huge anki decks

[Cavesa]

...

Wow, your situation sounds complicated. It seems like you have to first study medicine in Czech, then in France? Whatever the case, med schools in the US are fairly straight forward, you are tested on what you learn, and I appear to have erroneously assumed that to be true elsewhere as well.
Do check out the memory palace technique when you get a chance. Best of luck in your studies!

No, I need to finish one last year on my hyperbiased hated faculty of low quality, where the multiple choice tests are really a bit like learning for a different exam. Then, half a year later, I have to pass the final exam for the french students and directly compete for a good place against them. They are in general much better and it will show both in the exam and after that, as their education is truly about medicine and the useful stuff, not about tons of worthless crap. The problem is, that I need to be really good in this uneven fight. And I don't enjoy learning stuff I know I will never need (vast majority of ortho, ophtalmo, and tons of others).

I need to pass both those systems, at least the czech one (I hate it, so I just need to crawl just above the treshold to the degree. and to survive). If I fail the French exam (which is fortunately the only thing I have to pass there, thanks to the EU), I'll need to improve my German really really fast, so that I can move there and my life won't be wasted. Anki should help with both options. That's why I am trying to torture myself through this, despite hating studying.

I cannot afford the pace of 5 or 10 cards a day. But I cannot learn 2000 half-familiar terms in a weekend either... I've read of medicine students successfully adding 300 cards a day, but I don't know whether I am that good.

Two members have talked about flashcard apps that show you the appropriate number of new cards based on the deadline you set. One is jsega with Memrise from this post onwards, the other I think is aokoye but I don't remember what app or which thread. Someone also told you about an app that divides your remaining work by the number of remaining days, no?

Well, don't use any of those Instead, do what smallwhite the machine would do:

Q1. How many new cards would you realistically like to learn? -> Higher goal.
Q2. How many new cards must you learn as a minimum? -> Minimum goal.
* Divide the 2 numbers over the numbers of day you have minus, say, 10 days at the end with no new cards and only reviews. Eg. my figures for Greek were around 45 words/day higher goal, 28 minimum goal.
* Learn the cards. It does not matter how many reviews they become, because what you have to do, you have to do.
* Meet your target every 3 days. That is, you can fall behind 1 day, you can fall behind 2 days, but every 3rd day you have to meet your target again. The number 3 worked for me but you can choose another number - in advance.
* But skip the reviews if you don't have the time. That is, learn new cards as planned, review cards as life permits.

Also realise that it is statistically impossible that the grass is always greener on the other side of wherever you are. Stop thinking about it.

Have you noticed your memory improving?

My memory has not improved with SRS. I remember something better when I try harder, and I simply don't try very hard when I know that the something will reappear in 2 days, 4 days, 8 days...

Thanks, this is great. Even though the note about your memory not improving in general doesn't sound too promising for me either. I sometimes need seven or more cards to remember a card and it is frustrating to review it in a row (just one or two cards left) for a long time. I'll try trying harder

Memrise won't serve, I'm afraid. I did some longer courses there (not hyperlong, but long) and I wasn't happy with the algorhytm, when it comes to the older cards. And it is not useable for some card formats. I'll try to look into aokoye's tip, thanks!

How many cards? For German, I suppose 5000 of vocabulary cards could serve for a B2 level (as the active vocabulary), and my last opportunity to pass is at the end of this year. Not sure whether this is possible, but I partially know at least 2000 words.
For medicine? I make at least 10 cards per page, one textbook has 400 pages on average, and I need to get through like 20. This looks crazy. Most decks by other students have around 10000 cards, but those people make really long cards I am unable to learn. So, if I make a deck of 30000 cards (an idea), I'll need to have it learnt by the end of January. That's like 300 days, so a 100 new cards a day. I can still succeed, if I get a month of delay, so perhaps 80 would suffice?
This is crazy.

Thanks for the last two bits of advice! The every third day rule sounds really good and priority to new cards over reviews.

[smallwhite]

Memrise won't serve, I'm afraid.

Sorry, I meant Quizlet. Told you my memory hasn't improved.

[klvik]

For the medical Anki cards:

1. Take advantage of the cram mode. Make sure you include plenty of tags so that you can select a set of cards to cram. Only put things into your SRS queue if you really need to do so. You don't have time to SRS everything so only SRS cards that are very difficult or very important. You could add tags such as 'easy' or 'important' so that it's easier to focus your cram decks to the high yield cards.

