Over the course of my time studying Mandarin, I’ve used three types of flashcards:
- Picture flashcards (for visual review)
- Written/ typed flashcards (for verbal review)
- Software flashcards (for intense review-style cramming)
Each type of flashcard system has served a unique purpose for my vocabulary review needs. But all of them also had very important limitations.
Here’s a link to a great infographic that tries to answer the question “Are Flashcards an Effective Learning Tool?”
Here’s my take including my ideas for how you should use flashcards to study for the TOCFL or for everyday learning/testing. [For TOCFL specific advice, go straight to the bottom.]
But first, a mild disclaimer about flashcard reviewing versus flashcard learning.
Using Flashcards to Learn Isn’t a Good Idea
Flashcards can be a decent system for reviewing information—if used appropriately. For example, I occasionally use flashcards to study for vocabulary exams and quizzes. And I think they typically work well.
As a general rule: Flashcards help you review words that you’ve already learned but have trouble sticking in your memory. They aren’t a good main method of learning new words in Mandarin, because:
Flashcards Are Translation Dependent. Flashcards tend to force you into an “English word = Mandarin equivalent” mindset which isn’t always helpful for understanding the context and complexity that culture adds to language. (Example: 關係 = relationships? Not quite.)
Some characters have a lot of different meanings and usages. But when you go through a stack of flashcards, you are limited to that one translation completely in isolation. As a result, it gets frustrating and confusing when you learn that a word has a certain meaning, but then read it in a context that doesn’t fit the translation you learned. (Example: 沒關係 should mean “it doesn’t have a relationship” but it really means “it’s okay; never mind”) (A really good explanation of this is on Yearlyglot’s blog.)
Parts of Grammar Don’t Translate Well: Using flashcards to learn how words function in grammar doesn’t always work. Many particles and parts of speech have bizarre explanations/ definitions (Example: 得, 了, or 把). Learning these very technical definitions out of their specific grammatical context doesn’t help you understand the word at all.
Mandarin Has Many Easily Confused Characters: Sometimes you might see a character on its own and you think you know what it is, but if you’re careless and not paying attention to all parts of the character, you could be burning the wrong word into your memory.
For example, when I returned to the United States and got my first private tutor, I typed my first homework as 弟一課 (little brother one lesson) instead of 第一課 (lesson one). I had forgotten the top radical. My teacher scolded me. Many characters that look extremely similar—especially if you’re trying to hurry through a time pressured stressful situation like an exam! Words like: 例外 and 到处 have similar elements or characters like 土 and 士or 專 and 尃 look almost exactly the same.
Flashcards don’t really give you the opportunity to distinguish the differences in characters because you’re just looking at them one at a time (in isolation) and trying to get through them as fast as you can.
Everyday Review with Flashcards
Learning Visually with Picture Flashcards
Typical foreign language flashcards, especially those for adults, use the format: Mandarin word on one-side and English translation on the other side. Picture flashcards, however, often eliminate the translation step and just feature the target language, forcing you to associate word in Mandarin with a (representative) image.
Now, you have to create visual associations with the object or idea (rather than with its translation). To some extent, I think that really helps you start on the path of “thinking in the language.” You don’t have to translate. You only have to visualize.
They are also great source material for language learning games.
Limitations: Picture flashcards are extremely limited in that you can only really use them for things that can be depicted representationally. That means they’re best for learning vocabulary of concrete and simple to illustrate nouns (ex: food, clothes, body parts, sports) or verbs (ex: running, crying, dancing). Sometimes it can work with abstract ideas though like “greed,” “failure,” “frustration,” “bliss,” (think of those once popular motivational posters) but not always.
Moreover, if the concept in Mandarin is different from the concept in English—using only one picture to represent that idea, noun, or verb might cause you to start making incorrect assumptions about similarities across the two languages. So, you’ll have to be careful.
