Is Anki Useless For Language Learning? | Daily Language Diary 019
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- čas přidán 21. 05. 2020
- Are flashcards and tools like Anki and Memrise actually effective when learning a foreign language? Is there a certain point where you should stop using them to level up your language skills? Today we discuss how I learn languages using flashcards, even after becoming fluent in a language I'm studying.
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I used Anki very successfully in learning over 2,000 Kanji. It took about four months of everyday practice. Some people have done that in a shorter period of time, but in my case I was retired and perhaps my old brain needed a longer time.
How long does it take before you are mentally exhausted in a single session ?
@@dylanvalencia349 It's not an easy process but it can be done. I learned 20 new kanji characters each day plus the review of previously learned kanji as Anki enables. Then I reviewed the 20 new ones again in the afternoon and once again in the evening. It took roughly 5 -6 hours per day, an arduous task. The following year I visited Japan and used kanji to help me communicate with others as my knowledge of speaking Japanese was not good. I made a lot of friends there. I hope this helps.
@@dylanvalencia349 I forgot to mention that I use James Heisig book 'Remembering the Kanji' as a guide and downloaded the Anki cards that matched the book order. James Heisig uses brief sentences as memory aids for each Kanki, I entered the sentence on the reverse side of each card. The system does work. Keep up your writing in English, you are doing very well.
The whole time I was asking myself -- "Is he going to actually drink from that cup?"
I've been using Anki since severely years for almost every day now. I find it to be very useful! :)
In my experience, Anki is probably the best tool for vocabulary acquisition. In particular, when you add the vocabulary yourself (from books, tv shows, movies you read, watch etc). This has helped me memorise vocabulary and remember it over a long period of time. However, this is a time consuming process and it is not ideal of grammar, speaking, comprehension etc.
When I have added vocabulary from things I like doing, I find myself much more engaged and interested and this in turn helps me better understand the media I consume in foreign languages. Moreover, it helps take me from low level to immediate level and become more comfortable with the language.
Anki's SRS also helps to tell me when I need to review cards. Other SRS systems only let me a few cards a day or don't space the cards well enough.
I usually do the bidirectional method for phrases from English to the Target Language ! In Real life situations i don’t recall the sentences done and translated on Anki and i just have to go ahead with the context of the real conversation! Is this method wrong?
Flashcards are not a long-term solution -- it's more that flashcards give you short-term knowledge of a large number of words, and if you happen to run across them in the short-term (in movies, reading, speaking, etc) they will stick to long-term memory. As always, long-term memory of words are developed through connections -- interest, emotional attachment, seeing and using the words in context. This is how I've come to view Anki.
I find it helpful to use anki flashcard decks with sentences giving the vocab in context.
@@Daniel-dl6cu that's how I do it Daniel and it works incredibly well. I always create my own cards and I find sample sentences that include the word (either from where I encountered the word or from Reverso) and I always include context. Not only do I learn that word in context, I also subliminally memorise grammatical patterns because I'm always looking at sentences.
Here's how I set up flashcards:
Card 1:
____________
Word in target language
__________
Card 2:
1. Definition (in English)
- sample sentence in target language with _____ where the word would go
- sometimes another sentence with _____ where the definition might be the same but with a different nuance
2. Second definition (if applicable)
- sample sentence in target language applicable to second definition also with ______
________________
Works great for me!
I have come to the exact same conclusion. Further I’d say, Anki can help give you the short term hook, to allow you to experience an In Real Life contextualized usage without a dictionary-THAT event will cause it to stick, not so much the flashcards. Flashcards plus a heavy chunk of exposure works ten times better than flashcards alone.
Exactly how I approached it too. I memorized a huge list of words grouped together based on their roots to reinforce connections between themselves through Anki, which in itself wasn't pretty fun, but then encountering them and being able to recognize them through the massive amount of reading I was doing was an exciting experience
I agree; as a resource or method among others they seem helpful, particularly in learning a certain languages, it could enhance de process of memorize vocabulary, and may also increase motivation.
I really like how you empower listeners to choose what works for them when sharing ideas! And I appreciate the variety of options you give. I never feel guilty or overwhelmed. So helpful! THANKS! I too am using Anki and use the template from Fluent-Forever to incorporate pictures. Changing the picture periodically keeps the learning interesting and often helps when I'm struggling with a word or find there is a nuance that I want to remember. I've also started including the target word in difference sentences so I can see how it's conjugated and the variety of meanings it might have. I also repeat those sentences aloud and sometimes practice changing the tense for extra practice. It takes a bit longer to go through the deck but I've found I'm really maximizing my time. I also have several decks for different projects and bounce between them for variety.
Really appreciate you're thoughts watched at least five vids already and you're by far the happiest and open minded person on this topic thank you very much for you're thoughts
Thanks for these videos!! They are really useful. I'm learning english and sometimes i just wanna watch videos on youtube to train my listening. The problem is that sometimes i can't find some cool content to listen and watch, however thanks to your videos i finally found somenting awesome to listen...
