Some items emerge as leach cards which I repeatedly get incorrect. What is your advice for dealing with these items? Do I need to think harder to reinforce the mneumonic, or think of a different mneumonic?
Secondly, is there a simple way to rapidly pull out all leech items that exist?
I have noticed there are several reasons items become leech items which I repeatedly get incorrect:
It looks too similar to another item or character and I keep getting them confused, an example is 镜 and 境 both of these have the same pinyin making it extra confusing.
There is a lack of information due to it being only a single character so when I see the character there isn’t enough information for me to deduce the mneumonic, an example is 占.
I just keep forgetting it and I don’t know why, an example is 现 (see below).
Hand writing is a great way to do this. Select several of the characters that you struggle with and use Pleco to find words that include them. Use those words to write sentences by hand each time making note of which of the characters it is (for example 仙境 and 眼镜).
You can prioritize the learning of more words including theses characters, especially ones being part of sentences you’re studying and using elsewhere.
I found also that having the sentence option enabled in my revision settings is greatly helping.
Best,
Depending on the type of issue the solution differs:
Similar looking items: For me direct comparison cards solves this better than any other method. I just make my own Anki cards that directly compare two characters that I get mixed up (literally “A vs B”). A week or two of those and situation sorts itself out! The only issue is you need to use another separate SRS app and manually make the comparison cards - so it’s a pain. Nothing like this exists inside HH, but it’s completely worth it IMHO since it’s so effective.
For everything else - get better mnemonic. Ignore the HH if they don’t stick, just write your own one with lots of sex, violence, swearing etc. The thing that make memories stick the most are strong emotions (good or bad). If you can make yourself laugh, or make yourself disgusted - that’ll stay with you. The default HH mnemonics are all family friendly for obvious reasons, but use the notes section to make your own. Personally if a mnemonic doesn’t stick in the first two or three reviews it never will - it’s not good enough so make better ones.
Some non-family friend examples:
占 - James Bond jammed a police baton down into the mouth of a fortune teller outside the pawn shop because they wouldn’t shut the fuck up about his future.
现 - Xena put an eye on the end of a sceptre while she [insert your imagination here about what she might do] in the pawnshop bathroom.
But honestly you can go harder even than these for things that won’t stick. You don’t have to LIKE the mnemonic or even agree with it, in fact disgust is one of these strongest emotions. Just make it MEMORABLE.
No. It’s a commonly requested feature but no work is being done on HH any more so it almost certainly won’t happen sadly.
Not OP, but I hadn’t thought of creating Anki flashcards for similar characters that I struggle with. I would be interested to learn more about the “A vs B” cards. Is that something like:
This card has 3 options but I also have cards with just 2. I used to have cards with up to +5 alternatives (e.g. 清 vs 晴 vs 情 vs 请 vs 青) but that got too much to try to answer in a timely manner and confirm you were right/wrong. I now split them into multiple cards so no comparison card has more than 3 items in it (so the 青 based one is 3 different cards instead of 1 mega card).
I also setup the card also has a little java script that randomises the character order so I can’t just memorise the X then Y then Z. I’m forced to read the characters each time the card appears it’s ordered differently.
Overall I’ve found the direct comparison cards are incredibly helpful and time efficient for sorting out character confusion. Only downside is having to use a separate tool for them outside HH, but since I’m using Anki for sentences cards as well already it’s not a big deal for me.
