Flashcards - the full collection of articles

It was back in 2011 that I wrote my first post dedicated to the use of flashcards for learning Chinese, entitled "Flashcards: Just do it". And this remains my strong recommendation for anyone who isn't yet an "advanced" student of Chinese (or any language you might be learning).

Since then, I have written a number of posts dedicated to the use of flashcards, and this article brings all such posts together into a full compilation - to make it easier for you to find them all ...

• Flashcards: Just do it (I don't think I could be more explicit about how important flashcards are if you really want to accelerate your language learning)
• My long romance with flashcards (This post is about how I got into flashcards - after first trying and failing and giving up - to finally doing it properly)
• The 'redneck' guide to flashcards (A humorous look at "You know you should be using flashcards if ...")
• How many flashcards does it take to change a lightbulb? (Here I give you an early insight into my actual flashcard deck, with lots of stats about its content and my usage, with some early and some recent examples of cards added)
• Getting sentenced in Chinese (In this article I talk about why I had moved to learning sentences and not just words, and how to 'roll your own' sentences)
• A clever butcher uses a cleaver (As you can see from the heading, you can actually create really clever sentences which link words, making them much easier to memorise)
• "Write on!!" - reviewing Skritter for iOS (Here I reviewed the Skritter iOS app, coming to the conclusion it's a great flashcard-style system for reading & writing Chinese)
• The one flashcard I review more than any other (A little tongue-in-cheek article about vocabulary :)

The above articles are specifically about flashcards, and the number of articles will grow over time. I make many other references to flashcards in articles, especially those in the Heisig series, as well as in terms of 'dragon tattoo' posts and 'Charlie Brown' posts and 'flexible' posts and 'snake' posts and 'boat' posts and 'horse' posts (and many others) where I include sentences that can easily be copied-and-pasted into your own home-grown flashcard pack.

And for those who are wondering, I have been using the Anki flashcard software (originally on Windows, then Mac, now mainly on iOS) - it's fantastic software, for many many reasons.

And, just to make my point clear, there is one post you really should read: Flashcards: just do it!

Heisig 2 - past 2000 characters

Hi all

The last you heard about my progress studying book two of the Heisig method [of learning to read & write Chinese] was in January, where I admitted that I had started studying the book again, after failing to get off the ground a few months before that.

Back in July 2012 I kinda started the book for the first time, but because I didn't get into a regular habit, the days between picking up the book kept increasing, and after a while I just shelved it. Literally.

So why was this year's attempt more successful? Mainly because I went with the flow more, put less pressure on myself, and took time to enjoy it more. And three months later, I'm still progressing nicely, according to plan.

So this is how it looks:

• I had to accept that although I did Book 1 in three months - that was right for that book at that time. This book is different, and this time is different. So this year's goal suits this year's circumstances.
• Thus I have set myself the goal of completing the book by the end of 2013, which amounts to just over 4 characters a day. That doesn't seem like much, but given that I'm also doing podcasts and other full-sentence flashcards, this is on top of that. It's enough. 
• I completed the first 500 characters of Book 2 (making it a total count of 2000) on 9 April, which is about 5 characters a day - not bad.  I don't do it every day, I'm still not fully into the habit, but it's regular enough.
• I'm much better about revision than I was with Book 1, which is part of the reason I'm taking longer to finish the book. I am OK with that :)
• I use TWO METHODS to revise: (a) I keep going back in the book, sometimes the most recent chapter, sometimes even earlier chapters; (b) I also started using an Anki flashcard pack (downloaded off the site's free collection of packs) - which tests Chinese-to-English. I began that in late Feb, setting it to introduce five 'new' characters a day, so that it will also reach the end of the set by the end of the year. Of course, I will always be slightly further ahead with the book than with the flashcards, so actually it is a pure revision mechanism.
• Although I complained in January that the characters in this book were much more complicated, actually it's not that bad. Of course, on average, they are more complex than Book 1, but they're really not that bad. So far.

So that's where I am.  Is anyone else reading this post also doing Book 2? Or anyone who has already finished Book 2 that has comments or suggestions? Would love to hear from you.

Under the blankets, with a torch

It's a secret, so I'm not telling anyone, but I have started Heisig Book 2 again. Shhhh ...