Audience: Some people think picture flashcards are just for children or elementary learners. I disagree. Using pictures isn’t limited to a particular language learning level—just a particular language learning task. Here, the task is to reinforce your Mandarin associations by replacing your translations with easy to understand images. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Learning Verbally with Typed or Written Flashcards
Handwritten flashcards are extremely cumbersome and often impractical. If you remember from an earlier post, I once handwrote lots of flashcards. That didn’t work for me at all. I was drawn to this method because I thought it would give me a chance to practice handwriting the character. But there are better ways to practice your writing.
When you hand-write your flashcards, you have to make sure you print each character perfectly, so you aren’t learning/ remembering it incorrectly. If your goal is to work on your writing skills, I recommend that you do it in a space where you can train your muscle memory through repetition—rather than trying to painstakingly reproduce a word once for each card.
Typed flashcards have all of the benefits of handwritten cards with less of the stress. When I have time, I try to type out my class vocabulary and attach them to ring cards by cutting out and pasting the characters. Although less time consuming than handwritten ones, these cards still take some effort.
On one side, I color code the word based on the tone. On the other side, I have the zhuyin and the definition(s) in Mandarin. In the past, I used to use the English translation, but these days I try to stick to Mandarin as much as possible.
After I’ve made the cards, some teachers have required me to write my own example sentence for each word as homework. Other teachers have made me come up with the sentences orally on the spot during class. Both are good. But when I have to type my example sentences, I keep them in a folder for reference, so I can see how the word is used in context. This is a great resource.
Also, ring cards are extremely portable.
Memorizing with Software Flashcards
There are electronic flashcards with really cool features (audio, easy image uploading, character writing practice, etc.) that make them similar but more convenient to use than paper flashcards. Then there’s SRS.
SRS (or Spaced Repetition Software) is all the rage in flashcard technology these days. How it works: You go to a specific SRS site to create (or select) a deck of online “flashcards.” Then, the software uses an algorithm to manage the cards. It calculates how long it will take before you “forget” the word based on your input about how difficult it was to recall. Then, the software schedules when it’ll be best for you to review those words again.
One of the most popular SRS for Mandarin language learning is Anki. Specifically, this company has several premade vocabulary decks (including a complete set for TOCFL). There are also versions of the software that will work with your computer, phone, and tablet. So, yay for portability!
However, after a few tries, I discovered that I don’t like SRS. Or at least, it doesn’t live up to the hype for me—not even close. I understand the arguments that SRS is supposed to make learning more “efficient.” I have some pretty strong feelings… but in short, the goal of SRS seems to be to keep you in a perpetual state of context-deficient review.
I think my personal use of SRS and non-SRS electronic flashcards would be similar to how I use paper flashcards. I’d review a manageable amount of words for a finite a period of time with the goal of preparing for something specific. For example, I might use SRS to study for weekly vocab quizzes and tests where I have to translate meaning. I’d create my own decks from class lists, inputting the words after I’d already learned them and then I’d go through the cards once a day until it was time for the quiz. I’d repeat for the next quiz.
For more long-term results (the goal of SRS), instead of using flashcards, I’d make a point to continually and consistently apply my new words to things in my everyday life. Regularly interacting with words in multiple contexts (reading, listening, writing, speaking them) just seems more beneficial in the long run.
Purchasing vs. Creating Flashcards
I prefer/ recommend homemade flashcards to store bought flashcards or premade SRS decks for a couple of reasons:
Going through the process of creating the card yourself (whether you’re entering it into the software database or painstakingly drawing each stroke) gives you yet another opportunity to be exposed to the word. You have to make an association with the character, the sound, and the meaning in that moment before going to the next.
I also like the fact that homemade cards are customizable. My homemade cards are color coded (not all “store bought” cards are). I use zhuyin (most use pinyin). I can always have them in the right size to fit my bag or pocket. If I want to color code the cards based on parts of speech, I can do that—and the colors can be based on my personal associations. (Here’s one guy who color codes his cards based on tones.)
Customizing flashcards works best if you’re limited to a few dozen cards a week. If you have to make hundreds of cards all at once (like for the TOCFL). That’s just not practical.
