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Strategies for using Anki effectively? | ||
Tags: Anki | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| -Art Vandelay- Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 4151 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 21 14 December 2012 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello everyone,
I've been using Anki for a couple months now to increase my vocabulary in Spanish. I gotta say that I really love how easy it is to use and the spaced repetition that I get definitely helps increasing my vocabulary and the consolidation of the new words and expressions. One thing I've noticed however; because I have the word or expression in Swedish or English on the "front" of the card, I'm always translating in my head when using Anki. I read somewhere that a guy suggested using an image instead of the word on the front card. Do you think this is a good idea? I was thinking of doing it but then I imagine it'd be difficult to find good pictures to represent idioms and most adjectives. I've also noticed a bad habit of mine that I seriously think I have to stop doing. It consists of looking up pretty much every word I don't know whenever I'm reading. Not only does this mean it takes forever to get through a book but it also means I'm loading Anki with so many words and expressions that it sometimes takes me well over an hour to get through one day's worth of repetition. Some words I feel are really unnecessary to put in but I still get tempted to put in some words that I'll probably never really have any use for. An example would be the verb 'osar' which means to dare to do something. I'd use 'atreverse' if I was speaking and I've only seen 'osar' once and that was in a book written in the 19th century. I've never heard it in spoken Spanish either so I'm thinking this might be a case where it'd have been better to not add the word to my Anki deck. How do you guys decide what to put in the Anki deck? And do you sometimes get tempted to add something but then decide that it probably isn't necessary? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6384 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 21 14 December 2012 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Try sentences.
ajatt.com antimoon.com i prefer to add as much as i want but then also delete as much as i want or even more. Here's an article about reading strategies... see intensive vs extensive reading. Having audio on should help you to ignore the unfamiliar words. Edited by Serpent on 14 December 2012 at 6:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4308 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 3 of 21 14 December 2012 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Translating wasn't a problem for me with Norwegian. I used L1 > L2 cards with single words, but after having been exposed to enough real Norwegian, I didn't translate anymore (I was on a 10 month immersion stay in Norway, so that may have helped with that).
I only did L1 to L2, not the other way round, and only with material from language courses (about 3000 words). I did add words from reading for a while, but I figured out that I had a hard time remembering those and I didn't want to use those actively anyways (most where synonyms of known words), so I stopped. I kept on looking everything up in a dictionary though and I wrote the translations as glosses between the lines of the text, but I didn't try to learn them anymore. Maybe I should have added some words to reach my goal earlier, I can't tell, I only know that it worked that way too, without too much pain. After 2 years of study, I did just fine in Norway, but my native language being German obviously helped too, so for a Romance language, you might need to do more vocabulary work than I did...or maybe not, I can't really tell. I'm currently experimenting with another way of using Anki. I use it for grammar drills and give the translation as additional info, but I don't test myself on the translation. for example (for Danish): front: bog back: en bog - bøger (book) Here I test myself on gender and plural, but I just see the translation a lot of times too, so it might stick at some time in the future (the example is a bit trivial because the meaning can be easily guessed). Maybe it would be better to have the translation on the front too, helps to disambiguate between words like 'et tag - tage' and 'et tag - tag', but I didn't think of that when I started my deck. Edited by daegga on 14 December 2012 at 7:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6384 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 21 15 December 2012 at 1:07am | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5319 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 21 15 December 2012 at 2:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Here are 4 experiments you can try:
1) Since you're spending over an hour a day on Anki reviews, set yourself a goal: For the next 7 days, try to delete (or suspend) at least 5 cards per day. When you see a card and think "Why did I add that?" or "Oh, no, not that card again," then boom, it's gone. Deleting feels really good. Ask Khatzumoto:
2) When you read online, try copy-and-pasting entire interesting sentences onto your card, and mark the interesting words in boldface. Stick whatever you like on the back for each unknown word: pictures, definitions in English, definitions in Spanish. Mostly you won't even look at the back; you'll just read the word in context and remember what it means. You'll still learn it passively, and you'll get some grammar for free. 3) Try making cloze cards for core vocabulary, nice idioms and tricky prepositions. 4) See if anybody has made an subs2srs deck for one of your favorite Spanish movies. This will help you get a head start on listening comprehension. Edited by emk on 15 December 2012 at 2:59am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5217 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 6 of 21 15 December 2012 at 5:30am | IP Logged | ||
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One of the reasons for people having huge Anki decks is because they suffer from the one-word-per-card syndrome. IMHO this is only for rank beginners and is basically counter-productive.
I strongly believe in using entire sentences two reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, words come alive only in entire sentences. If you work with single words, you end up with 3,000 card stacks and a bunch of words floating around in your head. Secondly, you can put quite a few words on one card. So one card may be the equivalent of three or four cards. Maybe you don't need 3,000 cards if you can put that material of 800 cards. I have Anki on my computer but, truth be told, I prefer physical cards. I like to work with around 600 cards and I cull as I add. There's no point keeping cards of stuff that I know. Out they go. Then I work with small lists of cards on a daily basis. Edit: I just realized that the OP said that L1 (Swedish) is on the front of the card and L2 on the back. It seems to me that it should be the other way around. I may be wrong but I have always thought that this was how flashcards should be used. Edited by s_allard on 15 December 2012 at 5:33am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5653 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 7 of 21 15 December 2012 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree with you that the sentence method is far superior to the single word method. I have 8600 Dutch sentences so far, with about half of each sentence on the front and the rest on the back (all it Dutch). Ir really does a lot for your passive reading and passive vocabulary. However, it does very little for your active skills. I am thinking of starting a new deck, still only in L2, but where the front will be a question (sentence) and the back will be the answer (sentence). This will be much harder to build and add cards. But hopefully that approach will do a lot more for my active skills. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5515 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 8 of 21 15 December 2012 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | ||
I learned about SRS from Khatzumoto's posts and I came to the conclusion that on the front you put your target language, just like you wrote. The point of SRS is supposed to maximise exposure to certain phrases and words, not to try to make you learn them by heart. EDIT to add: Check out THIS POST from AJATT. Khatz describes in detail how to use SRS effectively. Edited by pesahson on 15 December 2012 at 2:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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