| Content! Find video (movies, series), audio (-books, radio, podcasts). The best way is to get exposed to the language as much as possible (some people prefer humans for this, some people prefer multimedia), and then you can use Anki on the side. For example, I'm recently watching Fullmetal Alchemist in Japanese. I don't speak Japanese, but I've picked up 50 or so phrases. Sometimes I get a phrase stuck in my head without knowing what it means, or I'll wonder how to say something (that I know I've heard but forgot), and later that day my brain will dig up the answer from the depths (essentially a much longer version of the 'active recall' that Anki uses). I'm a big fan of the Input Hypothesis (Stephen Krashen) which says the best way to learn a language is "input before output", in other words, immerse yourself in the language for a long period (say, 6-12 months) before trying to produce output (writing or speaking). In this way, by the time you speak or write, you will know what it sounds like, how the grammar works, and will be able to self-correct, rather than forming bad habits. We all know people who've lived in a country for decades and their grammar & pronunciation is awful despite constant use. The argument here is that they were forced to produce output (speak) before they were ready (got enough input to develop a workable model of the language), and were not corrected, typically out of politeness. The key point is that the brain does this modeling on its own, given the input. Explicit learning (eg. Anki) is unnecessary, but it does "cement" knowledge and accelerates things. If you'd like to read more on this, AJATT (All Japanese All the Time) is a great blog (a bit rambly though) on this method and also goes into spaced repetition quite a bit. "You don't learn a language, you get used to it." http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/ On the other end of the spectrum you have the exact opposite approach, traveling and going out to pubs and speaking the language from day 1: Benny Lewis, Fluent in 3 Months https://www.fluentin3months.com/ It's basically introvert versus extrovert. They disagree on whether output comes first or last, but they agree that you want to get as much input as possible. Happy hacking :) |