2. Try to present the difficult material multiple ways. For example: List the symptoms as the question and name the disease as the answer versus name the disease as the question and write the list of symptoms for the answer.

3. Include cards that require a descriptive answer and say the answer out loud. Even better - practice these with a study partner, it will help a lot with the oral portion of your exam.

-Good luck

[PeterMollenburg]

I am not convinced that Anki is the right way but maybe you'll remember this:

How I Passed the Demanding, 5-Part, 5 1/2 Hour, Oral, Paper and Pen, Highest Level (C2), Italian Language Exam Without Going to Italy – Here’s a Hint: the 326,538 Flashcard Reviews Helped a Lot.

http://brianjx.altervista.org

Alternative views

http://www.hackingchinese.com/is-your-f ... -own-good/

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/blog/201 ... ew-of-ank/

Some interesting links there, cheers! The first one, I'd never read that before, nice detailed story about that particular person's journey to C2 level Italian.

Edit: I went on to read "47 year journey to the German C2 exam", http://brianjx.altervista.org/GermanC2exam.html and found it to be a really enjoyable read (like the Italian article, I skipped over the exam breakdown, as that simply doesn't interest me and is of little use to me).

The Italian article had me pondering, should I return to Anki, to which my answer was no, simply because I don't like it. I did too much of it, and the thought of doing it now makes me, well, not want to do it at all. The German article had me remembering my youth when I dreamed of living in Germany and loved German, but never really learned that much of the language - it revived my desire to want to learn and speak German. But I have too much on my plate right now.

[rdearman]

I'm surprised that smallwhite didn't mention her method of using a spreadsheet for learning vocabulary. Not for the medical stuff probably, but you can cram vocabulary using a spreadsheet.

[Whodathunkitz]

[Observations below are meant to be useful, things that I've learnt in the last 4 years for CRAMMING, ignore what's not useful. I'm NOT an expert]

First of all, good luck.

Secondly, when learning Cebuano and having free time (or multi-tasking during baby sitting), I got through hundreds of memrise 'new'* cards and sometimes hundreds / thousand+ of reviews in a day. *lots of courses having the same words on, so NOT NEW.

This kind of thing I find easy, whereas other tasks (listening, grammar, MAKING cards) are hard for me (laziness and lack of opportunity to concentrate mostly!).

Thirdly when I had to cram for IT exams, I used pomodoro (25 minutes, 5 minutes break - tea) for 1 to 14 hours a day. Pretty unhealthy and unsustainable for more than 3 months (but I finally got enough tea - actually finding I did have an upper limit).

Do you have access to any video material? For the IT exams, I ran video at double speed, 25 minute chunks. These might be 10-30 hour courses, that together might add up to 80 (40 at double speed) hours. I didn't watch them all, I picked and chose, often watching videos from different presenters on similar material.

Both of these cramming scenarios had one element - the same material from different courses where the key material was repeated (and therefore given extra weight) and also greater breadth as the courses overlapped but also added a bit more that was unique or triggered a link with previous material that made it 'click' and be understood. I felt like a wave of knowledge and let it just pass over me and not do my usual panic/fret mode. On reflection, this linking from course to course may have been beneficial too.

In the IT exams, there were moments when was glad I'd seen something 10 times and it was second-nature and other times where I remembered that only one course out of 4 had covered it, glad I'd watched them all. I wasn't greatly interested in anything except passing the exams, but I have learnt and have made use of the info at work since - so it stuck.

I've never really crammed before - but this worked for ME.

The IT exams had material I would have REALLY struggled to have researched and produced my own syllabus. This sounds a bit like your Czech studies. The exams had some weird stuff - I wondered why they were including it on that exam.

So in short,
I used existing material (relying on true experts close to the IT company; I'm lazy; memrise - child minding or otherwise doing stuff at the same time)
I let it flow over me, not stressing (pomodoro, lots of tea**, sometimes bavorak/g&t) - double speed video and multi-tasking memrise
I did multiple similar courses which reinforced key concepts but also added breadth and context / tips
I TRIED treating it all as a game. I realise this will be hard and indeed when I took redundancy and needed another job, it was hard to regard it as a game.

Lastly - I wish you the very best of luck and success.