As you might remember from last July, I wrote a post called I have begun Heisig Book 2. Kinda.  At that stage - just 3 weeks after beginning - I was already behind 'schedule', and that was really disappointing for me because I managed to do the entire Book 1 in about 3 months. By August, just a month later, I was writing a post called Total failure - I simply did not have enough time to study Heisig, and decided that the little spare time I had should rather be spent doing flashcards rather than additional characters.

(To give you a sense of my time shortages, last year I did over 50 flights, which is approximately one business trip every second week. Ouch.)

Well, at the start of January this year, I picked up the book again, and began with character 1501.


What I'm doing differently - lessons from last time

1. No goals
I didn't set myself any goals - last time I actually found that disheartening. Instead I decided I would first get some momentum going, and get a sense of what time I would have available - and only then decide what goals to set myself. I still don't have a solid rhythm going, and I'm still not working through the book each day, but I'm enjoying the pressure-free attitude to Book 2, which means at least I'm enjoying it.

2. More revision
As I had remarked in the July article, Book 2 is more difficult - obviously. This means I really need more time with the revision because these more complex images can fade quite quickly in the beginning. I'm less panicked about finishing within a certain time frame, so revision actually feels like it's contributing to my goal of learning to read, rather than delaying my goal of getting through the book.

3. Character-to-English
When I did Book 1, my focus was on being able to see the character and know it's meaning. This is, after all, my challenge when I'm trying to read.  Learning to write was less important to me, so the need for English-to-Character is less. After focusing on C2E when studying the book, I loaded up an Anki flashcard deck, and my revision of the book was based on E2C.  I found this an extremely enjoyable and efficient approach, and I'm doing the same ... learning C2E mainly while studying the book. Later on I will load up a flashcard pack for Book 2.

4. Enjoy
I was not enjoying learning Book 2 when I picked it up last year. Don't get me wrong ... I wanted to learn the book, and I remember how excited I was when the book was first delivered to me, but it was the wrong time, and the wrong attitude - and it failed.  Now I'm enjoying it - and although I can't guarantee that I won't fail again, I at least feel like I'm on the right track.

5. Don't give up (in the long run)
I gave up in August, it was the wrong time for so many reasons. But I didn't give-up totally. I knew I would pick it up again, at the right time. And I did pick it up again. And this might be the right time :-)

When the boat arrives ...

The other day, in response to something I said in a Mandarin conversation, the person replied, "船到桥头自然直" (chuán dào qiáotóu zìrán zhí). I stared blankly - these were words that my brain figured I should understand, but I didn't quite get what they were saying.

Actually, it's a Chinese idiom - and I've had lots to say about such idioms in the past. Literally it means "When the boat gets to the bridge-head, it will naturally go straight", or in other words, "Everything will be alright."

I made a note to copy this into my flashcards, and when I got home I typed "船到" into my dictionary, only to discover that there are actually a few idioms that begin when the boat arrives.


Without much explanation, for your interest, amusement & education, here they are:

船到江心，补漏迟
chuán dào jiāng xīn, bǔ lòu chí
Once the ship has reached the middle of the river, it's too late to plug the leak
(English equivalent: No point in closing the stable door after the horse has bolted)

船到码头，车到站
chuán dào mǎtóu, chē dào zhàn
The ship has docked, the carriage has reached the station
(The job is over, it's time to relax)

船到桥门，自会直
chuán dào qiáomén, zì huì zhí
When the ship arrives at the bridge we can deal with the problem
(No point in worrying until it actually happens)


And actually, there are a few such idioms which talk about cars arriving too:

车到山前必有路
chē dào shān qián bìyǒu lù
When we get to the mountain, there'll be a way through
(The same meaning as the opening idiom about boats)

车到山前自有路
(A slight variation of the above)

车到山前必有路,船到桥头自然直 车到山前必有路，船到桥头自然直
chē dào shān qián bìyǒu lù, chuán dào qiáotóu zìrán zhí
When we get to the mountain, there'll be a way through and when the boat gets to the pier-head, it will go straight with the current
(This is a mega version combining both ships & cars)


Make sure you quickly copy at least one of these into your flashcards NOW, before you realise that your ship has sailed  :-)

I have begun Heisig Book 2. Kinda.

