I recently started learning Korean.

I am trying to use flashcards of the most common words, and also do short children stories here on LingQ. And I can say that flashcards alone are not working for me at all.

I got a high quality deck from Refold, btw.

It was fine for the first 150 cards because I already knew many words from watching tv series. And then new words started coming up. The huge problem appeared: I could not, for the life of me, make them stick, forgeting not just the next day, the next 5 minutes. The reason is, there is no context, nothing I can connect the word to.

They also promise to have sentences in that deck but so far it's 98% just single words "to build the foundation vocab".

Then I go to LingQ and read and listen a short story. It has 200 words, and I do not know 90% of them. It is not painful, it is fun. I learn how words connect, how they sound together, I put them in context, I see them again in different context, and hey, here they are, in my memory.

I feel that using the same time reading and listening is a lot more effective.

Unless maybe your flashcards provide proper context for each word. But to make it yourself, it is very labourious and no guarantee that it is correct.

i love anki and i think because of it i've gotten hyper fluent in portuguese. For example i just listened to a podcast that used the phrase "fazer alarde" without anki i would've never remembered that phrase. And now that i've seen it in real context it will solidify more in my brain.

That being said i have a retirement setting on anki so i don't spend forever on them, when it reaches a 2 year interval i retire them.

If i wanted to become fluent in a language as quick as possible id use it.

Also i really recommend adding audio, and making reverse anki cards to practice speaking.

Hi xxdb,

I couldn't reply to your original post.

I wouldn't say that I disqualify SRS as a practical learning tool to some extent. I may use it as a beginner to overcome hurdles, such as an unfamiliar writing system. Nonetheless, I have other activities and focus on the language besides reading to help me acquire vocabulary at a mass scale.

SRS only focuses on the forgetting curve. I emphasize fundamental language skills more as they significantly improve one's efficiency in acquiring vocabulary. There's an idiom in Chinese that applies to all learning: 磨刀不误砍柴工. （Sharpening the axe won't delay the cutting of firewood.) I acquired a significant amount of words on the first encounter, provided I have a good mastery of these essential skills. A good question regarding the efficiency of a particular method for learning a language is whether it allows you to absorb the content or vocabulary at an exponential rate over time.

I recommend memorizing words always in the context unless it's mainly to familiarize the writing system and the pronunciation in the first two or three weeks of learning a language. I do some sentence mining when I study grammar, and I even read dictionaries to review word usage in different contexts from time to time. These references can be TL-NL, NL-TL, and monolingual dictionaries. As for special colocations and set phrases, I would read the books dedicated to the particular topic as they provide more detail with sample sentences and the origin of the words with historical anecdotes. These can be grammar books, books on slang, idioms, set phrases, and any books on a particular subject.

The learning methods complement other activities that a learner engages in the language as long as one's comfortable with a particular approach with significant progress over time. It will be such a hassle and unnecessary to argue over which preferred method to use and the nonexistent mutual exclusiveness in our approach in our language learning journey.

Look up Matt vs Japan's videos on Anki, especially his later ones where he temporarily swears off Anki.

I think the principle is repetition and any way that works for the individual learner works. But as one becomes more advanced it should be in context and word families matter more than vocab words, and sentences that have associated memories.

I'm pretty taken by the idea that it's really about seeding recognition in immersion. Not a way to learn a language in and of itself by any means.

I got pretty far in my beginner and low intermediate stages with Olly Richard's Spanish books, where I could repeat one chunk of a story over and over again, with the audio books. Like how the short stories and dialogues work in lingQ

I don't think Anki's spaced repetition algorithm is anything special. In order to use it correctly you need to use the hard/easy buttons as well and yet most people say not to use those for language learning. I don't know if Memrise lets you do sentences as opposed to just vocabulary. If you can stand it, I think studying with sentence cards is a big step up because you're doing immersion while you review. I say if you can stand it because if you're a beginner or your language has a foreign script then reading a sentence card or a lot of sentence cards could drain the life out of you. I'm actually using a totally different app called Flashcards Deluxe which is a lot like Anki but more basic.

I think flash card apps or similar focused review is a big help to learners since words often don't repeat often enough just through reading to stick. The more advanced you are in a language of course the more you can read etc but even then focused review just seems so beneficial. The trick is to make it into an activity you enjoy.

My feeling is Anki is useful at beginner level to build up a base of vocab and practice basic grammar but is better used sparingly beyond this.

It's easy to use all your spare time just revising old words in Anki. I feel you will develop quicker if you use most of your available time reading and listening to new content rather than revising old content. This reading/listening method is a type of spaced repetition because the same words come up again and again so you keep getting refreshed.