This video is spot on, great tips for making the most of Anki!
I'm probably the only language learner that hates flashcards with a purple passion 😂 I'd much rather read. But to each his own👍
I feel that so much lol. I respect Anki but I don’t really think it’s for me 👍
Anki, and flashcards in general, are DEFINITELY not for me. (And reading, and re-reading, definitely ARE for me.) I think that we are not alone in this. But I'm interested: how are flashcards for you? Can you articulate what you hate about using them? (I ask because I am interested in the variety we bring to language learning, and in how to recognize/help others recognize a good fit of method, or a BAD fit of method, QUICKLY.)
Me too. I realy hate flashcards.
I can be specific: my mind takes away two things from flashcard exposure: (1) I failed to remember word "x." (2) The need to remember word "x" is over. THIS IS ILLOGICAL: I know that word "x" is going to keep coming up over and over again till I do remember it. BUT I can OBSERVE my mind making that little turn away: task over. *I* hate flashcards because what I learn is (1) I failed. But not the word. So--for me--no point, except to grind my nose in how I'm a screwup.
SO: flashcard haters: I double dare you: can you observe and articulate why YOU hate flashcards?
lmao doing anki is absolutely DREADFUL for me it is the most painful process to me at least it is just not fun lol but i still do it cuz it helps 😂
I recently told my friends (who are also learning languages) to subscribe to your channel and they did! Great video btw💜🌟😄
Woohoooooo thanks so much for doing that @AfanDE 818! I really appreciate all of your comments and support 😄
@@RobinMacPhersonFilms No problem!
Hi Robin, I recently found your YT channel and also your Journaly site. After much balking at any kind of flash card method I finally opened my Anki and started building my own decks, very slowly. I'm curious if you have any good suggestions for initially setting up the timing on Anki, add-ons you use, custom notes or card templates you use as well as just organizing your decks and sub-decks. I'm between an A2-B1 in Irish right now and am reading my first real novel (with the help of a class), and was wondering how to best organize words, phrases, expressions I come across. Is it worth just making a deck for the book name and then tagging certain phrases or expressions? Do you use Cloze deletion alot? (I'm starting to, and made a card/note type to force me to type the word out in Irish). Maybe you've covered this somewhere, but I'd love to know some of your Anki 'tricks' or tips. Thanks! (I'm sadiavt on Journaly)
Hi Robin! I forgot to thank you for your response to my question about the first steps when learning a language. It was great and I really love the idea of letting the language wash over you! Thank you very much for that!! Regarding Anki, I'm overall a fan of spaced repetition as I find it to be extremely effective. The only problem is it can become a little repetitive (clue's in the name!) and boring after a while. I think the key to that is not beating yourself up if you miss a day or two because that can lead to becoming demotivated and just not doing it at all - with that approach, you can keep it going much longer, I believe. Anki may not be the most creative of the SR apps, but I prefer it to others like Memrise because you don't need an Internet connection, meaning you can use it where you don't have Wi-Fi like on the metro (the kind of place perfect for using it). Looking forward to the next videos!!
Hi Robin, have you tried using the flashcard system built into Pleco? It’s for Chinese only, but I find it to be superior to Anki because you can add words directly from the dictionary to your deck.
It's really cool that this community, including you, can give some reasonable guidance but invites you to be your own teacher based on your idiosyncracies. I think that makes sense for many reasons, one being, becoming an 'active' learner instead of following a standardized path.
Do you have to create separate decks for learning languages, does just doing one large deck work or not? Looking for some varying responses 🙂
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I read a lot how vocabulary is important and how people specifically study vocabulary e.g. with Anki. I find this discussion very interesting, because I've never studied vocabulary as such. I speak 8 languages and I'm learning 2 new ones, so I feel my methods are effective for me. I'm one of those people who just can't do flashcards, the only thing I've found them useful for is kanji. And even then I go with the paper version, because for me, the thing that really helps me remember is physically writing things down. It might be also, that I first learned about flashcards when I was a teenager (an exchange year in Texas), so I never grew up using this as a study method.
I tend to concentrate on a lot input and then using the language. For vocabulary I find writing more effective that speaking, because in speaking I often don't have time to think about which expressions I'm using, but just taking the one that enters my head the first. But in writing I can practice these things and it also helps me to remember how the words are used, since the translation might not always be exact, especially if we're talking about a language like Japanese, which is not indoeuropean (which I also sometimes have issues with, since neither is my native Finnish).
I do see the point for studying words, if you're the kind of person this works for, but I don't really understand how anyone finds it efficient to take someone else's deck and study that. As in I understand if this is your way of reviewing your own lesson/notes/however you come by these words, but taking someone else's deck out of context seems strange to me. But then again, I like "my own content", so like in LingQ I never really use the lessons already there, but I use it to help me read the things I want to read. So, I could be an anomaly. But this is why I hate, when someone proclaims that it's the best way to learn or the only way to learn. Because it's not that for me.
