gsbod wrote:patrickwilken wrote:I love Anki, but I think it can only ever be a stepping stone to native materials.
I say that because I think the parts of the brain that do language really need language to learn, and unfortunately Anki cards generally are very restricted in their "language" content.
Maybe an important consideration is what you are asking yourself to do with Anki. For me, the most efficient way of working was with two way translation of words and phrases. I found cards with larger amounts of content for "context" tiresome compared to just using native materials, and cards looking for detailed answers just had too many ways to "fail" to be effective in relation to the SRS algorithm.
In short, I was always testing myself for a preferred translation of a word or phrase (either English or German). This helped build a basic lexicon, and also helped train me to watch out for basic details, like noun gender and the correct prepositions in fixed expressions. All useful stuff at A and B levels.
Where the limits lie I think are two-fold. Firstly it relies on the premise of there being a "preferred translation". This makes sense, to me, at lower levels where it makes sense to learn the most common English equivalent of a word first and fits in to the Pareto principle. But at the higher levels this whole concept becomes absurd, since there are many meanings to many words, and words often do not map exactly to words in other languages. And of course, at higher levels, translation is a professional skill to be developed in its own right, if that's the direction you want to go. Secondly, it doesn't allow you to adequately test yourself on synonyms or alternative ways of phrasing expressions. This is much more important to add colour and depth to your language at higher levels, and to avoid the danger zone of using the wrong synonym in the wrong context, at best sounding wrong, at worst sounding offensive.
That said, if I had an exam coming up which I knew would rely on a set of specialised vocabulary, I'd be drilling it in Anki straight away.
The cards are only as restricted as your imagination while creating them.
You can create a card with a whole sentence and just one word missing. Or add a bit of context to the question, like a common phrase using it.
For synonymes, I sometimes create a hint "L1word (not this L2word)", to force myself to remember a different synonyme. Or pointing out a subtle nuance of the meaning can sometimes work.
I don't think context is much of an issue as long as you keep devouring lots of native input. SRS doesn't somehow erase having seen the word elsewhere.
