anki and initial learning

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
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Sae
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Re: anki and initial learning

Postby Sae » Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:21 pm

I didn't get along with Anki initially and still kinda am in some respects. I guess if you get the right deck for you, it's good. But often or not from my use is that word choices can be a bit on the random side and will be down to the decks. Like you could have "apple" and then "killer whale" and then "spork" and these words aren't related and wouldn't normally be in a sentence together or a part of the same discussion topic, or at least I don't know many people who feed apples to killer whales on the end of a spork.

Maybe there is value in using it to create you own based on what you learn and use it to help you retain what you've learned and slip in practice whenever you can.

However, I see somebody mention Memrise and I definitely prefer it to Anki because I felt like the ones I found on there were structured more logically.
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Re: anki and initial learning

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Tue Jan 31, 2023 4:29 pm

Sae wrote:I didn't get along with Anki initially and still kinda am in some respects. I guess if you get the right deck for you, it's good. But often or not from my use is that word choices can be a bit on the random side and will be down to the decks. Like you could have "apple" and then "killer whale" and then "spork" and these words aren't related and wouldn't normally be in a sentence together or a part of the same discussion topic, or at least I don't know many people who feed apples to killer whales on the end of a spork.


I want to have some exposure to the content beforehand - hence, no pre-made decks. But I don't expect the sequence to "make sense". I don't want to be one of those who only remember things in context.
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Re: anki and initial learning

Postby gsbod » Tue Jan 31, 2023 5:24 pm

I do use Anki and find it can be effective, as long as it doesn't dominate relative to other activities.

I find it fascinating how people use Anki in many different ways, a lot of them successfully, so I don't think there's any one true way to use it. It's just a question of how to use it in a way that fits your personal preferences for learning.

For me, I absolutely have to make my own decks. Using a premade deck is like revising from somebody else's notes. There's a lot of information that I don't actually need to focus on, and the rest of it is harder for me to remember if the first time I encounter it is someone else's flashcards. If I go through the process of studying something, making notes about vocabulary I want to remember, and then creating my own cards, it feels more efficient, effective, and personal. I'm also the kind of learner who doesn't appreciate vocabulary lists in textbooks - I can pick up what I need as I go along as long as I've got access to a decent bilingual dictionary. This is obviously a learning style thing!

The other thing is I generally avoid making sentence cards. It takes too long to create the cards, and too long to review the cards, and learning "in context" is a bit overrated as far as I am concerned, as I tend to remember the context but not the details. So I tend to stick to words and phrases (e.g. common noun + verb combinations including any essential grammar details like prepositions or articles). If something is too complicated or vague to make a simple flashcard for, then I just have to find a different way of tackling it. Over the years I've developed a sense of what makes a good flashcard (for me), depending on the language.

And then after a few months it's quite healthy I find to delete a deck and start over again. If I've not learned something after 6 months of reviews, I'm not going to learn it just with Anki anyway.
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Re: anki and initial learning

Postby sfuqua » Tue Jan 31, 2023 8:59 pm

I'm using some heavily modified shared decks for Japanese, because I am/was completely lost.
I never really used shared decks before for other languages, as I remember.
I think anki is particularly apt for strange writing systems.
I have a tendency to over schedule myself in anki, and have it take up all my study time, and I have to fight against this constantly.
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