[erikw]

I think that the author was using Anki incorrectly, and that led them to the spurious conclusion that "Anki is dead". I also have attempted to use Anki this way- using someone else's deck to try to force myself to learn something new. But that doesn't work, because it is just memorizing random symbols, as they noted in the article ("The enemy is the static card"). For example in maths learning, memorizing arbitrary terms, symbols, etc is useless. However, once I am introduced to a concept for the first time, then I add it to my Anki deck so I can make sure I remember it. The key is the context, and writing terms / definitions etc that speak specifically to me. I still need to work out different variations of the concept to understand it, and that's not something that Anki can help with.

I haven't used Anki for language learning, but I imagine that if I did, it would be to add some new vocabulary I had just learned from a book, conversation, film, etc. I don't think it would help me learn a language from zero though- that would require practicing it.

In summary, Anki is great for reinforcing something you've just learned, but you can't reinforce your way into the context that is necessary to truly understand something.

[atrus]

Using someone elses deck is such a siren song, and I honestly believe it's detrimental to properly using Anki. Making and curating your own cards is an essential step in learning the new concepts.

[jamager]

Yes, thou the main problem stated in the article ("memorizing the rectangles") is very real. Now, I don't think you need much magic / LLM stuff to overcome that problem:

1. Instead of the usual "1 new word, 1 card" have 2 - 3 new words on each card, and have each new word in 3 - 4 different cards (ideally with different inflection, meaning, nuance, etc) 2. Review cards fast and very few times each. Like 5 - 8 times / card (max) instead of usual 15 - 20. 3. Don't punish yourself, keep moving on even if you just half-remember. First familiarize and then internalize language patterns instead of just memorize words.

Review intentionally, totally concentrated on the task. 10 mins / day well done >>> 30 mins / day mindlessly.

Outcome: more fun, more effective learning, no memorizing rectangles.

[franktankbank]

Look, if you want to learn a new language, move to a country and get a boyfriend/girlfriend. slaps hands my job is done here

[HankStallone]

Forty years ago, my French teacher said the easiest way to learn a language is to go live there for a few months. He didn't mention the boy/girlfriend part.

[billti]

Yeah. Anki (and flashcards in general) are great for helping you remember something _you_ learned (from a book, video, class, etc.). Not for transferring knowledge someone else learned.

Writing my own cards as I'm learning is the only way I've found it effective.

[treetalker]

First learn the material. Then use SRS to schedule the practice of effortfully recalling the material just before you would have forgotten it.

I think too many people use SRS to learn the material instead.

As I recall, the creator of Supermemo had a list of 20 suggestions or so, in which he urged people to first comprehend the information; then to learn it; then to memorize it; and then to rehearse it (SRS) so as not to forget it.

[raincole]

> that led them to the spurious conclusion that "Anki is dead"

It didn't. They wrote "Anki is dead" because it brings clicks.

[dothereading]

So I definitely agree that this is 100% the best way to use Anki, that's why I wrote the line about "Writing cards that trigger memories of experiences I had in the real world always produced better cards."

I couldn't give you a percentage, but I made most of my own cards, including all of those 2000+ kanji cards. There's lots of debate in the language learning community about vocab cards or sentence cards, and generally the ideal is the sentence cards, as it provides the context that helps you use is naturally (as opposed to literal translations from your native language).

> I still need to work out different variations of the concept to understand it, and that's not something that Anki can help with.

But imagine if it could!

[jbstack]

I agree that sentences are generally superior to vocab. Vocab cards are extremely problematic once you go beyond beginner level, because words can (and often do) have multiple translations in both directions. This could be because there are multiple words meaning the same thing, or because a word has multiple meanings.

For example if the English prompt is "watermelon" - are you supposed to recall the Italian word cocomero, anguria, or melone d'aqua (all of which mean watermelon)? If the English prompt is "bank" - is that a place you deposit money, a river bank, to bank (turn) a plane, or to bank (count) on something happening? You end up having to build in messy hacks like giving clues in the prompt as to which translation is intended (which means you memorise the clue instead of the word) or having cards for bank(1), bank(2), bank(3), and bank(4) which becomes very tedious for recall. Sentences mitigate these problems somewhat.

I now only use vocab cards for object nouns where there's only one important translation, and mainly because I can put pictures on these cards so that I'm learning from e.g. the concept of an orange instead of the English word for orange (which saves you the step of mentally translating when you aren't yet fluent with the word).

