Anki card decks for someone who is confused...

[Pengyou]

My school is holding free classes for the foreign teachers.  The Chinese teacher is using this series of books.  I did a search on this site looking for flashcard decks for Anki and found a variety of comments, not all good, and some from a couple of years ago.  Can someone give me an updated answer to the question what "what is the best source for flashcard decks for the HSK levels 1-5?"  I will most likely never test at level 6 but would like to have that as an option.  I have looked through some other posts here and found a wealth of resources to help me, but I would like to get some feedback on this decision before I start downloading and organizing.  Is there a desk that includes the part of speech for the word?

[Moshen]

Unless you are totally stuck on Anki, I recommend TofuLearn, which has decks for all the HSK standard level lists.  Really convenient to learn and review on one's phone.

 

Those do include the part of speech, along with sample sentences.

[jannesan]

2 hours ago, Pengyou said:

Can someone give me an updated answer to the question what "what is the best source for flashcard decks for the HSK levels 1-5?"

 

By far the best will be the ones you create yourself, where you pick example sentences yourself. I do think it makes a really big difference, so the substantial extra effort compared to pre-made decks is worth it in my opinion.

[mungouk]

I like the StickyStudy app for flashcards, which is iOS only and has built-in HSK levels with native audio. I found the audio really helped me to learn the tones.

 

TofuLearn is also very good (and works on all phones plus web browsers) and uses the same audio.

 

Don't forget that BLCUP has freely-downloadable audio for all the HSK Standard Course books on their website, and these are very useful resources. 

[大块头]

9 hours ago, Pengyou said:

"what is the best source for flashcard decks for the HSK levels 1-5?" 

 

If you want something targeted towards the current HSK, I believe the Pleco flashcard add-on comes preloaded with cards for that exam. As for the new HSK 3.0, I don't think the Anki deck I'm peddling has any competitors yet.

[Pengyou]

Thank you for the input.  So does the pictured above contain the official contents of the old HSK?  So any collection of cards or lists will contain vocab from this book?  In the same order as presented in this book?  Sorry for the bonehead questions.  I have used Anki before but only for personal study, never for something that correlates with a book or exam.

[mungouk]

1 hour ago, Pengyou said:

So does the pictured above contain the official contents of the old HSK?

 

That BLCUP series is based on the current HSK, version 2.0, which is going to be replaced by the new version 3.0 at some point this year.

[Pengyou]

Is Toufu learn purely online?

[mungouk]

There are iOS and Android apps too, but you need to be online when you sync your decks.

[马M]

What I do is make a spreadsheet with 5 columns*:
> id number (incrementing unique number)
> Chinese character
> Pinyin
> word type (noun / verb / adjective / ...)
> English Meaning

Then, I fill the spreadsheet with whatever vocabulary I want to use in my deck. You can do what Moshen suggested and copy the HSK vocabulary lists if you want to focus on HSK tests.

Once the spreadsheet is complete you can simply export it as a CSV file. Then, you can just import that file into Anki!

* sometimes I use an extra column for adding audio for each word, but that's a little more advanced/difficult to do.

** or, you can use an add-on like AwesomeTTS which will automagically add audio to all of your cards! (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/814349176)

*** Lately, I've started adding images to my cards, too. It really helps you to recall cards faster. I use another add-on for this called "Batch download pictures from google images" (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/561924305)