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by sgu999 969 days ago
Any links to share for using anki efficiently for learning languages?

Do you make your own decks or do you download some existing ones, what do you put on it, etc.

1 comments

I make my own decks. Nearly all of it is word + pronunciation (for Chinese/Japanese) + definition + example sentences, with additional fields for words that have several pronunciations/definitions.

I don't have any particular resources to share on this subject (but there is much discussion on /r/anki and /r/medicalschoolanki about it). Broadly I'd say that the most efficient way to use it is to use it consistently, but not to make it your one-and-only practice. It's passive practice, and it's useful for making sure you see idioms and words that might otherwise be uncommon, and it's extremely useful as a searchable database once you've built up your deck, but it can get tedious, and drilling works better as a complement to, rather than a substitution for, practical experience. The move is to limit yourself to ~30 min a day, and use the rest of the time you want to spend on languages for active engagement, like speaking/writing with other speakers of the language, or reading things you're interested in in the target language.

Thanks for that honest answer ;) It's indeed my experience from using it to learn Chinese, helpful but not transcending... I didn't look into it much so I was wondering if I was just doing it wrong.