The Anki method without recalling

[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.

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?

I generally don't do a "session" but rather multiple sessions throughout the day, with the longest period normally at lunchtime at work. I will sit flipping through cards during and after my lunch until I get bored of it, probably 20-30 minutes. The remainder of the time is walks with the dog, about 10-20 minutes in total morning and evenings, then whatever chance I get during the day. I try to catchup at weekends if I fall to far behind. Also on occasion I turn off new cards until I catchup. In fact I have a options group called 'catchup' for just for that purpose. I turn off new cards and put the max reviews to like 2500 and power my way through them. This is quicker for me since I'm not attempting to memorise them, but just get them in front of my face.

I have a deck of quotations, advice, tips, tricks, etc which are in English (my native language) mostly, with some French which I have been flipping through for years. I have actually managed to memorise a huge number of these cards without trying to just because I have seen them so many times.

[emk]

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.

Current subs2srs tools work much better when you're just starting a language than they do at the advanced level. This is because when you're just starting, most of the vocab is new, and you can just convert entire episodes at a time. This takes a weekend to figure out the first time, sadly, but once you have a workflow, you can automatically generate hundreds of good cards in a few hours.

And then when you review, you cull aggressively. If a card is too hard, too easy, too annoying, it's gone. Judith Meyer also chose to suspend all her cards at first, and then unsuspend those with the most useful vocabulary first.

And in any case, high frequency words will appear more often in a subs2srs deck simply because they're high frequency!

I have some ideas about how to build better subs2srs that would allow C1ish students to watch videos normally and make subs2srs cards with a couple clicks when they encounter a challenging bit of audio. But to make this practical requires much better automation than currently exists. Since I'm not convinced there's a real market for good advanced language learning tools, my work is proceeding very slowly.

[Tomás]

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.

Try this one:

http://www.manythings.org/audiosentences/

[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.

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.

Sorry rdearman,

The single word cards comments from me weren't aimed at you rdearman. That was general talk within the thread, which I should've made clearer, my fault.

Glad you agree TTS is rubbish. Native speaker as a source is just too fiddly for me. Perhaps it simply takes a little time to set up, but I just don't want it tbh even if it works well once set up. I don't argue that audio is fiddly for you now that I know where you're coming from, as I assumed you were using TTS (you've likely figured out a good system). I personally don't feel the need for the audio. We agree, TTS is rubbish.

[sfuqua]

TTS rubbish? You haven't heard my French.
I have a way to go before the limitations of tts will be holding me back.

I don't know why people hate tts so much; maybe I'm just insensitive to its shortcomings.

Or maybe I've spent so much time repeating the same instructions over and over again to students who aren't listening that I've started to sound like a tts voice.

But it is just soooo easy to implement with ankidroid.
As an old UNIX guy, I'm very much a "better a crummy shell script with limitations today, than an efficient C program next January."
Quick, dirty, and done.

Please notice that I said nothing against native speaker voices, which are the gold standard of course

[smallwhite]

I don't know why people hate tts so much; maybe I'm just insensitive to its shortcomings.

I believe it depends on what they are comparing TTS to - to no audio or to quality native recordings, to their own better or worse pronunciation.

> native speaker voices, which are the gold standard of course

I can't stand the native speaker recordings on Memrise, where the volumes vary from can-just-barely-hear-the-T's to so-loud-there's-distortion-and-makes-you-jump. And the pronunciation varies between every clip in every possible way, which is very confusing. I prefer the consistency and predictability of TTS.

[tommus]

TTS obviously varies tremendously between languages, applications, versions, etc. I have been extremely pleased with the male Dutch voice in Microsoft Bing Translator. It is very good and I have no problem at all listening to it. It is also available via the Microsoft Translate API which is excellent but the programming to access it is not for the fainthearted.

One really great advantage that TTS has over lots of native voices with transcripts/sub-titles, etc, is that TTS is exactly the same as the text. When the native voice and the text differ significantly, I find it very difficult to concentrate and I think it is very inefficient. So one recommendation would be to search the various TTS possibilities such as Google Translate, Bing Translate and the various commercial product voices for your L2, such as AT&T Natural Voices, Ivona, Nuance and Acapela, all of which are available from http://nextup.com/, where you can try the samples or try with your own sample text.

[PeterMollenburg]

TTS rubbish? You haven't heard my French.
I have a way to go before the limitations of tts will be holding me back.

I don't know why people hate tts so much; maybe I'm just insensitive to its shortcomings.

Or maybe I've spent so much time repeating the same instructions over and over again to students who aren't listening that I've started to sound like a tts voice.

But it is just soooo easy to implement with ankidroid.
As an old UNIX guy, I'm very much a "better a crummy shell script with limitations today, than an efficient C program next January."
Quick, dirty, and done.

Please notice that I said nothing against native speaker voices, which are the gold standard of course

Well, I guess that's what makes the world interesting- we're all different. It makes perfect sense to me that TTS could be very useful for others for whatever reason (personality, transcripts as you mention, TTS quality depending on language, language level ability, etc). It was for me at one point useful, until I released I was speaking faster than the TTS and it was getting in the way of my speaking (I always pronounce the content of my flashcards out loud, as I more often than not also do when I read, to ensure I continue to work on good pronunciation habits). Thus TTS was slowing me down and getting in the way, but it did work for a short time until I realised I was better off without it. For the same reasons I wouldn't use native voice either, although I would be an improvement. Oh yes! I remember I also used TTS as I was listening to Flashcards in the car while driving in a kind of 'auto play random mode' in which the English side would play first, i'd quickly try to guess the French translation, and then it would play that translation automatically. For that it was rather good as I could not look at my phone and still wanted to review vocab in my flashcards in 'stolen moments' of free time.

[Voytek]

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.

Current subs2srs tools work much better when you're just starting a language than they do at the advanced level. This is because when you're just starting, most of the vocab is new, and you can just convert entire episodes at a time. This takes a weekend to figure out the first time, sadly, but once you have a workflow, you can automatically generate hundreds of good cards in a few hours.

And then when you review, you cull aggressively. If a card is too hard, too easy, too annoying, it's gone. Judith Meyer also chose to suspend all her cards at first, and then unsuspend those with the most useful vocabulary first.

And in any case, high frequency words will appear more often in a subs2srs deck simply because they're high frequency!

I have some ideas about how to build better subs2srs that would allow C1ish students to watch videos normally and make subs2srs cards with a couple clicks when they encounter a challenging bit of audio. But to make this practical requires much better automation than currently exists. Since I'm not convinced there's a real market for good advanced language learning tools, my work is proceeding very slowly.

Than you for your reply.
Could you tell me where can I find a good tutorial about creatinng cards this way? I`ll give it a try since it takes a lot of time to create a good deck manualy. Besides, it`s a good thing to alternate your language learning tools to attack your brain/mind from various angles.

[Tomás]

Folks in this thread may want to consider the readlang SRS. It makes cards for you automatically, using whatever words you look up in your own reading. It gives you the context in the sentence. It feeds cards to you according to the frequency list ranking. It has the option of TTS. It exports to Anki.

In other words, it solves nearly all of the technical problems being discussed above.