Flashcards or reading: when to use SRS and when to use a graded text

The SRS camp says: without spacing, the word dies. Partly true. A good card keeps a lemma available.

The reading camp says: without sentences, you do not know Chinese. Also partly true. Knowing 苹果 (píngguǒ, apple) on a card is not reading 我买了两个苹果 (wǒ mǎi le liǎng gè píngguǒ, I bought two apples), where 个 is the measure word.

The false choice is “cards or immersion.” Doing only one is why people “know” 200 cards and cannot parse four lines. Native news on day 10 is not reading practice. It is noise with pretty characters.

Classic HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) bands sit near 150 / 300 / 600 / 1,200 words in the early levels, per Wikipedia HSK. A beginner text should sit near your band, not at newspaper level. A review of verbal-recall studies found that spacing beats cramming the same items in one sitting (Cepeda et al., 2006). That supports due cards before new ones. It does not hand you a percentage for Chinese characters. The exam itself is still chinesetest.cn, not the deck.

Pinyin (Mandarin romanization) and hanzi (Chinese characters) show up together in a good graded text. On a weak card you only see the gloss. That gap is today’s problem, not a learner-identity debate.

Anki-only people describe the same symptom: they know the word in the deck and freeze on 我买了两个苹果. Read-only people describe the mirror: they get the line today and tomorrow 苹果 is gone. Those two symptoms need different tools. Not a manifesto.

Open the queue when the failure is recall. Yesterday 因为 stuck. Today the gloss will not come. That is spacing: a word you cannot recall today comes back sooner. The qualitative idea is enough; we do not invent a forgetting-curve percentage here. Why you forget lives in the sibling post.

A useful card has audio when you can, and a minimal sentence if the word is abstract. 苹果 alone on the front is a sticker. After it shows up in 我买了两个苹果, the card earns meaning: 两 + 个 + noun.

Do not open SRS to feel productive when you already flash the gloss instantly and still cannot read two lines. That click trains pride, not parsing.

Do not turn SRS into a teacher either. Anki (or another queue) schedules intervals. It does not pick your HSK band or tell you if today is listening. If you need that product judgment, the Anki stall post already covers it.

Clear SRS-day signal: you open a short text and every third word is “I know it from the deck” but you cannot retrieve it without looking. Retrieve first. Then read.

Another signal: the queue has real due cards and you skip them to “read for a bit.” That bit does not fix the recall hole. Pay the queue debt first. Eight minutes is enough if you do not invent forty new cards.

If the queue is clean and you still want SRS “out of habit,” stop. Habit without a failure is filler. Today is a text day.

Open the reader when the failure is syntax in motion. You know 买, you know 苹果, and 两个 stops you. The measure word was not the card gloss. It was the tail of the sentence.

A graded text teaches that the word survives its surroundings: punctuation, 了, a dropped subject, a 的 you did not expect. A front/back queue will not teach that.

Pick the text by band, not by “authentic interest.” If you are near HSK 1 (~150-word band), do not start the day with an editorial. Start with a dialogue or reading in that band. The beginner reading post covers how; here you only need when.

Read once under your breath or aloud. Mark at most three truly unknown words. If you mark fifteen, the text is not graded for you. It is noise again.

Do not use the reader as an infinite dictionary. The day’s job is to finish a stretch that makes sense, not to underline 40% of the page.

Audio on the text counts. If you read in silence and then hear the same line, you find which chunks never stuck. That is not exam listening. It is a check that parsing survives the ear.

If the text is a dialogue, say one turn aloud. Do not stage a play. One spoken line is enough to notice that 两个 blocks you more in the mouth than on the screen.

Drop the sacred balance. The split follows the dominant failure and the exam calendar.

Template A (weak memory, reading paper still far): four SRS days of about 8 minutes (due first, few new). Three reading days of about 12 minutes (one text in your band, no hunting every word).

Template B (reading exam soon, queue under control): three SRS days of 8 minutes. Four reading days of 12 minutes. Same rules: right band, short stretch, three marks max.

If you only have 10 minutes, do not split 5 and 5 out of superstition. Pick the failure. Glosses vanishing? SRS. Glosses solid and the line broken? Reader.

Weekly clock is roughly 4×8 + 3×12 = 68 minutes on template A, or the mirror on B. Not a personality test. Small-room arithmetic.

If your routine already lives in 20 minutes, this split fits inside. The routine post fixes the block; this text picks the tool inside the block.

Concrete template-A week: Monday SRS 8, Tuesday text 12, Wednesday SRS 8, Thursday text 12, Friday SRS 8, Saturday text 12, Sunday SRS 8. Not magic. A calendar.

If a reading paper hits on Friday, shift weight to template B that week. Do not renegotiate your identity as an “Anki person.” Change the counter.

One. Not forty.

When 个 trips you in 两个苹果, do not import the whole lesson into the deck. Make one card: front 个 in context, back gloss plus the short sentence. Or front the sentence with a gap. Then keep reading.

If the word already lived in the deck and still failed in context, do not clone five variants. Add the text sentence to the existing card, or suspend the isolated card and keep the sentence. The goal is a link, not lemma volume.

If you miss the same word two days in the reader and never in SRS, the card was badly built (gloss only, no sentence). Fix the card. Do not punish the text.

If you miss ten words in one paragraph, drop a band. The problem is not grit. It is input level.

The site’s public vocab lists at /vocabulario help align bands. That is 12,432 lemmas in this app’s inventory, not the official paper.

Minimal card after the text: front 我买了两个___。 Back 苹果 (píngguǒ, apple) plus a note “个 with countable fruit in this line.” One face. One answer. No essay on the back.

If the word is a measure word, do not make twenty measure-word cards that night. One from today’s context. The rest show up when they fail again.

Day 1: 8 minutes SRS. Due only. Note how many you truly missed.

Day 2: 12 minutes in an HSK 1 or 2 text for your band. Three marks max. One card at the end if needed.

Day 3: 8 minutes SRS. Include the day-2 card if it exists.

Day 4: 12 minutes in another text in the same band, or the second half of yesterday’s if you over-marked.

Day 5: 8 minutes SRS. If the queue clears in under 5 minutes, do not pad with 40 new cards. Stop.

Day 6: 12 minutes reading. Same three-mark rule.

Day 7: choose from the data. Heavy gloss misses on day 1? SRS. Reading days stuck on “I know the card”? Another text. Do not half-do both “for balance.”

That is one cycle. Not a course. Next week you can flip to template B if the reading paper is close.

At the end of day 7 write two numbers: gloss misses in SRS and average marks per text. If the first is high, more SRS next week. If the second goes past three, drop a band or lengthen reading time without adding cards.

Do not score “pages read” or “cards done” as trophies. Score whether 苹果 came back yesterday and whether you parsed 两个 today without peeking at the gloss.

Chinese Trainer pairs an SRS queue with 204 graded readings and dialogues with audio. Free covers HSK 1–2 and three exercises per feature per day. Enough to test the decision rule without building a lab.

We are not Anki. We are not native immersion on day 10. We do not claim the queue alone makes you read, or the text alone makes you remember.

The 204 texts cover parsing practice with audio. The queue covers recall. Free limits you to HSK 1–2 and three exercises per feature per day. That pushes short sessions. Short sessions are the point.

If today is queue day, log in and clear dues. If today is text day, pick one in your band and stop at three marks. Today’s queue on free HSK 1–2 starts at log in.

• Due cards on the days the word will not come back.
• A graded line on the days you know the card and still cannot parse it.
• One missed word becomes one card, not a 40-word import.