A couple of recentish thoughts on SRS:

[realmayo]

I use ANKI for grammar points too.

 

Johnny, I've done similar before, as you say it's kind of bastardisation of SRS, or at least, using Anki's software to guarantee exposure/access to content, even if not using the SRS memory-algorithm stuff.

 

Then again, you could just print out the grammar points! And read through one page of A4 every couple of days.

[imron]

I don't know why, but computer-generated audio seems worse for me than just reading the pinyin myself

What audio are you using? Pleco has text-to-speech which is computer generated, but it also has male and female audio bundles that have recordings of tens of thousands of words (I think I remember Mike saying 30,000 or something, but he'll probably come along and correct me).

These are not just single syllables stitched together, but actual recordings of the full word, and will only fall back to stitched words for lower frequency terms.

[vellocet]

Pleco has text-to-speech which is computer generated, but it also has male and female audio bundles that have recordings of tens of thousands of words (I think I remember Mike saying 30,000 or something, but he'll probably come along and correct me).

 

Only if you have the full paid version of Pleco.  Lots of Chinese learners I know don't.

 

My issue with the audio is, as always, screwed-up third tones.  It's worse than no audio at all. 

[naijahusker]

Realmayo,

I am doing exactly what I think you want and I'm really loving it. For about a month now, I've been slowing building a deck to help drill and build vocabulary.

 

Q: I have audio of word I want to remember (2 or more characters),

A: I have audio sentence  where I encountered the word + I usually throw in the Hanzi + In rare cases I add English meaning of word.

 

I have been doing this so far with my long ago downloaded stash of Chinesepod Upperimmediate Lessons. I basically load the lesson in Audacity and listen. As it plays on, I enjoy the lesson and I delete sections I understand fully. When I encounter a sentence with a new word I create label/track. I listen and go through the entire lesson, I usually ignore the acted dialogue and focus on the more engaging discussion and explanations between the 2 hosts. By the time the podcast is over I would have created between 20-30 tracks of sentences. I export these tracks and these go on the Answer side of my cards.  For the front side, I got to this free glossary http://chinesepod.com/tools/glossary/entry/%E6%97%A5 where words are spoken by human voice, search each new word in exported tracks, click play and record it with Audacity. I do it for each word until all my 20 or so cards are made.  If a  word is not in the glossary, I just put the pinyin with tone marks in the front. This happens maybe 1 in a 100.

 

I feel this is a very effective way of eliminating the clues/context that used to allow me to guess meanings. Now all I have is the word spoken on the question side. When I flip to the answer side, the sentence and scenario during the podcast come flooding back as I listen to how the word was used and If I didn't already know, I usually can easily deduce the meaning.

[Johnny20270]

Imron I can't deny I'm fearful that this might all just be a step closer to the evil cult of Delitism!

 

Come to the dark side,

 

As for cloze deletion, I tried with that for a long time, but as Imron indicated, there is a large cost in terms of card creation. Like a lot of study I am great at preparing to study than actually studying 

 

Anki card creation for me is actually very fast as I use excel spread sheets, then export and import. I get the new words from MDGB. Here you can copy the entry and simply paste it into a spread sheets. The columns of your spread sheet have to be lined up with the import fields in anki, but 50 new words and import to anki only takes about 30mins at most as its so repetitive. The spreadsheet methods allows for excel formulas, sorting, VBA code <-- this is very powerful if you know how to use it. 

 

However, 2 major issues

1. I am relying on MDGB database. PELCO far better

2. I have no sentence examples. PLECO does

 

These 2 aspects alone (especially no. 2!) do tempt me to PLECO

 

 

My issue with the audio is, as always, screwed-up third tones.  It's worse than no audio at all.  

 

 

I never find the need to have the word pronounced now. I know all the pinyin. That pause between characters, not observing tone sandi, and computer generated voice is annoying and counterproductive. So you really need real recordings

[imron]

@vellocet - You don't need the full version. They are paid addons, and at $5 per audio bundle, it's pretty affordable.

[Johnny20270]

I think I remember Mike saying 30,000 or something

 

34,000 now according to their website Impressive!

Actually your right $5 is not much, My Starbucks coffee and muffin beside me cost ~$7 

I'll buy it, I can see it been useful even if used occasionally. I seem to struggle with words like 矿泉水

 

 

EDIT

One aspect I like about PLECO is that they seems like a well run company, not a fly-by-night app company

 

This is encouraging! Is it breaking rules quoting from their website?

