new to SRS : how to set this up

[rhizome]

I am new to using SRS and have a few questions on how to best use it for my particular study goals. I have tried reading the manual on this and forum posts, but things are not getting any clearer to me, so I decided to just sketch out my goals and needs here in an insanely long post and hope that someone can help me with this.

If anyone is in Taipei and wants to help me out, I'd gladly buy you lunch or something in exchange for an SRS tutorial.

my background
For the next 3 months, I will be studying Chinese intensively, being tested on about 30 new words every 2 days. Until last week, I hadn't studied Chinese in 2 years. I am intermediate/advanced, and while my speaking abilities are still ok, I forgot how to write many basic characters (even things like 高興 or 購買）. When I write those a few times, they stick again.

my goals
So in the next three months I want to do the following things, in order of priority: learn 生詞 regularly, 復習 basic words that I have forgotten over the past 2 years, and finally 復習 words I am learning these three months, so that I won't forget the words from chapter 1 by the time I get to chapter 5.

methods?
Everyday I would like to be able to separate my pleco flashcard sessions in 2 sets: first doing my 生詞， then my 復習。

生詞 test 1,5 hours a day

I already have all the flashcards divided by chapter for the book I will use this semester (AV Chinese 5) downloaded. Every day I would like to start by learning my lesson for that day. I always keep going until I know every word, but would like Pleco to remember which ones it took a few rounds to remember and repeat those more regularly. That should work automatically, right?

復習 test 45 min-1,5 hours per day

Then I have a few flashcard categories that I have created myself that are basic words I encounter and which I forgot or never learned. I would say these are sort of "new cards" in that I don't remember them, but many of these I learn much quicker than really new vocab. I would like to spend about 45 minutes to 1,5 hour per day on these--and I like reviewing no more than say 30 words max in one session to make sure I really get those done. I don't want to have to review a round of 200 words before the ones I forgot (maybe half of them) show up again; I won't remember them then again after such a long interval. I could of course do two sessions of 30 in one day if I am ambitious.

My review of the words from chapters that I am learning these 3 months could either slowly seep into this batch of flashcards, or I could test myself on these separately. Whatever Pleco permits more easily.

==============================================================

I think I can achieve part of my goals by enabling what the Pleco manual calls the "Limit new cards" option. Except in my version of Pleco I don't seem to have this? I have updated and synced Pleco, but it lists only "limit # of unlearned" in "learned cards" which might be the same? However, I don't want to just limit the number of new cards I am confronted with every day, but also make sure I first learn the 生詞 I am tested on from my book, and then review other "new cards" from my own categories of forgotten words/additional vocab.

I am infinitely grateful for any help.

 

[mikelove]

Separating 生詞 and 復習 is doable, but it's a little tricky - best approach would probably be to use one of the 'card filter' options to only review cards that you've never reviewed before, then turn it around to only review cards that you have reviewed before. You could do this with two different profiles (sharing the same scorefile) to make it easier to switch between them.

We don't currently attach any extra meaning to how many repetitions it takes to get a card correct initially - to be honest we're not sure whether that data would tell us anything useful about how hard the card is likely to be to learn later on. The only one that'll matter is the first time you see the card, since if you get it correct on that initial review then we can assume you already sort-of know it and push it back much farther.

The "limit # of unlearned" suggests that you're still using the old version 2 of our software - there's no option in that to limit the number of new cards per day, unfortunately. If you're running iOS 6.1 or later, you can update to version 3 via the App Store "Updates" tab.

 

[rhizome]

I got the new version of Pleco-- couldn't download it on my Ipod Touch although I tried syncing and rebooting a few times (any ideas why?) but I transferred to my Iphone.

Is it otherwise simpler to just do 生詞 in "simple" setting, so that Pleco will know when I have learned these and establish a score, and then later add that category to 復習 by testing it (and other categories) in Spaced Repetition? I can just keep adding new 生詞 categories to my 復習 sessions. i.e. 復習 is really just doing SRS on my previously "simple" learned words. This way Pleco just keeps track of when I learned something first, and will make me review when necessary.

I am also confused as to the format of SRS. When I go through a "simple" test, at the end the words I got wrong are shown again. This way, I go through a number of rounds until I remember. Makes sense.

