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Anki- whats the trick?

  Tags: Anki
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
12 messages over 2 pages: 1
ScottScheule
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
scheule.blogspot.com
Joined 5163 days ago

645 posts - 1176 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French

 
 Message 9 of 12
21 July 2011 at 7:18pm | IP Logged 
I use Anki to learn pretty much all my vocabulary. There are words that don't stick--usually because they're very close to another word. If that's the case with you, here's what I recommend.

Make a card with both terms on it:

1. gummamma
vs.
2. gummanna

and another one with the opposite order (this is so you are actually learning the difference in the words, and not merely the order of their appearance):

1. gummanna
vs.
2. gummamma

On the back, write the answers.

There are other words that just don't, for whatever reason, stick. Putting aside time to concentrate on them, or making up sentences, etc. probably will help with those. But, for me, it takes less time just to bluntly persevere in trying to learn the word with Anki, even though there may be many mistakes. If you know you get the word wrong often, the next time it comes up spend more time repeating it, associating it in your head.

But my basic advice is just too bluntly persevere--turn off the leech option.
3 persons have voted this message useful



Aquila
Triglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 5416 days ago

104 posts - 128 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, German
Studies: French

 
 Message 10 of 12
30 July 2011 at 7:43pm | IP Logged 
Anki is a very good tool to learn new vocabulary and to consolidate the new words. I use it on my iPod touch
almost every time I have to wait a few minutes.

However, I think that creating your own deck of flashcards is much more effective then using decks from others. I
tried to learn a few Russian with an already made deck but this didn't work for me. It's much work and it takes a lot
of time to make your own deck, but it's worth the effort.

I only make flashcards with the words and expressions I want to remember, from which I think they are important
and I want to use.

If a word really doesn't stick after a longer time of repetition, then I usually make another flashcard, or, if it's
necessary, two or more new flashcards with a sentence in which this word appears. This makes it a lot easier to
remember difficult or abstract words.

In Anki, it is also possible to give words a colour. Masculine words are blue, feminine pink and neuter words are
green in my case. And stressed syllables are red.

Edited by Aquila on 31 July 2011 at 9:10am

1 person has voted this message useful



starrye
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5029 days ago

172 posts - 280 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 11 of 12
01 August 2011 at 4:44pm | IP Logged 
Aquila wrote:
However, I think that creating your own deck of flashcards is much more effective then using decks from others. I
tried to learn a few Russian with an already made deck but this didn't work for me. It's much work and it takes a lot
of time to make your own deck, but it's worth the effort.


I agree it is worth the extra effort to make your own from scratch. I have found that for many words, by the time I've gone through the whole process of looking up the definition(s), looking up unknown kanji, finding example sentences, finding audio clips, reading it out loud, finding an image, typing out the cards, etc... I've learned the word. This doesn't always work for those difficult words, and there will always be some of those. But for many, just going through the work of creating cards and loading them into anki is enough to get them into my immediate short term memory. But not if someone else has already done the work for me.

What I do is start off with a short list of vocabulary, having to do with some topic or category I want to know about. For example, if I wanted to learn words and phrases dealing with "music". I might use a pre-made vocabulary list I found online or in a text book... or go find a short article (or two) dealing with the topic, and source words from that. I'll read the list (or article) through once or twice before adding them into anki.

Then I go through one by one and load them into anki. I usually add example sentences to all my cards, so I may end up adding additional words found from these sentences if they seem important or relevant... then I tag the new cards with the category "music" or "entertainment" or whatever the topic is.

When I review these cards for the first time, I set anki to show me only cards tagged with "music" so I can focus on them. Once I've gone through all these new cards at least once more, I set anki back to show me all cards due in the deck, and move on. I usually wait a bit before adding new vocabulary lists, to give myself a chance to catch up and review old cards. Otherwise I think I might drown in my anki deck, or my reviews would start taking up too much time.
1 person has voted this message useful



Aquila
Triglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 5416 days ago

104 posts - 128 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, German
Studies: French

 
 Message 12 of 12
02 August 2011 at 8:02pm | IP Logged 
Adding sound to flashcards makes it a lot easier to remember specific words, sentences, and their pronunciation.
In Russian, for example, the pronunciation is quite unpredictable if you don't know which syllable is stressed. I use
Google's "listen" option for this. It is very easy to record from Google translate in Anki. I find this a really helpful,
valuable tool. The pronunciation is maybe not always correct, but it's still valuable. Another useful website is
Forvo.

starrye wrote:
I usually add example sentences to all my cards, so I may end up adding additional words found
from these sentences if they seem important or relevant...


Example sentences are indispensable in many cases. I add information about how the word is used in
context, but also information about grammar (declension, conjugation for example). Some words will often remain
abstract without an example sentence, and therefore hard to remember.





Edited by Aquila on 02 August 2011 at 8:04pm



1 person has voted this message useful



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