Slave to the flashcards

I fear I may have become too much of a slave to my flashcards. It`s now three years since I began regularly updating my vocabulary from the Tangorin website into my Anki flashcards. I`m absolutely positive that this has increased my vocabulary substantially, but I wonder if I have relied too much on this and neglected other areas that also need work in learning a foreign language. It`s as if the flashcards have become a distraction, they can lull you into the sense that you are progressing more than you really are.

In order to keep the number of cards in my decks at a manageable level I have been deleting them when they get to around the three month mark. This has enabled me to keep the number of cards ticking over, may have had a detrimental effect on my long term retention of some of the less common words. I`ve begun to notice this anyhow.

I`m also frustrated with my lack of progress with fluency. I was hoping that by now I would be a confident speaker in my workplace, or with Japanese speakers in my life, but this is far from the case. I feel I need to take a different tack to break new ground.

I`m currently taking three lessons a week, so I don`t think this is the problem. More likely that I need to use, or engineer situations where I can use, the language more frequently in my day to day life.

JLPT N2

I took the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) last weekend. There are five levels and I went for level 2—the second toughest level.

I'm pretty sure that I didn't pass, but my long term goal is to pass in December (the test is held twice a year), so this was really just a practice run.

I didn't cram particularly hard for the test, just kept up with my daily anki flashcards on the iphone, and did a bit of reading practice. About a year ago I bought a level 2 past paper text which helps you to identify which parts of the test you are weakest at, and, according to that book, reading is my weakest area, hence the reading practice.

I'm looking forward to seeing the results in September, which will also help me identify which areas I need to work on for the test in December.

New iPhone

One thing that has a good effect on my language learning of late has been my new iPhone. It's my first smartphone and I've had it for a couple of months now. I downloaded the Anki app which has really enabled my flashcard usage to go up dramatically. It's great being able to check your flashcards for one minute or so while you are waiting for the train, or waiting at the pedestrian crossing or whatever. I'd say my use of flashcards has gone up by at least 100% if not a lot more.

家政婦の三田 on pps.tv

Another app that is useful is pps.tv. It's an app for a Chinese website where you can access all sorts of TV shows, movies etc. There is a Japanese drama category and I've been trying to watch a drama series from start to finish. There are subtitles in Chinese and Japanese! On the whole, I keep my eyes on the Japanese subs, and manage to follow what's going on quite well. From time to time though, I take a look at the Chinese subs too and get a bit of study in that way too.

The drama I've been watching is, like a lot of Japanese dramas, wacky as hell. It's called 家政婦の三田 (Kaseifu no Mita; Mita the housekeeper) and it's about a housekeeper who is working in the home of a bereaved family who have lost their mother/wife. The wacky thing is the housekeeper behaves like a housekeeping robot behaving and working perfectly, beyond belief, so much so that she actually creeps people out. It's wacky, but interesting to watch, and I'm looking forward to finding out why the woman/robot is as wacky as she is.

I held out from purchasing an iPhone for quite a while, but I've got to say it's a good purchase.

Recall flashcards are no more

I decided to suspend the recall cards in my Anki flashcard deck. (recall cards are when the English sentence appears and you have to try and remember the Chinese.) I'm not sure how much good they're doing, and they are the most frustrating part of doing flashcards.

I said before that the help I'm getting from the audio files with my pronunciation is the best part of the flashcards for me. Trying to translate the English sentence into Chinese in my head is taxing, and could potentially be counter-productive seeing that translating in your head is one thing you should be avoiding when speaking/learning a foreign language.

The recall cards are still there, but for now I want be using them. This means I won't have those painful moments trying to rack my brain for the corresponding Chinese sentence to translate the English. It'll just be straight reading the Chinese sentences, whilst listening to and practicing the pronunciation. Hopefully, this will make using the flashcards a more efficient and enjoyable experience, and I should be able to get through a higher volume of sentences faster.

The flashcard debate

One of my more personalized flashcards

Are flashcards really the answer? Doubts are beginning to creep in to be honest. They're definitely helpful, and with the audio file added, they give me good practice listening and repeating after a native speaker, which is pretty valuable for Chinese because of the pronunciation difficulties.

But I've begun to think that as far as absorbing vocabulary and sentences goes, maybe using podcast material is more beneficial over the long-term. Podcasts give you more context, and are certainly more interesting than the flashcards, which are really just a series of unrelated, random sentences.

I follow a few other language bloggers on the internet, and I know that there are those that are against flashcards, and those that are for. I'd probably say that I'm in the 'for' camp for now, just from the point of view that they are a good tool for remembering certain phrases, and for remembering Chinese characters.

But they do have their drawbacks. One of the main ones—which is really the reason I have begun thinking about them a little more critically of late—is that you really do have to tailor them for yourself, and this can be time-consuming. I sometimes find myself spending more time, looking for, copying and pasting, and uploading sentences, than I do actually thinking about them in a meaningful, semantic way.

But like I said my current deck of cards has definitely helped me progress in some ways, especially with the pronunciation, so I'll keep them ticking over for now I guess, just to keep my options open.

Flashcards and pronunciation

It seems hard to believe that I've only been doing these flashcards for about a month and a half. It feels like a lot longer.

This may be because I have been doing flashcards of one sort or another for a lot longer, it's just that I've only been using this method for about a month and a half.

It's great though. I can feel the improvement in my pronunciation when I speak. Having the audio file attached is a great help in this respect. Being able to listen and repeat after every card is a great advantage.

I've just got back from a few days holiday in Hong Kong, and despite it being a Cantonese speaking area, I was able to put my Mandarin into practice on a couple of occasions. I found that the people I spoke to were able to understand my pronunciation, which is what most learners of Chinese say is the most frustrating thing, so I took a lot of encouragement from that. The biggest problem for me was not knowing enough vocabulary.

Hopefully, six months or so more of the flashcards and this won't be so much of a problem.

Can't wait!