TOCFL-Specific Vocab Review
TOCFL has both listening and reading sections. Thus, it’s important to know the meaning of a word, what the characters look like, and how the word is pronounced. There are huge vocabulary lists for every level, but TOCFL is not a vocabulary test. Rather, it is a test of overall language comprehension. TOCFL is multiple choice. Thus, being able to recognize a word is more important than being able to reproduce it.
All of these facts really dictate how you should study TOCFL-specific vocabulary.
Because the vocabulary lists are so large, using picture, written, or typed flashcards for the bulk of your vocabulary review would probably be too tedious and time consuming.
On the other hand, Anki (SRS) cards aren’t necessarily the best either. The preloaded TOCFL cards (labelled TOP) give you the vocabulary word with its pinyin pronunciation. But you don’t get to hear it. As a test that encompasses both listening and reading—that’s an important limitation to be aware of.
Also, Anki is preloaded with one list per level. Although the choice of when to review a card is systematic and very calculated, which words to review and how words are grouped is not. That makes it harder for you to make certain connections between families of words. Another problem with Anki for TOCFL is that you have lots of random grammar flashcards (for things like adverbial particles or other parts of speech) that come out of nowhere and don’t really allow you to see how the words are actually used in practice.
My Recommendations for Studying TOCFL-Specific Vocabulary:
- Really assess your current level before choosing which exam to take. Don’t stress yourself out trying to learn all kinds of unfamiliar vocabulary for the exam. (Take at least one exam at your current level)
- Use the vocabulary lists to guide you, but don’t obsess over memorizing every single word.
- Learn the vocabulary first.
- Give yourself opportunities to read vocabulary in context through newspaper articles, advertisements, stories, and other reading material. Listen to vocabulary in context on the radio, on TV, from podcasts, and other listening material.
- Review with flashcards—understanding their limitations—after you’ve learned the words. (In other words, don’t use the flashcards expecting to learn words you’ve never encountered before)
- Use software but make your own decks. Don’t rely on mammoth preloaded decks (like the ones in Anki). You should group words thematically or in ways that make sense to you.
- If you can, upload audio (preferably from a native speaker) or find cards that already have the audio! There’s probably some pinyin-to-audio software out there you could use.
- Create a space for learning grammar specific vocabulary (like particles). Learn how and when to use grammar not just the technical definition.
- When you’re reviewing each card, pay close attention to what the character looks like so you don’t get it confused with a similar looking character.
- Occasionally review in reverse. Start on the English side and see if you can visualize the character and remember how it sounds.
That was a lot of information on flashcards, and studying vocabulary. I hope this helped. Ultimately this is my, “I wish I would have known these things before I started studying for the TOCFL” post. But feel free to let me know if you disagree.
I have a very different opinion of SRS than you.
“the goal of SRS seems to be to keep you in a perpetual state of context-deficient review.”
I have never encountered an advocate of SRS put forth this view. This feels like a straw-person argument to me. Most of the advocates I know of SRS (including myself) see SRS as a *supplement* to encountering words in context, not a replacement. In fact, Anki has features like the auto time-out which are supposed to limit how much you use SRS – it’s designed to be something you do for a few minutes at a time, not for intense study sessions.
“Regularly interacting with words in multiple contexts (reading, listening, writing, speaking them) just seems more beneficial in the long run.”
Again, you are positing this as an either/or proposition, which is a false dichotomy. Why can’t people practice reading, listening, writing, speaking AND use SRS?
I first started using SRS because I was running into a problem with reading where I would look up a word (this is learning words in context, no?), and then when I encountered the same word again two weeks later I had already forgotten it. If you just rely on reading and listening for building passive vocabulary (I consider building passive vocabulary to be the first step to building active vocabulary) there will be a lot of words where the intervals between encounters are simply too long to learn them properly, unless you’re reading carefully graded textbooks (which I find too boring). I use SRS (Anki) to plug this gap. With SRS, I can make sure the intervals between encounters for 90-95% of the words I am learning will be short enough for me to remember without the overkill entailed in other review methods. After I starting using SRS, my reading skills started to improve at a much faster rate. Thus I see SRS as a support to my reading/listening practice, not a replacement.
