Handwriting answers to Anki flashcards

[arthaey]

I've read studies showing that (some?) people learn better if they write things down, rather than type them or view them passively. (I don't have links handy, sorry.) It's made me reconsider Anki and think about using Iversen's word lists instead, when I start French.

But I really like digital flashcards like Anki. I do like how quick it is to flick through them, but I especially love the algorithm for selecting which cards to present when. The "multiple Cards generated from a single complex Note" feature of Anki is also nice from a knowledge-management perspective.

So I've been toying with the idea of a hybrid method of doing my flashcards: going through the cards via the Anki app like usual, but handwriting my answer on some scratch paper before flipping the card over to grade myself. I would obviously lose the rapidness of digital-only review, but I would gain better learning without sacrificing the scheduling algorithm.

Has anyone else tried such a hybrid flashcard method?

[lukbe]

When I was starting out with Chinese I did a deck where I would write by hand the character for the card given by Anki at least five times. The card information included stroke order. It was time consuming but it helped me develop a good feel for the writing system. I stopped using that deck long ago.

Now, I do this occasionally for my Chinese vocabulary deck. I do most of my reviews on my phone because that way I can do some whenever I have a free minute. However, if I'm at home with nothing else to do, I will take a piece of paper and write the words as I review them. Basically, I don't consider it a necessary part of my reviews, but it's a useful supplement when I can afford it.

So, yes, I think it's a good idea.

[DEC]

I haven't used it, but ankidroid has a feature called whiteboard where you can draw on the screen when reviewing flashcards. Maybe this would help?

[arthaey]

I haven't used it, but ankidroid has a feature called whiteboard where you can draw on the screen when reviewing flashcards. Maybe this would help?

I didn't realize this was a feature for the mobile versions of Anki! (The iPhone app has the same feature, although it's called "scratchpad" there.)

I'll give this a try alongside the old-fashioned manner of writing, to see if either, both, or neither help.

[smallwhite]

handwriting my answer on some scratch paper before flipping the card over

Then you could be writing the wrong word or spelling it wrong.

[arthaey]

handwriting my answer on some scratch paper before flipping the card over

Then you could be writing the wrong word or spelling it wrong.

In which case, I'd mark it wrong and pay closer attention when it popped up again soon thereafter.

[Cavesa]

Yes, I did. Writing the answers on a piece of paper (at least some of them) is the easiest way to turn Anki into Memrise (I never learnt how to make Anki require writing from me, not Anki's fault, I am just not that good). It worked really fine, even though I could do that only at home, not on the go.

Nowadays, I don't do it as I prefer Memrise. But when I return to Anki, writing things down is gonna be part of the routine.

[arthaey]

Can confirm, AnkiMobile "scratchpad" feature seems like a pretty awesome compromise.

I'm still curious to see if I notice any difference between this virtual writing vs physical... but since I should have gone to sleep 7 hours ago I think that experiment will have to wait until later.

[emk]

So I've been toying with the idea of a hybrid method of doing my flashcards: going through the cards via the Anki app like usual, but handwriting my answer on some scratch paper before flipping the card over to grade myself. I would obviously lose the rapidness of digital-only review, but I would gain better learning without sacrificing the scheduling algorithm.

Has anyone else tried such a hybrid flashcard method?

I did this when learning the basic hieroglyphs. I entered the cards in Anki and reviewed them according to the SRS algorithm, but when the card came up, I also wrote out the unfamiliar characters. This was inspired by the "Lazy Kanji" card format, and it worked well for an unfamiliar writing system.

If you want to try this with French, it might be worth trying two things:

1. Create MCD format cards, where you only need to fill in a tiny blank (a word, or even half a word). This reduces the amount of typing or writing you have to do, it makes reviews fun and painless, and it seems to lead to as much learning as any other approach.
2. Consider turning on Anki's "enter the hidden text to continue" feature.

Here's an example MCD card from one of my posts:

Anki is a great tool for reviewing information efficiently. It exploits the forgetting curve to get as much information into your head with as little effort as possible. My favorite way to use Anki is to make “sentence cards” with short blanks to fill in. Here’s a sample card I just made from New French with Ease lesson 1:

Front:

Pardon, madame. [___] est le métro Saint-Michel ?
Excuse me (pardon) madam. Where is the metro [station] St. Michel?

Back:

Pardon, madame. Où est le métro Saint-Michel ?
Excuse me (pardon) madam. Where is the metro [station] St. Michel?

The card format was first popularized by Khatzumoto under the name MCD cards. It works best if you don’t worry too much about any given card, and if you delete any card which annoys you. Remember: If something’s important, and if you read enough, then you’ll see it again soon. Keep things easy and fun, and don’t try to learn more than 10 new cards per day for the first month—the reviews build up quickly. Oh, and eventually you’ll reach a point where you don’t really need an English translation any more.

I have an open source tool for mass-producing these cards from ebooks and things I read in my web browser, and automatically turning them into Anki cards. PM me if you want to try it out; I may need to update it to make sure it's still online.

Anyway, I recommend considering short, easy clozes like this if you're going to write things out. It works really well, and it's a lot less painful than many other ways of doing active output with Anki.

[arthaey]

Create MCD format cards, where you only need to fill in a tiny blank (a word, or even half a word). This reduces the amount of typing or writing you have to do, it makes reviews fun and painless

MCDs and the even more-painless single word-to-word cards* are the only type of card I do. Perhaps this is part of why Anki is such "fun" for me.

*I've read the debates on the value of single word cards. They work for me, as a supplement to my MCD cards. :shrug:

Consider turning on Anki's "enter the hidden text to continue" feature.

Oo, another feature I haven't used yet in Anki! So now I'll have to do a 3-way test for how to write my Flashcard answers. Although I sorta suspect I'll prefer to scratchpad — something about the physicality and slowness of forming the letter shapes myself, y'know?

I have an open source tool for mass-producing these cards from ebooks and things I read in my web browser, and automatically turning them into Anki cards.

Thank you for the offer. However, I find that I like having to enter my Anki cards manually. It becomes just another step in the learning process. The times I've tried in the past to automate or otherwise hurry up the process, I've been dissatisfied with the results.

Which isn't to say I don't automate some things; I'm a programmer too. I have a script that takes a TL text (eg, a .srt subtitle file), creates a list of unique words in frequency order, and presents each to me so I can decide whether to have the script look up its definition online and save it to a separate file. I can then import than manually curated list into Anki. I've been happy with this system as a pre-viewing exercise before watching a movie or TV episode. I haven't tried it with books yet, but I might...