Articles tagged with ‘Spaced repetition software’
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Effective progress or experience points? The double-edged sword of measuring your Chinese learning
Measuring your Chinese progress is a double-edged sword: it can keep you motivated, but it can also tempt you to chase numbers that don’t reflect real progress.
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Spaced repetition software: What it is and how to use it to learn Chinese
Spaced repetition means that you review words you want to learn in certain intervals to maximise learning efficiency. Since this involves keeping track of much data, a computer program is needed to handle it properly. Spaced repetition software is very powerful and can be used for many things, but learning vocabulary and characters are perhaps the most important applications.
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Chinese characters and words that refuse to stick: Killing leeches
How long does it take to learn a Chinese character or word? It varies, but some vocabulary just refuses to stick, no matter what you do. These are called leeches, and if you don’t deal with them, they’ll suck you dry.
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How to best use flashcards to learn Chinese
Flashcards; some people love them, some people hate them. The goal of Hacking Chinese is to go beyond the black and white, and figure out how things work so we can use them to our advantage.
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Why flashcards are terrible for learning Chinese
Flashcards are often viewed as a silver bullet, promising swift mastery of characters, words and more, but relying on flashcards too much has serious drawbacks, and if you’re not careful, they can hinder more than they help.
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Why flashcards are great for learning Chinese
The humble flashcard: A key component in a successful strategy, or a distraction from what truly matters? Few things have sparked as much debate as the use of flashcards for learning a foreign language.
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Why spaced repetition software is uniquely well suited to learning Chinese characters
While spaced repetition software can be very useful, it also has some serious drawbacks. Fortunately, most of them don’t apply to learning to write Chinese characters!
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Diversify how you study Chinese to learn more
How is it possible to spend 80 hours a week learning Chinese? And what can you learn from that, even if you’re busy juggling work, family and other commitments?
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When spaced repetition fails, and what to do about it
Spaced repetition software can boost your vocabulary learning significantly. The idea is to schedule each review as late as possible, but not so late that you forget the answer. This sounds good in principle, but when it comes to learning languages, just barely being able to come up with the right word is not enough!
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About cheating, spaced repetition and learning Chinese
Have you even found yourself grading your answer slightly more positively than you should? Even though we all know that we shouldn’t, I think this is quite common. We shouldn’t do this! We’re only cheating ourselves and impeding our progress. In this article, I talk a little about cheating, spaced repetition software and some related consequences and theories.
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