I also think there is a value in using both contextual and isolated exposure. If I learn a word only in context, I sometimes ONLY remember it in context (in other words, I remember the context, not the word itself). By using *some* (not *total*, *some*) isolated exposure, I can ensure that I can at least partially remember the word out of the original context. However, when I use SRS, I don’t think ‘this Chinese word is exactly like the English translation/definition’ (or even ‘this Hakka word is exactly like the Mandarin translation, since my Hakka deck is Hakka-Mandarin, not Hakka-English) but ‘I at least know the word well enough that I would understand it in context’.
I know the most popular way to put grammar into SRS is to use example sentences, not to try to isolate the grammar (I think the pre-made TOCFL decks don’t do this because they are based on official lists instead of being personally crafted). I also know many people use example sentences to put the vocabulary in context (they drill the sentences, not the individual words), though I don’t do this because, as I explained above, I like a little isolation.
I do think one limitation with SRS is that is it much more useful for improving passive skills (reading and listening) than active skills (writing and speaking). However, I consider a good foundation in passive skills to be very important to developing good active skills, and I have noticed that the robust word associations I build with SRS DO help with my active skills, just not as much as with my passive skills.
Hi Sara.
Nice to see you in the comments. First off, it sounds like you have a particular system that works for you and you feel like you get a lot of benefit from it. That’s great! Keep doing what works for you. You’re obviously pretty committed to and sold on SRS.
However, I think you misread what I wrote by quite a bit. My opinions aren’t nearly as black and white as you appear to have read them to be.
Context Deficient Review::
What I mean by perpetual state of context-deficient review is that many bloggers say they use SRS to review everyday, but most of them can’t seem to articulate why.
For example, I’ve read popular blog posts/comments about how people have “learned” hundreds or thousands of characters with SRS. But those people don’t seem to mention whether they ever actually *use* even a fraction of those characters that are now fixed in their brain. So what was the point? Just so you can say you know thousands of characters? Woo hoo. I don’t care how many words you know. Tell me that SRS helped you build your vocabulary so that you could achieve your goal of reading, say _Foucault’s Pendulum_ in Mandarin. Now that’s way more impressive than some random character count.
I want to know how people apply their flashcard review and why they are reviewing. SRS is a means to what specific end? But only a few people offer that up. When bloggers and commenters rave about how amazing SRS is but they only tell me their character count and not any kind of real life application, it makes me think that those people are advocating using flashcards (SRS) to learn characters *just for the sake of* learning them. That’s one of my big issues with Mandarin and Japanese–some people love to use character count as some kind of badge of honor. I’m not cool with that.
So I guess if I were to edit the text, I’d explain that my problem is less with SRS as a tool, but more with how some advocates seem to be encouraging its use. (But that does not a strawman make.)
False Dichotomy::
Also, what you see to be a “false dichotomy” isn’t one at all. I *clearly* explain how I would use SRS. I’d use it for a very limited purpose–not for long term learning, but to help me with short term goals.
Then, on my list of ways to study for TOCFL,–which is more like “What *I’ll* Be Doing If I Take the Exam Again”– I list SRS (or software flashcards) within 1 of 4 groups of recommended activities. So, it’s actually included as a review system. When you read closely, you’ll see that I actually advocate for a “both/and” study method but with a very specific prescription for how each part should fit with the others.
You said a lot more things. But I’m not going to directly respond to them (because I don’t want to write a book in the comments). However, the point is, I think your passion for SRS made you misread my comments or at least interpret any ambiguity as being wholesale (and narrow-mindedly) anti-SRS. If you re-read those paragraphs, you’ll see that’s not what I’m saying at all. I think SRS is often hyped to be this amazing tool. But you know what? SRS is still a flashcard system. Flashcards are designed to be (mere?) review tools. And at some point in their personal language development, people have to move away from using flashcards just like children have to stop using training wheels on their bikes.
