Bi-directional flash card reviews strategies: Which direction to start with? Mixing directions? Etc.

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Bi-directional flash card reviews strategies: Which direction to start with? Mixing directions? Etc.

Postby Pinecone » Mon Jan 13, 2020 9:51 am

I have some questions about bi-directional flash card reviews. Right now I don't have a clear strategy. I am interested to learn what is working for other language learners and any known best practices.

Here are a few questions I have to kick the discussion off:
1. Which language direction do you start with, foreign (L2) to native language (L1) or native (L1) to foreign language (L2) and why?

2. At what point do you introduce the opposite direction into your reviewing? In other words, do you wait to reach proficiency at some level with the L2 to L1 direction and then introduce the L1 to L2 direction?

3. When you do introduce the opposite direction of review do you stop doing the former? If not, do you mix L1 to L2 and L2 to L1 cards in the same review or do you prefer that all cards in a review are in the same direction?

4. In terms of the technical mechanism for doing bi-directional reviews, for those of you that use flash card review software, do you input both directions as separate cards or does the software automatically handle this?

5. What relationship have you noticed exists, if any, between how well you know a word in the L2 to L1 direction and how well you know a word in the L1 to L2 direction?

6. When a word makes the jump to your active vocabulary, how well do you tend to be able to recall the word in each direction? Are there any patterns you've noticed in that regard?

If you have input or discoveries you want to share on one or more of these please chime in with your thoughts. Thanks!
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Re: Bi-directional flash card reviews strategies: Which direction to start with? Mixing directions? Etc.

Postby rdearman » Mon Jan 13, 2020 9:56 pm

I normally do them both from the start. L1->L2 & L2->L1. I'm not really sue about some of what your asking. But basically on one card I will have the L1 and the L2 is the answer, the next card might be L2 on the front with L1 on the back. But these cards are all mixed together in the same deck. Also I use Anki so I have audio cards and Subs2SRS cards as well.
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Re: Bi-directional flash card reviews strategies: Which direction to start with? Mixing directions? Etc.

Postby dicentra8 » Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:50 pm

I stopped doing bi-directional flashcards mostly because it increased the number of flashcards I had to go over. And at some point it started to become frustrating for me: even if the direction and testing was different, it felt I was going over the same 1 word over and over again.
I now try to fit what I think it's important in one card only and keep it as simple/straightforward as possible. I focus on how the content will appear while I'm consuming native materials (for japanese) and type the reading. For finnish I focus on typing the finnish word, therefore the meaning is on the front.

For japanese
Image

For finnish
Image

This is a "preview card" so the typing box doesn't appear.
There was an initial period where I had a second card type that went Audio (front) -> Word+Meaning (Back).

Pinecone wrote:4. In terms of the technical mechanism for doing bi-directional reviews, for those of you that use flash card review software, do you input both directions as separate cards or does the software automatically handle this?

Anki can do that automatically. A note can be used to create as many directions (cards types) as you want using the fields that it has. But like I said, the more directions you create the more cards you'll have to go through at some point.

This is probably not that helpful if you really want to do bi-directional flashcards to review, since they didn't work that well for me.
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Re: Bi-directional flash card reviews strategies: Which direction to start with? Mixing directions? Etc.

Postby lusan » Tue Jan 14, 2020 3:35 am

I use Anki as a general study tool. I create desks as need for different skills.

Grammar - Clozed delection
Reading- L2 > L1
Listening - L2 Audio > L2/L1
Active - L1 > L2 +Audio
Dictation - L2 Audio > L2
Full Active sentences - L2 > L1

It takes about 1:20 min for French. I keep all cards separated. I do sentences and phrases. Words only in the grammar deck.
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Re: Bi-directional flash card reviews strategies: Which direction to start with? Mixing directions? Etc.

Postby Ccaesar » Tue Jan 14, 2020 10:35 am

lusan wrote:I use Anki as a general study tool. I create desks as need for different skills.

