Category: Chinese Grammar

The importance of context in Chinese flashcards

The sixteenth rule in the 20 Rules for Formulating Knowledge is “Context cues simplify wording”. Dr Wozniak explains that you should feel free to include personalised context hints in your flashcards to simplify them. A key point to take away is that your flashcards are for you and should be as personalised as possible, so having your own individual notes and context prompts is a good thing.

Continue Reading →

5 ways to optimise your Chinese flashcards

What makes an optimal Chinese flashcard? Rule #12 in Dr Wozniak’s 20 Rules for Formulating Knowledge is “optimize wording”. This concerns making flashcards for general knowledge acquisition. While it does apply somewhat to language learning, acquiring a foreign language is something of a special case. How can you optimize wording for flashcards in a language you’re trying to learn?

Continue Reading →

Avoid enumerations

In the previous article in this series, we looked at why sets are damaging to learning and what to do about them. The first priority is to avoid sets completely, but when that’s not possible, the next best thing is to turn a set into an enumeration. This is Rule #10 in the 20 Rules for Formulating Knowledge.

Continue Reading →