I don’t use Anki or flashcards anymore for regular vocabulary, as I prefer LingQ and a more natural flow. At the moment, I don’t need to increase or speed up my vocabulary acquisition on any specific topic. However, I do want to reinforce my grammar, certain rules, and specific aspects of the language.
What would be the best and most efficient way to do this? How can I build cards that are truly effective in the long run?
Do you have any tips, or is this something you’ve experimented with? Do you keep Anki’s repetition settings at their default, or have you modified them?
Plus, I don’t want to build many cards, I would like to reach something very simple like reviewing a couple of minutes daily. But practical and effective.
Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!
EDIT: I should add that I don’t need to perfect my grammar for understanding when reading but for improving my writing.
I’m on my second L2, I use an approach which I find helpful. I have no idea if it is the most effective method. My intuition is that what matters is that you do something you enjoy.
I knew German would be a challenge thanks not just to the case system, but also the prepositions. I decided early on to create short example phrases highlighting the cases and verbs with associated prepositions. Thus Ich habe mich auf den weg gemacht and Sie haben das Buch dem Alten Mann gegeben are two simple examples using cases. And Ich kümmere mich um unser kleines Auto is an example of a verb with its preposition and some case endings.
It’s well known that noticing is key in learning a language. So when I review a sentence, I sometimes play around with it, putting it into the past tense, or the third person say. That helps me to focus, as otherwise there can be a tendency to go on autopilot, which is a no-no.
I do use Anki for vocabulary but I prefer to put it into context, so I know how to use it. And I think studies have shown that creating context helps recall when you need to use it.
Yes and no. I wouldn’t know how best to change them. If I find I haven’t learnt something, I select the not learnt option when revising.
Thanks. So happy that there are automatic translation today
I don’t plan to use decks from other people, but to create my own, that’s a totally different experience. And yes, reading some grammar book, especially the ones that are more conceptual, could be a good choice indeed.
You mean creating and reviewing sentences that are some sort of master sentences, that remind you of the connection between verbs and prepositions or other types of connections when you review them. Is that what you meant?
Look up cloze deletions if you’re not already familiar. That’s how I set up my Anki cards for grammar and vocab practice. Basically a sort of fill in the blank practice, which is good for mastering grammar patterns as well as single vocab.
I’ve also set Anki up so I can type in the answer, as it makes me less inclined to cheat. I forget exactly how I did that a few years ago, but you could find articles online. Mine are set with French or Japanese sentences with blank spaces that I need to fill in based on an English translation above.
For scheduling, look up Anki FSRS online. It’s too complex to explain here but makes for more efficient scheduling and allows you to enter a desired retention rate (i.e., 90% retention).
On AnkiDroid at least (Android version), you can also implement a setting for review loads based on day of the week. Mine is set to only show the bare minimum number of reviews on Saturday and Sunday.
I did say exactly what I meant, which is to create example sentences. The idea is not that they remind me, but that they force me to practice recall i.e. output. That is the idea underlying Anki. Testing is very important in learning.
The problem with the Krashen theory is that it is based on input alone, but that is insufficient. You need to practice output. I mix up examples to try and avoid rote learning i.e. it forces me to think through each case.
I use grammar books to get an overview over the grammar points. I don’t memorize them with those, as this wouldn’t work well anyways, but at least I have seen them before. For the first book of the grammar book series, I am mainly using, there was a premade anki deck, for the second book, I just finished recently, I’ve created the deck myself while working through the book. I’ve used the card layout of an existing deck as a starting point for my layout, so I don’t have to start from scratch.
I would guess that the process of creating those cards is already helpful in internalizing the grammar, as well as working with grammar books is. Even though you don’t memorize them, you become faster and faster in looking them up. Besides that I use ChatGPT for translating from and to the target language, explicitly telling ChatGPT to either cover the grammar relevant for a specific level or some specific grammar (like passive and causative clauses).
So long story short. I use ANKI as one mean for practicing grammar in addition to grammar books and translation practices.
