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My biggest issue with this is my dislike towards Anki. I really just don't like flascards, and I can never regularly study with Anki. It's quite sad, as my voca

My biggest issue with this is my dislike towards Anki. I really just don't like flascards, and I can never regularly study with Anki. It's quite sad, as my vocabulary in my second language (Irish) is easily the worst part. I've found that reading does help, though, even if not making it into flashcards on Anki.

rwnspace 7y ago
I love the idea of anki but immediately tire of the execution. There are naturalistic ways to achieve the effects of spaced repetition, fortunately, like reading the works of a particular writer or playing games of a certain genre in the target language.
- dorchadas 7y ago
  Yep. Sadly Irish is so small that I'm not going to find many games in it, but I'm at a comfortable B2 level (passed the exam twice, actually) and am reading just fine. I just wish there was a good way to incorporate specific words into all that.
- jldugger 7y ago
  Honestly, the problem with Anki is manifold: 1. It needs parameter tuning. If you get everything right, you were re-shown cards too quickly. There's a variety of ways to tune how that happens, some by showing you cards further apart, and some by introducing more cards. Either way is fine for language learning, IMO. 2. Users hate the experience when the parameters are tuned correctly. It should be something of a struggle, and you should be failing about 20 percent of cards you see. When every card you see is on the cusp of forgetting, each card is legitimately cognitively taxing. 3. Flashcards don't really fit into society. College classes tend to be a series of topic focused exams, and once the exam has passed, any time spent on retention of knowledge gained competes with time for acquiring knowledge for the next exam. Also, folks tend not to like the idea of failing 20 percent of their exam questions due to forgetting.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  In my opinion SR apps should not compute the repetition interval by themselves but rather ask the user. After revealing the answer you should be able to say "repeat this soon, later, much later". A different kind of app shouldn't use time at all but rather a queue of all words/cards and then put cards back a certain number of positions, depending on level and user input. The queue system works a lot better with different timescales (practicing over short or long terms), and it doesn't tell you how much time you have to put in at any given day. It also takes less parameters, I think.
LeonidasXIV 7y ago
The way I used to learn a lot of words in many languages (mostly English) is to figure out what they mean in context and only if I really can't figure it out (because they are very broad or very specific) look it up and maybe try to remember the next time I encounter them. That also has the advantage that you'll understand the common words first instead of what someone considered to be a sensible order (one of the first words I learned in French was the French word for parrot, which I have used exactly never since except for joking around with people who learned from the same textbook).
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  Some duolingo courses have funny "priorities" too. But in general, by learning and repeating any words in a language you build the mental infrastructure to learn more words easier. It is almost scary to me how easily I can memorize new Chinese vocabulary compared to a few years ago. You could say my brain was pre-trained as an autoencoder!

rwnspace 7y ago

I love the idea of anki but immediately tire of the execution. There are naturalistic ways to achieve the effects of spaced repetition, fortunately, like reading the works of a particular writer or playing games of a certain genre in the target language.

dorchadas 7y ago
Yep. Sadly Irish is so small that I'm not going to find many games in it, but I'm at a comfortable B2 level (passed the exam twice, actually) and am reading just fine. I just wish there was a good way to incorporate specific words into all that.
jldugger 7y ago
Honestly, the problem with Anki is manifold: 1. It needs parameter tuning. If you get everything right, you were re-shown cards too quickly. There's a variety of ways to tune how that happens, some by showing you cards further apart, and some by introducing more cards. Either way is fine for language learning, IMO. 2. Users hate the experience when the parameters are tuned correctly. It should be something of a struggle, and you should be failing about 20 percent of cards you see. When every card you see is on the cusp of forgetting, each card is legitimately cognitively taxing. 3. Flashcards don't really fit into society. College classes tend to be a series of topic focused exams, and once the exam has passed, any time spent on retention of knowledge gained competes with time for acquiring knowledge for the next exam. Also, folks tend not to like the idea of failing 20 percent of their exam questions due to forgetting.
bayesian_horse 7y ago
In my opinion SR apps should not compute the repetition interval by themselves but rather ask the user. After revealing the answer you should be able to say "repeat this soon, later, much later". A different kind of app shouldn't use time at all but rather a queue of all words/cards and then put cards back a certain number of positions, depending on level and user input. The queue system works a lot better with different timescales (practicing over short or long terms), and it doesn't tell you how much time you have to put in at any given day. It also takes less parameters, I think.

LeonidasXIV 7y ago

The way I used to learn a lot of words in many languages (mostly English) is to figure out what they mean in context and only if I really can't figure it out (because they are very broad or very specific) look it up and maybe try to remember the next time I encounter them. That also has the advantage that you'll understand the common words first instead of what someone considered to be a sensible order (one of the first words I learned in French was the French word for parrot, which I have used exactly never since except for joking around with people who learned from the same textbook).

bayesian_horse 7y ago
Some duolingo courses have funny "priorities" too. But in general, by learning and repeating any words in a language you build the mental infrastructure to learn more words easier. It is almost scary to me how easily I can memorize new Chinese vocabulary compared to a few years ago. You could say my brain was pre-trained as an autoencoder!