If you've been following my posts, you'll know that I have been preparing for a while to study the second book in the Heisig & Richardson series about learning to read & write Chinese. And I've been re-discovering good things too!

I set myself a goal to begin on 1 July (after fully re-studying Book 1), and to finish by year-end. Although I did the first book in about 3 months, I decided not to get carried away this time.

The bad news: I'm already behind schedule.
I thought I would begin at about 10 characters a day, expecting to slow down as I needed more time to revise. As of last night (21 days in) I had learned just 170 characters. I have also done a lot less revision than I should have done by now. Damn.

The good news: I am 170 characters further than when I started 3 weeks ago. (Even slow progress is progress, right?)


Here are some of the things I've noticed along the way:

• It is definitely going more slowly that Book 1 - but that isn't a surprise, right?
• The average number of strokes in the first couple of hundred characters looks to be about 10, which is quite a bit more than the first book
• My retention in the early weeks of the first book was nearly flawless - it was easy enough to remember the stories because the images were clear & obvious
• I'm not suggesting that there is a massive step up from the first to the second book - it's all about progressing slowly from character 1 to character 3000
• I'm mainly behind schedule because of work-based time constraints, and not because of a lack of interest in completing book 2
• There are some really strange keywords (the preface even explains this was necessary in order to ensure each character has a unique keyword), like: "father's sister" (maybe it would be easier if my father had a sister :-), "smidgen" (OK, I can cope with this), "cinnabar red" (erm ...), "flouds" (you'll get there, don't worry), "paulownia" (uhm ...), "vermilion" (sheesh ...), "succor" (hello dictionary), "brick heated bed" (seriously?)
• I got a little confused by 1559 ("widowed") until I realised that the 'head' primitive is actually written in traditional (not simplified) style
• And I smiled when I saw their copy-and-paste screw-up in character 1663 ("sow" - verb)
• It's so nice to finally get to know characters intimately that I have only come across in sentences in my flashcard pack
• It's clear that the authors have learned from Book 1, and they are improving Book 2 with this. For example, certain sub-primitives are getting different images to what they were allocated in the first book - I like what they've done here with Eiffel Tower and Disneyland
• And finally, I have created a Harry Potter themed image in all my Heisig work ("snitch" - I know it's not the way the authors intended it to be interpreted, but it made the story/character very clear for me)

So I'm really enjoying myself. Time constraints prevent me from doing any more time than I'm doing at the moment, but I'm enjoying the progress - and the fact that I'm already recognising characters from around, shows it's already adding value.

"Write on!!" - reviewing Skritter for iOS

Before the official release of the app for iOS, I was approached by the Skritter team to test it, and perhaps write a review. I wasn't offered any freebies, and was given total freedom to write my own review, so I'm comfortable that this is a neutral perspective.

Also, while it was tempting to publish my review around the time of the official release when all those other reviews were being published, I was worried that I would write it more in light of my excitement of having a new novelty toy to play with. I was more keen to actually get a sense of the 'longevity' of Skritter for iOS ... how long before the excitement died down?? (Hint: It still hasn't)

For no particular reason, I'm going to write this review in the style of a FAQ. (By the way, if you are rushed for time, just read Q1, 4, 6, 7, 13. Oh heck, just read it all - this isn't a particularly long post :-)

1. Would you recommend Skritter iOS to others?
Yes

2. Will everyone benefit from using it?
In theory, yes.  But I think there are plenty of Chinese learners who should be focusing more on pinyin, vocab acquisition, tones, and listening skills - and Skritter should perhaps wait a little longer.

3. What about the iOS experience?
From an iOS point of view, the implementation of Skritter is fantastic. It's sleek, artistic, fast, powerful, flexible. It's a great example of using iOS to the full.

4. Did you use Skritter before testing the iOS app?
No. In fact, I had a completely wrong idea about Skritter, so I never bothered before!
I'm glad I took the time to play with it. For example, I had assumed it was just about learning to write characters, but actually it's much more than that. Yes it can be used for that, but it has an amazing selection of vocab, so that it goes way beyond individual characters, into compound-words, phrases and sentences.