The book this is based on comes with audio. So I can listen to the audio before reading what is written on the card (the audio starts automatically). This way I practice listening, reading, vocabulary, can repeat common sentence structures as well as practice the new grammar. IMHO that’s worth taking the time to create such a deck.
Thanks for sharing. I agree, I need to create fewer cards, but I think they are really worth it and help me to integrate and remember the most important elements for a long period of time. Nice cards you have.
I’d probably identify some things that I struggle with grammar wise, or I feel like I need to reinforce and create example sentences of these patterns.
Then just exercise recall on those. (native language on one side and target on the other…try to produce the target).
I’m not a huge Anki fan. I’ve tried it a few times and every time I kind of struggle with how I want it to work and how to set it up in a manner that works for me.
I’ve been setting up google sheet spreadsheets myself for vocab that I’m struggling with. I can just add want I want on one line…German word, English translation, German example sentence, English example sentences. I can change the font of the English word translation to white (to match background) so I can’t see it unless I click on it. You could do the similar thing with your grammar example sentences. Color the font in white to “hide it” and then try to produce the sentence.
You could just review whatever number of examples you feel like that day with the above. Or if you want to get it to be more “Anki” like, you can look up the “Leitner” system. With this you start at “1”. If you recall the word (or sentence) correctly, bump the line up to “2”. (I add a column for this). Move on to the next word or sentence you want to practice. Now on a separate page I keep track of the “Leitner day”. The day will specify which numbers I should practice…Day 1 - numbers 1, 2, Day 2 - numbers 1,3. Etc.
You can easily dump words or sentences you know…delete them or just set them to some high number (with Leitner, the typical model goes through 7…8 would be completely known). You can also just say screw it…I want to just study these set of words today. Or add new ones in whenever you want.
It’s a lot more flexible for me and still gives me the opportunity to “progress” a word in an Anki like fashion (as you progress in number, you review less often according the Leitner calendar).
Anyway…just a suggestion in case you don’t like the complexity of Anki. I’m sure you can do all these things in Anki, I just don’t have the patience. Also, with my vocabulary list setup, I can copy my sentences easily into a Lingq lesson and read them there, or put them into a text to speech app for some listening practice.
Thanks Ericb100, I think I have the same problem with ANKI. I never find a way that works for me in the long run. That’s why I was thinking of improving my approach and limiting it only to grammar and a few things. I’ll have a better look at the Leitner system and see how it could be integrated.
No problem! BTW, the Leitner System, will be described as using index cards and a box and all that. You are certainly welcome to do that if you like it that way. Just to be clear I’m keeping track of everything in a spreadsheet. I keep track of the number in a column for each word or sentence I’m trying to learn. Then, on another sheet in the spreadsheet I keep track of the “Leitner day” and I have a picture of the Leitner “calendar” pasted on that sheet. So on a new day, I bump the day value and look up on the calendar which #'s I should be studying for that day. Then I can filter the words/sentences based on the number value column I have on that page and just study those. (or filter/study whatever I want to study that day). If I get the word/sentence right then I bump the number column for that word/sentence. If I get it wrong I drop it back to 1. Or, if testing words, if I understand it from my example sentence I’ll just leave it at the same number it’s at and try again on that next time it’s time to study that number.
Hopefully makes sense once you read about it.
p.s. Leitner system is also mentioned in the book Fluent Forever.
yeah, I think I’ll connect the dots once I read it better. I think I know already about it a little bit, but I don’t remember the structure completely. Thanks for adding extra info.
I do not use Anki for language learning at the moment. I used it a long time ago for learning German vocabulary as per Fluent Forever, but I now consider my current method to learn vocabulary far superior for various reasons. There are a couple of use cases I can imagine using it for, but I don’t use it for language learning. I do, however, use Anki for non-language-learning-related activities though.
Some comments:
I consider Anki far superior in most cases to using spreadsheets as mentioned by @ericb100. I have tried this as it’s easier to set up initially, but if you’re considering doing these things for the long-term, Anki’s automation of spacing the individual cards will save your swaths of time. Tens of hours in reducing unnecessary reviews over the long term.
