Flashcard Review Problem

[x2o]

Hi there,

I downloaded the HSK flashcard list from the Pleco browser. I then set the test type to "Review Only" for flashcard testing, and chose the HSK category as the only category I wanted to review. However, when I begin a test session, my flashcards from other categories often appear, despite the fact I haven't included those categories. When I choose of my own categories for flashcard review, this doesn't seem to happen. Is this a glitch, or am I doing something wrong? Is there a setting that controls this?

Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

How are you determining that the words are from other categories? Are you sure that those words aren't also part of the HSK lists? By default, Pleco avoids creating duplicate flashcards whenever it can; instead, when you import a card that matches another card that's already in its databases it adds the old card to the newly-imported category. (this is done so that you won't end up wasting time reviewing a new card that you've already learned from a different list)

You can change Pleco's duplicate-handling behavior in the "Problem Handling" section of the Import Cards screen, so if you want to have brand new cards for all of your HSK vocabulary, Undo your HSK import and then re-import with that "Duplicate entries" option changed to "Allow."

 

[x2o]

Ah, I think I get what's happening now. Some of the words in my categories are also in the HSK list. Because I've reviewed these words from before, I guess the test is "favoring" them and making them appear more (given that the HSK list has a couple thousand flashcards while I probably have 200 or so).

So allowing duplicate flashcards would eliminate this from happening? Or is there any way to review cards in alphabetical order? I think that might be a little more effective for me, unless there is a limit to how many cards there are in a test session?

Thanks for the help again.

 

[mikelove]

So allowing duplicate flashcards would eliminate this from happening? Or is there any way to review cards in alphabetical order? I think that might be a little more effective for me, unless there is a limit to how many cards there are in a test session?

Yes, allowing duplicates would give you brand new cards for all of the HSK entries. Reviewing them in strict alphabetical order isn't possible (though it probably should be), but you can review them in the order in which they were created if you set "Card selection" "System" to "fixed" and "sort by" to "created" - you'd also want to set "number of cards" to "All."

 

[x2o]

Sorry for all the questions, but would you anticipate that an alphabetical sorting system will ever be implemented? The duplicate workaround works, but it isn't really sensible to have duplicate cards to learn.

 

[mikelove]

Sorry for all the questions, but would you anticipate that an alphabetical sorting system will ever be implemented? The duplicate workaround works, but it isn't really sensible to have duplicate cards to learn.

Eventually, but I don't know how long it'll be - that "created" order should be pretty much alphabetical, though, since if your flashcard list file was alphabetically sorted then the 'a' cards would be created before the 'b' cards and so on - have you tried that option yet?

 

[x2o]

Yep, it worked great for the HSK flashcard list. The only concerns I had were for lists that weren't created in alphabetical order, but it really isn't much of a problem.