iPhone Flashcards?

I searched but did not find a thread nor info that fits this subject.

Is there any program for iPhone with the Chinese flashcards? Is there a program that matches the book “Practical Audio-Visual Chinese” used in Taiwan?

I am considering coding one up using our PAV and Freq database if there is enough interest…

[quote=“tango42”]Is there any program for iPhone with the Chinese flashcards?[/quote]I suggest trying the spaced-repetition flashcard application Anki. There are two ways to get the Anki client (which syncs with your flashcard database on the Anki server) onto iPhones/iPods. One works on any device, the other only on jailbroken ones. Info here:
ichi2.net/anki/download/index.html
I haven’t tried it on iPhone, but from the screenshots and from what else I know about Anki, I’d say it’s probably your best bet.

I have some experience of flashcard programs, having kept up practice with thousands of cards on Supermemo for Palm over several years. I’ve also tried various other platforms and programs. In my view there are a few really important things that a flashcard program should have:

[ul][li]Spaced repetition - It’s really important that a flashcard review program uses a good review algorithm, to establish how difficult you find each card and thus test you at optimal times. The more cards you have and the longer you work with them, the more important this is. Anki is a proper spaced repetition program, like Supermemo (but easier to use).[/li]
[li]Standard, interchangeable file formats - Anki on the iPhone syncs with the Anki servers, which sync in turn with your Windows/OSX/Linux PC. On your PC, you can import databases created in Mnemosyne, another popular spaced repetition program. And I think Mnemosyne has reasonable importing of databases from Supermemo for PC, despite Supermemo’s apparently awkward XML implementation. Anki also accepts other file formats such as comma- or tab-separated text files.[/li]
[li]The ability to input your own data easily - Although many people start with ready-made lists, it’s an enormous help if you can enter your own card data too, and without too much complication. The procedure I use when working with a word list involves creating a number of other cards for each item on the list as I learn it. (I really will get something up on the web about this soon.) And even if you can’t be bothered with that kind of approach, it’s still very useful to be able to add words and phrases that you encounter in the course of your studies or daily life. Anki is good for this, though you do have to enter the data on your PC.[/li][/ul]

[quote]Is there a program that matches the book “Practical Audio-Visual Chinese” used in Taiwan?[/quote]Well, if you get the Anki client on your iPhone, it shouldn’t be too difficult to get the PAV databases running on it too, via the Windows/OSX/Linux version.

I would love to see ZDT on the ipod touch. There is definitely demand for this. I’d pay for it thru the app store.

[quote=“tango42”]

Is there any program for iPhone with the Chinese flashcards?[/quote]

  1. Yes there is. I developed one called Chinese Flashcards program for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It goes through a list of 2700 characters (simplified or traditional) in order of frequency. You can find information here:
    chineselearnonline.com/apps

[quote=“tango42”]

Is there a program that matches the book “Practical Audio-Visual Chinese” used in Taiwan?[/quote]

  1. Yes there is. I manage and run the website that students at Providence University’s Chinese Language Education Center use. It has a couple of different flashcard programs plus other exercises designed by teachers, that follow the material in the Practical Audio-Visual Chinese book series. You can find information about that here:
    providencechinese.com

Let me know if these are what you had in mind.

Regards,

Adam

Hey Adam, welcome to Forumosa and thanks for posting your flashcard app… I’ve been looking for a good flashcard app for iphone myself… No offense, but your effort seems somewhat overpriced at $4.99 considering there are more polished flashcard apps available on iTunes for much less than that… Are you planning on updating and improving this app in the future or is it pretty much locked in?..

Thanks for the feedback. I compared my app to the other Chinese ones - a few of which are in the $9.99 range, so I felt $4.99 was quite competitive. I agree there are cheaper alternatives, but those require you to input your own data, so I felt justified in charging a couple of extra bucks to have the data included. I had planned to drop the price if demand waned, but so far demand has remained quite strong, which tells me that there is a market for such products at this price point, so I’m not planning any price changes at the moment.

I’ve looked at the feedback that came in. There have been some criticism of the color choices and such, but in general people are quite pleased with the app so I don’t have any updates planned (although I’m still open to suggestions).

