How many people have been successful with Anki and how did you use it?

13 comments

1. Anki should be an addition to proper studying like Genki, RTK, Tango etc and not the main focus IMO. I used anki as daily practice for words I learned with Tango and RTK.

2. Anki was a godsend for me expanding my vocabulary when I started reading regularly.

   I think it’s odd that anyone thinks keeping a list of words in a notebook is somehow radically different than keeping a list of words on flashcards. It’s the same thing, Anki just automatically sorts them for you based on how well you remember them.

3. I got to conversational competency (stress-tested only as a tourist for one month without a guide who spoke better Japanese than me) without using Anki. I only started with Anki after the “stress test” showed me where my shortcomings were.

   Since I didn’t feel like going through any of the prebuilt decks at that point, I treated the process of making my own cards as active study time, similar to how your friends write new words down in their notebooks. The difference is that I actually study my decks, though I try to be selective with what I bother to put in there. So selective that I can usually get through my reviews for entire day on all three of my decks within 10-15 minutes max.

   As for what my decks were, one was a typing one where I had to input the readings of 熟語 I understood but get readings mixed up, another was for vocab JLPT resources think learners should know, and the final one is stuff I actually pick up from media I consume.

   What’s important is to interact with the language. No, doing Anki isn’t “interacting with Japanese” more than it is “interacting with SRS.”

   I frequently added words in previous years, and Anki definitely helped me remember them, but it was taking more time than I’d like. I’ve barely added anything to Anki this year, and the sheer amount I took away from making my own cards got dumped into more content consumption which in and of itself became the review. If a word keeps showing up, it’ll need more effort to ignore it without understanding it, than to just look it up over and over, paying attention, and eventually getting what it means after a while. Using a dictionary that allows for custom word lists (Yomiwa on Android or Shirabe Jisho on iOS) makes it easier to keep track of words I’ve already looked up for a specific piece of media and it makes me acutely aware of what to pay attention to. If that doesn’t work out, then I add it to Anki and review as normal.

   Otherwise, the only time I add a new word to Anki immediately is if it has a kanji that I don’t already know, just because it’s nice to add to the list of known kanji tracked by the Japanese support addon.

4. You can make good progress with or without Anki/SRS really.
   I’ve tried both ways, gave Anki a fair shot, and it just wasn’t for me.
   I don’t really mind forgetting words that don’t come up in my reading/listening often enough, I’ll eventually get them, and while the stats are nice to have, it’s only a vague marker for your actual progression.
   I feel like I personally learn words more efficiently without Anki.
   I think that the act of making a card essentially tells my brain to not worry about committing it to memory because I’ll see it again in my reviews.
   Likely not the case for everyone, but for me it works pretty good.
   I don’t take notes either unless there’s specific information I want to use in the near future.

5. Anki can be a powerful tool but it’s not for everyone. Me, I personally don’t like it. I learn vocab in context better and I enjoy reading a lot and I don’t mind reading the same book or manga more than once.

   But those who swear by Anki use it complementary to their studies. It’s not a miraculous magic tool that will instantly get you vocab knowledge. Most students cram Anki for hours and nearly burn out “only” to get 2000 words in until they find something that was fun _and_ helped them retain vocab.

   And that’s the key here: fun! If Anki is fun for you, go for it. If not, find something else. If the Google Doc is working for you, then that’s perfectly alright! You do you. We all learn differently.

6. Well, you need to ask those japanese people how long they took to reach proficiency in English.

   What I’m trying to say is that Anki is not necessary to reach proficiency. But it tells you nothing about efficiency and how fast they reach proficiency. If you want to learn a language fast, then you need SRS. And Anki is one of the best form of SRS.

7. > I’ve spoken to a lot of Japanese people that have reached a high level of proficiency in English and other Western languages, and none of them seem to have used any type of SRS tool for vocabulary.

   I think going the other way, from a Western language to Japanese, is a different experience though because of the need to understand three writing systems and know multiple readings for kanji based on the word.

   There’s thousands of kanji you need to learn, and Anki was great for that, especially with Anki add-ons that will scan your cards and keep track of the number of kanji you know.

   Also because of the kanji and multiple reading aspect, using Anki to learn vocab for me was invaluable, especially if you’re using an add-on that adds furigana over the kanji. Also the ability to add contextual info, like audio, images, etc, was helpful for memory retention.

   I tried using Google doc like you said, for about half a year, and it took too long for me to acquire words, and I wasn’t starting from scratch either as I learned Japanese by ear (from my parents), but I couldn’t read so my vocabulary was limited.