5. Does Skritter iOS cater nicely to people who haven't used the website before?
In some ways, Skritter is intuitive to use. But I think the team could do a little more to help people who are totally new to Skritter. For example, there are many settings in the preferences pane that I'm not sure what they actually do - a clarification sentence would be nice for each. It talks about numbers of items added, number of items synchronised, etc. - but it wasn't obvious to me what the difference is. I remember having to add characters one at a time, up to a hundred at a time, although I really wasn't sure why I was having to do that when I had already selected a list - shouldn't it just add the whole list?

6. For actually learning characters, would you recommend Heisig or Skritter?
I still believe that the Heisig method is a better way to learn characters (either reading or writing) than practising writing (on paper, in the air, or with Skritter). I strongly recommend that Heisig should come first, and then Skritter should follow. And yes, definitely use Skritter once you can read & write characters.

7. If you already can read/write through Heisig, why bother with Skritter?
Ah, well this is where I'm finding Skritter to be particularly amazing.
I believe Heisig is the best way to learn to read & write - certainly the fastest with least effort. But it doesn't teach you the pronunciation (pinyin), nor does it show you the characters being used in compound words. I'm finding Skritter to be an excellent bridge between the Heisig world, and the practical world of reading and writing more significant texts. Highly recommended.

8. What's your biggest concern about Skritter iOS?
I think I'll say it's the cost. I don't doubt that a huge amount has been invested in developing this great app, but at just under $10 per month, that's a huge investment, even over a year. I think a lot of people will be excluded from signing up at this price (even the discounted prices), and I'm curious to know whether I'll still be happy to be paying this before a year is up. In a world where apps cost a few dollars, this is on the other end of the scale.
I will say that the Skritter team are not trying to trick you to paying them money, though! As my trial period was ending, they sent me quite a few emails warning me that I was going to start getting charged. No one could claim they were charged because they forgot to cancel, by mistake. Well done Skritter.

9. Any technical thoughts about the app?
There are some strokes that Skritter keeps saying I'm wrong, even though I find myself writing perfectly over the hint-line, mostly commonly 阝 and many near-vertical lines. Odd. I'm inclined to believe it's my handwriting and not Skritter, but when my lines appear to overlap perfectly with the underlying hints, it makes me wonder.

10. Do you like the font that underlies Skritter?
Actually yes, it's a beautiful font - lovely. I do wish however that we were given the option of a second font - something that was a little more computer-perfect. Most of the characters I see are of course on a computer, and Skritter's font is slightly more stylistic. This means I find myself positioning/angling some of my strokes in ways I would expect based on what I see most of the time. From memory, characters like 火, 垂, 民 all are slightly different as a computer font than the Skritter font. This means either Skritter thinks I'm wrong at times, or it ends up moving my stroke far away from where I placed it. I can learn to live with just one Skritter font, but a less stylised one might be a nice option. One day.

11. What about Skritter as a flashcard app?
Well, it is sold as an SRS (spaced repetition system), but so far it doesn't feel like that. Maybe there is a setting I haven't used yet, but very few characters have come up a second time, I still seem to be working my way through the list, one phrase at a time. And although it tests my pinyin & tones & definitions, it feels like only 1 in 25 cards is non-handwriting. I'm still waiting for the 'repetition' to begin, let alone the 'spaced repetition'.

12. What extras would you like to see?
Firstly, I've simply added words from two lists: "Integrated Chinese 2" and "Business". And Skritter seems to have thrown these into a pot, deciding for itself which characters to feed to me when. Sometimes (particularly on a plane, flying somewhere for a business meeting) I feel like I'm in "business mode", and I'd like to learn words only from the Business list, but I can't do that.
Secondly, it would be nice to have a search facility. As I mentioned above, the character 垂 was different, if I remember correctly, to how it appears on the computer. But I can't search for a single character within Skritter in order to show you how it looks. Also, sometimes I remember struggling with certain characters, and it would be nice to find them again to practise, but I don't seem to be able to do that on the iOS app.
Thirdly, when trying to decide which lists to use, it would have been nice for the list description to include the number of characters that I'd be getting by selecting that list.
Fourthly, the app is really feature-packed, and it would not surprise me to find out that all the things I think need to change are already a part of the app - maybe I just don't know how to do it! :-) (For example, at one stage I thought a nice option would be to retain my stokes, rather than replacing them with the right strokes - but then I discovered there's a setting for that!)

