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The "low hanging fruit" method for Anki | ||
Tags: Anki | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Improbably Diglot Newbie Norway Joined 4732 days ago 34 posts - 87 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English | Message 1 of 16 27 October 2014 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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So, here's my (rather newly) devised method of memorizing ready-made decks with Anki. The principle it's based on is very simple: pick the low hanging fruit. Learn the easy cards first, without considering their immediate usefulness, as learning a language is a long term project, and aside from preparations for specific situations, there will never be a need to learn one specific thing immediately, to painfully repeat it over and over again, forgetting it over and over again, because you feel like you Need to Know this Word Now, it's Important, I Must Know It!
The method is really just a simple change of settings in Anki: Set the leech threshold to 2, and leech action to suspend card. The "inspiration" for this, is this simple statement in the article "The 20 rules of formulating knowledge in learning" on the SuperMemo website: "Remember that usually you spend 50% of your time repeating just 3-5% of the learned material!" We want to eliminate all the difficult cards as soon as possible. (Optional: set the easy interval to a year or two, for cards you already know the answer to when encountering them in the learning queue of the deck. No point in wasting time building up the intervals for cards you're already familiar with, and it's quicker to press easy than to use the shortcuts for suspending cards or deleting them.) The goal with these adjustments is to eliminate time wasting cards as quickly as possible, and not only that, but leave behind only the very easiest ones, making reviewing a breeze, and leaving more time to learn new cards. Basically, you give yourself two opportunities to learn a card. If you forget a card once, you give it only one more chance, now knowing that it could cause future discomfort, and spending a little extra time trying to fix it in your memory. If you forget it again after this, let the card be. No point in wasting time on it, since there's actually no pressing need to know it right at this very moment. You'll presumably be learning the language for years to come, so you can tackle that card at a later time, say, after lots of input, when it's likely to be much easier to remember. So, you've finished your deck, have painlessly learned a bunch of new cards, and have maybe as many suspended ones, what do you do? You could just leave that deck be, and just keep up with the repetitions while moving on to new stuff; or you could unsuspend all the cards that were marked as leeches, and start learning them again from the beginning, as if they were new cards. I haven't gotten quite that far in the process myself yet (roughly 1000 cards into a 7000+ card deck), but I'm pretty certain that by that point, a lot of these cards would be a lot easier to remember, assuming you've gotten plenty of input in the meantime. For a language that's completely unfamiliar, I wouldn't be surprised if you end up with more suspended cards than learned cards. But in that case, just do several passes though the deck. In my experience, this method makes Anki a lot more fun. And you learn a lot more for the time spent. Edited by Improbably on 28 October 2014 at 6:47am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4145 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 16 27 October 2014 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Why study cards "you already know the answer to" in the first place? Just suspend/delete them.
Also, it might be difficult for some, to "get plenty of input in the meantime," if it's not yet comprehensible (enough for the individual). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Improbably Diglot Newbie Norway Joined 4732 days ago 34 posts - 87 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English | Message 3 of 16 27 October 2014 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||
Now when I think about it, I guess there must be keyboard shortcuts and stuff to quickly suspend cards in Anki. How about AnkiDroid? Still, I guess I could recommend setting the easy interval to years instead of months, since you're unlikely to work with the deck for that long anyways, and it's much easier to just press easy than typing @ (which requires two hands on my keyboard). I guess I'll modify my post accordingly. As for getting plenty of input, surely we can get input at every level, even at the beginner's stage, not just at the intermediate/advanced stages? At least in the major languages, there's always semi-comprehensible stuff to find, whether textbooks, graded readers etc.? Edited by Improbably on 27 October 2014 at 11:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7001 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 4 of 16 28 October 2014 at 2:33am | IP Logged | ||
I was unaware of that statistic. It sounds plausible. Your first step has given me what I thinking is a great idea. By setting the leech threshold very low, I can increase the number of words added per day. For instance, I'd been adding 10 words day from a frequency list and that is fairly manageable with the amount of time I want to devote to Anki (about 10 minutes / day). The default leech threshold is 8. By setting it to 2, I may be able to add 20 words per day. If I have less than 10 leeches per day, I'm technically adding more words in the same amount of time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6378 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 5 of 16 28 October 2014 at 7:54am | IP Logged | ||
I totally have this problem in my Cantonese characters deck. There are a bunch of characters that keep tripping me up even after all this time and they take up a lot of my review time. But I just can't stand not knowing all the characters! Anyway, good post! Food for thought. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Eginhard Pentaglot Newbie France enno-hermann.blogspo Joined 4484 days ago 12 posts - 23 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Croatian, Lithuanian Studies: Albanian | Message 6 of 16 28 October 2014 at 9:00am | IP Logged | ||
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I've never used leeches strategically like this, that's a very good idea!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5032 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 7 of 16 28 October 2014 at 10:26am | IP Logged | ||
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I do a very similar thing with my Italian & French review. Basically I have the first 20k most frequent words. I sent the leech level at 4 (rather than your 2) and I have used EMK's suggestion to enable gestures on Ankidroid and just sweep right when I want to suspend a card. It is very quick. I've set my new cards per day to 50, and max to review to 250. I suspend without a moments hesitation if I:
a) already know the word. b) figure I'm never going to need to know this word. c) figure it is too hard or otherwise painful, and don't want to wait for it to leech. I figure these decks are only for review or to see a new word a couple of times. If it is a word I need then I'm bound to see it in my extensive reading in the super challenge. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4329 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 8 of 16 28 October 2014 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | ||
You are working through the 20k most common words? Wow. That's impressive. However, given the exponential (?) drop-off in word frequencies, I doubt you would seem many words past the 10k range in the Super Challenge ever, which doesn't mean they aren't useful, just that they only occur only once in a million words or so. Edited by patrickwilken on 28 October 2014 at 1:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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