I think a lot of Chinese language learners, whether beginner or intermediate, tend to hear this advice: download Anki, find an HSK word list, make flash-cards, and progress through each level until you are fluent. This isn't bad advice, especially for a beginner. But I also think it's one-sided, repetitive, and has hidden downsides which most language learners won't tell you.
The Flaws
- It's boring. Learning through Anki is... honestly not that exciting. No one gets that excited about flashcards.
- Anki is a hammer, not a scalpel. I honestly believe Anki, when used to the exclusion of other programs, might as well be learning through brute force. I know, I know, heresy. The truth is, while SRS's are very effective tools, I don't think they're that elegant. For me at least, SRS's quickly devolve into rote repetition and what I call "wedging", where you "wedge" a word into your brain. Take the word for road, 道. Without knowing anything else about the word, you download Anki, create a double-sided flashcard with "road" on one side and "道" on the other, and drill. You see the word over and over, you hear the word over and over, finally at some point you connect the English translation with the Chinese character. It's memorization without understanding--which is not necessarily bad, for sure. Native language learners also do this, and come on, at a certain point memorization needs to happen. But I think this method is just kind of... brutal, especially when there are more organic alternatives available.
- You risk memorizing only translations. This can induce "lag-time" when you try to recall the word and are forced to translate it. It might make it more difficult to think in Chinese down the road.
- There's a lot you're not learning. Even if you might recognize a word, you might not actually be able to read it, if you know what I mean. This is where confusing 面包 with 面临 happens... you're just sort of glancing over the character and not really processing it. You also risk gaining a shallow understanding of the word--especially if you don't know anything about character components. Think of it like this: As stated above, you could learn 道 through a flashcard. Or you could learn your radicals and realize that 道 is a combination of the radical 辶 (walk) and the word 首 (head). Finally, you don't really know the context for this word. This isn't really an issue for simple words that are fairly analogous to English in word usage, but this problem gets more and more pressing as you progress.
At the same time, immediately jumping to implicit learning may not always be possible--even if you feel like you should be able to at your level. Most intermediate learners run into this issue. Watching TV shows, reading, etc.,--these are all so, so effective. But they're also hella hard, man. If you still can't understand a TV show or a movie, if you can't pick up a news article and read it, then what are you supposed to do? Advice for beginners doesn't apply to you anymore, but you can't make the full leap into native material. I mean, let's be honest, native speakers reference a huge body of vocabulary everyday. And every single one of the words they use, you also want to know. Whether it's now or later, the fact that you don't know the word for "cowboy" will eventually hold you back. (This literally happened to me last week in a native conversation, honest-to-God.) And yet if you haven't hit the tipping point of being able to enter native conversations easily---especially if you're introverted or shy--you might not be able to access the native context you need.
A Decent Solution: Clozemaster
First of all, Clozemaster isn't paying me for this. (Though they should!) I just use it a lot. And I think it's great.
Here's how it works: essentially, it's like a game. Clozemaster provides you with a native sentence (aggregated by native speakers, as I understand it). However, the sentence is incomplete, and it's up to you to fill in the missing word. You have the choice of submitting your best answer one of two ways: either you choose one of the four multiple choice options Clozemaster gives you, or for more difficult gameplay, you manually input the answer yourself through your keyboard (just download a Pinyin extension). Essentially, it's like a fill-in-the-blanks with the option of a multiple choice Scantron or just penning in the answer. The goal of Clozemaster is for the user to master a large body of vocabulary through what they call "mass exposure" to native sentences. Unlike Anki, you don't make the flashcards--the native sentences and questions have already been made for you. There's a website and an app--I use the website, but I think the app is available for Google Play and iPhones.
Does this sound boring and kind of similar to Anki? That's what I thought at first, too. But after binging it, I will personally attest to the fact that for broader goals and certain stages of language learning in particular (namely the intermediate stage), I consider it vastly superior to Anki.
The Benefits
- All words are used in sentences, with context. This is the really big benefit. The sentences are realistic and native. You understand how the word is normally used. You'll also see the same word used in different sentences and scenarios, so you understand it more deeply.
- It feels much more natural and less like "wedging". Reading words in their sentences doesn't feel as difficult and artificial to me as much as an isolated flashcard. It feels a bit more like reading an excerpted textbook passage and less like doing rote drills.
- Reading characters is prioritized. When they initially provide you with the incomplete sentence, it's all in characters--no Pinyin. This trains you not to rely on Pinyin and to reinforce your reading skills.
