Free Three-Sided Flashcard Program

Language Learning Chinese
1

I am a programmer. I found an interesting but somewhat primitive computerized flashcard program on an open-source web site. You can read about that here: codeproject.com/KB/cs/LeitnerBox.aspx

After doing extensive research on Sebastian Leitner and various companies which have implemented his ideas along with other enhancements, I expanded the LeitnerBox to a three-sided flashcard system that includes Question, Answer, and optional Hint. (no audio and no video)

Under the terms of the open license, my version and all of the associated source code is freely available. There is a working version just captured from my own system and including all the flashcards I’ve written myself. (I prefer and use BoPoMoFo, but the program will just as easily support Pinyin.)

Anyone who wants it can get it here: jimkay.tw/files/Leitner_Two.zip

It was built using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and the programmers out there can easily review the source to be sure exactly what the program does.

This program is very poorly documented but I’ll be happy to answer questions and advise people how to use it.

The program has the ability to edit and save updates to the flashcards on the fly.

There is primitive ability to use this program to create additional flashcards, but I have another data-entry program that is much better. That one is rather more complex (and very slow in startup.) Once I verify just what has to be included with the data-entry program, I’ll add it here.

2

I BELIEVE I have created a distributable version of the data-entry program.

jimkay.tw/files/Chinese%20Vo … 0Lists.zip

Feel free to try it out.

This version displays and saves both BoPoMoFo and Pinyin. But if you load the resulting file into the flashcard program, the Pinyin is discarded.

There are a couple of ways to keep the Pinyin instead of the BoPoMoFo, but the best idea is for me to create that as a user option - depending on someone asking for that.

3

Thanks a lot for sharing - this sounds just like what I was looking fora while ago, but gave up trying out different programs. Let’s see how it works - this might be just the thing I needed to get again into learning a bit of Chinese :slight_smile:

4

First hints for anyone who wants to use it: You need to install the .net framework 3.5 SP1, else you get lots of error messages and it won’t work.

So here is how to get it to work:

  1. Download both programs above

  2. Unzip them

  3. In Chinese Vocabulary Lists\Install\Release you find a install.msi, which installs the program, and also if necessary installs the .net framework for you

  4. In Leitner_Two\bin\Release you find Leitner_Two.exe which starts the main program

  5. To get started and see some of Jim’s flash cards to get a first impression, click lessons -> select lesson

  6. In the left part of the program the flash card boxes are shown. For example if you loaded the lesson Beg03-04, in the lowest part Archive you see a lot of items. Clicking on each you see the flash cards, with 3 “sides” - Question (Traditional Chinese character/s), Hint (BoPoMoFo) and Answer (English Translation).

I didn’t check much further yet, but this might help some people to get started :slight_smile:

5

Many thanks to Olm for his assistance. Since all my computers have the .net installed, it was impossible for me to test further.

I suggest you begin with MasterList because that one is in active learning mode.

Click the ‘statistics’ tab and you will see how the cards are distributed. You can see everything in either ‘browse’ mode or ‘Test yourself’ mode but testing is only to be done in either Box 1 or Part 1 of any box having parts.

Getting an item ‘correct’ moves it to the end of the next box while ‘needs more work’ moves it back to box 1.

The “auto age” function advances things from higher parts toward part one but never puts more than 30 items in part 1 (to make the study work manageable.) The oldest items are moved first.

The “prime” function will take items out of ‘archive’ and move them to box 1 to start/restart the learning process and anything ‘correct’ from box 5 part 1 goes to the archive.

There are six possible study modes which F2 cycles you through. The same data is used in each mode but displayed differently (so if you edit a card, you only need to edit it once.)

Right now, autoage will not change anything more often than a number of days (can be different for each mode) that you specify in the current lesson. Each lesson can be different. I have set it to 3 days for all modes of MasterList.

Any other questions, please ask.

Be careful with F12 as that will move everything into the Archive for that study mode. I use that for modes I don’t want to study.

Also, in the left window, you can right-click a card and move it to any other location in the system.

The top blue bar shows you the study mode you are in. The labels for ‘side1, side2 and side3’ can be customized in the lesson file. The sequence of study modes can also be customized on the lesson file.

The active lesson files are under bin/release/users

The ‘debug’ directory is only for developers who choose to make changes.

6

The three sides are Question, Answer, and (optional) Hint?

If so, why not just use Anki?

7

The SuperMemo algorithm is new to me so I just studied up on it.

The short answer is: the data in my program is organized differently so there is just one data record for each set of ‘three sides’ which then can be displayed in any permutation.

The main difference, however, is in using the Sebastian Leitner methodology of review which appears to me to be a substantial improvement over SuperMemo.

There is also the strong possibility of my adding user suggested changes/enhancements if there is sufficient interest.

But, as always, the choice is yours.