Setting up flashcards

[iphneusr]

I am trying to work out how to use the flashcard module. Adding words is easy, but some stuff is hard to work out:

1) when I go in to do some review, it is only going one way, ie chinese -> zhuyin/english. Currently I do that direction along with the reverse, ie zhuyin/english --> chinese.
2) when I start to do some reviews and/or finish some reviews, it asks me if I want to do some sort of save, what does this mean? Why would I want to press save all the time. If I just press "no" does it matter?
3) whats the easiest way to get large amounts of cards into anki, someone has alluded to putting content at a URL on a web page and fetching it but i cant quite see how to fetch a url.

There doesn't seem to be a help button on any of the flash card screens, so maybe these questions are answerd somewhere I am unaware of.

 

[mikelove]

1) when I go in to do some review, it is only going one way, ie chinese -> zhuyin/english. Currently I do that direction along with the reverse, ie zhuyin/english --> chinese.

Set "Show" in the main configuration screen to "Pinyin + Defn" instead of "Characters." If you'd like it to do both, go into "Test Settings" and set "Subject selection" to "Alternating" - you can then configure separate parts to display for "Reading" and "Writing."

2) when I start to do some reviews and/or finish some reviews, it asks me if I want to do some sort of save, what does this mean? Why would I want to press save all the time. If I just press "no" does it matter?

Some people like to interrupt a test in the middle of it and return to that same test later in order to review cards they answered on it previously / have incorrect cards repeated at the end of the test / make sure they covered a particular number of cards in a day / etc. However, if you're using SRS or some other system that manages card repetitions then it doesn't matter too much. Go into Flashcard Testing / Commands and set "Save session" to "never save" to disable that prompt.

3) whats the easiest way to get large amounts of cards into anki, someone has alluded to putting content at a URL on a web page and fetching it but i cant quite see how to fetch a url.

I assume you mean in Pleco; you can download a text file into Pleco using the built-in web browser, which you can get to via the "Import Cards" screen in flashcards. You can also upload it to your device from your computer over USB using iTunes; connect your iDevice to your computer, open up iTunes, select your device from the menu on the left side of the screen, click on the "Apps" tab at the top of the screen, then click on "Pleco" under "File Sharing" and you can copy files to / from Pleco's storage area on your device through that screen.

There doesn't seem to be a help button on any of the flash card screens, so maybe these questions are answerd somewhere I am unaware of.

There's a detailed manual at:

http://www.pleco.com/ipmanual/

Though inline help is certainly on our to-do list.

 

[iphneusr]

Thanks! I am going to give switching from Anki across to Pleco a good decent try and see how I go. (So far, trying to use Pleco seems to have a much larger learning curve than I remember Anki having.)

 

[mikelove]

Thanks! I am going to give switching from Anki across to Pleco a good decent try and see how I go. (So far, trying to use Pleco seems to have a much larger learning curve than I remember Anki having.)

Indeed - we've got pretty much all of the SRS configuration options that they do, but there's also a lot of Chinese-specific stuff to further complicate matters. We're trying hard to come up with ways to improve it, though, so these questions are very useful; if you run into any more confusing bits we'd love to hear about them.

 

[iphneusr]

I just had an idea on what would be really cool. A step by step video specifically for people using other SRS software, showing how to setup and start using the pleco flashcard module.

I've been mucking around with it for a bit now and I just feel like im not sure whats going on, there are so many options! I am hesitant to try copying my anki data across as I am feeling unsure that when I migrate over that it will all still "just work". Im not trying to be negative or anything, just sharing how it feels.

I love the idea of using pleco for everything, I really do! For now im just going to throw it into the too hard basket.

 

[iphneusr]

One more feedback, I see there is a "test listening" option. This sounds really cool. Can it be made to test listening only for long sentences? Im not exactly excited to guess what character "xin1" corresponds out of the at least 5 or 6 characters with that tone on my study list

 

[mikelove]

I just had an idea on what would be really cool. A step by step video specifically for people using other SRS software, showing how to setup and start using the pleco flashcard module.

Have you looked at the tutorial? Not a video, but a walkthrough at least.

I've been mucking around with it for a bit now and I just feel like im not sure whats going on, there are so many options! I am hesitant to try copying my anki data across as I am feeling unsure that when I migrate over that it will all still "just work". Im not trying to be negative or anything, just sharing how it feels.

That's certainly understandable, though in general you can ignore most of the options without doing much damage; there are all kinds of ways to reverse / adjust / reset card scores in case you mix things up. If you just import your word lists in and choose the "Spaced Repetition" profile you'll get something that's similar in behavior to a stock Anki install without having to change much of anything else.

I love the idea of using pleco for everything, I really do! For now im just going to throw it into the too hard basket.

I'm sorry to hear that. One thing you could try if you don't want to give up altogether would be to just use Pleco for quick reviews of words that you encounter in the field / add directly from the dictionary; you can export those to Anki later for more in-depth study, but if you just want to (say) go over all of the new words you encountered in the last week, it would be very easy to set that up in Pleco without having to worry about what's happening with your regular studies.

One more feedback, I see there is a "test listening" option. This sounds really cool. Can it be made to test listening only for long sentences? Im not exactly excited to guess what character "xin1" corresponds out of the at least 5 or 6 characters with that tone on my study list

Right now it would do those syllable-by-syllable, which isn't very useful; we've licensed a lovely new text-to-speech engine which should launch with our Pleco 2.3 update.