Use the FSRS algorithm. It depends how many cards you have and for how long you use Anki, but it’s a significant efficiently upgrade over the default SM-2 algorithm developed 30+ years ago. You’re probably looking at 20% less unnecessary reviews or something of that order. Go into settings of the deck and turn it on. It goes without saying that the FSRS has a superior algorithm over a Leitner box.
Just like LingQ, Anki is a kinda complicated, unintuitive software. If you’re unfamiliar with it, you should invest a hour or maybe more in learning how the software works. Watch a few YouTube videos, explore the software, and read a bit of the help file.
As your goal is improving your writing grammar, you need production cards, not recognition cards. As @devinbrazier mentioned, cloze deletions are a particularly useful type of card. Eg. If I was awake, I {{c1:would’ve come}}. (to come) → If I was awake, I […]. (to come) However, you can do other types of production cards, as well, depending on your goals.
With Anki, you need to be particularly mindful of pattern recognition. Your brain is damn good at finding the answer with minimum effort, so if you only have one card with the front being ‘awake’, your brain may just jump to the conclusion that reading the word ‘awake’ means the answer is ‘would’ve come’. There are several things you kinda need to do to get around this on the Anki side, but it gets complicated. Tip number 1 related to this though is you need to actively try and read the whole sentence and think it out instead of relying on your intuition to answer the card.
I highly recommend pronouncing your answers out loud or if you are doing it with a piece of paper next to you or a word document open on your computer, write out the answer. You can’t rely on your brain ‘feeling’ you know the correct answer. I.e. Intuition fools us. Actually produce the answer out loud or on paper.
The real learning doesn’t happen within Anki (as a general rule). Anki is a mere way of keeping things in your memory long enough for you to use them outside of Anki, in real life. This is where the real learning happens. I can’t emphasise this enough. That single application / use case outside of Anki in a real context is worth several Anki reviews at a bare minimum.
Another card type you may find particularly useful for your context is a more dynamic exercise, rather than one with a distinct answer. Eg. Describe what you did yesterday using X past tense or Explain a hypothetical situation you should’ve done yesterday.
If you are trying to improve your writing, a particular activity you may find useful is fully memorising a whole text. There are various ways to do it, but if you are dedicated to, say, writing prose, you can rote learn one of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories. I’m sure this will cement a very particular style and certain grammatical aspects. You could do this with Anki or another way, as you see fit. I’m talking about fully rote learning it to the degree to which a priest quotes passages of the Bible in a Catholic mass.
If you want to soldify particular grammar rules which you already semi-know, you can get ChatGPT to write out the cards. The advice of ‘don’t use pre-made decks’ is not in fact blanket advice, but people fail to mention the conditions in which the advice actually applies (which is in many cases though). If you already know a concept and want to further drill it, get ChatGPT to write out a dozen cloze exercises related to the particular grammatical concept. This practice would be very similar to going through the exercises in a grammar textbook, except you practise the exercises multiple times, practise the hardest cards more than the ones you find easy (this is probably the best part of Anki), and the order in which you practise them is varied instead of all the exercises related to cognitivo imperfetto or whatever one after the one (also great).
Not completely necessary, but my most useful add-on on the desktop version of Anki is Pass/Fail Remove the Easy and Hard Buttons. Then I don’t need to worry about answers how I rate the card. It just reduces the amount of decisions you have to make. It’s either the hotkey space bar for passing the card of 1 for failing it.
Thank you very much for the long answer and extra details. I definitely need to read this more carefully to make the most out of it.
One thing that I definitely know for sure is how good my brain is to fool me with these intuition strategies and workarounds. That’s why, if I decide to use ANKI again, I need to bypass this mechanism exactly. Less cards but done in a way that are really useful, practical, and being remembered in the long run. I cannot memorize things; my brain is not suitable for this, and I need to reduce the load of effort and the automatism; otherwise, my brain adapts and fools me again. That’s why I prefer to review even only 1 card per day, but that card needs to help me integrate a grammar concept.
