Is making flash cards of simple sentences about daily life a good way to start activating vocabulary? I feel like when I’m taking italki lessons this is essentially what we are doing anyway. Teacher says something in the target language and you try to build a sentence in your mind. Isn’t this the same thing as using Anki flashcards?
Does anyone here have experience using Anki to help them recognize common patterns in the language and therefore activating their vocabulary?
I do some targeted active recall for words and phrases I want to use.
I prefer practicing writing/written conversations with AIs on the topics I want to speak about (language islands), and then having it provide both corrections and suggestions for how natives would express the same ideas. I later practice those with tutors for live practice and more feedback.
Cloze master speaking mode is quite good for this in terms of activating vocab. Depending on the language I would personally just go through the fluency fast track and do the different grammar challenges etc. That plus Lingq is a pretty solid combo in my opinion
I personally use google translate and talk to online teachers but recently been trying something along the lines of this
@chytran Interesting. How do you do the google translate conversion process? Are you speaking single words in your target language to move them from passive to active?
I pretty much talk to myself and the words I can’t say, I type in google translate to get instant transation. I call it a preparation stage since I think the mind needs to be mentally prepared for words to come out. Just an opinion though
I don’t like Anki personally. It just doesn’t fit my busy schedule. I do/have used spreadsheets and Quizlet.
What I have been doing is maintaining a spreadsheet of sentences of things I want to be able to say or I believe may be asked of me in my daily life, or in common situations like travel. I try to categorize them…“everyday”, “restaurants”, “hotel”, “hobbies”, etc. Plus any various topics you think you might encounter or what to be able to talk about…travel, climate change, politics, etc (whatever is important to you or important in your life). You can use AI to help, but truly think of your interactions and what you want to be able to say or what you think you might be asked. In one column put your native language of what you want to say, in another column put the target language, 3rd column could be pronunciation if you need help with that (I did this for Norwegian recently), 4th column could be some notes if needed.
I can use this spreadsheet to test both sides of the equation so to speak. If you want to test output, set the text in the target language to white so it “disappears”. Then go through the list and test yourself. If you want to test if you understand reading, set the native language to white so it disappears. You can maintain a “level” or otherwise indicate sentences or phrases that are tricky. Or just keep looping through the lists.
I have recently transferred more of these into Quizlet. Quizlet is a flashcard program similar to Anki but there is no real maintenance of Anki’s level of knowledge or adjusting of when you view it again. You can mark whether you got it right or not, if not, the next review will show only the “not” cards. Or you can restart it. I’ve found both the spreadsheet and Quizlet much more useful to me as I don’t have piles of reviews that I have to keep up with. For me, that just doesn’t fit, although if you can keep up with it may be ideal.
I’ve also created some lists with Tony Marsh’s “OPI” 20 questions (look around on youtube). Basically a good starting point of things you may want or need to say. Essentially you take his list…“How are you?”. “Where are you now?”. “What are you doing now?” “What did you do earlier?”, etc. Think of all the answers YOU might give. Not what someone else might give. If you you’re never going to be swordfighting, then no need to come up with how you say that. Think of the things that are most common to you. Then add to the spreadsheet, quizlet, anki.
Drill these. You want to make it so you’re not having to really translate in your head. It comes automatically, or nearly automatically.
Other ways to help, speaking with a tutor, speaking to yourself (can just be the same sentences from you list), as your going through your day describe what you are doing, or what you did. If you don’t know it and think it is useful and something you would say. Add it to the list, figure out how to say it using Deepl, AI or a tutor and practice it.
Some more impromptu stuff is good to play around with. Are you still working on German or something else? You could take the Easy German you tube questions that they ask on the street and try to answer them yourself. Then go see what others said and maybe use some of those phrases.
Another thing I’ll do is just sit with Deepl or Chatgpt and just think of random things I might say and if I don’t know them I look them up. Save them if you think they’ll be useful.
I’m also relatively new into the speaking phase but I really think starting writing exercises is what helped push me through the initial phase to practice outputting.
I’ve had some good success asking AI to create some simple English stories (to take distraction away from thinking about what to write), then then having it correct and discuss my translation.
Actually your message finally triggered me to vibe code a little study tool to this effect, here is what Gemini came up with! I think it’s really helping me
I do three things to practice speaking.
Whilst studying my LingQ lesson, when I come across a new word or phrase, I ask Chat GPT to give me sentences around it and then speak aloud my own sentences. To do this I make sure to not have lessons of more than 5- 6 minutes or the process is too long.
For less focused conversation, I use Sesame AI and chat for 30 minutes a day. I try to speak how I would in English and when I don’t know how to say something I ask.
Then I travel to Italy once a year and talk constantly to relatives for 10 days!
