Study by subject
Chinese
In Mandarin Chinese you memorise characters, pinyin, tones and vocabulary. Lumi asks them back until the tone and the meaning come together, before your trip or your exam.
How to turn this subject into cards
Make one card per character and per word, with the pinyin, the tone, the meaning and a short example. Always learn the tone together with the syllable, because mā and mǎ are two different words. The trap is recognising a character without being able to pronounce it with the right tone or write it. With Lumi you answer from memory before seeing the solution, which fixes more than rereading (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). Build words of several characters from characters you already know. Keep short frequent sessions, because spacing makes you remember longer (Cepeda et al., 2006). Add to each card an example from your own life, which makes the answer easier to find again.
What you need to know by heart
- Pinyin and the four tones plus the neutral tone, for every syllable.
- Common characters with their meaning, pronunciation and stroke order.
- Basic vocabulary, including words of several characters.
- Measure words, such as 个, that go with numbers before nouns.
- Word order in the sentence and particles such as 吗 and 了.
It depends on the country
Mandarin Chinese has a well-known language test, the HSK, which assesses reading, listening and expression at several levels. The cards of characters, words and grammar that you make with Lumi help you prepare for it. You pick the level you are aiming for, then write the cards that match what the test covers.
How Lumi helps you remember it
You teach your Chinese cards to Lumi, characters, pinyin, tones, words. It forgets over time, like you do, then quizzes you right before you would forget. As your exam or trip approaches, the Mist settles over what you know less well and Lumi asks that first. You arrive able to produce the word with its tone, not only to recognise it.
Example cards
Three cards the way you would write them, with the answer Lumi expects.
How do you say thank you in Chinese?
谢谢 (xièxie).
What does 水 mean?
Water (shuǐ).
What does 我爱你 mean?
I love you (wǒ ài nǐ).
Example card
Try it, Lumi turns it into fill in the blank questions in your browser.
Chinese · teach this card to Lumi
Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone. The word 马 (mǎ) in the third tone means horse. The word 你好 (nǐ hǎo) means hello. Pinyin writes the pronunciation of characters with the Latin alphabet.
Lumi’s question
Mandarin has _____ tones plus a neutral tone.
Pick the missing word
Answer right to light Lumi up
Its lamp fades when a fact slips away.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I remember Mandarin tones?
- Learn each word with its tone from the start and say it out loud when you answer. Lumi asks it back so the tone comes with the word.
- Do I need to learn to write characters?
- It depends on your goal. To read and type, recognition and pinyin are often enough. If you want to write by hand, add a writing card for the characters you want to master.
- How do I memorise characters without mixing them up?
- Make one card per character with a word where it appears, and shuffle the cards instead of reviewing them in the same order. Retrieving the character from memory fixes more than rereading it (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006).
Read next
Sources
- Roediger, Karpicke (2006). Test-enhanced learning. Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3). doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
- Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted, Rohrer (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks. A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3). doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
Teach this to Lumi
Give Lumi your chinese notes, it gives them back as questions at the right moment.