I am lower intermediate. I spend 10-15 minutes per day on Anki. I have to be careful I don't add too many words each day or my review time will get too long. Most of the time I don't add any words or a max of 5 a day. Nowadays i only add words/phrases that are not intuitive or easy to remember. Basically: Anki for 10-15 minutes is a delight. Over 20 minutes gruelling! haha.

Here's one suggestion that's an alternative to the SRS:

Randomly read a page in a book or graphic novel in your target language that you've read before.

And randomly read over a page or two in LingQ of a lesson that you've completed.

Some random repetition of a whole chunk of something you already have memory of can be as powerful as an SRS

Interesting discussion! Myself, I've been a convinced Anki user for a long time. Not only for language learning but for almost anything.

However, since I started here on LingQ (not long ago), I experience really quick progress in Italian. I also have been using Memrise since I started with the language, but soon after starting here, Memrise felt like a waste of time. It just feels slow, and intuitively I think it's more effective to invest that time in immersing instead.

As for Anki, I removed the deck with the first 1500 vocabulary today as I spent daily almost an hour, going through vocabulary and short phrases, I actually know already. - Again, feels like a waste of time.

What I highly enjoy is going through mined sentences from movie or video game trailers. But creating these cards take quite long in comparison. I guess I will still keep creating them at times, I want to slow down a bit.

The slow pace is welcome though in other languages which are a bit more difficult to learn. At least for now.

About the SRS - I like that using LingQ's built-in SRS saves a lot of time. However, I only activated multiple choice. As many words have various meanings depending on their context, I think, the other options just complicate things and I believe, with time, the needed vocabulary will eventually be learned anyway, as we keep encountering them.

Maybe if I wanted to build some vocabulary in a specific area, I would use Anki again.

Hi,

whether Anki or any SRS or flash card app is a good tool for you, you have to find out for yourself. Everyone learns differently.

I like to work with a SRS-system and I use it (on and off) for about 11 years now. Personally I tried Anki once (about 11 years ago) but then I chose to use the app "Flashcards Deluxe" which fits me and my learning style more and the app served me well for all this time because I spend a lot of time in trains and busses, and I always have my phone with me. Actually I liked the app a lot as a beginner for French, because there is the possibility to use text to speech for French and I could listen to the pronunciation of each expression while learning it. That helped a lot with my own pronunciation. And there is the option to write my answer down as a drawing option. I always use that tool when I am somewhere where I can't use pen and paper, because I think that writing the words down helps learning them faster.

The advantage of an SRS app itself is that the app reminds you when you have to revisit the vocab. But people tend to feel pressured after the app tells them they HAVE to study 345 flashcards now... and sometimes people just swipe "known" without really knowing a word, just to get rid of the heap of flashcards that they "have to" learn that day. That's not how SRS works...

Before you use an app you should consider that it can take a lot of time to create flashcards in an app. That depends on the app and the source of your learning material.

BUT, when you already have great cards on paper... just use them the same way!

Actually I switched to an app because I had a looooot of paper flash cards "sitting around" as the result of learning three languages: more than 30.000 flash cards.... and I don't want to know how many hours (or rather days!) it took to transfer the cards to the app.

I love both content-flexible audio readers à la LingQ and artificial SRS such as Anki because they "complement" each other quite nicely, esp. via LingQ's export function for Anki.

"read that Anki is a program that works wonders for learning vocabulary, its algorithm is unique."

I'd say that's magical thinking without any basis in the realities of second language acquisition.

The important aspect in this context is "spacing vs non-spacing", but the quality differences of the spacing algorithms (SuperMemo, Duolingo, Anki, etc.) seem to have minor or no effects.

"Repeated retrieval with long intervals between each test produced a 200% improvement in long-term retention relative to repeated retrieval with no spacing between tests. However, there was no evidence that a particular relative spacing schedule (expanding, equal, or contracting) was inherently superior to another. Although expanding schedules afforded a pattern of increasing retrieval difficulty across repeated tests, this did not translate into gains in long-term retention. Repeated spaced retrieval had powerful effects on retention, but the relative schedule of repeated tests had no discernible impact." (https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Spaced-retrieval%3A-absolute-spacing-enhances-of-Karpicke-Bauernschmidt/23c01da059b9eb8be667930bddddc2033e719e31 . highlighting by me).

That said, the "main problem" for becoming fluent in our L2s is in my experience neither the spacing algorithm nor the distinction "artificial vs natural SRS", but the quality of the language learning material.