I know that I need to fully understand the concept before creating the card.
I need to summarize it and break it down into smaller pieces.
From here, I like your advice to read ALL the content and vocalize it to avoid our brain from skipping things and just clicking “done”, when in reality it’s not done.
I couldn’t find links I had used before exactly that mentioned good parameters for FSRS algorithm. I had tried this as well myself a few months back when I was exploring using Anki again and agree with Nfera it’s way better than the original algorithm. You can probably do some google searches like “optimimum fsrs settings for language learning” or something along those lines and find some suggests. Check youtube too.
I wouldn’t think of doing the spreadsheets for word learning without some strategy to space the words. That’s why I suggest the Leitner “box” (again I don’t do the physical box, but just keep track of the # next to the word). It’s no doubt an inferior algorithm to FSRS, but it does the job more or less. You do space out the reviews and at graduating scale. I just filter the list based on the level the Leitner day indicates for that day.
I really don’t like the automatic/forced nature of Anki. Even though you do have some tweaks you can do, I still feel like if you skip a day you’re forced to catch up (possibly there’s some tweaks to prevent that sort of thing but it still feels black box-like). With the spreadsheet/Leitner thing I’m doing, I can do the Leitner day as normal, I can say screw it and study different levels of words. If I have a bunch of level 5 words to review and I don’t have the time, I can just do some of them. Skip the level 5 day altogether. I can add a bunch of new words. I can skip adding new words if I feel like the plate is full. To me it’s just a suggestion for that day. I’m reviewing the newer words more frequently, the older words less frequently, and the words I know, I’m essentially not studying anymore, but can easily go in and review a portion of those too if I feel like it.
I also didn’t care for any of the premade decks I found for Anki. Often the chosen meanings didn’t seem like the most common one. The example sentences they use often don’t match the primary meaning they listed. The sentences often don’t have great context to help provide clues to the meaning (which is something I wanted). I suppose I could make some decks myself, but have found it very easy to do what I’m doing with the spreadsheets + chat gpt.
Maybe I’ll hit a road block but frankly it’s been pretty smooth sailing so far.
Note…I’m doing this to graduate some words that I feel at my level I should’ve already known (essentially going through a frequency dictionary and filling in the missing/not quite known words) with some extra practice. I just feel finally that at this level LingQ isn’t providing enough “reps” for some of these. So I’ve been doing 10-15 minutes of this, along with regular Lingq reading.
Oh, forgot to replay about this one. Totally agree. Easy to start thinking about the words you’ve seen today and try to remember the meaning, or the reverse. I’ve also been doing a lot of shadowing and listening to the example sentences I have and many of these pop into my mind as well.
You just need to turn FSRS on. The default parameters are where you need to start and they are decent. Then every month or two, go in and click ‘optimise’ to update the paramters based on your data.
You can read up on how the algorithm works, but it’s honestly unnecessary. I just don’t like thinking about manually figuring out the spacing. It’s just a waste of mental effort, when I could let the ‘black box optimised to my data’ do it.
It’s true that Anki isn’t designed for not using it pretty much everyday. Anki’s algorithm pushes the spacing to its limits in order to reduce unnecessary reviews and save you time overall. Using the FSRS algorithm optimised to my review data made me initially feel a little worried when I saw such long intervals, as my intuition was that I wouldn’t get the card correct after a week having only practised it once, but when the time comes, I actually get most of them correct. (My true retention is actually higher than the desired retention due to high initial encoding, but this is for non-language-learning stuff.)
If you’ve already got a system, it’s really annoying changing. Anki is quite fiddly and definitely has a high learning curve like LingQ due to software design. The switching costs are not small.
I would not recommend pre-made decks for vocabulary. You really want to use Anki to drill in stuff you already know, not learn words completely from scratch. If you already know a grammatical concept, putting in a bunch of pre-made cloze exercises is fine. Anki is for solidifying stuff you have already learnt in a way to hold it in your memory long enough to use it again in real life.
(My true retention is actually higher than the desired retention due to high initial encoding, but this is for non-language-learning stuff.)