** your theanine limits may vary - green tea is 1/3 theanine of black tea and I drink very strong builders' tea - don't try it with Czech / Turkish / Dutch coffee....

[tiia]

-can I set different algorhytms for easy and difficult decks?

You can set different values for each deck, if I remember correctly.

-any tips on remembering difficult cards?

I would take a look at the amount of repitions when a card may be discharged, because one didn't know the answer too often. Because I assume you don't want cards to be discharged.

[rdearman]

Another suggestion for "cramming" would be to simply record yourself speaking the facts you need to remember and then save as an mp3 and listen to it constantly whenever you cannot cram or do something else. Basically background listening to the facts all the time. This can be speeded up using vlc or other player as someone else mentioned above.

[Cavesa]

For the medical Anki cards:

1. Take advantage of the cram mode. Make sure you include plenty of tags so that you can select a set of cards to cram. Only put things into your SRS queue if you really need to do so. You don't have time to SRS everything so only SRS cards that are very difficult or very important. You could add tags such as 'easy' or 'important' so that it's easier to focus your cram decks to the high yield cards.

2. Try to present the difficult material multiple ways. For example: List the symptoms as the question and name the disease as the answer versus name the disease as the question and write the list of symptoms for the answer.

3. Include cards that require a descriptive answer and say the answer out loud. Even better - practice these with a study partner, it will help a lot with the oral portion of your exam.

-Good luck

Thanks! I'll try the points 1 and 2 for sure.
1:I need to explore the cram mode more. And hope for the best.
2:I am trying to present everything in multiple ways, asking differently, chopping stuff in smaller pieces fitting together. This is actually something I plan to do with language cards too, working not only with word cards but also sentences. But I haven't thought it out in detail yet, one challenge at a time

3:And talking to myself, I am already doing that and the results are not that great for not (but saying stuff out loud works nicely with the language cards). But it is impossible to do this with a study partner. Very few czechs use anki. And people are not gonna change their six years old study methods to help me.

I should probably mention I am not holding that againt them or think any less of them for this. My faculty simply doesn't support or require long term learning, which is the point of Anki. The prefered method (and the only one possible) is memorising stuff really fast, then also memorising (usually illegally) known past multiple choice tests (because you cannot pass most tests without this, the test is usually simply too different from the rest of the subject. even the teachers know about this), regurgitating the memorised stuff at the oral exam (and using the version that your particular examiner requires. Some of them disagree with textbooks or last two decades of research or just their colleague across the hall), and then forgetting it while you memorise new stuff. The best joke are teachers, who now tell us we shouldn't complain about too little time for a huge exam, we should remember it all really well from the past years.

That's why it looks like new stuff pushing old stuff out, as if memory was really limited. No, just our stupid organisation is not meant to leave long term results. And you see why it is so hard to prepare for an exam, where I'll be competing against people educated with this exam on mind and with long term kind of preparation.

I want to make this work and to get all the three kinds of results. Short term cramming, mid-term for passing the czech exams, and long term for the french exam and my professional life. That's one of the main reasons for choosing SRS.

The Italian article had me pondering, should I return to Anki, to which my answer was no, simply because I don't like it. I did too much of it, and the thought of doing it now makes me, well, not want to do it at all.

What does too much mean?
I don't particularly like it. But I hope the results will make me dislike it much less

I'm surprised that smallwhite didn't mention her method of using a spreadsheet for learning vocabulary. Not for the medical stuff probably, but you can cram vocabulary using a spreadsheet.

I'll study her log, thanks for the idea!

....a long and awesome post I am responding to, just a few tiny bits left, so that my whole post doesn't take half forum...
Thirdly when I had to cram for IT exams, I used pomodoro (25 minutes, 5 minutes break - tea) for 1 to 14 hours a day. Pretty unhealthy and unsustainable for more than 3 months (but I finally got enough tea - actually finding I did have an upper limit).
....
Both of these cramming scenarios had one element - the same material from different courses where the key material was repeated (and therefore given extra weight) and also greater breadth as the courses overlapped but also added a bit more that was unique or triggered a link with previous material that made it 'click' and be understood. I felt like a wave of knowledge and let it just pass over me and not do my usual panic/fret mode. On reflection, this linking from course to course may have been beneficial too.
....
I've never really crammed before - but this worked for ME.
......
So in short,
I used existing material (relying on true experts close to the IT company; I'm lazy; memrise - child minding or otherwise doing stuff at the same time)
I let it flow over me, not stressing (pomodoro, lots of tea**, sometimes bavorak/g&t) - double speed video and multi-tasking memrise
I did multiple similar courses which reinforced key concepts but also added breadth and context / tips
I TRIED treating it all as a game. I realise this will be hard and indeed when I took redundancy and needed another job, it was hard to regard it as a game.

