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I've been surprised that in Chinese education (notorious for memorization) there is no concept of flashcards I wonder if any Chinese user can tell me what are

I've been surprised that in Chinese education (notorious for memorization) there is no concept of flashcards I wonder if any Chinese user can tell me what are the standard memorization techniques used (tangentially, bc of the necessity of learning thousands of characters from what I gather reading levels in children are way behind. Getting to the point where you can read a news paper is a huge effort. Ie. Good memorization is essential to being literate and a functional member of society )

SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
Not Chinese, but I have experience adapting traditional Chinese learning methods so that I could learn Literary Chinese (think of it as to East Asia as Latin [and Greek] has been to Europe), as well as academic knowledge of some of this from China studies and Linguistics at a graduate level. Memorisation is largely just wrote. They repeat something until it sticks. Charactera are learned largely stroke by stroke by writing them out a ton, and many things are similar. A lot of literature is memorised verbatim. Surprisingly, up to a point, this is actually really effwctive. And especially for young children, who can not only accept a lot of repitition, but often get a lot of joy out of it, it's very effective. I myself even as an adult have managed to memorise dozens of poems in Literary Chinese, and even some prose. Once you get started it becomes quite addictive. One way they make this easier though is similar to what things like Sesame Street and Play School do here. Put thjbgs to song. Chinese language YouTube is full of videos with cute little animations, with ancient poetry set to music. Kids learn to sing along and do a little dance while they memorise 3,000 years of canon poetry and short prose. I've found these resources massively helpful. At a certain point, once you've memorised enough of the stuff, you start being able to understand more and more novel material. Edit: To reiterate, this works up to a point. Chinese education tends to use this hammer even when a screwdriver would be more appropriate, and for specific things there are more effective strategies. But especially for young children, a level of wrote memorisation with aids to make it more stimulating and fun is extremely effective for almost anything.
- contrarian1234 3y ago
  Song and rhymes! That makes a lot of sense :))
vunderba 3y ago
I lived in Taiwan for years and there were plenty of students using flashcards for various subjects - maybe it's different for the mainland?
iopq 3y ago
They learn the characters by writing a line of each character repeatedly. It's a super inefficient method. 1. Once you have written it once, repeating the motion doesn't help you memorize it because it's in your short term memory. Memory research has shown that it's more efficient to review information when some time has passed. 2. There's no system that builds on the graphical similarities of the characters, or based on the frequency of said characters. You will get thematic grouping of 冷 (extremely common word meaning cold) and 霜 (a more rare word meaning frost) In Chinese classes in China for foreigners they similarly just tell you to write the new character. There's no explanation of radicals or whatever, just some stroke order considerations (which is the least important info) and sometimes the character composition when it's not obvious. The way that people who research the topic learn characters is far better - use an app that tells you to write in the correct character in a time-based repetition manner split by most common characters. Even better would be to build up characters by common shapes (not necessarily radicals since a lot of common shapes are not radicals)
- yorwba 3y ago
  > Once you have written it once, repeating the motion doesn't help you memorize it because it's in your short term memory. Memory research has shown that it's more efficient to review information when some time has passed. Memory research has shown that if you have a fixed number of repetitions and want to maximize recall in the long term, spacing practice out over time is better than massed practice once at the beginning but that same research also shows that if you have a fixed time interval, more repetitions are better than fewer. (The recall curve for massed practice starts higher but drops faster than spaced repetition.) Making children write the same character ten times is about making sure they'll still remember next lesson, not so much about making them remember for years. The long-term part is handled by implicit spaced repetition due to occasional exposure in assigned texts and their own reading for entertainment. For learning a foreign language, explicit spaced repetition is more necessary, because learners are rarely exposed to enough content to benefit from the implicit spaced repetition effect.
  - iopq 3y ago
    Well, it doesn't even work for the next lesson because repeating something in your short term memory doesn't do anything. I've tried it. You can write it a hundred times and still forget it in two days (been there, done that). Or you could do a flash card and first try to remember the character without seeing it. Then when you review it tomorrow (in the same way, first get the defition/pronunciation and try to REMEMBER), you will remember it somewhat without seeing it first and will be able to get started on writing it, maybe even remember the rest of it.

