Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

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german2k01
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Re: Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

Postby german2k01 » Mon Apr 18, 2022 1:29 pm

@Le Baron
Thanks. Whenever I buy a new car model of a particular color, suddenly, my subconscious mind sees that particular car model everywhere on the roads. It is called the awakening of your subconscious mind or internal radar. That's why there is a study technique called SQ3R that propagates for doing a survey in order to activate your internal radar before directly diving into the main reading activity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQ3R#:~:t ... ve%20Study
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Re: Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

Postby Le Baron » Mon Apr 18, 2022 1:49 pm

german2k01 wrote:@Le Baron
Thanks. Whenever I buy a new car model of a particular color, suddenly, my subconscious mind sees that particular car model everywhere on the roads. It is called the awakening of your subconscious mind or internal radar. That's why there is a study technique called SQ3R that propagates for doing a survey in order to activate your internal radar before directly diving into the main reading activity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQ3R#:~:t ... ve%20Study

I hope you are practising step 4:

The second "R" refers to the part known as "Recite." The reader should try to recite from memory what was learned in the same manner as telling someone else about the information. It is important that the reader use their own words in order to formulate and conceptualize the material. Try recalling and identifying major points (heading/subheadings) and answers to questions from the "Q" step. This recital step may be done either in an oral or written format and is related to the benefits of retrieval (testing effect) in boosting long-term memory for the material.


;)
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Re: Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

Postby lingohot » Mon Apr 18, 2022 7:54 pm

german2k01 wrote:
Sure. Stuff I have memorized via Anki I notice when it pops up in "real life" (I remember that I've learnt it before and what it means, if that is the question). I have that all the time and I find it pretty cool, because it shows me quite clearly that reviewing via Anki is not in vain.


Why do you think you can recognize these words in real life? Why are only these words memorized via Anki? What process had taken place in the background, in your opinion? This is my question. Thanks


I don't really understand what you mean, but the words that "pop up" in real life after having seen/actively recalled them in Anki are not the only words I manage to memorize via Anki. Apart from that, I don't memorize isolated words with Anki, but words I encounter "in real life" (e.g. in books) and that I put into Anki afterwards (in the form of whole sentences). It's a reinforcing, circular process, and Anki serves as something like my database for all the words/expressions/... I want to memorize/"keep".
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Re: Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

Postby german2k01 » Mon Apr 18, 2022 8:33 pm

I don't really understand what you mean, but the words that "pop up" in real life after having seen/actively recalled them in Anki are not the only words I manage to memorize via Anki. Apart from that, I don't memorize isolated words with Anki, but words I encounter "in real life" (e.g. in books) and that I put into Anki afterwards (in the form of whole sentences). It's a reinforcing, circular process, and Anki serves as something like my database for all the words/expressions/... I want to memorize/"keep".


That answers my query. Even though it is a reinforcing and circular process some people say that reading and listening alone will take care of it without actively reviewing words so its usefulness in the realm of language acquisition is debatable to them. My gut feeling says that active recall helps words cement in a mental dictionary of a person the next time they can notice them easily as was the case I cited above. Again I can not back it up with ample evidence. It is possible to learn a foreign language without Anki after all natives learned it.
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Re: Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

Postby einzelne » Tue Apr 19, 2022 2:54 am

Reading and listening certainly help to cement words. Reviewing will certainly accelerate this process. Yet the bigger your vocabulary is the harder it will be to expand “naturally”. But, again, flashcards don’t guarantee that you will remember all the words. Memory is a tricky beast, it’s very hard to tame it.
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Re: Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

Postby lingohot » Tue Apr 19, 2022 6:14 am

german2k01 wrote:That answers my query. Even though it is a reinforcing and circular process some people say that reading and listening alone will take care of it without actively reviewing words so its usefulness in the realm of language acquisition is debatable to them. My gut feeling says that active recall helps words cement in a mental dictionary of a person the next time they can notice them easily as was the case I cited above. Again I can not back it up with ample evidence. It is possible to learn a foreign language without Anki after all natives learned it.


You can certainly do without an SRS, but it's a big help, escpecially for words/expressions (I always say "words/expressions" because there are sooooo many idiomatic expressions you need to learn in order to master a language, not just vocabulary) that you don't encounter often. With the help of Anki, you can study those in a concentrated fashion, and it's also great if you don't have the time to read a lot (you can still do your Anki reviews). And it aboslutely helps to actively recall stuff in real life if you do so in Anki.
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Re: Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

Postby Beli Tsar » Tue Apr 19, 2022 10:11 am

Le Baron wrote:
german2k01 wrote:Why do you think you can recognize these words in real life? Why are only these words memorized via Anki? What process had taken place in the background, in your opinion? This is my question. Thanks

This is a puzzling question, or perhaps I don't understand how it is being posed. It seems obvious to me that if someone is going over certain words in a list again and again that in the period of doing some will be recognised. As in the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon Jeff posted. This goes for pretty much everything. Have you never had that experience when you develop a new hobby, let's say collecting old clocks, and then you suddenly find old clocks everywhere? Even in places where they seemingly weren't before?

With the Anki reviews (or any review of words) then encountering them in the field, you get them being reinforced which, if you're lucky, causes a loop of reinforcement. This is the point of engaging with content and people, to contextualise the input.

Couldn't you go even further? Isn't the point that this kind of experience leverages the Baader-Meinhof phenomonen? If you study vocab and then meet it in the wild, you experience it in a dramatically more salient way. Your mind focuses on the word in a way that creates an extremely strong memory.

This happens to me all the time: words I meet like this are ones I rarely ever forget, and often have a much broader, more flexible understanding of them.

It's a perfect example of the synergy of deliberate vocab study/SRS and input-based strategies. And SRS, by spreading many short reviews over a long period, increases the likelihood of these meetings.

As so many have said, SRS certainly isn't necessary. But it helps.
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Re: Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

Postby german2k01 » Wed Apr 20, 2022 10:20 am

This happens to me all the time: words I meet like this are ones I rarely ever forget, and often have a much broader, more flexible understanding of them.


Same experience here. It is not like I do not recognize other words when I am listening that I have acquired through reading passively. I do actually. But with this active recall thing via SRS, it feels like my subconscious mind just traces them or they jump out at me causing a stronger memory of it as you have aptly put above. That's what it feels like to me.
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Re: Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

Postby luke » Wed Apr 20, 2022 2:42 pm

german2k01 wrote:
This happens to me all the time: words I meet like this are ones I rarely ever forget, and often have a much broader, more flexible understanding of them.

Same experience here. But with this active recall thing via SRS, it feels like my subconscious mind just traces them or they jump out at me causing a stronger memory of it as you have aptly put above. That's what it feels like to me.

Although it may not be necessary, it sounds like Anki isn't necessarily Evil.
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Re: Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

Postby leosmith » Thu Apr 21, 2022 11:42 pm

german2k01 wrote:Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?
In other words, does active recall increase our subconscious mind awareness?
I just wanted to point out that these questions are quite different. It's nice when the title question is the question you want answered. I think everyone, yourself included, knows that Anki isn't "necessary". After all, people learned languages before 2006.
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