   Within a year and half, I learned around 15k words, and there’s no way I could have done that, at that speed, without Anki. My goal was to read novels though, so I needed to learn a high number of words.

   As for language learners in general not using Anki, I don’t think that’s surprising. Despite the popularity of the app in this sub, and in other communities that are studying medicine or law, it’s still a pretty niche app.

8. Carried my whole vocabulary and reading ability for me. No shot I’d be able to study 10-20 words and 20kanjis a day without some kind of SRS tool.

9. It’s quite individual. Anki and SRS in general is the most consistent and fastest way to memorize vocabulary. No matter what other approach you use, you will need to spend more time, quite often in 2-4 more. But at the same time, outside of vocabulary memorization we also need a huge amount of practice. And if you use content for something like 2+ hours/day anyway (and see hundreds-thousands of unknown words in the process), then you learn vocabulary passively anyway. The only difference is that with SRS you learn specific words, and pretty much always push it to the max recalling ability, while with content you learn words randomly and more gradually, very often starting from recognition in context and moving to recalling ability later.

   People use both approaches. In my opinion SRS shines at 2 stages. Very beginning, and nearly fluent. At the very beginning people can’t use native materials, so you don’t have much to do outside of learning grammar and learning vocabulary with tools like SRS. At nearly fluent stage it’s slightly different, amount of unknown words becomes quite diminutive, so if we don’t increase it in any possible way, out learning will become very slow. Everywhere between these stages, it’s quite individual. If you don’t have much time for learning, SRS would be better, but if you have, it doesn’t matter.

10. Im doing the Tango N5 and Genki N5 deck in Anki and its actually a game changer for my reading. I notice more Kanji, even if I dont know them I can kinda guess what they mean, based on the Kanjis I know and I also get more exposure to how words are actually spoken.

    It also tries to teach you gramma, but I think its better to learn that via Textbook, or Youtube Videos that explain it.

    Overall Anki is a lot of fun for me and Im looking forward to do Anki every day, simply because I love to learn vocabs.

11. >none of them seem to have used any type of SRS tool for vocabulary […] What does seem to be common however is a notebook of some sort where people put their “mined” words or sentences.

    I used [単語カード](https://www.kokuyo-st.co.jp/stationery/band-wordcard/img/kv.jpg) (たんごカード, flashcards), vocabulary note ([like this](https://cdn-ak.f.st-hatena.com/images/fotolife/l/lecielbleu18/20201024/20201024224503.jpg)) and [red “anki” sheet](https://baseec-img-mng.akamaized.net/images/item/origin/f904f3b9f9a624ae5af3f55e99f75771.jpg?imformat=generic&q=90&im=Resize,width=640,type=normal) to study vocab, Anki does the same thing but it’s digital and more convenient.

12. i definitely wouldn’t be at the level i am at today concerning reading and vocabulary if i didn’t use Anki in the beginning of my learning.
    i used Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji and a pre-made deck based on Heisig’s work on Anki to learn the Kanji, and then mined and input words and phrases from manga and articles to learn vocabulary. I’m at N2 level now.
    i don’t use Anki right now, but i plan to use it again when i go to Tokyo for language school this summer, and later when i start learning Italian (partner is Italian). for the past few years, i’ve just been immersing in and reading Japanese content, no formal studying. only recently decided to get serious about getting the N1.

    i think what people tend to miss about SRSs is that it’s a tool to create an efficient micro-environment, within your larger immersion environment, where you are consistently interacting with the material you are trying to retain, especially if you don’t already live in an area where Japanese is around (i.e. in Japan, or in a Japanese community outside Japan like in Seattle). the people who say improved their skills via notebooks or google docs most likely were purposely creating an environment where they were constantly and consistently interacting with the material. so just like doing SRS every day, they were interacting and reinteracting with the material in context and reviewing their notes and docs before they could forget it, until they got to a point where it was locked in their long-term memory.

    so really, whether it’s SRS or notebooks/docs, the main key is to create an environment where you are constantly and consistently interacting with Japanese, looking up things as you need to, focusing on areas you have trouble, etc.
    SRS is just a tool that makes focusing on the trouble areas easier and more efficient.

13. You need 6-10k words to understand most native material.

    Anki is not the same as a notebook. Imagine trying to review your notebook of 5k words… Impossible.

    Anki allows you to “learn” 25 words a day and achieve a decent level, if combined with immersion, extremely quickly.