As far as I can see, SRS doesn't feed you back the ones you got wrong. Only when you start up a new test they will be shown first. But then after that you are also show everything else that you did know, which is unnecessary. Also, even when you got cards wrong last session, starting up for a new session, the screen will show the message "Session Complete." Why? I understand that SR is trying to feed you the cards based on when you learned them and how you did previously, but how can you have completely revised vocab when the last time you saw it you got it wrong? Seems like a bad review session then.

I am worried about this because it means that if I am reviewing a big number of words that I haven't studied in a long time, I won't actually learn them because I am just shown them once during a general review session, whether or not I get them wrong or not. This doesn't seem very productive.

 

[mikelove]

Is the iPod running something older than iOS 6.1?

Random versus spaced repetition doesn't really make a difference for new cards, but it's probably easier to use the same system - shouldn't make a difference in later testing.

SRS doesn't show you everything you should know, it shows you everything that's due to be reviewed today; if you find it's reviewing cards too soon then we can help you tweak the settings so that it waits longer before reviewing them again. But it supports "repeat incorrect" just like other tests do, you can configure that in Commands.

As for reintroducing them during the test, though, pedagogically we think it's better to repeat incorrect cards at the end, and after that to wait a day before reviewing them again. If you want to review recently incorrect cards additional times, you can easily set up another profile with a card filter to pick up cards last reviewed in the last day and last answered incorrect, but most of our SRS users like to review all of their cards that are due for today and then be done after that.

 

[rhizome]

yup, just saw I'm running an old version of iOS. Well-- that's a project for another day. Happy to use my iPhone now.

By "random" repetition, do you mean the simple setting?

Okay, I found the end-of-session Repeat incorrect functionality. Much better!

So I guess this means that I can just use SRS for both 生詞 and 復習 categories, since they both do mostly the same things now. I also changed the settings so I am no longer prompted for quality.

There still seem to be two differences though:
1) If I study my 生詞 in SR from the get go, I will get super bad scores for them as I won't know any of them during the first roung, even though at the end of the day I will know all of them perfectly. If I disable "only change 1x per day" I can probably rightfully correct for this. Thoughts?

2) The other remaining difference now seems to be that I still get "Session complete" at the beginning of 生詞 tests (since I study the same batch of cards for about 3 days in a row, a few times a day，to prepare for different 聽寫s and 考試s). Is the following understanding of these options correct?

If I select "continue" I basically extend the due dates by a tiny bit, as I review them a few hours or max. 2 days after first learning them. Since I have "only change 1x per day" enabled for scoring, this won't lengthen the review time for cards that I incorrectly answered the day before by inflating my scores. If I press "w/o dates", it won't extend the due dates and I might be shown them again the next day, even though I correctly studied it for 3 days in a row.

It seems there is one disadvantage to each. Disadvantage of "continue": If I review a card that was due in 5 days on day 3, I will once again have to wait 5 days to "prove" that I can remember it that long, before moving on to a longer period, e.g 8 days (not sure about how numbers increase). In other words, if I review early now, I will in essence have to review it earlier later too. (hope this makes sense). Disadvantage of "w/o dates": if I review early, Pleco might as well take into account that I do so--if I review a card due in 5 days on day 3, having it still show up on day 5 will not actually prove that I remembered it for 5 days, so having me move on to 8 days afterwards might not be legitimate at that point.

I am thinking that given these differences, "continue" is the better, or rather safer, option. Your thoughts? Is my analysis correct?

Thanks so much for all your support.

 

[mikelove]

Not sure how 'only change 1x per day' would help on #1 - for those intense reviews, after running through your new cards once I'd suggest setting up a profile with 'scoring system' set to 'none' that filters on your newly added cards (there's a "first reviewed" filter too that can be set to check within the last day) so that you can just pound away on them until you feel like you've learned them adequately without having them impact the scoring system.

The same approach might also help on #2 - can almost think of 'reviewing' and 'testing' as different things when it comes to new cards. So the basic workflow might be this: 'test' once with your SRS profile so that any new cards that you already know will quickly join your regular rotation, then 'review' new cards with a separate, non-score-affecting profile that pulls all of your new cards via card filters; you can pound away on those 'reviews' as much as you like and only do a new 'test' once per day. Does that make sense?