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Anki contributor here: I’ve been using SRS on and off since 2006 and this post addresses one of the key failure modes I’ve seen in SRS usage—they tend to be fa

Anki contributor here: I’ve been using SRS on and off since 2006 and this post addresses one of the key failure modes I’ve seen in SRS usage—they tend to be fantastic for discrete pieces of information, like the names of capital cities, the pronunciation of various symbols or various physical constants. Most my usage of SRS in the early days was languages. For that domain, SRS is useful for learning an alphabet (or syllabary), for scaffolding enough common words to start understanding graded readers and for a few other tasks. They’re terrible as a primary learning strategy, though! Too much of language is highly nuanced and context dependent and the only way to absorb all the unwritten rules, the common collocations and the precise boundaries of word meanings is through extensive input. This means encountering the same words and structures in countless different variations and contexts, not the same few sentences drilled repeatedly (at least past the beginning stages). By paying attention to the specifics of learning math and tailoring the SRS to match it, it’s possible to make a far more efficient system than anyone could with an Anki deck. I’d love to see similar efforts in other subjects!

dotancohen 2y ago
Anki is great for building vocabulary. It's not suitable for actually learning the language. I use it constantly, averaging over 200 cards a day for over fifteen years.
- kiba 2y ago
  I wish I have the same dedication, but alas Anki hadn't sufficiently proven useful to me that I would use it on a day to day basis.
  - dotancohen 2y ago
    If you have an Android device, go install Ankidroid. It's absolutely terrific, letting you fill in those wasted seconds when you're waiting in line, sitting on the toilet, waiting for the pot to boil. Two or three cards at a time, dozens of times per day, adds up. You could treat yourself to three cards after every git commit, for instance. Takes literally less than ten seconds to review three cards.
    - kiba 2y ago
      The problem isn't the convenience but that the value in my deck hasn't sufficiently manifested itself in real world applications. This is my own fault rather than the app's fault.
      - Bluestein 2y ago
        I both second Ankidroid (oustanding) ... ... and concur when failing (as of yet) to find a way to use the system with other types of knowledge, sadly.-
- boppo1 2y ago
  How many new cards a day do you set?
  - dotancohen 2y ago
    Depends on what I'm actively learning at any given time. Right now it's 4, sometimes it could be closer to 20.
gwd 2y ago
A couple of problems I found with Anki for languages: 1. The words aren't in context, which leads to "flashcard blindness", where you see a word in context, know that you recognize it, but can't remember what it means. 2. The theory behind spaced repetition is that you learn most efficiently when you try to remember something just when you're about to forget it. But that means that if the algorithm is working properly, every single card is hard. This makes motivation a problem, because you know studying is going to be a grind, not fun. 3. While "being able to remember it after thinking a second or two" might be fine when studying for an exam, or in many other contexts where memorization might be important, that's too slow for languages. What you want for a language is "know it immediately without having to think about it". 4. The "scheduled review" system is too inflexible. Some days you get only a handful of cards to review, some days you get dozens. It's hard to tell when you're starting out how many cards you should be adding each day such that the number of cards match the amount of time / effort you have to study. Furthermore, if you skip a single day, you have twice as much the next day; and if life happens and you end up missing a week or a month, you come back with a giant jumble of cards, half of which you've forgotten, and it's really difficult to dig your way out of it. By a strange coincidence, in 2019 I also started on an alternate to Anki to help myself study Mandarin. It has some similarities to his system, in that there's multi-level knowledge; but it's different in that instead of having a fixed schedule, it has the concept of "difficulty" and "study value" for each word / grammar concept, and the algorithm tries to give you a full "readunit" of "native input" which will balance the two. "Spaced repetition" emerges naturally from the model, and if you go away for a week (or 6 months), it knows you've forgotten some things, so it gradually refreshes your memory. And because you're reading actual native text, there's something which pulls you in. It's in closed beta now; the first public language (MVP) will be in Biblical Greek, but the second one (if it happens, maybe in a year or two) will be in Mandarin; and hopefully there will be other ones after that. There's a sign-up form you can use to be notified for updates. https://www.laleolanguage.com https://www.laleolanguage.com
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > But that means that if the algorithm is working properly, every single card is hard. Could the algo be tweaked so as to regulate the "closeness to the edge", ergo, the difficulty? PS. Then again, something tells me what makes SR so effective *might just be* (or be related to) that "difficulty".-
jwells89 2y ago
For this reason, I’ve seen it recommended in various language learning guides to use Anki in a manner that’s complementary to consumption of media in the target language. The general idea is to do Anki-only for the earliest bootstrapping stages (super basic vocab) and switch to media+Anki as early as possible. The media gives both context and real experience with the language while Anki serves to commit the words you’ve read/heard (even those not used quite as commonly) to memory. I’ve only just dipped my toe into this method but have seen many reports of success with it from others.
- bunderbunder 2y ago
  You might find, as you get deeper into the language learning journey, that this approach to practice is most popular among an extremely vocal group of intermediate language learners. But people who've been doing it for a long time tend to gravitate toward the parent poster's opinion. I've also noticed that assiduously sentence mining your input and then drilling it in Anki is much more popular among people whose media consumption is almost exclusively video content. This resonates with the work of SLA researchers such as Paul Noble who've found that extensive reading is easily the fastest way to grow vocabulary in a new language. There's even some (scant) evidence that SRS combined with extensive reading is less effective than extensive reading alone for long-term vocabulary growth and retention. It suggests, to me at least, that heavy reliance on SRS for vocabulary retention past the beginner stages of learning a language may not be a universal optimal path, so much as a backup option for people who don't enjoy reading. Like AlchemistCamp I do still like it a lot for specific things, and I'm not here to wag fingers at people who enjoy it (Above all else, make sure you're enjoying your study routine! Getting there should be 100% of the fun.), but I do still worry that many Anki users have a serious case of golden hammer syndrome.
  - jwells89 2y ago
    For sure, by no means am I married to the method and am very flexible and open to trying various approaches. I do believe however that a little bit of structure can be helpful in the beginner to intermediate levels, where it's less likely that one has formed a habit/urges to watch/listen to foreign media without subtitles or read untranslated print media. It's a real slog when you don't have a decent arsenal of words to work with.