 

[pprendeville]

I just had an idea on what would be really cool. A step by step video specifically for people using other SRS software, showing how to setup and start using the pleco flashcard module.

I've been mucking around with it for a bit now and I just feel like im not sure whats going on, there are so many options! I am hesitant to try copying my anki data across as I am feeling unsure that when I migrate over that it will all still "just work". Im not trying to be negative or anything, just sharing how it feels.

I love the idea of using pleco for everything, I really do! For now im just going to throw it into the too hard basket.

I like the idea of a few tutorial videos also. The instruction manual contains a lot of reading and it can be a bit overwhelming. There are 7 tutorial videos by the guy who came up with Anki on Youtube. Just short ones that cover some a basic points and I find them really useful.

 

[mikelove]

I like the idea of a few tutorial videos also. The instruction manual contains a lot of reading and it can be a bit overwhelming. There are 7 tutorial videos by the guy who came up with Anki on Youtube. Just short ones that cover some a basic points and I find them really useful.

Those will probably come once we finish our UI redesign - they're actually pretty time-consuming to make properly, and we really don't want to delay any of our product releases to make some videos that those releases will render obsolete anyway.

 

[RoyHanney]

I absolutely give up!!!

I have read the manual extensively and tweaked and tuned and still I can not get the thing to behave as I want it to. For example today it says there are no new cards to review!!!

yesterday it only gave me ion card to review!!!

Even though I have the whole of New HSK level one and two in the categories... I should have thought (having set unlearned cards limit to 30) at least 30 new cards to review!!!!

How can anything as simple as a flashcard system be as complicated and difficult to configure as this. I have to say I am flabbergasted that anyone can figure this out.

All I want is to use spaced repetition to learn the New HSK vocabulary while limiting the number of new cards introduced on a daily basis to something reasonable like two or three a day!!!

Plus I want cards that I have learnt to reappear on a reasonably regular basis....

Anki took me a few goes and maybe ten minutes to get it doing what I wanted to a satisfactory level. Your flashcard tool is mind boggling complex. I am on the verge of giving up and buying something else and I certainly would not recommend it to anyone.

Full of potential but to difficult to use!

 

[mikelove]

I have read the manual extensively and tweaked and tuned and still I can not get the thing to behave as I want it to. For example today it says there are no new cards to review!!!

Sorry about that. It sounds like you need to either raise the maximum number of unlearned cards or lower the threshold at which they become learned - does it help if you set "card is learned if" to "correct total" and the "amount" to "1"? For most people the default score threshold makes sense, but depending on the other ways you've tweaked the system it may be that too many cards are unlearned and yet aren't due to review again. (an "introduce X new cards per day" option should be coming in the next big update, though)

 

[Deleted member 4086]

If I may steal the attention for a while...

I'm currently reading through my first Chinese novel (活着, if interested), and am continuously adding new words as I encounter them. This works great for learning new words, but I feel like it would work even better if I also had the opportunity to study all of the unique characters that builds these words. Is there a way to build a new flash card deck out of an old one, containing the characters that's part of the old deck?

 

[mikelove]

I'm currently reading through my first Chinese novel (活着, if interested), and am continuously adding new words as I encounter them. This works great for learning new words, but I feel like it would work even better if I also had the opportunity to study all of the unique characters that builds these words. Is there a way to build a new flash card deck out of an old one, containing the characters that's part of the old deck?

No, but it's something we're planning to add, actually mainly for the sake of stroke order tests (which only support 1-character cards) and for other tests people might want to do on a character rather than a word basis (practicing simplified to traditional, say - something we've been considering for a while). So hopefully in 2.3 or 2.4.

One way you could do it now would be with some clever find-and-replacing on an exported copy of your flashcard list - if you can get it to that you have one unique character per line, you can import that file into Pleco and then have a bunch of single character entries.

 

[Deleted member 4086]

I'm currently reading through my first Chinese novel (活着, if interested), and am continuously adding new words as I encounter them. This works great for learning new words, but I feel like it would work even better if I also had the opportunity to study all of the unique characters that builds these words. Is there a way to build a new flash card deck out of an old one, containing the characters that's part of the old deck?

No, but it's something we're planning to add, actually mainly for the sake of stroke order tests (which only support 1-character cards) and for other tests people might want to do on a character rather than a word basis (practicing simplified to traditional, say - something we've been considering for a while). So hopefully in 2.3 or 2.4.

One way you could do it now would be with some clever find-and-replacing on an exported copy of your flashcard list - if you can get it to that you have one unique character per line, you can import that file into Pleco and then have a bunch of single character entries.

Awesome!

EDIT: While I still have the attention, is there a way to sync your Pleco flashcards with Anki (OS X version)? Fairly sure it must have been asked before, but my search skills have failed me.

 

[mikelove]

EDIT: While I still have the attention, is there a way to sync your Pleco flashcards with Anki (OS X version)? Fairly sure it must have been asked before, but my search skills have failed me.

Not to sync, but if you dump your Anki flashcards to a tab- or comma-delimited text file, open it in Excel, and arrange it so that it the first column contains characters, second Pinyin and third definitions, you can save that out to a tab-delimited text file and import it into Pleco.