I wish there was more balanced commentary on SRS. But there isn’t. I *mostly* see “SRS is AMAZING. (period)” or “SRS is AMAZING, but don’t forget to use other things, too.” Obviously! The “don’t use flashcards in isolation” argument is so common sense that it’s tedious. My point is, “SRS is okay. Understand its (limited) role in your language learning and move on.”
Sara, if you feel like SRS helps you, good. Keep doing what you’re doing and best of luck on your life long language journey.
Like you, I have ‘strong feelings’ so I did misread you somewhat (thanks for the clarification).
If people really have said that SRS should be the main means of study, then you did not set up a straw-person (though I suspect it’s possible that you misread them just as I misread you, since I have never read that argument before). Actually, could you link to some of these blog posts? You have aroused my curiosity.
However, people mean different things when they say ‘learn’. For example, when I say I ‘learn’ words with SRS I usually mean ‘I found this word in a book, looked it up in a dictionary, and then put it in my Anki deck’. You would probably call that ‘reviewing’ instead of ‘learning’.
I have also tried using Anki for my first encounter with words (i.e. see the card in Anki before ever encountering it in reading or listening) … and it also works for me. I won’t say I ‘know’ the word until I’ve encountered it in context a couple times, but I can ‘learn’ enough about a word via Anki alone to later recognize in it context. The main reason I don’t do this as my main method is that I don’t know which words are useful and which ones are not. If I am never going to encounter the word 舢舨, then I am not interested in learning it. By extracting words from things I’m reading/listening to, I know it’s a word that is useful to me.
I do, however, learn words straight from Anki for Hakka (or you could say that I learn the Hakka word when I create the card and then review it). Of course, since it is Hakka-Mandarin there are less problems than if I were doing a Chinese-English deck since Hakka and Mandarin are related languages and the words have closer correlations with each other.
I am cool with people being character geeks (hey, if that’s what you enjoy, go for it), but I am like you in that I don’t want to learn a character that I will never use.
I have never tried to use Anki for a short-term study purpose like a test, so actually do not know how well that would work. I suspect, however, that I would be better off using something else if I needed to cram, since I think I need to go through several cycles in order to form a solid association.
If you want to know more about my learning methods, I just wrote two guest posts for Hacking Chinese.
http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=2044
http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=2040
Olle Linge (who runs Hacking Chinese), has written many articles about SRS and describes its use in detail (I know he plans to write more articles, so if the existing articles do not answer your questions, I am sure he would be willing to accept suggestions for future articles). You can browse through the articles in the ‘Vocabulary’ section:
http://www.hackingchinese.com/?page_id=548#9
Thanks for the links, Sara. I’ll probably check them out next time I start thinking about preparing for a big exam like the TOCFL again.
Also, thanks for sharing your process. It’s obviously different than mine given that I’m not the biggest SRS fan. But it might be helpful for someone else to see and compare to their learning style.
I won’t include links here. Recently on twitter I called someone out for doing something I didn’t agree with and I felt like I was being catty. So no more of that. But I’ll continue to try to keep an open mind (all while knowing how *I* learn best and what works for me).
Actually, I thought of another question.
The very reason I find SRS so useful is that it, as I put it, ‘plugs the gap’. Let me explain what I mean by that (sorry, this will be a little long).
If I read/listen to something where I don’t understand many words, it might slightly improve my Chinese (at least I’m reviewing the words/grammar I *do* understand), but learning words by pure osmosis is extremely slow and inefficient. And the less I understand, the more frustrating, and the harder it is to motivate myself. On the other hand, if I look up words, then what would often happen is I would look up word A, make a note (to help cement it in my mind), and then never see word A again for three weeks. After three weeks, I had forgotten it, so I wasted time I could have spent doing more reading/listening by looking up the word A a second time (or third time … you get the idea).
I could review my notes … but to do that frequently enough to address this problem, it would be tedious, boring, and *also* cut into time I could spend doing more reading/listening. Traditional flashcards offer the same problem – many ‘wasted’ reviews using time I could instead use doing more reading/listening.