I need to ask the real question here... Do you have anything in that cup?
He does. You can see the liquid shaking between 1:40~1:42
Anki changes my life!!
Truly a wonderful video! Just surprised you're reading Marc Levy :)
Hi there! Another great video of yours! I also use flashcards apps pretty much during the whole process. Just when I reach C 1 level I use it much less. That’s because there are many low frequency vocabulary that are very abstract and tough to relate with a picture or a word in my mother tongue. Than I just research the word in google image and it pops up when I need it or when I read it. Professor X here. Stay safe.
Thank you for another great comment sharing your own experience! 😄 The point about association with pictures and words is a good one. For me, the way that I still continue to have a lot of context and association is to use entire sentences or phrases for those flashcards. This way, even if the main word is somewhat abstract, I can create a complete sentence that is more relatable and helps me to anchor the word to some context 🙂 Stay safe, too, sir! 😊
Hey Robin, my pleasure man! Good strategy! Thanks for sharing it! Regards from Brazil 🇧🇷 🙏🏻
Hi again Robin. Very interesting your views on flashcards. I absolutely love them and learnt so much in the beginning of my language journey with Memrise and Mosalinga before I moved onto other resources. Now I am trying to find a good system that will allow me to create my own flashcards in French with all the idiotismes that you mention for your Spanish. My challenge though is technology and I understand Anki is not the easiest to use. Do you know of any other systems please that has this functionality? Really loving your videos btw, so happy to have found you. Keep up the good work. Regards Gaby
If you’re still looking, I recommend Flashcards Deluxe - very simple app but very powerful - you can totally customise your cards, decks and timings, import other people’s decks and create your own with pictures, sounds and as many « sides » as you want to a card.
I use flash cards but I don’t always review my decks, I instead open up all the cards and read through them all, I find it to be a more time efficient way to look at my cards.
Repeated low-effort exposition vs intesive learning; I think Steve Kaufman writes the words in English and the target language on the _same_ site and just reads them.
@Robin MacPherson How do you balance language learning with (a) new language(s) and keeping up with older/paused languages?
Hey @Matthew Downes! I'll cover this very soon in a video about my multi-tiered prioritization system from my book! 😄
Totally agree with you :) I somehow truly enjoy flashcards :D they just give me security and a sense of accomplishment. I also really see great results! 😊 Viele liebe Grüße aus Hamburg 🤗
I used Anki a lot. I loved the functionality before I started running out of space on my computer and my account! As a current Memrise user (I'm transferring my Anki materials into new decks), I have no trouble admitting that it's just as dull as the bland flash-card app, which is a shame. Near the end of using Anki, I realized that the cloze-deletion feature was the most important for me.
Luckily, I found a good work-around for that feature.
There's an experimental psychology concept called priming. If you are tested on your memory/knowledge of something but shortly beforehand you are exposed to some stimuli that is related(whether you realize it or not) in some way to the topic at hand your recollection improves significantly. This happens even when the subject is completely unaware of the fact that they were primed.
For me Anki is not just memorization, it's a daily priming of words,idioms and phrases that hopefully seep into my subconscious so that when I hear or read them(or even something similar to them)I'll make a subconscious connection and more easily recall the meaning. There's been plenty of times that I've been watching some video in Turkish and I hear a word spoken quickly but I'm able to pick it out and get the gist of what it means because my brain makes the connection that somewhere in some anki session I saw it a few times.
I'm not aware of the concept but I understand this totally.
I always wondered how people thought in another language until recently. Now sometimes I see certains objects or want to describe something and the word that comes to my mouth is another language. I'm just recalling the relationship I have between the word and the object, and it finally clicked that I didn't have to translate, it was just pure subconscious thinking in another lanugage.
This for me is where flashcards really hit the nail on the head with language learning, they really drill that relationship between object and word into your mind without the need for translation. I don't think anyone will ever become fluent with JUST flashcards but combine it with contextual and input based learning methods, after some time it all comes together in a beautiful way.
@@piercecooke9649 Yes the goal is to make subconsconscious connections not just memorize words. That said, you should be doing this by reading,listening,talking AND anki. Anki alone won't do it but it is a very easy and low effort daily activity that can be part of your overall practice.
Nice video. I am trying to improve my German language. What do you think of learning it by flash cards however with sentences rather than words. Do you think it's a good idea. Also what about Grammar rules may be it can be included. Lastly is it a problem if the decks for language learning become big, example 30k or 80k
I use sentence cards for learning Japanese and really recommend it. The key is to find sentences that contain exactly one unknown word. Put the definition of that word on the back. This way you learn grammar and sentence structure as well. I can imagine that it's particularly useful for German where inflections for case as well as grammatical gender can be learnt subconsciously rather than having to go through grammar tables and trying to memorize long lists of vocabulary.
that was beautiful
Thank you Ikram! 😄
Blessed, love your perspective on anki and not stopping but changing the way you use it to achieve progression at a very high level, not going to this series has been great to watch with my morning coffee and I'm going to be sad when it ends but all great things come to end
Btw can someone explain what shadowing is and how to do it effectively so many mention it in their videos
I believe Alexander Arguelles has a good video explaining it, from years ago.
