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Iversen-Anki Method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5801 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 1 of 11 12 March 2010 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The Iversen-Anki Method
I have been thinking about how it might be possible to combine the Iversen Word Study Method with the Anki SRS application to take advantage of both. This thread is related to the WordStudy - Iversen Wordlist Tool thread, which is working on a software version of Iversen's Method. But this thread is a suggestion for those who already like the Anki/SRS approach, but who might want to take advantage of Iversen's Method, in a quick and easy way. 1. Start a new Anki deck. 2. Add a card. 3. On the front of the card, write seven target language words, separated by commas: paard, werken, mogelijk, auto, zaterdag, maan, gisteren 4. Following Iversen's approach, learn and memorise your base language translations of all seven of these words before writing anything down. 5. When you are sure you know all seven, write them on the back of the card: horse, work, possible, car, Saturday, moon, yesterday 6. Before you save this card and go on to the next one, make sure you know the reverse direction; i.e., that you could write all seven original target language translations from the seven base language words. 7. Again, before you save this card, highlight and copy the base language words to your clipboard: horse, work, possible, car, Saturday, moon, yesterday 8. Save the first card. That brings up the next blank card. 9. Paste the copied words to the front of the card: horse, work, possible, car, Saturday, moon, yesterday 10. When you are sure you know the target language translations of all of these seven words, write them on the back of this card: paard, werken, mogelijk, auto, zaterdag, maan, gisteren 11. Review this second card and save it. 12. Now you have two cards, one L2 to L1, and the second, the same words, but L1 to L2. 13. Now you can just let Anki take care of repetitions in the normal way. 14. If you want to stick more closely to Iversen's procedure, you can use the Anki Current > Edit function for each card when it comes up for review. This will allow you to actually re-type your answers each time to reinforce the learning process, as recommended by Iversen. The Current > Edit function also provides a "peek" option, as also recommended by Iversen. You can also choose the Anki "Again" and "Hard" assessments to force the cards to be repeated right away, or quite soon, as you wish. I see this Iversen-Anki approach as having several key advantages: 1. Anki is readily available and is already in widespread use. 2. The procedure is very simple. 3. It combines the learning advantage of Iversen's Method (seven at a time, learn, L2>L1 and L1>L2) and early repeat, with the proven advantages of SRS. 4. Anki takes care of all the repetitions and save functions. Try it. It is very easy, much easier than these 13 steps may suggest. Edited by tommus on 12 March 2010 at 2:25pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| rapp Senior Member United States Joined 5666 days ago 129 posts - 204 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 2 of 11 12 March 2010 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You don't need to enter the information twice, as in step 9. What you want to do is set up different "card templates".
If you click on Settings/Deck Properties, a screen will pop up showing you the deck models currently defined. There is very likely only one listed there, so click the edit button to edit it. In this "model properties" window, there will be two tabs, one of which is called "card templates". Click that. Here, you can define templates that present fields from the "facts" in your database in different ways. So you want to create two templates, one where the question field contains the L1 and the answer field contains L2, and a second template where those are reversed. Doing this will cut down on your data entry time, as well as give you the ability to toggle the templates on and off. So if you only wanted to drill L1 -> L2 for some reason, you could go to Settings/Inactive Tags and turn off the other template. Also, this allows you to define a variety of different cards if your database is somewhat more complex. For instance, in some of my decks my facts contain an L1 field, an L2 field and an L2 audio field. I then define cards that do the standard "show me one language's text and I'll recall the other", as well as dictation cards where the audio is played and I recall the L1 translation. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5801 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 3 of 11 12 March 2010 at 9:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
OK. Thanks for that info. However, in this case, making it easier and more automatic is (strange as it may appear) not the best approach. What I am trying to do here (and also in the other related thread) is to follow Iversen's Method as closely as possible. In that method, the value is in the procedure itself. It forces you into learning all seven words at once, and it is critical that you then "manually" enter the L1 words, and then "manually" re-enter the L2 words. The value comes in during these deliberate learning and writing steps. Yes, there are simpler ways to build these cards, but it is not Iversen's Method. Learning, and then writing, the columns of words on sheets of paper in the way that Iversen recommends seems to be well-accepted as a very powerful vocabulary learning tool. This adaptation in Anki is meant to replicate that process as closely as possible. Now some users may prefer to get the L2>L1 and L1>L2 cards built automatically. So thanks for pointing out that procedure very clearly. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5670 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 11 12 March 2010 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Now that is a good and creative advice! Thanks tommus, I'll give that a try some time :)
