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Asked 175 months ago by
BobRoss
One of the major problems with spaced repetition flashcard tools is that students often need to study vocabulary again before the spaced repetition system wants to show them. Is there a way to cram with the TrainChinese apps? Since I spent a lot of time today studying my word list, it now thinks i know the characters (which I don't) and won't show them again for 5 days.
I think the new Android app is very well done, but without the ability for me to decide if I want to study words early, this tool is much less valuable. If you could create a flashcard tool that combines the Leitner method with a spaced repetition feature, that would be an incredible tool and would set you apart from the rest. 谢谢
This question has been viewed 63 times.
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I've been just studying with Trainchinese for hours at a time the last few days. I also think that Trainchinese should
implement some more effective form of cramming vocabulary OUTSIDE the
space-repetition cycle. The than solution described above is not satisfactory for
the following reasons: 1) Manually opening each separate card and waking it up (i.e. clicking on the item, waiting for it to load and open, clicking on the wake-up button and waiting for changes to take effect, then closing the pop-up window) would result in spending more time managing the content on Trainchinese website than actually studying the vocabulary, which kind of defeats the purpose. 2) But even with more effective management techniques, such as solution is not optimal Cramming vocabulary for an exam is, after all, a short-term objective, but waking up a card prematurely have long-term consequences. It may result in having set the card as "learned" within days rather than weeks and months that are required for the vocabulary item to be retained in long-term memory, as the space-repetition algorithm assumes. I hope that newer versions of Trainchinese programs will allow for cramming vocabulary saved in user-specific vocabulary list OUTSIDE the space-repetition cycle. I assume such changes should not be all to hard to implement, and they seem to correspond to the needs of many students of Chinese, who face the tradeoff between short-term and long-term learning strategies. Cheers, chinskycraze Before adding new functionalities let us express two things: 1) According to researchers of study mechanism, Cramming is discouraged by educators because the hurried coverage of material tends to result in poor long-term retention of material (as opposed to the spaced repetition implemented by default on our system). So any user who is waking up cards pre-maturely should consider this! 2) The process of Waking Up cards pre-maturelly at the trainchinese website does not take as much time as it sounds as the pop up is immediate (there is no need to acccess the server for this as that information is already loaded with the page) and after clicking on the Wake Up button the window closes immediately, so that the time required to wake up is effectively very short and the process of waking up even a lot of cards. As for the suggestion to implement some sort of special Cramming mechanism outside of the spaced-repetition cycle: The main problem is, even if we would implement such possibility how to get back to the Spaced Repetition schedules after the student use that same word for cramming? Users will have different opinions on that. Even the wish of users may differ form card to card! We therefore will for the time being allow that users who really want to cram just can wake up cards while they themselves need to keep on eye on them - and re-start learning them in case they think it is necessary to start the spaced repetition for that card. Of Course this process could be made easier if cramming is used only on specific card lists! |
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The possibility to wake up specific flashcards was added to the website. To wake up specific cards you need to go to the List of Your Flashcards. Once you click on a specific card content then a pop up window will show you the card. If this card is sleeping, then a button to wake up card will be shown.
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