I'm glad you liked it!! Don't worry, even when this first season of daily diary videos ends, regular uploads are here to stay and things are only going to get better my friend 😄 And I think I will do future seasons of the daily videos! Also, I think that shadowing is a great topic since I have done it a LOT and have many thoughts on how to do it effectively. Count on that coming soon! 😄
Thanks for chiming in, @Tom McN 🙂 Alexander Arguelles is awesome, we had some great conversations together in Serbia. Hopefully I can make some great videos on the topic very soon 😄
@@jesse09besse I second this! His videos have been pivotal to my language learning. Dude is a rockstar!
I'm old so I learned German and dabbled in Spanish/French back before Anki and SRS was around. There was no SRS in my routine, I would read words, write them down, cram them, never look at them again, and keep reading. So just natural SRS from reading. I have no idea how many German books I read it's 50+ maybe over 100. It's a lot. Then in my 30's I tried learning Japanese the same way and it didn't work. I couldn't read Japanese. They had kanji, few loan words, and the grammar was too weird. Anki made learning Japanese still possible for me although I learned it a lot slower than you did. I'm studying Korean now and Anki is a big part of my study routine. I really value it. But I'm not at the point where I can read books (I'm about 3/4 through Harry Potter 1 my first book). I think if I hit a point where I can read more often and actually finish books say within two weeks or less maybe, I'll be getting enough repetition of vocabulary as I go that I probably won't need Anki. However, I think I reached a point with my German where I I stopped learning new words simply because the harder words didn't repeat often enough. I don't know what my overall vocabulary was but in my mid 30's and maybe 8 years after quitting German I picked up a 10,000 most common German vocabulary list and flipped through it and I could recognize about 90% of the vocabulary which really surprised me. So pretty good I think. But when reading there are lots of words I don't know which goes to show how much vocabulary languages have. (Yes, I could totally guess them from context but if seen in isolation I wouldn't know them) Anyway, I'm rambling. I think if I went back to a previous language like Spanish, French, or German where I can read and would probably learn lots just from reading, I would do that and no Anki. *Until* I hit the wall again where I felt like I wasn't learning new words. Then I'd probably integrate Anki. If you like Anki but maybe like reading more, perhaps for the intermediate stage, you could try stopping Anki for a while until you felt maybe it would benefit you to use it. Just my thoughts. I might decide to use Anki after all if/when I go back to those languages.
I totally agree with you.I don't think flash cards for are useless. Well, unless you get lost with all the gamification mechanisms in place and try to learn too fast and forget everything by the next day. I use Memrise to learn all the vocab of my text book divided in corresponding units. Im learning Swedish and am B2. I write all cards myself and I'm including declination and conjugation of verbs. I have the feeling people like to complain because they wish there was a short cut but the reality of language learning is that you have to learn a base set of words by heart even if it's boring. Remember learning multiplication tables in math? It's basically the same concept. In my experience with english (my mother tongue is german) you can stop actively learn vocabulary once you reach C1. I do believe though that memorising random lists is a time waster. Your cards should for better results contain words that are related to a topic you are currently working with.
I hate memorization. To this day I haven't memorized my address or my cell phone number. I have terrible memory. And yet I speak Portuguese, English, Japanese and am learning Swedish right now. I am against memorizing words. I focus on understanding the text I am reading. It is possible to understand a text even if you don't know some of the words in the text. There is no need to know every single word in a text to understand it. I have found so many people advocating memorization tools, apps or software. It really baffles me. Do you really need those? You only need to worry about important words. You can ignore words that are rarely used. Important words on the other hand are used frequently, so it means you are going to meet those words again and again and you will memorize them automatically, without any effort. I am reading a book on mathematics right now and it uses the word 定理 on almost every single page. Why do I need to memorize the word 定理 if the book I am reading uses that word on every single page? There is no need to memorize the word, just by reading the book the word gets stuck in my head. The same applies for every single word that you need. Important words are used frequently, if you read a lot, you will inevitably meet those words again and again, and you WILL memorize them, whether you want it or not. There is no need to use a special tool to memorize those words.
Some people seem to be convinced they need to memorize a bunch of words BEFORE reading native material. They seem to believe that those words will magically allow them to read native material. But in my opinion they should be doing the EXACT OPPOSITE. You should be reading native material to ACQUIRE vocabulary, not the other way around!!
Memorizing a bunch of unrelated words seems to be completely painful, boring, inefficient, tedious, time-consuming. Why would anyone want to do that?
