15 minutes per day / 60 minutes per hour * 365 days per year = 91 hours per year. This is no small amount of time.
I don’t think Anki’s spaced repetition algorithm is anything special. In order to use it correctly you need to use the hard/easy buttons as well and yet most people say not to use those for language learning. I don’t know if Memrise lets you do sentences as opposed to just vocabulary. If you can stand it, I think studying with sentence cards is a big step up because you’re doing immersion while you review. I say if you can stand it because if you’re a beginner or your language has a foreign script then reading a sentence card or a lot of sentence cards could drain the life out of you. I’m actually using a totally different app called Flashcards Deluxe which is a lot like Anki but more basic.
I think flash card apps or similar focused review is a big help to learners since words often don’t repeat often enough just through reading to stick. The more advanced you are in a language of course the more you can read etc but even then focused review just seems so beneficial. The trick is to make it into an activity you enjoy.
“The trick is to make it into an activity you enjoy.”
No, wrong approach and wrong attitude.
The trick is to make it a habit that sticks so that learners are independent of mental volatility (i.e., motivational ups and downs, “feeling like it”, joy, etc.) and say good-bye to “avoidance behavior”.
See BJ Fogg’s “Tiny Habits”: https://tinyhabits.com/
“since words often don’t repeat often enough just through reading to stick.”
No, just read more because reading is a “natural SRS in itself”. And this works very well for higher frequency words.
BTW, learners should (almost) never focus on individual words because native speakers tend to use tens of thousands of word groups (esp. collocations), not single words in communication processes.
“could drain the life out of you”
Just reduce the number of repetitions in Anki. 25 per day, for example, works very well in my experience (I’ve been using Anki for more than 7 years).
Maybe we need a “course” on how to use artificial SRS and how not to use them…
I am not using Anki at all, but maybe you could make a case for using it to remember phrases. For instance, I asked ChatGPT to write 10 example sentences for “are opposed to each other” in mandarin:
- 男人和女人是相互对立的。 (Men and women are opposed to each other.)
- 公司和竞争对手是相互对立的。 (A company and its competitor are opposed to each other.)
- 阴天和晴天是相互对立的。 (Rainy days and sunny days are opposed to each other.)
- 健康和疾病是相互对立的。 (Health and disease are opposed to each other.)
- 正义和邪恶是相互对立的。 (Justice and evil are opposed to each other.)
- 爱和恨是相互对立的。 (Love and hate are opposed to each other.)
- 学生和老师是相互对立的。 (Students and teachers are opposed to each other.)
- 成功和失败是相互对立的。 (Success and failure are opposed to each other.)
- 信仰和怀疑是相互对立的。 (Belief and doubt are opposed to each other.)
- 和平与战争是相互对立的。 (Peace and war are opposed to each other.)
I could imagine loading them into Anki or other flashcard systems and review them (of course shuffled and with 100s of other phrases unrelated to “are opposed to each other”)…
Excellent idea, Jan!
I like it.
Look up Matt vs Japan’s videos on Anki, especially his later ones where he temporarily swears off Anki.
I think the principle is repetition and any way that works for the individual learner works. But as one becomes more advanced it should be in context and word families matter more than vocab words, and sentences that have associated memories.
I’m pretty taken by the idea that it’s really about seeding recognition in immersion. Not a way to learn a language in and of itself by any means.
I got pretty far in my beginner and low intermediate stages with Olly Richard’s Spanish books, where I could repeat one chunk of a story over and over again, with the audio books. Like how the short stories and dialogues work in lingQ
I get you don’t like anki and if you have developed your own method good for you.
That said, I’m going to point you to some hard-coded logic that is unassailable:
An SRS is focused on YOU. It repeats the words that YOU do not remember, specifically giving you focus on them, while allowing you to relax on those you have already learned. That is to say, it is optimized for your particular learning curve.