- In order to guess the correct word, you have to understand the other words in the sentence. This requires you to read entire sentences holistically, rather than allowing you to sidestep sentence structure. Which also leads in to my next point, that being...
- You passively pick up a lot of vocabulary. A lot of times, sentences may have multiple words you don't know. Imagine an English sentence that goes like this: "The prisoner ____ his freedom" (desired). You don't know the word prisoner, freedom, or desired, and after learning this sentence you now know the word "desired". That's great, right? But the real benefit comes later, when you get, say, the question: "Americans value _____" (freedom) or "After being captured by the police, my father is now a _____" (prisoner). It becomes much easier to answer these questions since you have past experience to lean on. Your vocabulary begins to resemble a web rather than a hierarchy.
- You pick up all this because you can understand every word in your example sentences. As I understand it, it's only in the paid version, Clozemaster Pro, where you can mouse over unknown words and read the translation. Unfortunately, the free version lacks this. Boohoo... except you can just download a Chrome extension (I use Zhongwen Chinese Popup Dictionary) and mouse over unnknown words and read the translation, haha. I do this after I've answered a question, naturally, to prevent myself from cheating.
- It's not cognitively demanding enough to induce burnout. I can honestly play Clozemaster for 4 hours if I listen to some nice music while I do so. It's not mindless but it's also not so hard that you can only study for 20 minutes a day. It's really not a massive load of cognitive strain, which makes it ideal for binging.
- They provide audio (although it's mediocre-quality.) I personally always look for this when I'm learning new words. It's shitty Google Translate-generated audio, but even Roboto tones are better than no tones at all.
- You can drill specific HSK levels. It's not all willy-nilly--nor is it grouped by topic like Duolingo, which I don't consider ideal. It's good ol' HSK vocabulary, in context, surrounded by other HSK words. Right now, I'm studying the HSK 5 node and I think it's great!
- It's free. The paid version is kind of superfluous. Honestly. The free version has everything you need. I think the only benefit of the paid version is the word look up and some more statistics. However, if you want that, it doesn't seem that expensive--$8 per month.
- You don't have to make any flashcards. The sentences and questions have already been made for you. They're of pretty consistent quality. No downloading or making necessary. Of course, making your own flashcards is a learning experience in and of itself, but if you're a procrastinator or lazy then you'll like this.
Who is it not for?
- Total beginners. Most beginners are probably better off starting with a textbook and/or studying Anki flashcards. At the beginner level, at least in my experience, it's more important to get a good foundation of simple words and sentences down and learn Pinyin, pronunciation, and radicals, rather than focus on, say, reading characters in context. That's not to say the HSK 1 node of Clozemaster wouldn't be helpful--but it would probably offer less value to this learning stage than other alternatives.
- Those who want to drill a narrow set of words (e.g. problem words, business Chinese, etc.) Unfortunately, Clozemaster doesn't offer a lot of choices on what sort of words you want to learn, outside of HSK groupings. You can't choose specific words to learn or specific topics--it's organized around word frequency. For someone with a specific subset of words to drill, Clozemaster isn't ideal.
- Learners who have exceeded the HSK 6 level. Clozemaster is themed pretty firmly around the HSK system, so it probably produces maximum benefits for learners in that bracket. Advanced learners who are beyond that are better off consuming native material and using Anki to supplement.
- Learners who already have good grasp of contextual usage. The main benefit of this resource won't apply to you (contextual learning) if you already have a great command of grammar and word usage.
- Learners who are focused on high efficiency rather than wide spread. Clozemaster sort of creates a 'web' of learning, where you learn a wide spread of frequently used words (as you would expect from an HSK-themed program.) This is good if you have listening comprehension issues, because that's as often a ''spread" problem as a depth problem imo (a "spread" problem meaning holes in your vocabulary which trip you up even if you know other, fairly high-level words). However, if you just want to learn as quickly as possible as much as possible, especially words you have already been exposed to, then Anki is a better bet. Clozemaster is better for those who still haven't been exposed to all of the everyday vocabulary in their chosen language and need to get better coverage.
- Those who would simply prefer Anki. I'm not here to preach on anybody! Anki has tons of advantages over Clozemaster, chief among them highly personalized customization and increased effiency. You can also of course study sentences in context with Anki flashcards--I just think that this is a nice, free resource where you don't have to do any legwork in finding correct sentences, uploading Forvo pronunciations, etc. Live your lives and take the advice of Internet strangers like me with a grain of salt!
Sorry if there are any English mistakes, I typed this up pretty fast! Thank you and I hope this post is helpful to you!
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