How do I get the MOST out of Anki?

Learn the 6 secrets of language learning! refold.link/le... Have questions about language learning? Ethan and Ben have answers! In this clip, they’re tackling the question: How do I optimize my Anki?
Should you just study words? Sentences? Does it matter what goes on the front of the card vs the back of the card?
Tune in to find out!
Want your question answered LIVE on stream? Submit your questions in the official Refold discord before the next stream airs! Then, Ben and Ethan will answer the questions with the most upvotes on the last Thursday of the month!
👉Ask your questions: refold.la/join
👉Teach Yourself a Language Course: refold.link/te...
---
Refold is a company dedicated to helping language learners achieve their goals. We think it's crazy that only 1% of language learners achieve their dreams, we're here to change that.
Looking for structured guidance on your language journey?
Check out our Teach Yourself a Language course. Complete with 30 days of immersive video instruction, assignments, and hand-picked resources, we provide you with everything you need to become the master of your own language journey!
👉 Get started today: refold.link/te...
☆☆ Read our FREE guide ☆☆
🗺️ Achieve true fluency via immersion with our step-by-step roadmap.
🔗 www.refold.la/
☆☆ Vocabulary Decks ☆☆
💬 Learn the most common 1k words with example sentences and native audio.
🔗 refold.la/decks
☆☆ Refold Community ☆☆
🗣️ Wanna talk about language learning? Chat with the 30,000 learners in our Discord!
🔗 refold.la/join

[@YuraJayRJay]

For text sentence cards I recommend highlighting the target element with a bold font, or a different text color. Thus the card could be reviewed quicker by just focusing on a target and surrounding context (if necessary). However, the ability to read the entire sentence is still preserved.

[@hvar777]

I’d recommend watching shows with tl subs rather than over-stressing about anki. Acquiring%>Learning%. Just do 10 a day from prebuilts and be done with it. (Coming from a polyglot)

[@eibhlinniccolla]

I combine Anki with Lute to export my language periodically, sort the resulting spreadsheet by most frequent words, and create cards for the ones that are frequent but low status, since those are clearly common enough words that I'm not remembering well enough through immersion alone. This way I'm not just randomly cherry picking words I find in my immersion, I'm optimizing my flashcard time to focus on words that are common enough that I should make a card to remember them, but still in a way that reflects my immersion habits and not just randomly picking words from frequency lists online. Using this with lute has the extra bonus that you can see all the occurrences of the word that show up in Lute, so you have lots of options for picking example sentences, not just the sentence you happened to see it in when you decided to create a card

[@loveloreal]

So I put pictures on the front of most of my Anki cards (especially ones that would have been harder without a picture) along with the target language word and a couple of sentences that show different ways to use the word. My goal is to just recognize the word and also to associate it with a mental picture of its meaning and not the English word (my native language). I don't hear the picture technique discussed in Refold videos. I am doing 13 new cards a day. It doesn't take me a long time. I'm willing to do it throughout the day if it gets to that. I think this is good. Any thoughts on this?

[@hvar777]

Keep it up loreal, nice job so far. Hang in there, immersion can be a tricky business. Blessings from 🇬🇧

[@loveloreal]

​@@hvar777My immersion activities are actually separate. I use Anki as like a spotlight. I give each word I want to know the spotlight so that I know I covered that word and I can recognize it better during immersion

[@ALizarazoTellez-English]

Cool method.