Lastly - I wish you the very best of luck and success.

** your theanine limits may vary - green tea is 1/3 theanine of black tea and I drink very strong builders' tea - don't try it with Czech / Turkish / Dutch coffee....

CRAMMING is an important part of this. I am so far behind the ideal plan that I need to cram for months to make up for it.
Thanks for lots of valuable notes, this is one of the posts I will return to several times, it seems.

How much time would you spend on those thousands of cards? How much time were you able to keep putting in every day without burning out?

I think a part of my "not new" advantage is the fact most subjects are more or less intertwined with the others, some more and some less. And I know a part of almost all the subjects, I get around 30% in the tests for the french exam (I need to get over 80% or ideally 90% to have a good chance of not having a horrible results in the exam week with all the nervosity), I can talk about a lot of stuff at least superficially. I don't have the details. In some areas, I know more. In some, I haven't touched the subject yet. It is really varied.

On MAKING cards. I have a trouble with it, it takes a lot of time. Did you find any way to make it more efficient or less of a torture, or did you just settle for the already made decks instead, to not waste time?

14 hours! wow! and for 3 months. That is a wonderful example, one of the things I had been hoping to read. Experience of others and an idea of what is realistic and what could be the limits. Pomodoro is great, I experimented with the times a bit, but the original 25/5 is probably the best. I somehow don't get enough "immersion" during just 20 minutes, despite the difference not being that huge.

It is hard to ask people about the time they are putting in studying. Most are either exagerrating or trying to look more cool by saying lower numbers. And you cannot ask like "and out of the 8 hours, how much did you spend on facebook and instagram?". When you tell me about Pomodory, I know what you are talking about without further asking. I still don't know how to survive such an intensive plan though

About the video material: there is some in French and in English. In French, it covers just a small part of the curriculum, only some subjects. In English, I get to a similar problem like with the non-French books. But I'll trying playing more with it. The speed idea looks very interesting but I guess it would depend on the kind of video and speech included. Students of IT or maths are very fortunate to have so much video material on youtube. It really looks like both (and also other fields, sure) have a lot of students and teachers who love the subject and love to share.

The overlaps are something I am sure to benefit from too. An example: the hypertension is being treated in the overall intern medicine, in cardiology, in nephrology, and I think also in endocrinology. Also, it is logical most of the subjects overlap, it is still one body they are talking about. But it is even worse, when I cannot remember something that I have seen so many times. I need more reviews.

For languages, it is similar. Perhaps instead of fighting it and trying to find a way to make a master list of vocabulary out of all my sources without repetitions, I should just embrace it and make more lists. And if I let something in for the second or third time, I obviously need to see more of it. Thanks for leading me to this thought.

I am not be a newbie crammer. (heh, vast majority of my studies has been cramming. and I remember a lot, considering the cramming attitude). But I need to do it on a scale I could have hardly imagined before. I hate myself for not having been a better student, but there were also valid reasons for it. There is no point in wasting time on regretting the lost time, I need to cram now.

I am lucky I can afford relying on official materials by experts, my dad is supporting me in my studies and providing even for my textbook needs. But still, no expert is likely to know my particular weaknesses better than me, so the cards made by myself are a must this time.

Thank you for your good wishes. **during the times of intensive studying, I drink two liters of filtered coffee per day. Or several espressos (cappuccino or latte during the winter or for breakfast). I don't drink the Turkish coffee and I hope the "Czech coffee" is safely buried in the prehistory, with the rest of the 20th century Tea is awesome, I am more for the black one, but I am considering switching to green. I like it too, I just somehow cannot get myself to it. Is it really good for memory?

[smallwhite]

Memrise won't serve, I'm afraid. I did some longer courses there (not hyperlong, but long) and I wasn't happy with the algorhytm, when it comes to the older cards. And it is not useable for some card formats.

Memrise's planting stage multiple-choice and Quizlet's Matching especially on the phone, work like magic for me for initial memorisation.