Grammar - Clozed delection
Reading- L2 > L1
Listening - L2 Audio > L2/L1
Active - L1 > L2 +Audio
Dictation - L2 Audio > L2
Full Active sentences - L2 > L1

It takes about 1:20 min for French. I keep all cards separated. I do sentences and phrases. Words only in the grammar deck.


What do you mean by full active sentences? Do you type them?
Also how does the dictation work? I am always fascinated by how people make Anki work much better, I tend to attempt and fail, although I am a fan of the software
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Re: Bi-directional flash card reviews strategies: Which direction to start with? Mixing directions? Etc.

Postby lusan » Tue Jan 14, 2020 5:24 pm

Ccaesar wrote: What do you mean by full active sentences? Do you type them?


I take sentences from FSI Basic French which are part of translation exercises. They have both English, french, and Audio. Face one: English. Face 2: French + Video. I write the answers by hand . I set a limit of no more than 10 review sentences per day with 6 new sentences daily.

Of course, I type them. It is a form of study too. It helps remembering by paying attention to the words themselves. I even write by hand every new sentences several times.

Ccaesar wrote: Also how does the dictation work?


I got 2000 sentences from a French Public deck, and modified it as: Face 1: Audio. Face 2, French and English. 3 new sentences per day. Of course, you could use any others sources of credible sentences. I liked the public desk because the sentences start very simple and progress to complex sentences later.

Yes. Anki could be used not only to remember things, but also to take notes and review them later.
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Re: Bi-directional flash card reviews strategies: Which direction to start with? Mixing directions? Etc.

Postby Pinecone » Wed Jan 22, 2020 9:28 am

Thanks for the comments. It is interesting to read the replies. So far I am picking up that having both language directions as well as audio and sentence style reviews going at the same time for the same word is more common than I thought.

The critique of doing bi-directional reviews focuses more on the fact that it creates extra cards:
dicentra8 wrote:I stopped doing bi-directional flashcards mostly because it increased the number of flashcards I had to go over. And at some point it started to become frustrating for me: even if the direction and testing was different, it felt I was going over the same 1 word over and over again.

I am guessing part of the frustration has to do with the algorithm being used for scheduling the reviewing and the software not knowing that the cards are related to each other, as well as, the algorithm not factoring how a review of the word from L1 to L2 should impact the scheduling or frequency of an L2 to L1 review. In other words, if the software automatically decided which direction to show you and didn't treat the directions as separate cards would that ease the pain?

This is what my 5th question was trying to touch on: "What relationship have you noticed exists, if any, between how well you know a word in the L2 to L1 direction and how well you know a word in the L1 to L2 direction?"

I am inclined to think that if I know a word in L2 to L1 direction I will more likely be able to correctly answer the L1 to L2 direction and vice versa. I am also inclined to think that a spaced recall of the word in either direction brings that particular word back to mind and may even meet the spaced recall need for both directions at once. But I don't know this for certain, so I thought it would be interesting to hear some observations on that. I am thinking about this for both my own review practices as well as in my thinking about improvements to the smart review algorithm I am using in WordClimber.

lusan wrote:I create desks as need for different skills.

Grammar - Clozed delection
Reading- L2 > L1
Listening - L2 Audio > L2/L1
Active - L1 > L2 +Audio
Dictation - L2 Audio > L2
Full Active sentences - L2 > L1

I like this detailed breakout of which review types work for developing the different skills. Personally, I tend to think of reviews like scaffolding. They are temporary and serve the purpose of holding the word in place until I recognize or use it in context enough times live so that the word sticks and recall / usage happens automatically. Like lusan, I think the different directions serve as scaffolding for different skills. For listening / recognition of the word, L2 to L1 seems the most helpful because until the word is automatic I hear or read the foreign word and recall from that to my native language to understand it. Whereas, for production / usage of the word in conversation, L1 to L2 seems the most helpful because until the word is automatic, I first think of the word in my native language and need to recall the foreign word from that.

dicentra8 wrote:
Pinecone wrote:4. In terms of the technical mechanism for doing bi-directional reviews, for those of you that use flash card review software, do you input both directions as separate cards or does the software automatically handle this?