13. In the opening paragraph you spoke about concern about the excitement of using Skritter iOS dying down ...
Yes, that was a real possibility. I've used many tools and websites to improve my Chinese; I've started listening to many podcasts - but over time I find I get bored of them, and just realise one day that I don't use them anymore. But so far Skritter has been really good, and I continue to enjoy using it. It's a nice distraction when I have a couple of minutes to spare, it's a nice break from podcasts, or Heisig Book 2. And I have definitely got value from using it.

So I am still using Skritter iOS. And I am still benefitting from Skritter iOS. And I am still happy to continue to pay for the Skritter iOS app.


tl;dr: If you can afford it, then I think you probably should use it too.

Write on!!

Bad Heisig images & great Dali paintings

Discovering (un)treasure

It was about 2.5 years ago that I finished studying Book 1 of  "Remember the Simplified Hanzi" Heisig & Richardson. And as you might have seen from a relatively recent post, I've got Book 2 staring at me from the shelf ... but first I wanted to completely re-do Book 1, to make sure that I revised all primitive images, and was truly ready for the next installment.

In order to revise the book, I downloaded the Anki database of the book's 1500 characters, set it to 10 new characters a day, and just ran it from there. That happened nearly 150 days ago ... So I'm just a few dozen characters away from finishing the book. Again.

The database is pretty good, with the character number, hanzi, keyword, pinyin ... and it also contains stories (where Heisig & Richardson didn't provide their own stories). These stories appear to have been taken from a community effort to create stories for those characters that didn't get their own in the original book. I guess anyone would have been able to contribute their own story for a character, although I'm not sure how they chose which was the one to get into the Anki database.

Much of the time, I just stuck the the story that I had previously created myself, but every now and then I couldn't remember mine, so I looked at their stories. Some were actually quite good, but so often the stories left me scratching my head.

"The Persistence of Memory"

In this article, I have taken an extract of stories that I found in that Anki pack, and highlighted some of the ones that I don't like.

Of course, for the most common characters, you see them so often that after a while you forget the story and you just know the character. And that's OK. But there are some characters which I have barely seen since completing the book, and when I do see them sometimes, I do have to rely on the stories - and that's when the persistence of memory becomes important.

And this is going to be even more important for Book 2, I'm sure, given the even further reduced frequency of those characters.

This is not about personal preference of whether it's 'nice' - this is based on my being able to work through Book 1 in about 3 months, and seeing what did & didn't work. It's also based on now revising the book after 2.5 years, and noting which of my stories persisted, and which completely failed me after all this time.

No offense intended

It's possible that you were the author of one of the stories I have included below. No offense. But I think it might be useful to consider what makes a good story, and what is likely to give problems. And for anyone that thinks I've got it totally wrong, please leave some comments below ... I promise I won't be offended :)


The Hall of the (in)famous


760: 微: Tiny

The tiny sherpa (taskmaster) is leading this queue of brave ant mountaineers up the wall of the house and towards the ceiling where they can live in peace and security in the attic. Unfortunately, they didn't account for the strong winds that blow through the attic at that altitude, so they are all swept off the mountain (a wall) and back to the ground!

Two thinks go wrong, in my opinion:  Firstly, the story has too many 'equivalents' to be memorable: You have to remember that taskmaster is a sherpa (which may differ from your other taskmaster images), and a wall is a mountain - so when you see the image in your mind, will you remember to use a mountain? Or will the image of 'wall' arise and confuse you?  Secondly, there are too many extra words here, that are likely to confuse: house, ceiling, ground. These all have their own primitives, and this interferes with how the image persists in your memory.


950: 碌: Commonplace

Stones are commonplace - stone snowmen, less so!

Unlike the story for 'tiny', this one is simple with no additional confusing words. Good. But consider these two alternatives ...
 - Metal is commonplace - metal snowmen, less so!
 - Wood is commonplace - wooden snowmen, less so!

As you can see, although going from story to keyword might be possible, if you go from keyword to story, suddenly the requirement that the word is 'stone' fades, and you may not be able to remember what is the primitive on the left. Try to make the 'stone' more integral to the story.