In other words, what language learners need, esp. at the intermediate language levels, is a lot of information about tens of thousands of collocations (including their use cases, i.e., oral vs written, slang vs informal vs neutral vs formal language registers, positive vs negative connotations, etc.).

Just randomly reading / listening and / or doing flashcards seems to be a "bad", i.e. "time-inefficient" SLA strategy... so I'd say we need much better tools based on, e.g., collocation training, AIs (say "hello" to ChatGPT, etc.), corpus linguistics, etc.

Anki requires SO MUCH TIME... I think there's better ways to put your hours into.

In spite of this, Anki is a great tool and it depends exclusively on you.

I only spend 10 - 20 minutes a day on Anki now that I am at lower intermediate level. It is useful at beginner level to get a set amount of vocab under your belt and practice grammar. I used to add words/sentences every day and was spending an hour reviewing every day which felt really gruelling. If you want to spend less time on Anki, stop adding words so there is less to review.

I now spend 10-20 minutes on it every day which is enough to refresh what I've learnt but not overwhelming. Now i rely on reading and listening to youtube podcasts every day in Linq to pick up new vocab and learn about grammar in context. Much more fun! Don't worry about forgetting words that come up in Linq, they will come around again and they will fix in your brain the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th time around.

Absolutely not. I would say it is a potentially useful tool, but it should be used sparingly. Currently some language learners spend the majority of their study time with Anki. This is really not the best way to acquire a language.

I use flashcards with sample sentences in different contexts mainly for pronunciation/speaking practice and to familiarize myself with the grammatical structures in the language. I focus more on the essential abilities to be developed and acquired than the number of words to be memorized. Once I become more comfortable deciphering more complicated text, intensive and extensive reading would be perfect for committing vocabulary words into long-term memory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--Hu2w0s72Y

I practice "lazy SRS" in LingQ, which I find very effective:

I have it set to never have to type in the words as I loathe feeling tested in learning a language.

I pass every card no matter what.

I set it to 25-30 cards per session.

I set each session for the 1-4 rating of knowing the words/phrases

I set it to the "important" option, not creation date or status. As status biases cards with a rating of 1 and creation date has me only going over new words.

For each rep I listen to the word with the text to speech. Of which I never use for sentences but I don't find it a problem (artificial robotic speech) for individual words and small phrases.

90% of all of these words come from a show that I've already watched, so each sentence chunk has a subtle memory to it.

So essentially I'm sentence mining with LingQ.

I've tried exporting these cards to Anki, but I'd rather just power through them with LingQ being able to hear each word.

The reader is fantastic for intensive reading but I find some mindless repetition to really accelerate things.

Anki is not necessary and I believe at the late beginner stages and beyond it's not the most efficient way...in my opinion.

I started my German "journey" with Memrise (their old A1 course that you can't find anymore). I really think it was great for these beginning stages and I think Anki could certainly be used at this stage too. I think this is the best time for these SRS programs. A lot of the words are nouns and verbs so they're easier to associate the meanings in these type of programs. These beginning words also typically have a simple straightforward meaning. As you get higher in levels, the types of words and the meanings behind them start to get a lot more complicated and definitely words can take on an entirely different meaning in phrases.

After my Memrise A1, I found LingQ and started importing easy news articles...my vocabulary skyrocketed. The problem with Memrise and SRS systems is that you spend all your time reviewing and never learning anything new (at least with my limited time). I didn't see a future with this as I would simply not have time...LingQ was a saving grace.

As I'm getting into the advanced levels, I can perhaps see a place for Anki. *Maybe*. I doubt I will try though. I think I have better ideas...

If you really want to "review", go through a lesson you've done. If you don't want to re-read the whole thing again, just skip to the yellow words. Read the sentence and the word(s) in context. Try to guess the meaning. If you need more context, read the surrounding sentence. If you still can't guess the meaning look it up. Move to the next yellow word and do the same. At least with this way you can see the word in context and you will likely get a better meaning of the word from that, as well as start to associate with other words which may help you learn the word better next time around. As someone has mentioned already, Anki or SRS with single words doesn't provide this and it really gets hard to associate or remember the multiple meanings a word may have, just from looking at that word alone.

If you like doing Anki and SRS, by all means do it. There's a lot of people here that do. There's a lot of successful learners that do use it. I'll admit I find it super boring so I will likely never do it for any stretch. One thing...I would limit its usage outside of the beginning stages to maybe at most 10% of your time with the language. I think input...reading and listening will better serve you. Of course, everyone is different. You may hate reading and listening. In that respect Anki may be the better fit...but I think it will be less efficient and at some point you're going to have to read/listen anyway.