Anki can do that automatically. A note can be used to create as many directions (cards types) as you want using the fields that it has. But like I said, the more directions you create the more cards you'll have to go through at some point.

Nice. I didn't realize there was an automatic way to do this in Anki. So, it is all on one card but reviewed in more than one direction or does it create separate cards?

rdearman wrote:I'm not really sure about some of what your asking.

Sorry, it was kind of confusing to me too! :D Just trying to learn what other people's practices are with bi-directional reviewing and wrestle a bit with understanding better how one's bi-directional review methodology impacts overall acquisition of the word.
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Re: Bi-directional flash card reviews strategies: Which direction to start with? Mixing directions? Etc.

Postby Pinecone » Wed Jan 22, 2020 9:40 am

Pinecone wrote:I am inclined to think that if I know a word in L2 to L1 direction I will more likely be able to correctly answer the L1 to L2 direction and vice versa. I am also inclined to think that a spaced recall of the word in either direction brings that particular word back to mind and may even meet the spaced recall need for both directions at once.

A follow up point here--I've noticed that many words that I know in L2 to L1 direction I can also recall in L1 to L2 direction but not all. However, there is rarely a word that I know in L1 to L2 direction that I can't recall in L2 to L1 direction. So for me, consistently knowing a word in L1 to L2 direction is both more difficult for me to achieve and the better indicator that the word is either already in or on the cusp of being in my active vocabulary (automatic recall).
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Re: Bi-directional flash card reviews strategies: Which direction to start with? Mixing directions? Etc.

Postby MrPenguin » Wed Jan 22, 2020 11:13 am

According to the creator of SuperMemo, having a recognition item/card in addition to a production item can reduce the workload compared to having just a production item. The example he uses is one for learning programming languages, but I wouldn't be surprised if it applies to language learning as well.
What the programmer has to remember and what satisfies the memorization criterion is the active recall of the name HWindow. However, adding a symmetrical item which, in a sense, duplicates the memorized piece of knowledge and asks for its passive recognition, has been proved to reduce the overall workload, i.e. the time loss side of the memorization criterion (TL). This happens by reducing the difficulty of the items in question; the fact reflected by a lower number of repetition per item, e.g. 6 repetitions in two years instead of 10 repetitions, and by a shorter repetition time, e.g. 3 seconds instead of 5 seconds (the overall difference here would be as between 2 items * 6 repetitions * 3 seconds = 36 seconds, and 1 item 10 repetitions * 5 seconds = seconds)
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Re: Bi-directional flash card reviews strategies: Which direction to start with? Mixing directions? Etc.

Postby dicentra8 » Wed Jan 22, 2020 6:27 pm

Pinecone wrote:the algorithm not factoring how a review of the word from L1 to L2 should impact the scheduling or frequency of an L2 to L1 review. In other words, if the software automatically decided which direction to show you and didn't treat the directions as separate cards would that ease the pain?
That would be nice! I really don't know that much about algorithms but maybe trying to implement that would create other problems, maybe? :? I haven't noticed that yet in any SRS sofware.
Pinecone wrote:So, it is all on one card but reviewed in more than one direction or does it create separate cards?
Each type of card creates a new card. If you have a note with 3 types of cards (different directions), it'll create 3 cards to learn and review. There is an option related to decks where you can "bury related new cards until the next day".
Pinecone wrote:I am inclined to think that if I know a word in L2 to L1 direction I will more likely be able to correctly answer the L1 to L2 direction and vice versa.
I also believe in that, that's why I don't worry too much in applying different directions. I tried at first because I thought it could be beneficial somehow. However it became more like a chore and I wasn't getting that much from it. The only different type of card I enjoy (beside focusing on typing the target language) is to put a short audio in the front to practise listening.
I'd like to add that, when it comes to methods/strategies, it's always better for the person to try them for a short period of time, to see if it works with them or not. I've recently been doing certain things that have been (atm) working well for me, and people in general tend to advice against it.
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