951: 争: Contend

This drunkard has to contend with crossing a booby trapped lawn back to his house. First, he keeps stepping on rakes in the grass (which fly up and hit him in the face) and secondly he has to avoid getting bound up in the tough hedges all around.

Again, lots of extra words in the story to confuse which primitives should appear, like house & grass (which have their own primitives). Secondly, do you think you'll remember the word 'contend' when seeing the character? Or will you see the 'bound' and the 'rake', see the guy sneaking through the garden, and wonder if the keyword is 'careful' or 'dangerous' or 'injury' or ... 'contend'????


991: 乏: Weary

Zorro has become world-weary, having seen one too many drops of cruelty in his adventures.

This feels like a sentence and not an image. How do you visualise this? Will you still have memorised the phrasing of this sentence in two years time?   "drop of cruelty"?  I just believe that stories should be more clear, more explicit, less wordy, for them to persist in memory.


1036: 泻: Diarrhea
Diarrhea flows out like water, writing off the meal that you ate last night.

Yes the primitive on the right is 'writing', and in theory 'writing off' matches that. But as with the previous story, this would only work if you memorise the sentence. It's not an image, and it's unlikely to be remembered for long enough to be useful. I would really recommend your image either includes someone writing, or seeing writing on a page ... something that is visually memorable. And try be consistent: if it's someone writing, then always see someone writing to represent that primitive.

1157: 饭: Meal

At mealtimes you eat your food against the backdrop of a TV episode or some other entertainment. Mealtimes are the only things that will drag you out of contemplation of that idea that has been eating you up!

I don't even know where to begin with the confusion this image creates. Again, it is built on being able to memorise a sentence ("drag you out" - rather than seeing something being dragged;  "against the backdrop" - rather than seeing something against something;  "eating you up" - rather than someone actually eating). You are making it really hard for yourself if your images are based on memorising sentences, rather than picturing images that stick in your mind.

1178: 脑: Brain

The brain is the only part of Fagan's flesh this is worth anything - every other part of his flesh is cruel, despicable and nasty - from his top hat down to the pit of his stomach.

Double-counting! On the left is 'flesh' and on the right is 'Fagan' - thats is enough for a story.  Yet this one also includes the components of 'Fagan' (being 'hat' & 'cruel') - which is confusing.

1212: 请: Invite

You invited a few friends round for some drinks at your house, but the words got out and telescoped out of control! Now you have a full blown house party going on, and none of your words are helping to move the resulting mound of grown-up flesh from the house.

I'm sure by this time you're seeing that certain problems keep arising. Firstly (yet again) we have too many words ... drinks, friends, house, etc. Careful these don't confuse the image when you have to piece it together yourself. And secondly, it feels like trying to memorising a sentence again!  "telescoped out of control"?  "mound of grown-up flesh"?   Even if you see a wild party in your image, how will your mind remember "telescoped out of control"?  Can't you actually put a telescope into the image?

1252: 陈: Exhibit

The museum is showing off the pinnacle of Eastern transportation development. Forget Hyundai and Toyota - the humble rickshaw is the most amazing invention that they are exhibiting!

This takes the use of 'pinnacle' and again makes it wordy, rather than visual. In my mind I always use an image of the top of a certain famous building in London as 'pinnacle' - and any scene that takes place here will be obvious to me to use that primitive on the left, simple. And if you're thinking of this story/image, how will you remember to use the word 'pinnacle', and not 'top' or 'peak' or anything else?

1275: 决: Decide

"You Decide" - at least, since the last king had his head cut off by a guilllotine! Of course, given how effective democracy has been it would have been wise in restrospect to keep the head on ice to make decisions for us when the politicans are caught up in squabbling. Alternatively, this pictures someone who can't decide between two model of guillotine: extra tall or extra sharp? While he waits his feet are getting frozen to the ground in the cold air.

There are actually two version here. The first one has the added confusion of a head (careful not to use it as a primitive), whereas the second has the ground, which also isn't one of the primitives in the image. I'm not sure the link to 'decide' in the first one is obvious enough to be memorable.

1318: 蚊: Mosquito

Mosquitos are principally found in Scotland, where the insects bother the highlanders to their hearts content.