SRS, however, significantly cuts down on the wasted reviews with the timing of the cards. Since I generally only spend a few minutes per SRS session, it’s not tedious (I generally only spend 15 minutes per day on Anki reviews). And I use the time I save to do more reading and listening … so I review more words/grammar with the reading/listening … and because of the SRS reviews I understand a higher percentage of what I read/hear than I would otherwise, which means I enjoy it more, feel more motivated, and can review more words … and it forms a really positive cycle.
I have read 15 novels in Chinese, 6 of them over 1400 pages long, and 1 over 2000 pages long. Most recently, I finished reading 笑傲江湖, which you can browse through here (note: I don’t recommend reading the online version because of the typos, but it should at least give you an idea of the ease/difficulty of this specific novel):
http://sokamonline.com/NovelMain/JinYong/smile01.cfm
I have managed to read so much in spite of having studied Mandarin for less than three years, and I am positive it would not have happened so quickly without SRS.
So my question is, do you also have the problem of forgetting words and having to check them in a dictionary multiple times? If you don’t have this problem, then I understand why you’re not an SRS fan; it’s simply not addressing your issues. Or have you have this problem and have simply found a different solution? While SRS has worked very well for me, it’s not perfect, and I am still interested in other possibilities.
So, ultimately, you’re asking me about my “learning process.” I’ll most likely talk about this in a post to go up not too far in the future. (Thanks for the post suggestion.)
First, I have a horrible memory. But even still, you and I seem to have a different style and perhaps temperament [which is neither good nor bad]. I spend most of my time watching, reading, and listening to things that are within my level. I challenge myself certainly, but that’s not most of my time. I limit my reading to subjects I’m interested in and repeatedly expose myself to related vocabulary, so I can see connections between words frequently. Ex: I’ll read a review of a TV show I’ve already watched. (When I branch out, it’s incrementally.)
My tutor’s newest suggestion is to work on 9 articles/ essays each week. Three are new: I discuss the content and test my ability to explain the ideas. Three are older: I have to apply the new words I learned the week before by writing a story using them in a brand new context. Three are even older: I have to take a quiz on a reasonable selection of the now not-so-new vocabulary (recognition quiz not written from memory). So I’m exposed to the same words for three weeks in a row, but also constantly adding new ones.
This is a new process, but so far it seems like a good one. But, you’re right: going weeks without seeing certain words can be a problem. So, I force myself into situations where I have to see words and use them for several weeks in a row before allowing myself to move on. And even then I don’t completely move on because I go back to similar subject matter hoping to encounter them again. It’s slower and a LOT of work, but hopefully extremely effective in stretching my comprehension, organic use, and memory.
Back to flashcards… thus, I’d only use a flashcard technique to review before a quiz, but at that point, hopefully I wouldn’t need to as much because I’d already know the word and how to use it. In a cumulative review, I’d make flashcards for multiple lessons and perhaps use a SRS system (but only before and for the exam).
When you say ‘work on’ articles/essays, do you mean reading stuff by native speakers, or writing your own essays?
Anyway, I look forward to continuing this conversation when your new post is up
How about this: I can tell you really want me to love SRS. So, this week, I’ll take this week’s reading, input new vocabulary into an SRS flashcard deck on Day 1 and review it each day for the full 3 weeks alongside my reading comprehension, written work, and quizzing. Then, at the end, I’ll tell you if my opinion has changed after that full cycle. Sound good?
Oh, and I suggest you consider pitching a guest post for Hacking Chinese yourself. I know Olle wants to get more guest contributors, it would bring Wai-Taiwan to more people’s attention, and you have your own unique perspective on Chinese learning to share.
Language learning isn’t really my area of expertise– cultural exploration is my real passion. But, I’ll certainly consider it if I can think of something interesting and appropriate to share. Thanks for the encouragement!
Cultural exploration is an important part of language learning (and one that many language teachers suck at, in my opinion).