I do have another app that is being worked on, that will be similar in structure but is based on words rather than characters. It will also feature audio and the ability to record your own voice. The rest of the format will be similar to the existing app.

If you have ideas for it (or other apps), please let me know.

Regards,

Adam

[quote=“Adam_CLO”]If you have ideas for it (or other apps), please let me know.[/quote]For what it is–a program to test people’s knowledge of individual characters–it seems quite well designed.

If you wanted it to become a program which would actively help people to learn characters, of course I’d recommend the same as I did above: a decent spaced repetition algorithm (you’d need more than just no/skip/yes responses to do it properly); a focus on learning characters through words and phrases; and above all the ability for users to enter their own flashcards and import data from other flashcard apps and different platforms.

And if you got all that done, the icing on the cake would be if you could automatically prompt users to add more example phrase cards when they find a particular word or character hard to remember.

You did ask… :wink:

Adam,

It seems like your flashcard program only tests the character, not the pinyin. I’m still a bit of a newbie and I would like to have a flashcard that shows the character and the pinyin. Then the answer will be the English word. What I like about ZDT is that you can change at any time what you are testing between the three (pinyin, character, English). If you can do that you have a new customer.

Wow, great stuff guys! As I mentioned I’m working on a new app right now that would test words rather than audio. It will also include more modes rather than just Chinese to English / pinyin, so hopefully you will find it useful, plus of course audio.

The problem with doing the character and pinyin to English for individual characters is that a lot of characters have multiple pronunciations with multiple meanings so that could get messy. It shouldn’t be as much of a problem for words though, so let’s see what it ends up looking like.

I’m going to stay away from offering import options, since there are several apps out there that already seem to do a good job of letting you create your own lists and tests. This is more designed for people looking for a ready made solution.

[quote=“joesax”]
If you wanted it to become a program which would actively help people to learn characters, of course I’d recommend the same as I did above: a decent spaced repetition algorithm (you’d need more than just no/skip/yes responses to do it properly); [/quote]

Can you elaborate more on what you had in mind? The first version of the app let the user rate their response from 1 to 5. If they rated 1, the character would show up sooner, if they rated 5 it wouldn’t show up again. However when testing, I found most people either clicked on 1 or 5, so I decided to do away with the 2 to 4 options and let the program figure out the middle. So the first time you click on Yes, it assumes you know it and won’t show it again. If there’s hesitation and you click on No, it’ll show it soon after, with each subsequent Yes showing it less often until if you have clicked on Yes 4 times in a row, it assumes you know the character and won’t show it again. If at any time you click on No again, the algorithm starts over. I found this more effective, since the user didn’t have to spend time deciding how well he knew the answer - just yes or no. However I’m open to other ideas you may have.

[quote=“Adam_CLO”][quote=“joesax”]
If you wanted it to become a program which would actively help people to learn characters, of course I’d recommend the same as I did above: a decent spaced repetition algorithm (you’d need more than just no/skip/yes responses to do it properly); [/quote]
Can you elaborate more on what you had in mind? The first version of the app let the user rate their response from 1 to 5. If they rated 1, the character would show up sooner, if they rated 5 it wouldn’t show up again. However when testing, I found most people either clicked on 1 or 5, so I decided to do away with the 2 to 4 options and let the program figure out the middle. So the first time you click on Yes, it assumes you know it and won’t show it again. If there’s hesitation and you click on No, it’ll show it soon after, with each subsequent Yes showing it less often until if you have clicked on Yes 4 times in a row, it assumes you know the character and won’t show it again. If at any time you click on No again, the algorithm starts over. I found this more effective, since the user didn’t have to spend time deciding how well he knew the answer - just yes or no. However I’m open to other ideas you may have.[/quote]Spaced repetition isn’t my idea. Lots of info on it on these pages:
mnemosyne-proj.org/
ichi2.net/anki/whyreview.html
supermemo.com/english/princip.htm
It’s sounds as if you have something that’s halfway there. But I think a more sophisticated system works better in the long term. Some of the earliest cards in my Supermemo database come up for review very infrequently now–months between repetitions. But I think it still helps that they do come up from time to time.

