A language learners’ forum

At first I preferred word cards. It’s just less information. It just took forever for me to learn them and I’d often forget them. When I first tried sentence cards I got pretty bad information overload. After getting used to them I started to prefer sentences. Now that I have enough vocabulary to usually know most words in a sentence card from the pre-made anki deck. I was worried rote memorization would get in the way. It actually speeds up how fast I learn if I’m only learning one or two words at a time. I only need to see that card once or twice to remember what the new vocabulary means. I can’t say that about word cards at all. They might have been useful earlier on, but maybe sentence cards in order of difficulty would have been helpful earlier on. I know for sure larger languages like French and Spanish have those premade anki decks, while the Hebrew one has a more random order. I’m happy the Hebrew one exists to begin with and that it has audio. At the moment most sentences are roughly at the level I need with the occasional sentence being too hard and the occasional sentence I understand easily.

I prefer to make my own cards rather than study from a premade deck... although I have studied from premade decks before.

Also, I try to add example sentences for all of my Anki cards (I'm assuming you are using Anki or something electronic). This takes a little extra time to make (copy and paste the word into word reference....copy and paste sentence taken from word reference). I've noticed that I only read the example sentences maybe 20% of the time. Sometimes if I forget a word I'll see if I can guess it based on context.

In the end, I find that Anki (or traditional vocabulary study) is a good supplement to lots of reading and listening...but can't replace it. Best results come when I add a new word to Anki and then come across that word a few times in books/audios. Anki is just a way of adding a few extra reps in what you might not otherwise get to do.

NoManches wrote:I prefer to make my own cards rather than study from a prepaid deck... although I have studied from premade decks before.

Also, I try to add example sentences for all of my Anki cards (I'm assuming you are using Anki or something electronic). This takes a little extra time to make (copy and paste the word into word reference....copy and paste sentence taken from word reference). I've noticed that I only read the example sentences maybe 20% of the time. Sometimes if I forget a word I'll see if I can guess it based on context.

In the end, I find that Anki (or traditional vocabulary study) is a good supplement to lots of reading and listening...but can't replace it. Best results come when I add a new word to Anki and then come across that word a few times in books/audios. Anki is just a way of adding a few extra reps in that you might not otherwise get to do.

I’m still at that at the beginner stage and I’m lazy. I know I could be going through coursebooks or making my own anki cards, but I’m too lazy at the moment. I could try to do those things, but I’ll end up not studying at all. I believe lazy studying is better than no studying. Maybe I’ll give coursebooks a try again, but I gave myself a rule that I have to finish all my anki sentences before I try to do other language learning related things like working on flashcards. Once I’m advanced enough to listen to things I’ll listen to a lot, but for now I’m just trying to get out of the beginner stage. I’m hoping subs2srs will make make my passive skills closer to intermediate.

sporedandroid wrote:At first I preferred word cards. It’s just less information. It just took forever for me to learn them and I’d often forget them. When I first tried sentence cards I got pretty bad information overload. After getting used to them I started to prefer sentences. Now that I have enough vocabulary to usually know most words in a sentence card from the pre-made anki deck. I was worried rote memorization would get in the way. It actually speeds up how fast I learn if I’m only learning one or two words at a time. I only need to see that card once or twice to remember what the new vocabulary means. I can’t say that about word cards at all. They might have been useful earlier on, but maybe sentence cards in order of difficulty would have been helpful earlier on. I know for sure larger languages like French and Spanish have those premade anki decks, while the Hebrew one has a more random order. I’m happy the Hebrew one exists to begin with and that it has audio. At the moment most sentences are roughly at the level I need with the occasional sentence being too hard and the occasional sentence I understand easily.

Making your own cards based on 2-6 words is a good idea. For example, with your sentence "It actually speeds up how fast I learn if I’m only learning one or two words at a time" ->
1. It actually speeds up
2. speeds up how fast I learn
3. how fast I learn if
4. if I’m only learning
5. learning one or two words
6. two words at a time

Pretend it was in Spanish, cut up the sentences however it makes sense to you, and then add the translation to the other side of your card. You'll catch more collocations this way and can make use of more difficult sentences. You might not be able to make sense of an entire really difficult sentence, but you'll surely be able to take something from it.

Also, what Hebrew deck are you using and where did you get it?

AML wrote:

sporedandroid wrote:At first I preferred word cards. It’s just less information. It just took forever for me to learn them and I’d often forget them. When I first tried sentence cards I got pretty bad information overload. After getting used to them I started to prefer sentences. Now that I have enough vocabulary to usually know most words in a sentence card from the pre-made anki deck. I was worried rote memorization would get in the way. It actually speeds up how fast I learn if I’m only learning one or two words at a time. I only need to see that card once or twice to remember what the new vocabulary means. I can’t say that about word cards at all. They might have been useful earlier on, but maybe sentence cards in order of difficulty would have been helpful earlier on. I know for sure larger languages like French and Spanish have those premade anki decks, while the Hebrew one has a more random order. I’m happy the Hebrew one exists to begin with and that it has audio. At the moment most sentences are roughly at the level I need with the occasional sentence being too hard and the occasional sentence I understand easily.

Making your own cards based on 2-6 words is a good idea. For example, with your sentence "It actually speeds up how fast I learn if I’m only learning one or two words at a time" ->
1. It actually speeds up
2. speeds up how fast I learn
3. how fast I learn if
4. if I’m only learning
5. learning one or two words
6. two words at a time

Pretend it was in Spanish, cut up the sentences however it makes sense to you, and then add the translation to the other side of your card. You'll catch more collocations this way and can make use of more difficult sentences. You might not be able to make sense of an entire really difficult sentence, but you'll surely be able to take something from it.

Also, what Hebrew deck are you using and where did you get it?

I’m using this deck and a subs2srs deck I made.
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/655083326

How do you deal with audio with your method? Do you chop up the audio as well. Thankfully I come across a lot of cards where I know most of the words.

sporedandroid wrote:How do you deal with audio with your method? Do you chop up the audio as well. Thankfully I come across a lot of cards where I know most of the words.

Ah yes, you can do that with audio, too, if you have it. Audacity is a good, free program for doing that.

AML wrote:

sporedandroid wrote:How do you deal with audio with your method? Do you chop up the audio as well. Thankfully I come across a lot of cards where I know most of the words.

Ah yes, you can do that with audio, too, if you have it. Audacity is a good, free program for doing that.

I’ve definitely tried chopping up audio in audacity, but it never sounds as smooth as I want. How do you make it more smooth? Is that even possible? I’m especially interested in chopping up audio for pronunciation practice.

sporedandroid wrote:

AML wrote:

sporedandroid wrote:How do you deal with audio with your method? Do you chop up the audio as well. Thankfully I come across a lot of cards where I know most of the words.

Ah yes, you can do that with audio, too, if you have it. Audacity is a good, free program for doing that.

I’ve definitely tried chopping up audio in audacity, but it never sounds as smooth as I want. How do you make it more smooth? Is that even possible? I’m especially interested in chopping up audio for pronunciation practice.

You can slow down the speed, which should help, but if it's native audio then it can be hard to make it super clear. The longer chunks you use, the better in terms of smoothness (if we're talking about the same thing), but then your chunks might be bigger than 2-6 words. So, there is some give and take.