Heart's content? So there is the heart primitive in the image? No, so careful about using the word 'heart' :-)  And how does this story help you differentiate between mosquitos? Flies? Birds? All could work as it appears - but only one is right. Make sure your image involves them sucking blood - so it's clear this is a mosquito and not a fly.

1343: 遗: Bequeath

Bequeathing your possessions to your children can be an expensive road to go down, due to inheritance tax. Much better to spend it all before you die!

I feel I'm repeating myself here, so I'll stop after this one.  You can't visualise "road to go down" - not in the way it has been used in this story. Really try to be more explicit about a road, like having all your expensive possessions lined up along the side of the road, so you are in effect bequeathing it to anyone who wants to help themselves to something.


A Better Way

Ultimately this article is just to get you to think about what makes a bad story, to make sure you don't make these common mistakes. Trust me - you want these stories to last!

Here are some of the other posts I have written on making great images, so that you can succeed in learning to read Chinese ...

• Some early mistakes - try to avoid them
• Tips & Tricks for Heisig Visualisations - one of my most popular posts
• Using Modern Art to Learn Chinese - dealing with abstract imagery

With a clear set-up, images that do the right things (as per the links here), and which don't do the wrong things (as with the examples in this post), you are ready for visuals that will last, that will take advantage of the Persistence of Memory.


Good luck!  And let me know below if you disagree with my assessments - it would be interesting to hear from you. (And yes, you can even comment if you agree with my post!)

My long romance with flashcards

In my previous post on the topic, I recommended very strongly that you should be using flashcards as part of your Chinese-learning efforts.

In this post I'd like to write a bit about how my relationship with flashcards has gone, and why I find it one of the most useful tools available to progress one's learning.

SRS

When I started with flashcards, I used a program that was not SRS-based, which was a terrible mistake. A random-card system was fine in school when you were trying to revise the capital cities of the world, but not when you're using it as a tool to learn Chinese words. I would learn a word, and then it wouldn't appear again for weeks, by which time I'd have to learn it again. Or words that I already knew well would keep coming up - wasting my time. So I gave up on flashcards.

But it wasn't long after that I found Anki, which felt so natural that I haven't stopped using it since then.

Setting it up 

Some people load up pre-made decks when they begin - for example there are beginner's Chinese packs available that you can you download directly into Anki. However in my case, there were just a few dozen words that I wanted to learn (or so I thought!), so I chose to set up my own deck and start with only words that I cared about.

I built three fields for each 'fact':  English, pinyin, simplified Chinese. And for each 'fact', I built two 'cards' - one where the English was the question, and pinyin & Chinese were the answer; and one where pinyin was the question and English & Chinese were the answer.

To be honest, I didn't even look at the Chinese writing, I was a beginner and I stuck with English & pinyin.

Phrases & Sentences

Over time, knowing individual words wasn't enough. I needed to use sentences, and frankly my grammar was rubbish. Some of the words I was adding were coming from the About.com daily words email, and ever-practical I realised it would take just as long to copy a word into my deck as to copy a sentence - and thus it began.

Again, although my deck is made up of words & sentences that I have added myself, you can choose to take the route of downloading a pre-made deck directly into Anki, one of which is called "20,000 Chinese Sentences". Whatever works for you.

I slowly got into Chengyu (I've written about that guilty pleasure before) and have also added a few into my deck over time.

(Here are two screenshots [1] [2] of cards from my deck, if that helps give you context.)

Relevance

To make sure that I was learning words that I would be likely to use in future, whenever I looked up a word in my dictionary, and I felt that I really wanted to remember it, it became automatic to copy that word into my deck too. Took just a few seconds to make another card.

(See "Why a meal is worth more to me than my grandmother" for more thoughts on sticking to relevant learning.)

Earlier on I was just copying the word (including English, pinyin & Chinese), but over time I made sure that I found a sentence that used the word. This gave the word a context, made it easier to remember than just a lonesome word, improved my grammar, and sometimes included other useful words to learn too.

This use of sentences was so valuable to my learning that I wrote an article called Getting Sentenced in Mandarin, about how to track down good sentences.

I don't know if building up a deck from scratch sounds like a lot of effort, but if you're only doing a few a day, and since you're just copying & pasting, then it's really quick.

