The Anki method without recalling

[Adrianslont]

What do you think about using Anki only for exposure, without memorization and recalling?

Much of the work that I've done with Anki is essentially based on this idea. I've used sentence comprehension cards and subs2srs cards, and I score them based on how well I can comprehend them. This produces lovely results for way less effort single word translation cards, which I eventually came to loathe, due to ambiguities and difficulty. So here's one vote for the theory that Anki is actually a better tool for managing repeated exposure in context than it is for straight-up memorization.

And a second vote from me. I've been influenced by emk and most of my cards are subs2srs or audio cards of a similar nature. They seem to work for me.

[sfuqua]

When I did Samoan, I learned It with 30-60 Word wordlists reviewed at increasing intervals. I got the words from what I was reading, and after I memorised the list, I would read the passage aloud that the words came from. It worked great for me.

Right now I'm about a third of the way through a set of 10000 cards in French, Portuguese, and Spanish. I'm trying to push through it with more new cards per day than is probably reasonable in the long run. I'm doing sentence cards from anki in the L2->L1 with a tts voice reading the cards. I like the deck a lot; it seems like a very powerful tool for learning, and it fits into my recently hyper busy lifestyle. I'm not sure if I will try to any active direction anki cards, those things get to be a pain because of all the ambiguity.

[Voytek]

What do you think about using Anki only for exposure, without memorization and recalling?

Much of the work that I've done with Anki is essentially based on this idea. I've used sentence comprehension cards and subs2srs cards, and I score them based on how well I can comprehend them. This produces lovely results for way less effort single word translation cards, which I eventually came to loathe, due to ambiguities and difficulty. So here's one vote for the theory that Anki is actually a better tool for managing repeated exposure in context than it is for straight-up memorization.

Thanks for your reply.


But tell us, isn`t it cumbersome to create subs2srs cards? I mean searching words that you want to remember because you think that they will be useful for you.

I`m using frequency lists and the idea of using this technique doesn`t resonate with my learning philosophy which is to use frequency lists to some degree (let`s say, for acquiring 4000 most frequently used words).

[Voytek]

When I did Samoan, I learned It with 30-60 Word wordlists reviewed at increasing intervals. I got the words from what I was reading, and after I memorised the list, I would read the passage aloud that the words came from. It worked great for me.

Right now I'm about a third of the way through a set of 10000 cards in French, Portuguese, and Spanish. I'm trying to push through it with more new cards per day than is probably reasonable in the long run. I'm doing sentence cards from anki in the L2->L1 with a tts voice reading the cards. I like the deck a lot; it seems like a very powerful tool for learning, and it fits into my recently hyper busy lifestyle. I'm not sure if I will try to any active direction anki cards, those things get to be a pain because of all the ambiguity.

Nice idea, I`ll try it because reviewing single worded cards is quite dull and, as you mentioned, they can decive you due their polyvalency.

[rdearman]

What do you think about using Anki only for exposure, without memorization and recalling?

That is what I do all the time, which is why I have probably at least a couple of hundred if not a thousand cards per day. It is a lot less stressful than trying to spend 2-5 minutes per card trying to memorise them. Also it is a lot better if you have audio on the cards as well as the text.

[PeterMollenburg]

What do you think about using Anki only for exposure, without memorization and recalling?

That is what I do all the time, which is why I have probably at least a couple of hundred if not a thousand cards per day. It is a lot less stressful than trying to spend 2-5 minutes per card trying to memorise them. Also it is a lot better if you have audio on the cards as well as the text.

I don't agree that it is better to use audio on the cards. I used to use TTS and found it too slow (I could speak faster), and I felt didn't allow me to 'take control' of my own pronunciation. I ought to know how to pronounce the words on any given flashcard, and if i don't (rare), then I look up the phonetics.

On another note, I also found single word translation cards became way too complicated. I developed a lot of short cuts (often 3 letters) to type in (auto fill really due to the shortcuts) clarifying notes alerting me to various things such as telling me a word was a verb and not a noun if two words looked the same. Not only that, but then it became a battle of what definition do I write- all 10 definitions or 10 seperate ones and how do I know which definition (and thus translation) I was looking for as an answer. In the end it was a big learning experience and single word cards lost out.

Cloze deletion makes a lot of sense now. I find words in context- could be in a book, in a magazine, in some audio I've heard, in a course, I then add a sentence or two and blank out the word or phrase with a translation as my hint. Much easier, contextual (and not random, but sth i've come across), and the context a well as the translations (relative to that particular context) all make for pretty stress free cards. So, although it's not forgoing the recall, it goes a long way to assisting me in finding the answers relatively easily.

[rdearman]

What do you think about using Anki only for exposure, without memorization and recalling?

That is what I do all the time, which is why I have probably at least a couple of hundred if not a thousand cards per day. It is a lot less stressful than trying to spend 2-5 minutes per card trying to memorise them. Also it is a lot better if you have audio on the cards as well as the text.

I don't agree that it is better to use audio on the cards. I used to use TTS and found it too slow (I could speak faster), and I felt didn't allow me to 'take control' of my own pronunciation. I ought to know how to pronounce the words on any given flashcard, and if i don't (rare), then I look up the phonetics.

I'm not doing single word cards however. I'm using either subs2srs cards where the audio dialogue is from a native speaker, or other sources where the audio is from a native. I do agree that TTS is a rubbish, so if you're going to include audio try to get a native speaker as the source.

[Voytek]

Actually, I`m going to combine my wordlists with bab.la, where I can find examples of sentences with the words from my wordlists, forvo, where can I ask for pronunciation for my sentences (only short ones), and put all this stuff into Anki. It`ll be arduous but I can manage with it.

Sometimes you can find on forvo a pronounced sentence for the word you want to add to your vocabulary.

[sfuqua]

I have a prejudice against anything other than automatic creation of a bunch of anki cards. I'm sure that making cards from vocabulary met in reading is useful, I just hate doing it.
I think for me the trick is not to fail cards too easily. After reading rdearman's post above I reminded myself to go back to my old way of scoring cards.

Easy button means that I don't need to consciously parse the card, I just know what it means. I suspect that what this means is that I can delete the card without losing very much, but if it only takes a few seconds to review, I guess I could leave it around a little longer.

Good button means, there was some parsing in my head, but that the meaning of the card fell into place at about the speed the tts voice read it.

Hard button means that I was able to parse the card easily after I saw the translation. Recently I've been failing cards like this, but defining what hard is and moving the cards forward makes things better. This way I don't fail a card just because I forgot the meaning of one word.

Fail means that I still can't parse the sentence easily even with the translation. I suspect that these cards should be deleted also, or at least suspended until I get a little stronger.

I use tts because my pronunciation of French and Portuguese is still uncertain. With Spanish, my pronunciation is what it is.

I've been thinking about doing a bunch of cloze cards instead of an active wave with this deck of cards from Assimil courses. I also think that drill the meanings of the sentence in with anki is a lot more intense than a passive run through them in the book.

[Voytek]

What do you think about using Anki only for exposure, without memorization and recalling?

That is what I do all the time, which is why I have probably at least a couple of hundred if not a thousand cards per day. It is a lot less stressful than trying to spend 2-5 minutes per card trying to memorise them. Also it is a lot better if you have audio on the cards as well as the text.

Besides audio I also put images into my flashcards which helps me understand and remember them better. It also makes reviewing a bit faster, I guess.

Do you find this technique effective and ain`t you too exhausted after a session?