Request for working with large flashcard sets

Question

I love the flashcards. I love the longer lists too because they are more comprehensive. Sometimes the larger sets offer a peculiar roadblock to learning though. If you have 100 words in the set and have already mastered 90 of them you are required to cycle through the whole lot if you want to repeat for practice on the failed words. At some point I began to think, "Man, would it be great to be able to work only with the 10 failures. I could repeat a short list like that ten times in the same amount of time to repeat the entire list once."

Since the application does save a list of failed words I think the answer lies in those memory-based subsets. A great feature would be the option to allow the user to work only with that failed list. At the end of one cycle of that then there would be fewer failed words but the user could (theoretically) choose to work again with the failed list. Each pass of the failed list would eliminate one or two mastered words until the user had mastered all of them.

I suppose if there are audio or other files already cached it would be possible to create a new list and index to them? I'm just guessing but thought you might want to consider it for your "spare time" (har).

Even without such a nifty feature I think it's a great app so this is hardly something to be filed under the complaint title. It's a lot easier to request features than to create them, eh?

PP

That's a good idea, you can do that with Busuu.com but you can't make your own flashcard lists there. - rabbitwho, Dec 7, 2011

With Anki you can -- and so much more. It's free, too!! - territurtle, Dec 7, 2011

Answer 1

I have many large flashcard sets that I have made for college courses and when I am studying for a test, I use the words that I have missed to make smaller sets and study from those until I know them. Flashcards are so easy to make that you can use them to study those hard to remember words. I recommend this method. Give it a try.

Answer 2

I would use Quizlet then for flashcards. They have a mode called "Learn" where, once you get through to the end of the set, it shows you which ones you missed and make you just repeat those, then if you miss them a second time, it makes you just repeat those and so on. At the very end, you have the option of exporting whichever game you the most problems as a new set to practice them on their own.

Answer 3

I keep my flashcard sets smaller, about 20 words.

But if you're done with 100 words in a set and missed 10, there's an instant way to review. Before you leave the set, there are options to click to review your missed words. Go though them a few times before closing the set.

That's what I do Pesta. It also allows me to keep redoing the flashcards until I get every card in the set right. - territurtle, Dec 8, 2011

Answer 4

Thanks for the links and suggestions for working around this issue.

My latest thinking from a programmatic point of view is that there may be a simpler solution than the one I requested. I'm thinking about a new Shuffle Option that allows the user to shuffle the failed words to the front of the list for the next sequence. That would allow the user to cycle through, say, the first ten words over and over by just abandoning the cycle after finishing the first ten.

I think this allows the programmers to use a lot of the object infrastructure they already have in place. There is no need to create a new list object, but just to fiddle with the existing sort/shuffle. From the end user POV it seems to satisfy the need to work on cycles of failed words.

Do others feel like this would satisfy the feature request? I can see no holes in the scheme at the moment. Even if we had 30 failed words in one cycle, to shuffle them to the front of the next cycle gives us the option of working only on those words, right?

I think.

I agree completely, Pablo. - territurtle, Dec 8, 2011

Answer 5

You should go ahead and start making large flashcard sets. I love large flashcard sets! If you do make one, I'd check it out.

Answer 6

I would just write down the words that you are having trouble with and make your own SD Flashcard set, just for those words. Or, do what Sanlee suggested.

Answer 7

Ever tried LinQ? I haven't used it in over a year, but it has something akin to what you are describing. It keeps track of words that you don't know (and that you do) and you have to use them correctly 3 times before you are credited with knowing the word and then it is dropped from the list of unknowns. (or something like that). These are not word lists, however. You read articles/stories/dialogues in Spanish and can mouseover the words for meanings, etc. You mark the words that you know. The other words will be marked as unknown until you mark them as known 3 times or something like that.

It is a terrific site. If I hadn't gotten so hooked on SpanishDict I probably would still be using it. Anyway, its a great site for building vocabulary. It doesn't have the grammar explanations that you can find on a forum like this one, however.

Answer 8

I think this is a great suggestion Pablo. It didn't sound like a complaint at all. I understand why people like to keep related words (even if there are 100) in one set. But I can see how it would be frustrating to have to cycle through all of them to get to the few words you really need to focus on.

I personally have just written the words down and worked on them the old school way. As with many "great" ideas we have or suggest in the forum, there are times when, as you said, there are more pressing problems...or...the technology isn't possible or easy enough to implement.

Let's see what becomes of your suggestion. We might just all be thanking you in the near future.