Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

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lusan
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Joined: Sat Aug 15, 2015 1:25 pm
Location: Greensboro, NC, USA
Languages: Spanish(Native)
English (Naïve)
French(Intermediate)
Italian(Intermediate)
Polish(In Alcatraz)
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Re: Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

Postby lusan » Sun May 08, 2022 1:53 am

For me, Yes. I manage 3 languages that way. It takes about 35 min/day. It is like going to the gym.
Of course, I also deal with native materials as per my needs/wants.
Right now my focus is Italian so besides Anki I watch TV, listen and read the news as well as read paper books.
French and Polish seat on the back of the bus. Life is short and there are other things besides languages that attracted an aging 67 old retired man.

By the way, the setting of Anki that I used are for new cards:

Learning steps: 15m 1d 6d
Graduating interval: 15
Easy interval: 60

And I used full short sentences L2>L1 - listening cards and "guess the word" sentences for L1>L2.

Anki is for me indeed a necessary Evil. If I were living abroad, I am sure that I would need to used but live the language - As I have done with English.
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Italian, polish, and French dance
FSI Basic French Lessons : 10 / 24 17 of 24 goal

mokibao
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Joined: Wed Mar 10, 2021 2:44 pm
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Re: Is reviewing words via Anki a necessary Evil?

Postby mokibao » Sun May 08, 2022 9:12 am

leosmith wrote:Can you cite this?


I can't find the exact article I had in mind. But here's a paper that hints that 1) the more spaced out, the better - there's an optimum but it's way beyond Anki's default intervals, and 2) participants retained quite a bit even after months of idleness. It's not really that surprising - people don't forget how to bike even after years of not practicing, musicians may be hesitant at first after years of not touching their instrument but they quickly find the ropes, etc.

The upshot is that you don't need to actively drill yourself all the time with thousands of NL-to-TL reps a day, there's little evidence it's more effective and you just run the risk of burning out. (An exception is if you have an upcoming deadline of some kind like a C level test.) Besides, the Anki default intervals are just kind of set on an ad hoc basis and you're supposed to tweak them to fit your needs.
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