 

We've been in business for over a decade, and we offer free upgrades and free platform transfers whenever possible; we have users who bought the Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary from us for Palm Pilot in 2001 and are still able to use that same purchase on their brand-new iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy in 2013 without ever having had to pay an upgrade fee.

 

Edited August 1, 2015 at 03:16 AM by Johnny20270

[realmayo]

What audio are you using? Pleco has text-to-speech which is computer generated, but it also has male and female audio bundles that have recordings of tens of thousands of words

 

Ah, so it does, I'd never installed these though they must have come with a bundle. They sound nice. Still some 3rd tone problems but not the end of the world.

 

However, a pity all that audio is locked into Pleco, given that I won't switch SRS from Anki to Pleco. Presumably it wouldn't make sense for Pleco to sell the audio as standalone mp3.

[realmayo]

naijahusker, that looks like a good method, for brand new words at least, and given that you're already going to be spending time on each of those podcasts. The thing is I'd like to be able to add audio retrospectively, and to words that I won't necessarily find -- or not immediately anyway -- in chinesepod or other audio sources.

 

Thinking more broadly, and just guessing about how the brain works, but presumably if you get good at recognising the audio of, say, 3000 words, then you should be able to recognise new words outside that 3000 even when you're hearing them for the first time -- assuming you've learned them already as pinyin or characters?

[imron]

we have users who bought the Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary from us for Palm Pilot in 2001

I bought it in early 2007 for Palm Pilot and am using it now on my iPhone (and all phones in between) at no extra cost.

The amortised costs over the last eight years bring its total cost to pennies per day (and that's having spent ~$160 on various bundles and dictionaries back in the day).

The price might seem steep, but it's one of the best investments a Chinese learner can make.

The free version doesn't even come close to offering the same value.

[realmayo]

Hehe, I remember buying a second-hand palm thing simply for Pleco. I like to hope that by the time we are all wearing electronic contact lenses or brain implants, I'll still be able to upgrade Pleco to the new hardware!

 

Imron, out of interest, how long do you drill flashcards for?

[imron]

Imron, out of interest, how long do you drill flashcards for?

It comes and goes.  At the moment for example I'm not drilling anything at all and just coasting on existing knowledge, which at the moment for the stuff I read is mostly enough. 

 

When I do drill, I tend to keep a deck until it gets to around 20-30 minutes worth of revision per day.

[Shelley]

Ok so this question may sound dumb to people with much more experience and knowledge of SRS, I admit to being very uneducated as to how the whole SRS thing actually works. I understand the principle, but not the mechanics.

 

My question is

any words I get wrong twice get automatically suspended,

 

Why if you get it wrong is it suspended? Why is it not presented to you until you get it right X amount of times?

 

I would expect ones you know get suspended and ones you don't keep appearing.

 

So what am I missing?

 

Maybe we need a new topic by an expert - SRS the basics.

[realmayo]

Why if you get it wrong is it suspended?

 

Those are the settings that I chose to tweak, the default setting is to only suspend cards if you've got them wrong 8 times or more.

[edelweis]

@Shelley: Anki has a "leech" concept, it means cards which you don't manage to learn for some reason, and which take an unreasonable amount of revision time without any result at all. So they get suspended in order to let you spend your revision time more productively.

 

I guess that if a word is really important to you you'll take the time to learn it properly, then you won't have so many failures in a row with this card, and it won't be suspended. Or, perhaps you're meant to inspect the suspended leeches periodically to decide whether you actually to want to them or not....

[Shelley]

Yes, but why does it suspend them when you get them wrong?

 

Surly if you get it wrong you need to see it some more.

 

If you get it right x times then see it less and less.

 

I am sorry I just don't understand

[Shelley]

@edelweis I see thanks for the explanation. Not sure i agree but I understand.

[edelweis]

Well, I don't really use this feature either.

I think it's more for people who already have extensive vocabulary and have huge decks with several thousand cards, so if they don't learn one particular word it's no big deal.

[realmayo]

However, a pity all that audio is locked into Pleco, given that I won't switch SRS from Anki to Pleco. Presumably it wouldn't make sense for Pleco to sell the audio as standalone mp3.

 

Actually now I think about it, it should be easy enough to record Pleco's audio output onto my PC and add it to Anki that way.

[simc]

I fully support the idea that Pleco is better than Anki. Having the pronunciation is one major reason for this, but not the only one. What I like with Pleco is that you are one tap away from the example sentences in the dictionary so you can see the word in context, very very helpful.

My favourite feature is filters. You can load up a frequency list to weed out low frequency words. This makes the deck a lot more managable and makes deletionism unnessary.