I have never done that. I have never heard of any other profession that does that. I have never heard of an engineer or mathematician or physicist using ANKI to memorize a bunch of words.
Why do some language learners insist on using memorization tools like ANKI to memorize words, if no other profession does that??
If you want to learn medicine, you have to read books about medicine. There is no other way. You don't use ANKI to memorize words, what is the point? The important words will appear so often in the medical books that they will be burnt forever in your brain, there is no need to memorize them separately.
That is why in my opinion memorization tools are really a waste of time.
One last note: my memory is horrible, so I write down everything on a small notebook I carry all the time in my pocket. I already know I WILL FORGET things, so I don't even try to memorize. I just write them down.
Lýdia Machová Ted Talk found that one of the secrets all the polyglots she talked too had found methods and used methods that they enjoy which gives motivation too.
@Rambling Elsewhere You know, it's funny, she actually used to talk about me in one of the slides of the earlier versions of her presentation and my methods for using podcasts and TV dramas! Back when I was teaching online, I got a lot of students who found me through Lýdia's original talks around Slovakia and I was quite good friends with her back then 🙂 It's been great to see all of her success over the years. And I think the point you mention is exactly correct, too 🙂
@Diana Polyglot yes she's great 🙂 I'm sure this year's talk will be another good one 😄
I’ve been using Anki in my Spanish language learning journey but I feel I’m to the point where it is more of a crutch for me because it forces my brain to translate back and forth between English and Spanish instead of working my brain to be completely in Spanish.
How do you (or anyone reading this) feel about this idea?
I've been wondering about this too, as I am not such an advocate for translation. I think that one of the things you could do is to add a bare image on the front (or with the word in your native language above, that you'll hide with your hand when reviewing so that it just helps with the referencement of known words but doesn't let you translate) and then on the back what's it's called in your target language (and a exemple sentence underneath it).
By doing so, it shouldn't force your brain to translate back and forth, but I'm still not a hundred percent sure whether it's the best way to make anki flashcards or not.
Actually, I think that it depends of what your language learning goals are. To talk a bit about my experience, as I said just before I don't love translating, but I've recently realised that it can come in handy for exams in which the aim is precisely to translate (as I sometimes know what the word means but somehow can't translate it and it's very frustrating). So if your goal is fluency, then you might want to avoid translating (especially if it feels like a waste of time to you) and go monolingual (Matt vs Japan and other immersion fans would probably say that it's The only way to aquire a language) but it seems easier once you have aquired a certain level of fluency (but that's just my opinion), but if you might need to translate your target language someday (in future studies for instance) then it may be a better option to start translating first.
As you might have guessed, I'm really not sure either, but it's interesting to discuss about it and I'd like to have your opinion on my thoughts :)
Mix this with full immersion.
Don’t create bilingual flashcards lol. I mostly create cloze sentence flashcards for me to guess the word that’s missing, or create an image (front) and word (back) flashcard.
Kind of depends where you're at in the language. FWIW, no matter what you do, until you reach an advanced level in the language, you will be storing the new words in the exact same loci in your brain as the equivalent words in your native language. There's no way around that. So, translate, don't translate, it honestly doesn't change anything unless you're already at an advanced level (in which case the vocabulary does start to get stored in separate loci).
So yeah, if you're feeling that it's not working for you that way anymore, just switch to something else. You could try Spanish definitions, cloze tests, etc. But the key to memorisation has always been to process the information and encode it. The deeper the better. The best way to do that is through varied output (and the "generation effect" on memorisation has been proven for over half a century already). So, whether you're using an English translation or a Spanish definition, one way to get your brain to really do that encoding work is to force yourself to invent a few sentences using that word, each time it shows up for review in your SRS. That means that you spend more time reviewing cards than people who just passively use it as input, but in terms of memorisation you should start to see pretty radical improvements by doing that.
OMG so true, besides pronunciation idioms in Spanish is where I would probably gain fastest.
Ack, flashcards! I’ve been trying to get on with them, on and off for months. I find digital ones harder to use - whether Anki or Flashcard Deluxe ( a better app in my experience) because out of sight, out of mind. Recently I’ve been exploring using actual cards coded in different colours for different languages. Of course, the idea of ending up with hundreds or thousands is worrying. But I was curious to see if I got on better with them and so far, maybe I do, as I like leaving them around while I’m learning a set and I like being able to spread a set out and see them all at once. I like their physicality. But I think the biggest factor is that of making sure that what’s on the card is a phrase and not just a word. I experimented with just using words the other day and I remember almost none of them, they feel like they floated off as separate objects, which of course they were. If I learn a word as part of a sentence, and the sentence as part of a sequence or story, it’s much easier to retain, for me.
Words are best learned in the context of a sentence.
What level do you think it’s okay to really start actively learning idioms?
