How do I learn something from Anki? It seems to be absolutely useless for me

8 comments

1. By all means, then use Duolingo for vocab. Better to learn somewhat inefficiently than to not learn at all. Just do yourself a favor and use something else for grammar or soon enough with Duolingo you will be lost.

2. If duolingo works then use duolingo.

   Also Anki isn’t really what you use to learn stuff. Some people do it that way, but anki is a REVIEW system. You learn something and then use anki to review it and it shows it to you at specified times so you don’t forget it. Maybe learn things outside of anki and then add them yourself.

3. Don’t worry, I think the simple repetition is not the most effective learning method, you are not alone. You might need a more involved approach to learning new words.

   1. Are you using the reverse version of the cards as well? So you have the same cards in both versions in the deck. You either have to guess the Japanese word from its translation or see the Japanese words and guess its translation.

   2. Try picking out a few words from the ones that you learn and learning them in a more involved way. I would say there are a few stages of mastering the word:

   a. You see the word for the first time and you try to understand its structure and meaning.
   b. You see or hear this word in context somewhere else and recognize it.
   c. You build phrases or sentences with this word.
   d. You learn different semantic nuances etc.

   I think you can try practicing b. and c. For example, if I see a relatively complex word, like an abstract noun, verb, or an adjective expressing an emotion, my first instinct is to check the examples. Because translation equivalents often do not match and give you a false idea. So try finding a few examples for the words you are studying. If you like an example or if it illustrates the word well, write it down (or add it to your anki). Then you can try building a few phrases with it. This might get you wondering if you are understanding the nuances of the word correctly, e.g. if the adjective you are studying can be used with a certain type of subject etc.

4. > I’ve been trying this one super easy deck with 42 cards in it for 2 weeks and I am just unable to remember new cards.

   How many hours of Anki time have you done within these 2 weeks? Have you done your Anki every day?

5. I’ve jumped into Anki and fallen out of it after a month-or-two-ish like a dozen times at this point, so I think it just doesn’t work for some people. I’d always get disheartened to see a word pop up that I felt I should’ve gotten down weeks ago and it’s the millionth time I’ve seen it but I still didn’t know it. I think some of us need more context for the brain to connect with a word, so maybe just go with a textbook and learn words via sentences. Get a new word, look it up in a dictionary, hear it said aloud by a native speaker, say it aloud yourself, write out the different forms, come up with a mnemonic device if you need to, draw a simple picture for it, read some example sentences, write a couple of your own sentences, maybe put a sentence on a flash card and you have a physical deck that you just browse through once a week for a quick refresher, as you learn other related words come up with new sentences that use them all together, make simple quizzes for yourself that you then take a couple weeks later, etc etc.

6. That’s the paradox of anki that I’ve never managed to overcome. To memorize something, you must first learn it. If you manage to find good mental link between the front and back, then it’s relatively painless. But you spend 80% of your time on those hardest 20% and some just never stick. The best way to conquer those cards is to add more context to the card. But Anki doesn’t hold your hand and rework your cards for you. At best it will leech the card. At least they recognized the issue. Personally, I’d just get repetition from doing literally anything else.

7. A different deck might help, or even making a custom deck from your duolingo lessons. I started off with the ‘kanji damage reordered’ anki-deck, which although can be a little ‘crude’ really caught my attention memorizing. I do my review on an android tablet, and use the dictionary ‘akebi.’ I look up a word, and there is a button to quickly send the word, example sentence, pitch, kanji to a custom deck.

   [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.craxic.akebifree&hl=en_US&gl=US](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.craxic.akebifree&hl=en_US&gl=US)

   Even better for me has been the ‘mochimochi’ app. Not only do I need to recognize the word, but I have to type it out in hiragana. That has exposed a number of spelling/pronunciation problems with my memorization.

   [I have ‘issues’ with a a few of their entries/ examples sentences, but as a co-worker says, ‘as long as you know the word when used in context, what does it matter to you if they show a single kanji with no context/definition – you answer じゅう but they were expecting とお and get it ‘wrong;?’]

   May I suggest you also test drive Lingodeer? And as others mention grammar is getting to be very important for me to learn more, as I try to understand those example sentences. [How does verb-の work? Oooh. Why did they use ‘こと’ in this way? Oooooh. I need read my textbook chapters for things I need to focus on…]

8. Are you learning words or kanji? Both can be much easier if you learn the base these comes from.

   Kanji are built by different sub symbols, radicals, and trying to learn complicated kanji without first learning the basic kanji using those radicals can be really difficult. It’s like drowning trying to learn how to swim.

   I found Wanikani brilliant in stepping it up bit by bit. The drawback though is that it is very hard to practice stuff you may need to, outside of their curriculum. Their use of mneomonics might be a good inspiration to wire your memory better though.