Do not let flashcards be your excuse. Do not spend so much time building up a deck that you never get around to using it to learn.

Chinese characters

Although I learned to recognise a few characters simply by virtue of the fact that my cards included the Chinese writing, this was incidental. It was only a couple of years ago, when I started to formally learn to read Chinese (here is Day 0 of that adventure) that I changed my flashcard practice. Instead of only using English or pinyin as the questions in Anki, I also set it to show me the Chinese version of the words & sentences I had already entered. In Anki, this change took about a minute to make - it's a great program.

And of course, having moved to Hong Kong late last year, I am now surrounded by traditional Chinese characters - but my deck was populated with simplified characters! Making some easy edits to my deck format, I added an extra field, and then any sentences that I added after that time would also get the traditional characters added too. I don't test myself based on the traditional characters, but I am still able to compare the two systems when looking at the card. And for now, that's enough.

Getting technical

More recently, rather than focusing on words from general conversation, I'm taking the time to build up vocab that I am likely to hear in meetings, or read in documents. Since I'm in the financial sector, these words include things like: assets, credit rating agency, cost of capital, assess, reserves, medical insurance, etc.

The process is the same as I've been doing - I find a word I want to learn, look it up, explore sentences of the various results to make sure I've got the right word in the right context, and then copy it into my deck. Usually it takes a few days or a few weeks before that new entry makes it into the queue for me to start learning.


So that's it for me and deck. I would love to hear about you and yours ...

Flashcards: just do it

There's a lot of debate about whether you should use flashcards for learning Chinese. And perhaps the advice I should give you is: Use it if it works for you, and don't use it if it doesn't work for you.

Simple.

But I should also state that I have benefited so massively from the use of flashcards, that I really believe you should use it - regardless of whether you think it might be useful or not.

Just do it.

My use of flashcards has evolved over the years, and that's probably why I'm still getting value out of them, starting with individual words (excluding Chinese characters), progressing through to much more complex sentences which include the hanzi.

I use Anki, which is an SRS (spaced repetition system) program that runs on most operating systems. It's incredibly intuitive, very flexible, and free. You may as well install it now, if you haven't already done so, and you can learn more about how to use it optimally in the next few posts I write.

One of the more common arguments against using flashcards is that if you are reading books & newspapers & websites in Chinese, then you will end up learning the most common words anyway, without wasting your time on words that you might almost never see.

But most students of Chinese are not at that level, and therefore most students really should be focusing on accumulating words as quickly as possible. The more words you know, the more you will understand and the more you will be able to say. A flashcard system is, in my opinion, the best way to get there.

So if you're an advanced student, flashcards might not be for you. But for anyone else ... Just do it.

(Not) learning to read Chinese - 'Black October'

If you have been paying attention, you would have noticed no updates from me on how many characters I learned lately. And there is a reason for this ...

This is an update on my experiment to learn to read Chinese. You can also read my original post on this topic, or check out all other posts on my experiment. After a bit of research I settled on Heisig's "Remembering the Simplified Hanzi" method - which is progressing really well.

October has been crazy work-wise. This included separate business trips to both India & Singapore. Leading up the trips there was a lot of preparation to do, and then after the trips there was, uhm, a lot of follow-up work to do. So I spent pretty much no time learning new hanzi - and my official total is still at 1000.

October hasn't be a total waste though ... I've been revising the first 1000 characters through flashcards (although only about 5-10 minutes a day). 

And I suppose there is a lesson here - that if something is 'available' and 'easy', then you'll do it. Anki flaschards are always loaded in the background, and if I need a quick break, or I dial into a dull conference call, then I can flash through a few quick cards.

But enough is enough! I'm missing the excitement of when I was learning 25+ new characters a day. I'm missing the urge to reach for my well-thumbed Heisig when I pop out for a quick lunch. And I want to get through the 1500 well before year-end.

So this weekend, I'm back on the wagon. I promise.  

(And if you're still thinking about trying Heisig, you can download - yes, legally - the first 108 characters here, and by Monday morning you could be 108 characters closer to fluency. If you're up for the challenge, drop us a note below, and then leave another comment when you've got through those 108. Go for it!)