I think we should get the option to Flashcard every LingQ if we wanted to. It would be very convenient for when we want to review everything at once. Is it a possibility to get this feature within the near future?
When you first start with LingQ, you’ll have few LingQ’s and so it’s possible to review everything. If you are using LingQ as recommended, i.e. making LingQ’s liberally, you’ll soon have thousands of LingQ’s and it’s simply not practical if not totally impossible to review everything at once.
Yeah but I already take like 3-4 hours of my time going over the flashcards, and a review is very simple. In any case, I’d like to have the option and freewill of being able to do it. Everyone has their preferences.
You’re free to do what you want, I won’t stop you.
I’ll simply add that going through hours of flashcards per day is terribly inefficient.
You can choose “Show 100 per page” and flashcard 100. Then go to the next page and flashcard the next 100.
I’m a kid, I have all the time I need, and plus reviewing something is a lot more easier and quicker than learning it.
In my view, it would be nice if LingQ flashcard system would be as Anki.
Any ideas?
I’d prefer that it wasn’t. I’ve found that I don’t like Anki at all. (After about half a dozen attempts at using it because I thought that I ought to.) Might be nice as an option though, for those who do.
My problem with SRS is that it gives YOU the times that you should be reviewing. Those are the most efficient, so it says. I’ve found that it’s not the most efficient thing for me. I, instead, work better doing two short sessions per day of the most important words.
Overall, I find vocabulary learning to be over emphasized by language learning approaches. Less time on vocab, more time on listening and reading.
And, we can all pretend we love sitting back doing flashcards for hours 
YLearner,
“Might be nice as an option though, for those who do.”
I agree with you, completely! 
I doubt the flashcard system will be like that of Anki anytime soon. Apart from the the fact implementing this would require a lot of programming resources, SRS is not really compatible with the philosophy of LingQ. For an SRS system to work, the most important thing is that the reps are reviewed every day. Hence you must choose what you put into an SRS system like Anki carefully, otherwise you will soon be overwhelmed by hundreds of reps everyday.
With LingQ, it’s the other way round. You are encouraged to lingQ liberally. Whether it’s a word or a phrase, when in doubt, make a LingQ. As a result, you could have thousands of – and in Steve’s case tens of thousands of – LingQ’s. The huge number of LingQ’s will simply choke an SRS system.
So if you are an Anki aficionado, the best you can do is to go through your LingQ’s carefully and transfer the more important ones (to you) to Anki manually.
Nice explanation. I mean it’s not a big deal, but it would definitely be icing on the cake.
I just had a thought about what sort of processing power a SRS based flashcard system might use. LingQ is not a desktop application but a site ran from a server.
I agree with Chatotango, use Anki if you want Anki.
The only thing I said I would like to see, is the option to put all my LingQ’s in flashcard mode. Nothing else. It would already be within the current infrastructure. We just need the option for a larger number. I don’t know anything about Anki and never suggested it.
When I started using LingQ, I was reviewing all my Flashcards and spending lots of time doing them. But soon I realised, partly from advice given by more senior LingQers, that it is not the most efficient use of time. After a few months you’ll probably have forgotten most of the Flashcards that you have spent hours working on. If you focus on listening and reading, with frequent but brief Flashcard review, I think you’ll find words starting to stick better. Ideally, I guess it would be good to use an SRS because, just like in high school or uni, the best way to commit things to memory is to do them on a given day, then do them a week later, and then a month later (or something to that effect). Apparently after the third time you will remember them for a loooong time. But each to their own.
Yeah but in cases like Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, this would not optimally apply. Since with those languages, you must also remember the symbols as well.
I think korean’s different. Once you know the alphabet, things would get easier (like Russian, I’d imagine). I haven’t had the courage or motivation to delve deeply into Chinese (or Japanese) yet, but I think the same principles would apply. I reckon with Chinese, I’d do the same thing, but I would also have to apply extra time to characters. Maybe just picking 5-10 characters from each beginner lesson each time I go through it and then writing them out on paper 10 times each, trying to learn naturally (and perhaps lazily!). Not in the hope of being able to write them correctly, but just hoping to be able to recognise them when reading. But I think some of the members who are proficient in those languages would have better ideas. At any rate, looking at your profile, it’s cool to see how motivated you are with Japanese. Good luck with your continued studies at LingQ.
Thanks. If you ever need help with Spanish, let me know. It’s also my native language along with English.
I am also one who almost killed my interest in LingQ through slavishly over flashcarding. I am learning Japanese too. I find the best method for me when flashcarding in Japanese is to focus on cards that COMPLETELY stump me, either the meaning, the reading or both.The other cards that I kind of know both meaning or reading of, I will not look at more than one brief time. For example, one of the big challenges I have in remembering the reading of Japanese is the うsound after お, small ゆ、or small よ. But I don’t worry about stuff like that when I am flashcarding.
It is important to see flashcarding primarily as a support to the more efficient learning activities of listening and reading a lot with comprehension.
As for kanji, it is easier to deal with that separately, like with Heisig’s “Remembering the Kanji”. Anki has a sweet pre-loaded deck for that. BTW I use Anki from time to time too, but I find the fact that LingQ’s system grabs the phrase to be the deciding factor in sticking with LingQ.
I started a page on the LingQ wiki called “Zen and the Art of Flashcarding” I invite all on this thread to ask for access and feel free to edit the page as you wish.
Is it really related to Zen?