[erikw]

I'm so tempted to try improving my language skills with Anki, both for my native language and my daily use language. But the commitment feels so daunting- I've barely missed a day in my reviews for the last two years, and only have 28,000 reviews total. I'm very impressed by your 98,000!

I guess the best way to start is just to create a new deck in it with one card and then go from there. I already have a daily review habit, which is the most important part.

[dothereading]

Yeah I was definitely doing too many for it to be fun.

I think that when you have a really high level, Anki is actually even better than when you are at a lower level, because you already have the intuition for the language in general and you are just adding one small component. At lower levels you are making more assumptions about how the word will be used and that can lead you astray.

So I'd say try it!

[jbstack]

I can't agree with this when it comes to language learning specifically. I've used all sorts of tools to learn the language of my in-law side of the family: books, audio lessons, videos, tutoring, apps, etc. I've never made as much progress as I have with Anki. My language skills have improved in leaps and bounds so much with Anki that I now rarely bother with anything else, other than for sentence mining to create more Anki cards (e.g. from grammar books or apps) or just for a bit of variety to make the process more enjoyable. I actually find classes/tutoring (traditionally seen as the "best" method) frustrating because of how slowly I learn with them compared to Anki. In a 1 hour lesson we might cover a handful of concepts and words/phrases that I will almost certainly have forgotten most of by the time the next lesson comes around. In that same hour I can create and review a ton of Anki cards and I'll remember most of them.

With tools like Google and Microsoft's neural TTS and Anki's AwesomeTTS add-on my cards have audio that is so realistic that I am also constantly exposed to near-native listening. I do 3-way cards (Writing only -> English, Audio only -> English, and English -> Other language) so I'm actually getting a reasonable simulation of real life practice (reading, listening, speaking) on an individual sentence basis. My process is: (1) find a high quality sentence from a book / app / website / ChatGPT (with verification from a native speaker); preferably one that is fairly simple apart from a single word or verb conjugation that I haven't learned yet, in keeping with the i+1 rule, (2) create an Anki card for that sentence using my own custom note templates, (3) add audio with AwesomeTTS. Creating a card like this takes me perhaps 10-20 seconds as its mostly just copy-pasting and clicking a few buttons.

Of course to become truly fluent you need practice. But when I practice I'm already able to follow the gist of conversations and I can stumble my way through speaking in most situations: I've got a huge head start thanks to all the latent vocabulary and grammar that my brain knows thanks to Anki, instead of having to constantly look blankly at the other person while I pull out Google Translate.

[rahimnathwani]

This sound great. I'd love to see a 1 minute video of this in action.

[dothereading]

Me too!

[sn9]

I think people underrate the utility of a premade deck when constructed well and used appropriately.

A use case I've found is if you can find a deck that corresponds to a book you're reading.

I found a deck for the Rust book and it's structured such that you can see cards about things in the order you read about them. You simply read the book as usual, learning from your reading and entering code into a terminal as instructed, and then test you understanding with the cards.

When you end up reviewing older cards, you end up getting the benefits of putting them in long term memory but you also get the opportunity to make more connections as you revisit concepts which has its own benefits for deepening understanding.

I've found this makes reading the book 10x more effective. I get so much more out of it.

This all depends on having a source from which you're learning and the deck is just for testing understanding.

But yes anytime you're using Anki to learn/understand instead of to remember, you're likely misusing it. Anki is a tool for memory.

[bokenator]

That sounds like an awesome experience. Can you please share the links to the deck and the book?

[sn9]

When anyone mentions the Rust book, they're talking about the recommended place to start in the Rust community: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

To find a shared deck, I usually go here: https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks

Search for "rust".

You'll find two decks with 550-560 cards.

The older one was the original and whoever created it did most of the work and should be blessed by the heavens.

The newer one took the older one, and replaced the screenshots of code with markdown equivalents so they could be rendered by Anki while saving memory. You can see this in the difference in the number of images between the two decks. This is the one I'd download and use.

[bokenator]

Thanks a lot!

[treetalker]

Somewhat related: you might dig Andy Matuschak's Quantum Country project, which aims to incorporate a text's flash cards inside the text itself.

https://quantum.country/

Later edit: I should have said "Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielson's".

[dothereading]

I love Andy Matuschak! His podcast with Dwarkesh was so enlightening and his blog is great as well. He's one of those people whose work I go back and read every couple of months and I always learn something new

[bokenator]

Wow, I've been looking for this. Thanks for sharing!