Comments on: Doing SRS the fun way

By: NielDLR

NielDLR — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 09:36:00 +0000

Those are good words. Use what is useful to you. In fact, the other day I was wondering what the word for butter is. I’ll steal that for my deck too :P

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 09:27:00 +0000

Hey Niel. Glad you’ve got this under control now. :) It’s all about the fun in my (humble) opinion…

To be honest, I started my own deck too and have added random words and sentences too – stuff that I first have to study before I get into review mode with Anki – but it’s a start and that’s exciting :)

These are some of the words I’ve identified and I think you’ll see I’m mostly food obsessed :)
Muffin 英式松饼
Occupation zhíyè 职业
Butter – Huang2you2 黄油
Starbucks – Xing1 ba1 ke4 星巴克
Secret – mìmì – 秘密

I really need to focus on vocabulary – this includes a lot of everyday objects and items so really just need to take a look around me and identify the names of things around me that I think I should know instead of making it too complex too soon.

This is my mission…

By: NielDLR

NielDLR — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:06:00 +0000

Thanks for the comment Greg! I dig that sentence, totally stealing it for my deck right now. :)

By: Greg

Greg — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 15:52:00 +0000

Thanks again for the reference … I’m enjoying the discussion!

I actually DO use it for learning new words – but you’re right that the key is to use it to learn your own choice of new words. For example a couple of days ago I was visiting Taiwan for some meetings, and in one (Mandarin-only) meeting, I kept hearing the word “guīzé”. I looked it up after the meeting, and saw it was 规则=rule. I then found a sentence that used that phrase (you can reading my blogpost “Getting Sentenced” how I do that) and found a short phrase this time: 什么时候打破规则.

So it’s a new word, and now I know how to use it in context. It might be a few weeks before it reaches the top of the queue to being SRS’d in Anki, but it’ll get there.

Enjoy being in charge again!

By: NielDLR

NielDLR — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:18:00 +0000

I think in terms of school/uni work, using SRS would be a bit different, but similarly interesting. When I was studying for a test, I’d cram everything the day before. Not the best idea. With SRS, after class, choose words you are not familiar with or words that are awesome and add them to your deck. Everyday do a little. When the test comes, you’ll be knowing those words without the need to cram.

By: Sara

Sara — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 01:23:00 +0000

I’ve got problems with SRS too or maybe it’s a problem in general that I get bored easily and want to try new methods to learn Chinese. Skritter is amazing, but now I haven’t used it for a long time. I know that it’s a great tool for me to review the words from my textbooks, but somehow I still haven’t found the time to use it.

It’s hard to make it fun when you can’t choose the words you learn, but have to follow the textbooks and prepare for exams that include those words. Or is there a way to make this fun too?