How do you use vocab tags?

I guess nobody is using the tags then :-(

Another 2 vital bits that are missing from the vocab section: 1) Search my vocab 2) Don't add an item if it's already there (that would rely on point for in its implementation I guess)

That's what I started doing first, but there were two problems I had with that: 1) I ended up with a lot of tags that had very few vocab items in them. So I couldn't really use those ones for the memory game (I like that game). 2) Always in the back of my mind was the idea that those kind of tags could be added automatically by CP.

Brendan, I used to try to use the vocab tags. I started with measure words, and verbs. Then I realized that I didn't know enough to make it worthwhile to myself. I'm now in the practice plan program and I'm going to give your tags a run. I'll try current and review as my two starting points. Thanks for those suggestions. I love your idea about pre-tagged words. Measure words, verbs, particles, would be a great start. Memorizing some core measure words might assist with the looping/decoding concept that we've all been discussing lately... for instance, the unknown word that follows the zhi must be some type of long slender thing. jonathan

Good stuff - let me know how you get on with this tagging method jonathan. It's too early to say that this is going to be the definitive way for me to do it. But perhaps between us we can make some useful suggestions to CP based on our experience. Also, given that every unknown word makes the needle jump from the track (to use a metaphor from very old technology ;-) then you are right - the measure words are important to identify to minimize the need to loop.

I should have mentioned a third important tag: 'learned'. That's the 终点 for this 火车, right?

I really like the idea of spending 10 minutes flicking through vocab to "top up" my learning. The only way I can do this is off-line and so I have been using the tags as a way of organising my exports. I, like most others, started off by tagging vocab with things like "colour", "question", "person", "nature", "drink", "food", etc. But this left me with a number of tags with very few words. I went back to the old way of "tagging" vocab, by simply just using the lesson numbers. This allows me to download them in similar sized sets which can easily be flicked through in 10 minutes or so. Some words are repeated, but I haven't found this to be a problem. The beauty of tags is that they are so flexible, and so it's good to hear how other people are using them. It would be nice to see more consideration given to the fact that a lot of learning is done off-line. And, as soon as I take my vocab off-line, the tags are gone.

That's a very good point. It would be ideal if the export function included the tag information.

Your idea is nice -- I tag my vocab a little differently. I tag them by type of word : verbs, Nationalities, questions (why, where, what...), time of day etc.. That way I can pick a category of words I want to test myself on.

The server seems to have some trouble with these tags... if I update more than 5 tags, it just loops.. and afterwards, I have trouble contacting the server.

Brendan: I use a similar but possibly less labor-intensive system. When I first add a word to my vocabulary list, I leave it unflagged; then, once a week or so, I flag everything with the month and year: "July 2007". This means that I can review only the most current vocab by clicking on "Untagged," or review a slightly larger set of vocab by clicking on the current month. I do most of my vocabulary learning on paper flash cards, so this also lets me keep track of what vocabulary I've already downloaded and printed on paper (a month at a time). Sometime soon I'm planning to upload my flash card template and explain how to use it.

@binabik: Yes - it does take me longer to learn the hanzi, and in fact based on the way I use the vocab tools, I have to learn to recognize it before I move the vocab item on. @chapka: That makes a lot of sense. I would only flag learned vocab with the date, do that the unlearned stuff would accumulate (oh boy does it accumulate!). Do you do this? I like that system chapka. Thanks for the tip. I think I might change to use that. That means I need to wipe or tag all the existing untagged vocab. But it was probably about time.

I tried to use the tagging system but I find it cumbersome to be honest. It would be better just to have them automatically under a lesson heading, or with pre-defined categories. To make the tagging truly useful, I'd like to see: * Support for multiple tags. Then I could, for example, see 'Beijing' under 'Cities', 'Olympics', 'Places'. * Shared tags. If I tag a 'pingguo' as 'Fruit', when other users search for 'Fruit' it should appear. * Tagging multiple items at once. At the moment, if I want to tag 20 items, I have to type in that tag 20 times.

this thread made me try to add and tag vocab, but I gave up. I'm on the practice plan with 4 lessons/week and I just Can't go and manually tag all 20-30 entries one-by-one every day. Great idea, I'd love to really start using it, but I have to agree with backfromspace, this is way too cumbersome, system might be fine when adding a handful of entries a week but at Upper-intermediate there's a lot more... At the very least, Add and Delete function should be enabled on multiple items at once. Next would be support for multiple, extremely useful too.

...I meant support for multiple tags

@backfromspace: You can use multiple tags. Just use comma-separated values. I do this all the time. @goulniky: What you are referring to is the ability to tag multiple items at the same time, and I couldn't agree more. The interface could be very much improved upon in this regard. What would also be nice is when you click 'add' that focus would be in the text field already. Right now you have to do a lot of clicking and pointing.

Maybe you could extend even a little further : hanzi studied, hanzi to review ? For me it takes a little longer to know the word.. and how to write it... probably it is the same for you ?