Does anyone else not use Anki or flashcards at all?

6 comments

1. Run your own race. The “best” way to study is always going to be the one you stick with.
   Anki has never been a part of my own journey, for better or worse.

   This sub has a lot of people looking for shortcuts and/or any excuse to do something EXCEPT actually, you know, *consume* Japanese – hence the popularity of things like Anki.

   It’s a fine tool for many, I’m sure, but like you I’d rather encounter and subsume shit naturally in the wild, because that’s where my interest is found.

2. I got to a conversational level without SRS, but damn, the improvement speed felt insane when I did start using them.

   The artificial exposure to new words made it easier to remember new things, but in recent times, I really just can’t be bothered to add too many new things aside from new kanji I come across in my media.

   In return for not adding any more reviews for weeks or months on end, I’ve gone back to just going with daily content consumption, every day, no exceptions. At this point, I’ve improved enough to the point that just the consistent content consumption ends up being a viable and legitimate way to review. If a word keeps coming up again and again and again, it would take more effort to skip those words than to look them up repeatedly until they stick, or even let the meaning and usage dawn on me without looking things up.

3. Anki simply replaces looking up definitions in a dictionary at “random” times with looking up definitions on flashcards at optimal times. Both works obviously, but personally I am more annoyed with constant Yomichan lookups while I am trying to enjoy what I read than I am annoyed with flashcards, so I use Anki. But honestly I don’t really understand the debate. Just do whichever one you like more (or dislike less).

4. I do around 200 Anki cards a day and it’s not my favorite, but it has helped with vocabulary immensely. For kanji I use a writing app and actual writing practice

5. Nah..I have been recently to try it out but as I’m just learning for fun I’d rather learn slower in a way I enjoy .

   Honest they’re dull.

6. I used to be a firm believer of anki, and if I were to do it again I would not use anki at all. The only good thing about anki is frontloading vocab to start immersion. I started learning Japanese through doing 10k anki cards without any immersion. I was severely burnt out, and I couldn’t use all the vocabulary I learnt. I would suggest to people that are using anki, they should mix 10% of anki with 90% of input.

   If a language learner grabs a basic language book, learn some vocab and basic grammar they can start reading very easy graded readers. Slowly building it up to harder things. They will actually get the experience of building their language usage from the ground up reading native level texts aimed at children.

   There are people on discord servers with 40-50k+ cards. What is even the point of having vague knowledge of that many cards? If they had just read hundreds of books rather than doing anki, they would get a similar amount of vocab, but they will actually have a good understand of the word and nuance. Some words have 10 meanings, if you remember them all and hear it in context can you instantly recall which one it is? Where as if you immerse and learn the meaning from there, you start seeing patterns on different meanings, how words are used etc.

   The brain uses a different area for language, why force words into your memory and then learn to use them when you can just start using words right away either through immersion and reading.

   That 30 minutes of anki can be spent on listening or reading for 30 minutes. There are full books with furigana that varies a lot in level, even high level learners can use them. By reading without using a dictionary extensively, your brain will work out the words from context after seeing it a few times. The reader just need to pick something suitable for their level.

   For example, I’m reading 鹿の王 at the moment which is rated level 36 on learnnatively. The book has furigana on every single kanji, I don’t even need to second guess readings. It also fixes problems like reading kanji wrong. Kanji like naka, I sometimes might mistakenly read it as chuu. It’s also enjoyable, and developes my language abilities as a whole.