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 11 12 March 2010 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I find the idea very interesting. As Tommus mentions it is essential to work with groups of words AND to slow down everything down. I have never used Anki or its competition so I actually don't know whether it is technically possible to write 5-7 words in on go on an Anki card. But I think that there is a more logical solution: first you do the wordlist in its digitized form, and afterwards it should be possible to transfer the word pairs to Anki cards in order to use this system for the repetition. Personally I prefer having all the words I have studied written in a long row under each other, and I am not keen on the game aspect of the SRS programs, but we are all different. Edited by Iversen on 12 March 2010 at 11:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5670 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 11 12 March 2010 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think many of us already use Anki, and if I'm not the only one, there are some of us who have an aversion to writing these things on reams and reams of paper :) So for us, this sounds like a good way to use a proven method in a familiar setting. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5801 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 7 of 11 12 March 2010 at 11:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
It is very easy. Anki is very flexible. You can put sentences, or even paragraphs on each side of an Anki card. But in this case, it is just seven words separated by commas. Commas are better than spaces because you can have more than one word in each. For example, words with definite articles: het nieuws, de hond, het huis, ...
In Anki, both "sides" of the card are shown, one under the other, so the words and their translations are more or less lined up. Seems to work just great. I never got the impression of "game aspect" from Anki/SRS. Think of it simply as your telling it your opinion of how well you know a word or group of words, and roughly when you would like to review it again. Anki has very practical, academic feel to it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rapp Senior Member United States Joined 5666 days ago 129 posts - 204 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 8 of 11 13 March 2010 at 12:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, you can get the manual entry part by another tweak of the card models.
In the card models screen, there is an options field that is normally set to "Don't ask me to type the answer." But you can change that to point to one of the other fields in that "fact", and it will then ask you to type the relevant value. If you create a brand new deck in Anki, it defaults to defining two fields in its database, "Front" and "Back". And it defines two card templates, "Forward" and "Reverse". In the "Forward" card template, the "Front" field is displayed as the question and the "Back" field is the answer. The other card template is the other way around. So if you go to each of those templates and change that option field to say "Compare to X", where X is the value displayed in the answer field, then when you're doing reviews Anki will display a textbox just above the "show answer" button. Type your answer there and press the enter key (or click the show answer button) and Anki will display the answer field colored green if you typed it correctly or red if you didn't. Then use the usual buttons to rate your recall and move on to the next card. So the manual entry part of your process is a standard bit of Anki functionality, you just have to know where to go to turn it on. With that, it seems like the only difference between your procedure and standard Anki functionality is your steps 4 and 10, where you really, really try to learn the translations as you are entering facts into the database. But isn't that what you do on every review of a card? I know when I review a card that I'm shaky on, I'll mentally repeat "seĝo, chair, seĝo, chair" or whatever several times before I click one of the scoring buttons to move on to the next card, trying to get that difficult card to stick in my head. So your procedure essentially buys you one extra review over the life of the card, when you're entering the second card in steps 9-11. But since I probably review a card a dozen or more times before I feel like it is safely locked away in long term memory (say, a review interval of 6 months or more) that one review doesn't seem like much. And if others require significantly fewer reviews to get to that level of recall, so that getting that extra review in at the very start makes a big difference, it seems to diminish the usefulness of Anki's SRS functionality. The main innovation of this Anki-Iversen method seems to be chunking 7 words together on a single card, versus making one card per word. Does that make a big difference? I don't know, maybe, couldn't hurt to try. At worst, it seems like if there's one word out of a set that you're having a hard time recalling, you'll end up reviewing the other 6 much more than you really need to, but is that some big drawback? Probably not. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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