dotancohen 2y ago

Anki is great for building vocabulary. It's not suitable for actually learning the language. I use it constantly, averaging over 200 cards a day for over fifteen years.

kiba 2y ago
I wish I have the same dedication, but alas Anki hadn't sufficiently proven useful to me that I would use it on a day to day basis.
- dotancohen 2y ago
  If you have an Android device, go install Ankidroid. It's absolutely terrific, letting you fill in those wasted seconds when you're waiting in line, sitting on the toilet, waiting for the pot to boil. Two or three cards at a time, dozens of times per day, adds up. You could treat yourself to three cards after every git commit, for instance. Takes literally less than ten seconds to review three cards.
  - kiba 2y ago
    The problem isn't the convenience but that the value in my deck hasn't sufficiently manifested itself in real world applications. This is my own fault rather than the app's fault.
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      I both second Ankidroid (oustanding) ... ... and concur when failing (as of yet) to find a way to use the system with other types of knowledge, sadly.-
boppo1 2y ago
How many new cards a day do you set?
- dotancohen 2y ago
  Depends on what I'm actively learning at any given time. Right now it's 4, sometimes it could be closer to 20.

gwd 2y ago

A couple of problems I found with Anki for languages: 1. The words aren't in context, which leads to "flashcard blindness", where you see a word in context, know that you recognize it, but can't remember what it means. 2. The theory behind spaced repetition is that you learn most efficiently when you try to remember something just when you're about to forget it. But that means that if the algorithm is working properly, every single card is hard. This makes motivation a problem, because you know studying is going to be a grind, not fun. 3. While "being able to remember it after thinking a second or two" might be fine when studying for an exam, or in many other contexts where memorization might be important, that's too slow for languages. What you want for a language is "know it immediately without having to think about it". 4. The "scheduled review" system is too inflexible. Some days you get only a handful of cards to review, some days you get dozens. It's hard to tell when you're starting out how many cards you should be adding each day such that the number of cards match the amount of time / effort you have to study. Furthermore, if you skip a single day, you have twice as much the next day; and if life happens and you end up missing a week or a month, you come back with a giant jumble of cards, half of which you've forgotten, and it's really difficult to dig your way out of it. By a strange coincidence, in 2019 I also started on an alternate to Anki to help myself study Mandarin. It has some similarities to his system, in that there's multi-level knowledge; but it's different in that instead of having a fixed schedule, it has the concept of "difficulty" and "study value" for each word / grammar concept, and the algorithm tries to give you a full "readunit" of "native input" which will balance the two. "Spaced repetition" emerges naturally from the model, and if you go away for a week (or 6 months), it knows you've forgotten some things, so it gradually refreshes your memory. And because you're reading actual native text, there's something which pulls you in. It's in closed beta now; the first public language (MVP) will be in Biblical Greek, but the second one (if it happens, maybe in a year or two) will be in Mandarin; and hopefully there will be other ones after that. There's a sign-up form you can use to be notified for updates. https://www.laleolanguage.com https://www.laleolanguage.com

Bluestein 2y ago
> But that means that if the algorithm is working properly, every single card is hard. Could the algo be tweaked so as to regulate the "closeness to the edge", ergo, the difficulty? PS. Then again, something tells me what makes SR so effective *might just be* (or be related to) that "difficulty".-

jwells89 2y ago

For this reason, I’ve seen it recommended in various language learning guides to use Anki in a manner that’s complementary to consumption of media in the target language. The general idea is to do Anki-only for the earliest bootstrapping stages (super basic vocab) and switch to media+Anki as early as possible. The media gives both context and real experience with the language while Anki serves to commit the words you’ve read/heard (even those not used quite as commonly) to memory. I’ve only just dipped my toe into this method but have seen many reports of success with it from others.

bunderbunder 2y ago
You might find, as you get deeper into the language learning journey, that this approach to practice is most popular among an extremely vocal group of intermediate language learners. But people who've been doing it for a long time tend to gravitate toward the parent poster's opinion. I've also noticed that assiduously sentence mining your input and then drilling it in Anki is much more popular among people whose media consumption is almost exclusively video content. This resonates with the work of SLA researchers such as Paul Noble who've found that extensive reading is easily the fastest way to grow vocabulary in a new language. There's even some (scant) evidence that SRS combined with extensive reading is less effective than extensive reading alone for long-term vocabulary growth and retention. It suggests, to me at least, that heavy reliance on SRS for vocabulary retention past the beginner stages of learning a language may not be a universal optimal path, so much as a backup option for people who don't enjoy reading. Like AlchemistCamp I do still like it a lot for specific things, and I'm not here to wag fingers at people who enjoy it (Above all else, make sure you're enjoying your study routine! Getting there should be 100% of the fun.), but I do still worry that many Anki users have a serious case of golden hammer syndrome.
- jwells89 2y ago
  For sure, by no means am I married to the method and am very flexible and open to trying various approaches. I do believe however that a little bit of structure can be helpful in the beginner to intermediate levels, where it's less likely that one has formed a habit/urges to watch/listen to foreign media without subtitles or read untranslated print media. It's a real slog when you don't have a decent arsenal of words to work with.