Somewhere around A2
I realized that I learn vocab better without Anki, I still use Anki for maths and some tests on my native language but when studying English I rather spend my time watching videos and reading, I've got to an advanced level without using Anki, I started learning English back in 2013 and I heard about Anki back in 2019 but never used more than 1 month
Drink ya tea and also a god bless ya from the bottom of the heart.
I agree with Robin, methods are not universal.
I saw a comment here from someone saying you could 'not like' Anki but that doesn't mean it doesn't work. The SRS system works, there is plenty of research confirming it ...but only if it fits your way of learning.
So, Anki works but not for everyone. It's not about the theory behind it, it's about if it fits the way you acquire languages.
There are many ways to learn a language quicker than using Anki but it depends on how much info you can process at once, what are you interested in ... and how quickly your brain can absorb that info you're processing (that of course will depend on your interest and motivations in it), and if you can "bridge" it or not.
I learned around 3000 words of Dutch in 60 hours (that included 30hrs of a tutored class), did a phone interview in Dutch, got the job and went to The Netherlands to work.
How did I do it? Two things, (1) I already spoke German and knew its grammar inside out so I used that as a bridge, and (2) I memorised the whole Dutch book we used for the lessons.
Yes, the whole book "Nederlands voor anderstalingen" from Bloom in 60 hours in total, intro included, and went to The Netherlands to work - ironically, for a language book selling company (no joke).
My Dutch tutor was a professional translator that fall in love with a Dutch man, she had done exactly the same to get her Dutch to an amazingly fluent level. She mentioned it, I learn the pronunciation from her, I gave it a go to learn the book by heart ...and it worked for me.
Also when you learn from reading and memorising whole books or large texts, understanding each sentence and word you read, you've an arsenal of sentences to play with, instantly.
How many Anki cards you need to do the same? Does that amount not equate to a whole book anyway? ...Then?
Anki did not exist then but it was much better, interesting, and quicker than Anki for me...but it could not work for everyone or for every language, I get it.
I'm learning Chinese now and have created a tool to help me "bridge it" without the need for knowing any Chinese in advance.
Anki is just one option, you can find the route that fits YOU...or create it, why not?
I recommend using excel and having the sentences and their meanings side by side.
Hide the columns when you need to and check your results.
Hi! I usually agree with what you say but the part where you say "they don´t find it helpful" referring to anki usage it just can´t be possible. One can find it boring, tedious but not helpful as it touches the two most important things in just learning: spaced repetition and forceful recall. I am on my way to learning the fourth language, french, and I am amazed at how fast it improves only focusing in using anki. To be fair I do put words into context and not the word alone as that makes it worse because it will make it harder to memorize long term. The last time I used it was for german and the result was exactly the same, amazing progress in a short time. I do agree with you that there is a time where using it doesn´t make much sense and that is when your level is B2/C1 and all the learning/maintaining can be done by just consuming content in the target language.
PD: enjoyment is key in everything and specially if you want to learn a language just for the sake of it if anki takes that away I don´t think it is worth it but it would be for sure effective
Hi! Thanks for your comment 😄 I'm not sure if I understand what you disagree with me about. Are you saying you disagree that some people say they don't find it helpful?
I was simply making the point that *if* a person says they don't personally find it to be helpful or did not have a good experience with it, they cannot say that it is objectively not a helpful tool or technique. My point was that these are amazing tools and there are many wonderful ways to use them. So again, when you say "I usually agree with what you say but...", I am not sure which part you are disagreeing with.
Also, there is a part near the end of the video where I talk about how, personally, I never "officially" stop using tools like Anki. Even when I am highly advanced, I will still occasionally find myself creating a nice little Anki deck to help me organize some new cool idioms or phrases that I pick up along the way,
I agree with you that enjoyment is key and so, at the end of the day, if somebody simply does not enjoy Anki then that is okay and they probably shouldn't do it. Personally, I think they should also consider that maybe there are other ways to use it that could be more fun. But again, one of my main points was that just because somebody does not enjoy it, does not mean that it isn't helpful or effective 🙂 It seems to me like we agree on all those points. Thanks again for the great comment! 😄
It's totally possible to not find it helpful. For me it's not helpful, because I won't do it enough. Partly, because I find it so boring, but also, because I don't find it as effective for me as other things I do. I can do boring things if I find them effective or non-boring less-efficient things. But for me this method is boring and not effective. And I'm just talking about me here.
In general in Finland people don't do this while learning languages and I don't think Finnish people are actually the worst language learners. So there are many ways to learn. Just because it's great for you (and awesome that it is), it doesn't mean it works for everyone.
@@RobinMacPhersonFilms then we agree on everything. I just wanted to point out that one can find it boring, but not not effective/useful as that is impossble to how our brain memorize stuff. Great videos, keep then coming.
