Pleco flashcard questions

[Georg2015]

I have been using Pleco for 10 years (First on a Palm TX and now using 3.2.10 on an iPad Air 2 with iOS 9.2), but am new to using the flashcard system. I have read the manual (75 pages just for flashcards) , and looked through the forums to try to understand how it works. I have some questions regarding how to use the flashcard module to learn Chinese.

- Learning Words Workflow

Basically we all want to get from Unlearned to Learned quickly, and then not forget the word later. How do you do that with the flashcards? This is my Workflow of how I would like to learn (feel free to comment on the workflow order).

Listen to Character Audio along with seeing the Character, repeat out loud.
1) Learn pronunciation.
2) Learn definition.
3) Learn the Character pronunciation without the audio.
4) Learn the tone.
5) Write ( optional step)

I know that there are many options/methods to test, self graded, fill in the blank (pronunciation and/or tone) etc. What I would like to do is for a character/word to move through the Workflow, once I have learnt the pronunciation I move onto the definition, and so forth.

Can I create a workflow like this? I was thinking maybe a score of say 100 – 299 is step 1, 300 -499 is step 2 etc. A simple workflow status field on the flashcard statistics would work. This could be displayed in the dictionary when you lookup a word, it could possibly manually moved back a step if you feel you have not learnt it yet.

Also how could I retest words that I have just learnt. For example, it is easy to be positive that you know the pronunciation in a self-graded test, but you haven’t actually learnt it. Is it possible to run a fill in the blanks test on words that you have marked correct in the self graded test to confirm?

- Flashcard information

Is there any way of quickly deciding what information appears on the flashcard? I find that I am confused by being presented with too much information, multiple definitions when 1 would be sufficient, and multiple example sentences. If possible I would like to recreate the Tuttle Publishing “Chinese in a Flash” flash cards.

On the front they have:-
- Character
- stroke order
- 4 example compounds

On the back they have:-
- Pronunciation
- simple definition
- radical
- one example sentence
- 4 example compounds from the front along with their pronunciation and definition

I know you can create a custom card, but was wondering if this is the only method, and is it possible to show the individual steps of the stroke order?

- Review in order

I would like to review the cards in the order that they appear in a category, at least at first until I know the correct pronunciation. I read a suggestion in one of the forum threads about using the date created field as the order by. The problem I have with this is that I first imported all the HSK flashcards, and then started to create my own cards, organizing them into categories. If I add a card to my category that was already added with the HSK cards, the date created is when I first created it with the HSK cards, not when I added it to my category. Should I delete all my cards and start again, adding cards as I want to learn them?

- Best order to learn characters

What is the best order to learn characters? I have a list of the top 1000 characters in frequency order. I thought it would be a good place to start, learning them in frequency order. Then add words that are compounds of the characters already learnt, is it possible to suggest flashcards based on characters already learnt?

- Update question

1) Is the flashcard module due to updated? An update to the test settings has been mentioned in the manual and forums, but I couldn’t see a major update in the version history.
2) Some of the threads in the forum are a few years old and I’m not sure if the advice is still valid. i.e. “Flashcard testing fixed order” Discussion in 'Pleco for iPhone / iPad / iPod Touch' started by gato, Jun 12, 2010.

What text editor do you recommend in Windows to edit the flashcard file to be imported?

Thanks for your help, it is greatly appreciated.

 

[mikelove]

Workflow: yes, in "Test Settings" set "subject selection" to "score-based" and you can configure cards to test different sections in that way. Currently restricted to the same test type, though, so you'd probably want to use 'self-graded' and do your writing testing manually (using the sketch box overlay, which you can access by tapping on the sketch button in the top toolbar during a test).

And yes, for that confirmation test you'd want to use a 'card filter' to get cards that were last reviewed within (say) an hour and last answered correct, and you'd probably also want to set the "scoring system" in "scoring" to "none" so that these re-tests would not be recorded against the card's score.

Information: no way to show stroke order right on the card at the moment, that's probably going to have to wait for our stroke order data revamp (where we hope to finally start offering a 楷体 font option).

Review in order: yes, you'd need to delete and reimport to get that working at the moment. Pedagogically, we hate hate hate the idea of fixed order and would never encourage anyone to use it - better to get more cards wrong on the first run through than to have your memory of one card tied to your memory of another that you won't actually encounter at the same time in the real world - but we get so many requests for it that we're probably going to add an option for it anyway; we'll just bury it under a confusing name ("cat cust srt fld" or some such) so nobody will use it who isn't actively looking for it

(adding features and then actively discouraging customers from using them is actually something we've done quite a few times before in our history)

Best order: I wouldn't really encourage you to learn characters by themselves at all, personally. There's this persistent myth that the key to understanding Chinese is characters, but it really isn't; characters should be something you fill in for the words you already know, not the other way around. You'll get much better at Chinese much sooner if you learn it the way native-Chinese-speaking children do - focus on vocabulary first and learn the characters for the words you need to be able to read / use as you come across them. Much of Pleco is oriented around the idea that characters are an annoyance that need to be overcome - hence the handwriting input / OCR / document reader / etc all trying to make it as easy as possible to read Chinese even if you don't recognize all the characters.

So if I were you I'd drop the character list entirely and start cranking away on a list of useful common words like the HSK instead - if you really want to have character-specific flashcards, create cards for characters you encounter a lot in the HSK list, but don't stress about pushing through X number of characters for their own sake.

Flashcard module: yep, has been 'in the works' for a long time now, delayed by a combination of overambition / couple of false starts / colossal amounts of time spent porting to + optimizing around + keeping up with new versions of iOS and Android / other easier-to-add new features nudging their way ahead of flashcards in the priority list. But that means that most of the advice from 2010 is sadly indeed still valid at the moment

Text editor: on Windows EmEditor is my personal favorite - fast and with very strong Chinese support.

 

[Georg2015]

Dear Mike,

Thanks for a quick response. I will try your suggestions and let you know how I get on.

Just another question on the custom flashcards. I understand that adding stroke order to the card is not possible right now (and a possible update included in the future), but is there a way to quickly create a custom flashcard at the point you add it? If not I could create a temporary category that I add cards, then convert them to a custom card (simplifying the definition) before moving it to the learning category. Basically I want to only learn the most common definition that I’m going to use.

Also just discovered (reading the manual again!!) that the + with a solid square round it means the word is in the current default flashcard category, and a + with a dotted square is in the flashcard system. Additionally adding a ! at the beginning of a search priorities words in flashcards to the top of the list. This is useful for example if you have searched for a word i.e. Camera, checked with a local which word is most common in that region, and added it to a flashcard category.

 

[mikelove]

Can do that pretty quickly by tapping on the [+] button again and choosing Card Info and then Convert to Custom Card. Or you can skip the second tap if you make Card Info come up automatically in that case (Settings / Flashcards / Duplicate (in cat) -> Card Info).