Studying for my Third-Year Chinese final
I started studying for my Chinese final two days ago. The test isn’t until next Friday, but rather than cram like crazy a few days before, I’ve decided to only do five lessons a day (out of 25), for five days, and then focus in on the vocab and grammar that I’m shaky on.
I used to study for Chinese finals by going through my massive stack of notecards and reading the grammar sheets that our teachers would hand out with each lesson. I’d make a notecard for each vocab word. This got incredibly impractical during Third-Year Chinese, however, because we were getting over 100 vocab words per lesson. Making notecards was just too time-consuming.
This is what I do now:
- Read the lesson text
- Cover up the English and pinyin of the lesson vocab, and read the characters. If I can’t remember their English meaning or pinyin, I make a notecard. This comes out to about 10-15 notecards per lesson.
- Read through the lesson’s grammar points.
- Repeat for next lesson.
I’m pretty happy with this system, but I’m always looking for better and more efficient ways to study Chinese. If you have any suggestions, send them my way.
Filed under: Academics, Learning Chinese
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Hi, interesting blog (from CBL). I thought I’d comment about studying Chinese.
I made 1,800 flash cards for my Chinese course this year - on a computer no less - and didn’t find it impractical at all.
I already have flash cards I review periodically from way-back-when so when I get a new lesson, I look at the vocabulary list and make four categories:
1) Already known
2) Meaning already apparent, but not something I know because I haven’t encountered it or because the characters don’t inform its meaning very well (i.e. “very easy”
3) Easy, because I know the characters and they inform its meaning fairly well
4) Hard, because I don’t know the characters, or the characters don’t make much sense (i.e. contradiction, spear-shield makes less sense than zhuisui, ‘catch up’-'follow’
Of these decks, I:
2) Make flash cards which I’ll review that day, then a week later, then expanding these intervals so we’re talking about weeks, then months of difference
3) Make flash cards, review the cards an hour later, then the next day, then a few days later, then a week, etc
4) Make flash cards, and a card for the individual character. Review this group maybe 8 times in the first day, for avg 10 minutes each time in various ways (with the article counting as a “time”), then review them the next day, a few days, a week, 2 weeks, etc later
Making flash cards in #2 and #3 serves as a main point for starting my study of the words. First, I type in the words onto a table with an NJstar lookup. Then after typing the whole list, I go back and type in the English (or Chinese) definitions, after which I convert them into a flashcard format and print them. For the #4 list, it helps a good bit, but not as much - but the cards are necessary for hard words anyway, otherwise I’d never have a good model for how to write the character.
I see here that you are “cramming” for your test, but I didn’t study for mine. My thesis is important. Because I break out these flash cards at the proper intervals, they stay in my memory and I refresh myself whenever my memory of the words is about to fade.
For these 1,800 cards, I doubt I could undertake an effective review without them. It’s just impractical to review 1,800 words at its most efficient point (based on my memory) because I’d never find which deck I’m supposed to review without having them all carefully labeled and sorted. I haven’t forgotten a single card entry, because they help me stay organized that well. On my desk is a 2-foot long rainbow of card boxes ordered chronologically by creation.
Another perk is that I can auto-convert them into traditional character cards and learn traditional characters that way.
In my experience, flash cards aren’t impractical - they’ve spared me the inconvenience of actually having to study for my tests so I can work on writing my thesis instead. They’re the best organizational tool, bar none.