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Let me first tell about my experience with Supermemo. I have been preparing Q/A for Supermemo for me and my daughter for about 6 years. Mostly it was questions for learning English; but there were other kinds of learning too. I believe I have made some progress in the art of preparing questions and finding more optimal ways of using Supermemo.
The first tip I would like to share addresses the problem of a question having multiple correct answers (synonyms). In the beginning; when I did not have much experience in creating questions; I was worrying too much that a question might have several different correct answers. I thought I ought to create questions in a way, that each question has one and only one possible answer. In order to achieve that in vocabulary questions I decided to reveal the first and the last letter of the answer in the question. For example:
Q: [l…d] clothes are too bright or have too many bright designsA: loud
I had been practicing this approach for some time; until I realized that I recognize the questions by [l…d] pattern only; without needing to read the rest of the question carefully. I also noticed that such questions were not improving my vocabulary much: I did not start to actually use the words I had been trying to learn that way.
So I decided to try another strategy: adding a list of synonyms in the question:
Q:
[…] clothes are too bright or have too many bright designs
-> garish, gaudyA: loud
I added a list of synonyms at the moment of creating the question by copying the list of synonyms from a thesaurus dictionary. This approach worked much better for vocabulary learning: I started to actually use the new words in speaking and writing.
However the approach had the following disadvantages:
- preparing the questions took more time; since I needed to add lists of synonyms to the questions;
- sometimes the lists of synonyms were very long. The long lists were cluttering the questions and breaking the minimum information principle;
So I modified the strategy again to the following. First I create a question without worrying about possible multiple answers, like this:
Q: […] clothes are too bright or have too many bright designs
A: loudLater Supermemo will present me the question for repetition. Each time I answer it as designed (i.e. "loud"), I continue learning it without modification of the question. If I answer not as designed; but the answer is also correct (let say I answered "gaudy") I give myself "Bad" mark and modify the question; adding "gaudy" in the synonym list in the question:
Q:
[…] clothes are too bright or have too many bright designs
-> gaudyA: loud
Thus next time I see this question I will know that "gaudy" is not the designed answer and I will have to think of another one.
One might ask "what if I answered not as designed but I could not determine if my alternative answer had been also correct?". That is another problem. I did not want to add an incorrect answer in the synonym list. Often I could not say for sure if the alternative answer had been correct; so I had to carry out a small investigation using dictionaries; internet, and advice of native speakers to determine that. It took time; but it allowed me to study language at a higher level of consciousness; so I think it was worth the time spent.
I hope this post will be helpful for someone.
I am planning to post more information on how I use Supermemo.
P.S. See the discussion of this topic here:http://wiki.supermemo.org/index.php?titl