@@RankkaApina Ey Rankka! If you stopped doing anki is not that it is not helpful, it is that you did not do it enough. And effective learning routine doesn´t have to include anki(any spaced repetition app) but anki is helpful because of how memory in the human works, that is just facts. Do you prefer doing other stuff? Fine, I do other stuff too. But you cannot debate the effectiveness of spaced repetition and forceful recall. People in finland have a much better educational system than other countries in europe, like the one i was born to, spain. That doesn´t mean anything more than that. Again, I can see how boring can be and how that makes it hard to do it long term but that does not mean anki is effective for every human if he/she sticks to it.
@Rankka Apina thanks for you really insightful input! 🙂
I'd just like to clarify my personal feelings/position on this.
@MuEnVIFitness thanks for pointing out the science behind spaced time repetition.
The point I was trying to make in my video is also aligned with what Rankka said, however: it is totally fair for a person to simply not enjoy any particular technique/method, and to not find it helpful for them. At the end of the day, if somebody really doesn't enjoy a certain activity, then it won't be an effective method for that person, and I think that is completely okay 😊 I'm sure you both know that I always talk about how important it is to do things we love and that even a technique that a lot of people don't find helpful can be incredibly effective if you love and enjoy it. I think it goes in both directions.
I think another important thing to mention is that flashcards or Anki are just tools. There are lots of ways you can use them, so it is also possible that somebody finds flashcards to be quite unhelpful with method A, but the experience would be quite different with method B.
For example, I once had an Anki Deck that had every sentence from a really fun Japanese TV drama, and it even had the audio pulled directly from the show! It was a lot of fun for me to go through the sentences from episode 1 and then watch the real show, haha 😄
I'm not saying that would work for everyone, either. Just to illustrate how very different two experiences with the same tool could be.
The second part of my point was that for those people who simply don't enjoy using tools like Anki, it does not mean that *objectively* it is a bad method. I made this point because for quite some time, a lot of people thought that flashcards were simply an inferior way of learning languages compared to some other techniques that a lot of great polyglots enjoy doing.
I hope that clarifies my own thoughts and what I hoped to communicate in the video 🙂Sometimes it's quite difficult to say exactly what I wanted to communicate on the daily videos when I completely improvise each one without time to prepare or organize my thoughts.
I really appreciate the great discussion! ☀️
I guess I'm a bit of a heretic, but I see SRS as a better technique for intermediate and advanced learning. In the early stages, the vocab and patterns you are learning are going to reinforced in pretty much every activity you engage in. So long as you are working proactively with the language, I simply can't see the need for artificial repetition of this basic material. But later on, when you have to learn low-frequency specialised vocab and idioms there's a much stronger case for SRS. Though even then, there are alternatives that I personally find more enjoyable, like writing "Language Island" dialogs on the topic and learning them by heart. That way, you are learning from something meaningful rather than something broken down into random small chunks.
10 minutes holding that cup?
For C1-level German exams Anki helps with the 'reading comprehension' cloze, and the 'writing'/active vocabulary cloze. I always make my own personally focussed cloze-cards using texts from in-depth news reports and text books. Additionally, I recently started creating Anki cloze decks using TV drama dialogues, downloadable from opensubtitles. I feel this will aid with listening comprehension, when combined with watching the shows.
I miss the positive reinforcement and dopamine provided by the more ‘gamified’ apps that I used before C1. Such a shame that the likes of Memrise get so clunky when properly declined, grammatically correct and natural collocations become the main focus.
@Pablo Stick to the textbook vocabulary lists at B1. Usually they are in a separate section at the back or in a pamphlet. Learn according to the class schedule.
@Pablo Good luck with your studies, I am sure you will do well.
Eu estava maratonando seus videos agora pouco
Uau, isso é tão legal!! Obrigado pelo apoio! 😄♥️
Je suis premiere!
Wooohoooooo bon travail !! 😄🏎
Let's play a drinking game. Take a shot every time Robin says "sort of"
Personally, flascards are wonderful when it comes to learn Chinese words, people, objects, verbs, for a totally beginner, W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L!
dahm son are you even going to take a sip of that or just keep holding it like that 🤣 . seriously anki has improved my korean 100% because of repeat patterns like "HOW MUCH IS IT" "HOW DO I DO IT " "HOW ARE YOU" the constant repeating of a word helped me understand so much structure. All tho one thing i find works is after using the app say stuff with no flash cards for ten minutes
I gave up on Anki because it is soooooooo ugly. It was taking way too much work for me to get it to a pint where it even looked half decent. Being visually stimulated while learning is an important part in my learning process and, unfortunately, Anki is not visually stimulating enough for my brain.
Anki does need more dopamine inducing positive reinforcement. It's so important for motivation and is not an optional extra for many.
I absolutely love spaced repetition. I think it's the best tool ever. BUT - when it comes to Anki, I've wanted and tried to love it, but I've never gained momentum with it which is a shame.
I think my downfall is, that when I've used Anki, I've used it simply as a vocab learning tool. So I've tried to learn each word in isolation without context. And it hasn't helped give my language knowledge BODY, y'know?