On the contrary, “natural SRS” is fake. It is not SRS. Encountering words in video or books is averaged out based on frequency. It has nothing to do with the forgetting curve and is just based on how often it comes up. And you can’t change it based on words that are easier or more difficult for you. It’s fixed.
Anyhow. That said. Both of them complement each other but for different reasons.
Unless you are memorizing specific phrases (ugh) you are only getting exposed to words that are out-of-context, and as (maybe you?) and definitely Peter have said, collocations and set phrases are definitely a thing you will not get from individual word bulk memorization. All the different techniques have a place. For me SRS is epically helpful. You don’t seem to like it, that’s great. If you have a method that works for you without SRS that’s great but I whole-heartedly disagree with the concept that it’s useless or “beaten out” by “natural SRS”. They are complementary instead.
Anyhow, love these kinds of chats.
The thing about SRS is it’s supposed to optimize your time. You’re spending the minimum amount of time required to commit the item to memory instead of just hitting it based on frequency from reading or listening to a tremendous number of words.
The question I’d love the answer to is this: what is the optimal way to burn in the words?
I’m not convinced those on the side of “reading or listening” is better.
If it was, anki and tools like it would not exist.
The problem with anki is simple: it’s painful. LingQ is fun.
I’m kind of reaching towards the idea that at the beginning it’s indispensable.
In the middle stage you don’t really need it because the mid-frequency words probably come up enough times while doing something enjoyable i.e. engaging with content by listening or reading.
At the advanced stage I think it becomes useful again: you just don’t get enough exposure to the advanced-but-necessary words in any given time period for them to be above your memorization threshold in the forgetting curve.
But I don’t know what the answer to that is, because who can say what a useful low frequency word is. By definition it’s low frequency so you might never hear it again on average.
The compromise idea I have come up with as a hypothesis is target a particular genre or subject area (say narnia books, a particular scifi show or cooking books or whatnot). In those areas there might be domain specific “jargon” that is worth learning in order to be able to easily understand those specific domains.
Any case. Right now I’m stuck: I’m intermediate with no clear roadmap to move to “advanced” other than slogging it out so instead I’m pinpointing focus areas and going for them.
A particular telenovela. One crime show. One Scifi show. The Narnia series.
Once I have completed those I’m hoping I will be “done” enough. LOL. We’ll see in July.
And conversely I learned Spanish by doing exactly that: I memorized the first 6,000 words of Spanish then started watching TV shows. Last week I gave a presentation to a C-level board in Chile. So I don’t suck. Anki definitely has its place if you can tolerate the pain and boredom.
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You can get overwhelmed very easily, that is true.
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Of course it isn’t. You can’t learn a language just by memorizing individual words. You can however, get to beginner level just by memorizing words.
To get to intermediate you NEED to either read or listen to language.
Hi xxdb,
I couldn’t reply to your original post.
I wouldn’t say that I disqualify SRS as a practical learning tool to some extent. I may use it as a beginner to overcome hurdles, such as an unfamiliar writing system. Nonetheless, I have other activities and focus on the language besides reading to help me acquire vocabulary at a mass scale.
SRS only focuses on the forgetting curve. I emphasize fundamental language skills more as they significantly improve one’s efficiency in acquiring vocabulary. There’s an idiom in Chinese that applies to all learning: 磨刀不误砍柴工. （Sharpening the axe won’t delay the cutting of firewood.) I acquired a significant amount of words on the first encounter, provided I have a good mastery of these essential skills. A good question regarding the efficiency of a particular method for learning a language is whether it allows you to absorb the content or vocabulary at an exponential rate over time.
I recommend memorizing words always in the context unless it’s mainly to familiarize the writing system and the pronunciation in the first two or three weeks of learning a language. I do some sentence mining when I study grammar, and I even read dictionaries to review word usage in different contexts from time to time. These references can be TL-NL, NL-TL, and monolingual dictionaries. As for special colocations and set phrases, I would read the books dedicated to the particular topic as they provide more detail with sample sentences and the origin of the words with historical anecdotes. These can be grammar books, books on slang, idioms, set phrases, and any books on a particular subject.