[@paulwalther5237]

I can't believe I'm still experimenting with how to make Anki better for myself. A few days ago I made a new card: picture, English, and target language audio on side one and then side 2 well everything. This is practically just having everything on side 1 but not quite. It makes me listen and focus a bit more than if all the info were on side 1. Unless the audio is bad or my listening skills really stink I'm going to get the card "right" every time. But I pass or fail the card based on my intuition of when I want to review it again. Obviously new or newish cards I'm very likely to fail to make them pop up again unless they don't seem so difficult. What got me thinking like this was that I was restarting a deck (Korean Vocabulary by Evita) and had a backlog of over 1000 over due cards. Part of me was thinking no way... you need to TEST yourself on the material or you lose a big benefit of doing a flash card. Well it's too soon to say for sure but a lot of the words I reviewed this way were randomly popping up in my head later that day when I was doing other things so I don't think making it harder for myself is necessarily better. I'm wondering if making it easier might even make it not just faster but more effective. I have no idea yet. I know some people are better at rote memorization than other people. I was God awful at it when I was a student but got "ok" at it when I became an Anki addict. If I were stronger at rote I probably wouldn't be doing a method like this and would be doing clozed deletes probably or something similar.

[@loveloreal]

What do you do for immersion?

[@paulwalther5237]

@@loveloreal Everything I can. KZbin, Netflix, podcasts, reading books on LingQ, and iTalki conversation lessons.

[@muhammadalyan35]

Hi, I have some german cards which have german sentences, there are some words in these sentences i want to get translation in english, i added google translate and deep L add-on but when i right click selected text, i dont get any option to translate, also this dictionary add-on dont give accurate translation, is there a way i can get translation of selected text in anki

[@hcm9999]

I am against using ANKI or any kind of flashcards. There are many disadvantages with flashcards: 1. They are time-consuming. It may take a long time just to write them. Then you have to read and keep repeating until you get the answers correctly. That can also take a long time. 2. They are boring, tedious, you may lose motivation. 3. They take the words out of context. It is much harder to memorize and understand them. Flashcards are completely inefficient compared to just reading. 4. The fact that you can answer all flashcards correctly doesn't mean you have learned the subject. 5. Flashcards ignore the difference between active and passive memory. Active memory is the vocabulary for output (speaking and writing). Passive memory is the vocabulary for input (reading and listening). Passive memory is much larger than active memory. You need a much larger vocabulary to understand what native speakers are saying or writing. But when you yourself want to speak or write, you don't need a large vocabulary. Even with a very small vocabulary you will be able to say whatever you want. Your sentences will be very simple and sound childish but most native speakers will probably understand what you are saying. But flashcards ignore such distinction, putting everything in your active memory, which is completely unnecessary and inefficient. Just reading a book is much more efficient. In the same time you create and read flashcards you could just read a book. In one hour you can read several pages of a book. In the same hour how many flashcards can you write (and read)? Flashcards are much more time-consuming than just reading. Or, if you are studying something like Physics or Mathematics, you should just solve a bunch of exercises from a textbook. Most textbooks have plenty of exercises for you to practice. All you have to do is solve them. The book author already prepared all the exercises for you, you don't need to write them, unlike flashcards. If you are learning a foreign language you should read as much as possible. Reading is the best way to acquire vocabulary. You consult the dictionary for the words necessary to understand the text. Reading is much more fun, entertaining, engaging and pleasant than using flashcards. By reading you always see the words in context. In the case of JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) you should buy specific books for it. There are books on sale that specifically help you for the test, offering a bunch of exercises similar to the JLPT questions. It is a much more efficient way to study than flashcards created by someone you don't know. Even if you nailed all the ANKI flashcards, there is no way to know if the flashcards are actually related to the JLPT. Textbooks on the other hand will base their exercises on the actual questions that appear in the exam. I have been studying Swedish for 3 years now mostly by translating song lyrics. I have translated more than 600 songs. I listen to the songs while reading the lyrics, I get vocabulary and pronunciation at the same time. It is a lot of fun and pleasant, I never get bored. I don't worry about memorization, I only care about understanding the lyrics. In the beginning I was barely translating one song in one hour. Now I can translate more than 8 songs in one hour. And I never study more than one hour per day.

[@allthekingsbooks]

To each their own. I read a book, look up words I don't understand and add those to ANKI to review them sporadically. I consider ANKI to be an integral part of the learning process.