100% if I were to use Anki again for a language, I'd put a lot more effort into building a contextual deck rather than downloading a 1000 most common words deck just because it worked for everyone else. I have to work to my needs!
You're spilling all the tea (or coffee, rather) on language learning again, Robin. Love it.
I just wrote commented on this. If you are gonna use anki to learn a language the coding part(when you make the sentences that contain the words that you want to learn) is key as it makes it more personalized and relevant to your own self. So go ahead and do short sentences from 4-7 words where the word that you want to learn is in a language that you have crazy control over like your native one or English(if it isn´t your native language). Make them weird af too, crazy stuff is easier to memorize than "peter went to the park". Imagine "peter fought a dragon in the park", now that is a lot easier. Specially when you are up to 100-200 words of revisions each day. So, in short:
-Short sentences (4-7 words)
-The crazier, the better
@@MuEnViFitness oooooooooooo thanks for the advice, I'll totally keep that in mind!!! :D
@@MuEnViFitness Thanks for the insight, but don't you think that it can be useful to select an exemple sentence from let's say reverso context so that you see how the word is used/in what particular context/if it has a double meaning etc ?
I guess that it might not as easy to recall, but would maybe be more accurate ?
@@MuEnViFitness I know im replying 2 years late but that is exactly what I do and it is much better than just memorizing a sole word without a wacky example sentence
@@crazymadstriker766 times flies lol.
Long story short.
Brain learns from context best.
Learning one word isolated = hard
Within a sentence = Easy for the brain
This does not mean one sentence(context) is enough so getting more context whether that be through more flashcards or immersing is gonna help cement the knowledge.
personally I really hate anki, My target language is Japanese. I learn mostly through informal conversation on italki paired with trying to write based on newly acquired vocabulary or grammar.. I enjoy this most, I can get instant corrections with context, get my questions answered in an organic way.
Do you take cream in your coffee? Random question haha...
He's still drinking coffee to this day.
When I strated watching, I automatically made a cup of coffee :)
Jaysus, The Frequency of ads is a bit much 2/3 at start & end and 3 interrupt-ads. Dubious.
Hmm that is quite annoying, sorry about that Bob 😕 I only recently started allowing multiple ads because I looked into it and research seemed to indicate that people didn't drop out of videos due to them, and also my channel's biggest growth problem is that my videos still don't get recommended much by the CZcams recommendation engine (all of my other metrics appear to be superb, but videos just don't get enough traffic yet to provide the engine with enough data points -- even though I keep seeing much newer people come onto the scene and have explosive channel growth with lower-quality videos, for example).
I am of course trying my best to do much more substantial and authentic things to remedy this (such as trying to make better and better content, do a better job picking good titles that still feel genuine, etc.) but I also read that videos over 10 minutes that have multiple ads enabled are recommended more due to CZcams's ability to make more money from them (sigh 😪). So I finally enabled multiple ads but I honestly didn't realize they would put that many in the video and make it so disruptive for you.
I will have a think and definitely consider disabling multiple ads. I appreciate you giving me the feedback on the negative viewing experience it caused! 🙂🙏🏼
Hey Bob! Just wanted to let you know that I went through and removed "during video" ads from all of my daily videos. I don't think I ever enabled them before that. Hope the viewing experience will be better for everyone now. Thanks again for bringing it to my attention 🙂
me: this title is such bait
*clicks anyway*
Lol but it’s not click bait at all. The video discusses exactly what the title proposes, does so thoughtfully and gives me opinion on the matter. It’s not just a superficial title to get you to click and not really deliver on the substance
skill issue
Is Anki Useless For Language Learning? The answer is... in the video. ;-)
Currently, one person disliked this video.
why are you holding an empty cup?
You can literally see me drink coffee from it at the end of the intro and can visually see coffee in there throughout the video. Just have to pay attention before commenting, if the coffee thing is important to you 🙂 if just trying to troll then really need to try harder! Good luck! 💪🏼
@@RobinMacPhersonFilms oops did i piss you off
Not at all! I thought it was a hilarious to see how badly you failed 🤣 thank you for brightening my day ☀️
@@RobinMacPhersonFilms You're welcome. You now owe me that empty cup of coffee for brightening up your day.
Anki is so dam dull and memorise is not much better.
It is but it is so effective it is worth the doing. When you improve fast that is a huge motivation boost.
In any case, I advise people to start with a small number of words to create daily, like 5, and then go up from there. I create 15 words/day and my french in 3 months is much better. I am able to understand films(to be fair, Spanish is my native language and they are so damn similar in structure and words).
In short:
Start low and go from there if you want to improve a lot faster
what if you made cards in a way that you enjoyed using them? for example, i'm considering just using them for oral practice plus translation from L1 to L2. So i'll probably have the english sentence on the front, or possible a recording in english, and then i'll have the L2 audio on the back, and maybe the text also. I haven't decided yet