Perhaps if the algorithm was designed with that more long-term basis in mind, you’d find people learning to use the software effectively, and using the whole range of grades! I’m pretty sure that most people who use the software packages I linked to do so.

[quote]I’m going to stay away from offering import options, since there are several apps out there that already seem to do a good job of letting you create your own lists and tests. This is more designed for people looking for a ready made solution.[/quote]How about the option to enter your own cards? A lot of people are looking for a ready-made solution, it’s true. But in my experience, learning vocabulary through flashcards is many times easier and more effective if you supplement ready-made lists with cards that you enter yourself. Allowing people to enter their own cards is at least a nudge in the right direction, even if many people won’t bother to do it.

woah…you pay $5 for this app and you can’t import lists??

Check out ZDT. If anyone can make a flashcard app like that I’ll buy it in an instant.

Why ZDT?

Easy to make lists
You can look up a word in a dictionary and drag and drop it into your flashcards.
Options for how you want to be tested…you can test the pinyin if you want. Most flashcards just test the character.
Control over spaced repetition. You can test words you get wrong. It keeps stats on this.

Unfortunately this program is java and I’m not sure that’ll run on the iphone.

There’s definitely a niche here that needs to be filled. I’ll even pay $15 for the app if it works the way I need it to.

There’s a program called Flash My Brain for the iPhone which supports user created lists. You can share your lists with others. I noticed them promoting Chinese character lists. They have support for audio, spaced repetition etc. I’m not sure what I’d be able to add that this program doesn’t have. Having said that, I’ll study the feasibility of importing. If it’s not too complicated I may add the option.

It seems to me that a lot of the people on this forum are more technically astute than the average user out there. So I would like to offer a 7 day trial of the Providence Chinese site to any of you interested. It contains a couple of different flashcard programs, typing tests, character, listening and grammar practice for the material in the Practical Audio Visual Chinese series, all with instant feedback on how you’re doing. In return, I would like a review of whether you think this site is valuable and whether there would be a market for it for foreigners in Taiwan. Subscriptions sell for $3000 NT per semester (3 months).

As I mentioned in another topic, the site is more geared towards students in an existing course or who have studied the material before, since there is no teaching involved - just a review. If you are interested in trying it out, send me a PM with your first name, last name and email address and I’ll set you up with an account.

Declan have released Chinese flashcards for iPhone itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSt … =302574515

Only for simplified chinese though, you’ll have to wait for the traditional characters.
Also, the audio is Mainland chinese.

I have released my second Chinese Flashcards app (aptly titled Chinese Flashcards II). You can find it here:

itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSt … 68084&mt=8

While the original Chinese Flashcards focused on learning characters, this one focuses on words from the HSK 1 list. It also features audio for each word and the ability to record and compare your voice to that of a native speaker. Try it out and let me know what you think.

There is no import feature yet, since I haven’t figured out how to integrate that feature within the context of these apps.

Well at $4.99 I won’t be buying that app, but FWIW in terms of constructive criticism, the colour scheme is pretty painful…

Thanks for the feedback. This was supposed to be an introductory price since all the other apps with these types of features (audio, recording etc.) seem to be in the $9.99 and higher range (the app posted above this sells for 3x the price). As for the color scheme, people seem to have a love/hate relationship with it (according to reviews from the original app). People either love it or hate it.

I still haven’t found the ideal iPhone flashcard app, but I found a free one that is pretty damn good:
Study Arcade here:
http://inzania.com/

If you have Anki decks you can sync them to this iphone app. However there isn’t a lot of info about how the spaced repetition runs on this program. It seems to still be in beta, but for now it’ll have to do.

Ideally I would like to have an iphone app that implements the SRS method and includes a dictionary. I could look up a character in the dictionary and there would be an option to add that to the flashcards. I have a good Chinese dictionary on my iphone, but g*damn, there is no copy and paste on the iphone.

I can’t tell you how many times i’ve been sitting in a bar or somewhere talking to someone and learning a new word. It should be easy to just put it in my iphone dictionary and add it to my flashcard list, but the only way to do that is too damn complicated to do on the fly.

Flashonary might do what you want.
It’s a chinese-english flashcard dictionary. Allows you create flashcards from dictionary entries.
itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSt … 88944&mt=8