SuperNinKenDo 3y ago

Not Chinese, but I have experience adapting traditional Chinese learning methods so that I could learn Literary Chinese (think of it as to East Asia as Latin [and Greek] has been to Europe), as well as academic knowledge of some of this from China studies and Linguistics at a graduate level. Memorisation is largely just wrote. They repeat something until it sticks. Charactera are learned largely stroke by stroke by writing them out a ton, and many things are similar. A lot of literature is memorised verbatim. Surprisingly, up to a point, this is actually really effwctive. And especially for young children, who can not only accept a lot of repitition, but often get a lot of joy out of it, it's very effective. I myself even as an adult have managed to memorise dozens of poems in Literary Chinese, and even some prose. Once you get started it becomes quite addictive. One way they make this easier though is similar to what things like Sesame Street and Play School do here. Put thjbgs to song. Chinese language YouTube is full of videos with cute little animations, with ancient poetry set to music. Kids learn to sing along and do a little dance while they memorise 3,000 years of canon poetry and short prose. I've found these resources massively helpful. At a certain point, once you've memorised enough of the stuff, you start being able to understand more and more novel material. Edit: To reiterate, this works up to a point. Chinese education tends to use this hammer even when a screwdriver would be more appropriate, and for specific things there are more effective strategies. But especially for young children, a level of wrote memorisation with aids to make it more stimulating and fun is extremely effective for almost anything.

contrarian1234 3y ago
Song and rhymes! That makes a lot of sense :))

vunderba 3y ago

I lived in Taiwan for years and there were plenty of students using flashcards for various subjects - maybe it's different for the mainland?

iopq 3y ago

They learn the characters by writing a line of each character repeatedly. It's a super inefficient method. 1. Once you have written it once, repeating the motion doesn't help you memorize it because it's in your short term memory. Memory research has shown that it's more efficient to review information when some time has passed. 2. There's no system that builds on the graphical similarities of the characters, or based on the frequency of said characters. You will get thematic grouping of 冷 (extremely common word meaning cold) and 霜 (a more rare word meaning frost) In Chinese classes in China for foreigners they similarly just tell you to write the new character. There's no explanation of radicals or whatever, just some stroke order considerations (which is the least important info) and sometimes the character composition when it's not obvious. The way that people who research the topic learn characters is far better - use an app that tells you to write in the correct character in a time-based repetition manner split by most common characters. Even better would be to build up characters by common shapes (not necessarily radicals since a lot of common shapes are not radicals)

yorwba 3y ago
> Once you have written it once, repeating the motion doesn't help you memorize it because it's in your short term memory. Memory research has shown that it's more efficient to review information when some time has passed. Memory research has shown that if you have a fixed number of repetitions and want to maximize recall in the long term, spacing practice out over time is better than massed practice once at the beginning but that same research also shows that if you have a fixed time interval, more repetitions are better than fewer. (The recall curve for massed practice starts higher but drops faster than spaced repetition.) Making children write the same character ten times is about making sure they'll still remember next lesson, not so much about making them remember for years. The long-term part is handled by implicit spaced repetition due to occasional exposure in assigned texts and their own reading for entertainment. For learning a foreign language, explicit spaced repetition is more necessary, because learners are rarely exposed to enough content to benefit from the implicit spaced repetition effect.
- iopq 3y ago
  Well, it doesn't even work for the next lesson because repeating something in your short term memory doesn't do anything. I've tried it. You can write it a hundred times and still forget it in two days (been there, done that). Or you could do a flash card and first try to remember the character without seeing it. Then when you review it tomorrow (in the same way, first get the defition/pronunciation and try to REMEMBER), you will remember it somewhat without seeing it first and will be able to get started on writing it, maybe even remember the rest of it.