The learning methods complement other activities that a learner engages in the language as long as one’s comfortable with a particular approach with significant progress over time. It will be such a hassle and unnecessary to argue over which preferred method to use and the nonexistent mutual exclusiveness in our approach in our language learning journey.
Right. Different strokes for different folks.
We do what works for each of us.
I know my method works because I’ve successfully used it three times now.
But it’s painful and boring for some folks so they do something else.
Consistency is key to be honest. You need to keep grinding it out.
EVERY DAY.
It’s an excellent addition to sentence mining using a dictionary. Something missing from SRS using sample sentences is the absence of context clues in some cases. That contextual clue may come from preceding sentences in a paragraph.
两个足球队在竞赛中是相互对立的。
(Two football teams are opposed to each other in a tournament.)
最终红队在队友互相帮助下，在最后的对抗赛中赢得胜利。
(Eventually, the red team gained victory in the final match by helping each other among teammates.)
Another thing that needs to be added to SRS using sample sentences is the historical clue we get from the context to derive a more accurate sentence meaning and thus memorize the words with less effort.
他连鹿的影子都看不到，更谈不上治理一方。
He doesn’t see the shadow of a deer, not even to mention governing a place.
Actually, “鹿” comes from “逐鹿天下” in the context of contending for the supreme power to govern the world/land (天下) among warlords in ancient China.
Another thing that helps memorize the vocabulary in reading is the natural flow of the text, which connects the intriguing plots of a compelling storyline. The topics-focused text also offers some valuable clues for the meanings of some words. Sometimes it’s better to focus on the level of our impression of the vocabulary than the frequency of repetition.
i love anki and i think because of it i’ve gotten hyper fluent in portuguese. For example i just listened to a podcast that used the phrase “fazer alarde” without anki i would’ve never remembered that phrase. And now that i’ve seen it in real context it will solidify more in my brain.
That being said i have a retirement setting on anki so i don’t spend forever on them, when it reaches a 2 year interval i retire them.
If i wanted to become fluent in a language as quick as possible id use it.
Also i really recommend adding audio, and making reverse anki cards to practice speaking.
“The problem with anki is simple: it’s painful. LingQ is fun.” (xxdb)
I wouldn’t say that LingQ is “fun in itself”.
It’s rather the case that advanced texts (from a B1 level and above) that learners can choose for themselves are usually more fun than doing Anki, Glossika, etc. drills.
However, nce the use of Anki becomes a habit, it’s no longer painful. You just do it 
“I’m kind of reaching towards the idea that at the beginning it’s indispensable.
In the middle stage you don’t really need it because the mid-frequency words probably come up enough times while doing something enjoyable i.e. engaging with content by listening or reading.
At the advanced stage I think it becomes useful again: you just don’t get enough exposure to the advanced-but-necessary words in any given time period for them to be above your memorization threshold in the forgetting curve.” (xxdb).
Yes, that’s also my experience with several L2s.
I recently started learning Korean.
I am trying to use flashcards of the most common words, and also do short children stories here on LingQ. And I can say that flashcards alone are not working for me at all.
I got a high quality deck from Refold, btw.
It was fine for the first 150 cards because I already knew many words from watching tv series. And then new words started coming up. The huge problem appeared: I could not, for the life of me, make them stick, forgeting not just the next day, the next 5 minutes. The reason is, there is no context, nothing I can connect the word to.
They also promise to have sentences in that deck but so far it’s 98% just single words “to build the foundation vocab”.
Then I go to LingQ and read and listen a short story. It has 200 words, and I do not know 90% of them. It is not painful, it is fun. I learn how words connect, how they sound together, I put them in context, I see them again in different context, and hey, here they are, in my memory.
I feel that using the same time reading and listening is a lot more effective.
Unless maybe your flashcards provide proper context for each word. But to make it yourself, it is very labourious and no guarantee that it is correct.
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