⚙️Generating flashcards from a word list ⚙️

A semi-automatic method to create Anki flashcards for Mandarin Chinese 🇨🇳

Hello everyone! 🌞

Today I found out a way to semi-automatically generate Anki flashcards from a word list. 😮

I was looking up information on how to achieve this after I decided I wanted to begin studying some 天官賜福 words I do not know yet to slowly prepare myself to read the non-translated version.

After browsing around, I finally found out how to achieve this after reading this Pleco forums thread and finding this Anki add-on. In this post, I share this novel trick with you so you can also optimize your flashcard creation workflow. 🤩

Let’s see how this works! ✨

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❗Requirements❗

To make this work you will need:

• A text editor (i.e. Window’s preinstalled notepad)

• Pleco’s flashcard module ($)

• Anki

• Pleco-to-Anki addon

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⚙️The method⚙️

To create your flashcards out of a word list semi-automatically, perform the following steps:

1. Create your word list ✍️. This can for example be a list of words extracted from a target text that you obtained using Morphman/AnkiMorphs’ readibility analyzer tool or a list of words you mined.

2. Convert the list into a format compatible with Pleco 📝.

   1. Copy the list of words (with one word per line) into a text editor, adding in the first line the following string, changing the text inside the « » to the new Pleco category you would like to create.

      // <<CATEGORY_NAME>>

   2. Save the list as a .txt file, making sure the encoding is set to UTF-8. It should look something like this:

      

3. Import the text file into Pleco ⏬.

   1. Add the file to your phone’s storage.

   2. Making sure Pleco’s flashcard system is set to “Pleco Built-in” in your settings, select from the main side menu Import/Export → Import Cards.

   3. There, choose the text file to import and, after modifying the settings to these, click at the very top on Begin Import:

      1. Dictonaries: if you want, click and order them according to your prefered source of definitions.

         

4. Export the imported flashcards ⏫.

   1. Click on Import/Export —> Export Cards.

   2. After modifying the settings so they these, click at the very top on Export Now:

      1. Categories: select the CATEGORY_NAME you previously defined in your text file.

         

5. Generate Anki cards using Pleco-To-Anki 💻.

   1. Download & install the add-on.

   2. Transfer the text file to your computer.

   3. Click on Tools → Import pleco bookmarks

   4. Select the text file by clicking on Select Bookmarks to Import and choose your desired settings (mine are these).

   5. Finally, click on OK and wait!

      

   
   The flashcards will be added to a new deck called pleco with the same information that you can see in the app. If you have the Spoonfed Chinese deck in your collection, the cards will include examples containing the target word alongside the original audio:

   

6. (Optional) Customize the card template 🎨. By default the card template includes two types of cards (recognition and recall) and clickable spoiler buttons to show the meaning of the examples, but you can of course adapt it to meet your needs/preferences.

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And that’s it! It’s a bit cumbersome when you do it the first time, but it’s really not as hard as it seems 😉. Most importantly, it can really help you save a lot of time when creating cards in bulk! 😁

Let me know if you have any further Anki-related questions or if you end up trying this method! 😊

Also, if you have a better setup for automatic Anki flashcard generation (or a similar method for Japanese 🇯🇵!), I would love to hear about it. 👀

See you soon with more valuable content,

~𝙽𝚊𝚝𝚑𝚊