I recommend Refold's anki decks as they're used to help a beginner onramp into a new language while immersing. Worth the money but even they state that anki is optional in Refold and not a great way to acquire a language

"Do you think it is necessary to use Anki in addition to all these for a good vocabulary?"

People have been learning language long before Anki existed. In fact, you learnt your mother tongue without Anki, if I may be so bold to guess. No, it is not "necessary" to use Anki to obtain a good vocabulary. Grandmaster Steve does not use Anki nor the LingQ SRS.

There are certain uses of Anki or an SRS, which can be very powerful, while there are other uses, which are less so. The devil's in the details.

Personally, I do not use Anki. I have in the past, but reading/listening everyday is a 'natural SRS' for me these days. Reading/listening everyday gives you large amounts of exposure to high- and mid-frequency words. You both learn these words and review them constantly through content. It's the lower-frequency words, which you may have more trouble to review through the 'natural SRS' of consuming content. In that case, at an advanced level, it may be worth considering using Anki. But at a beginner and an intermediate level, it's just not necessary.

But if you really like using Anki, enjoy life and rep away. ;)

Hi CanTaylan

I will probably be controversial here, but I've tried different review methods - Anki, Goldlist, manual SRS, LingQs own - and i have to say that they bore me silly, and I hate doing them...so I don't. I don't think that you NEED to do SRS, but if you LIKE doing them and theyt work for you then most likely any of the platforms will work for you. I've realised that the thing that matters is that you enjoy the experience...which makes you do it more...which gives you exposure...which then works.

In my opinion, the words that you need, and the phrases, will continually crop up when reading, and the only reviews of words I do are to click on the words in LingQ to advance them up my "known" level. But even then I forget them, and remember them, and forget them again, and them at some stage when my brain is ready, they stick.

So, to summarise...I don't think it makes the slightest difference which one you use.

: )

Phil

I'm no expert so take this with a grain of salt. I don't think you want to memorise a language but attain it. I use Anki (for Japanese) to learn kanji and be exposed to conjugations. I think its better to learn vocabulary in context so that it's tied in to a conceptual framework.

I'm also doing Spanish and tried Anki with it to learn the most common words. It didn't help. I was divorced from every word and its relationships with other words or concepts etc.

I guess it depends on how you use Anki. If you can use it to help with intergrating concepts rather than storing all that information to memory, it can be useful. Generally though, people use Anki to straight up memorise, I don't recommend that. I could be completely wrong though. I'm not confident in langauge learning.

Just my two cents.

Anki overwhelms me every time I try using it. Its algorithm doesn't work that great on me, I just drown after a week of studying.

I think flashcards are good to drill down a limited set of vocabulary or useful phrases, fast. But they are not a necessity.

In my path I found Anki to be helpful at beginner and lower intermediate stages.

The more advanced I get, the less I find Anki helpful.

You're trying to burn a very specific "clip" of the language, which is great when attempting to get a foothold in the language, but as one becomes more advanced, the less needs to be repeated deliberately.

Although the SRS in LingQ has been criticized, I prefer it, just 30 cards a day. Just for some repetition powering through but not caring about some complex Anki algorithm.

I could also continuously read the sentences of the vocab words I've looked up and written down in the novels I read. That would be like a random SRS.

seems like Memrise would be pretty similar to Anki-- it's just which program you prefer.

I use it but it's mostly when I don't feel like reading I still feel like I touched the language. Not sure how much it helped me at the beginner level. Maybe a little bit!

Maybe it is good at intermediate levels to review words you don't see very often.

There's a lot to unpack here.

I would say that the more you do, to a point, the better. Anki and similar apps will help close gaps that may take you longer to find in LingQ or a similar program. However, when you speak a language, you never do it by imagining a series of flashcards and then putting them in order. You just use it. Slowly and poorly at first, sure, but you get better at it.

Also, flashcards are almost always out of context. It's just a word on a card. If you can read authentic material, you will learn words in a variety of contexts.

So, I would say that Anki is useful early on when you're still learning key vocab, but it's really, really hard to learn more than maybe two thousand words using a flashcard app. At some point, I would either leave Anki behind entirely, or use it to focus on a particular set of vocabulary I need to know about a particular topic.

Just my two cents as someone who used Anki in combination with other apps and LingQ to learn Russian. Also, I basically never use LingQ's flashcard review thing, or if I do, it's specifically to focus on the "4" value, really important words. I mostly just keep reading.