Interesting thoughts Mei. I had a gap in my Chinese language learning and I think part of it was topics that didn't interest me but I had to go through them because it was a university course. I am trying to review now to remember what I have forgotten and follow a textbook where topics sound a bit more interesting. I tried The Chairman Bao and LingQ but still haven't found an interesting series to stick to it. Regarding flashcards, I also don't like learning words in isolation but I found it helpful to add new words from the materials I am using and learn them because I saw them in use. I also found TOFU Learn better for Chinese than Quizlet or Anki because in TOFU Learn you have exercises on recognising the character and then exercises on writing them on the screen. I just thought I'd share in case it is useful for anyone. (Anki also has cloze deletion flashcard type - fill in a word in a sentence instead of seeing just 1 word)