5 ms·

There's a large number of prebuilt Anki decks available here as well if this is useful for anyone exploring the space - https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search

by codyb 1y ago

There's a large number of prebuilt Anki decks available here as well if this is useful for anyone exploring the space - https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search

piva00 1y ago
As far as I know about decks for language learning, you should be building your own. Pre-built decks don't work so well exactly because you don't spend the time to create the links that work for you personally, I know a few people who tried to shortcut it by using pre-built decks but gave up after noticing it wasn't working well. It sucks though, it's also the one thing that makes me constantly not be consistent using Anki, I get tired of creating cards and stop for a while.
- pessimizer 1y ago
  I used only pre-"built" decks and got to C1 in Spanish. One was actually prebuilt, the other was literally algorithmically generated disposable clozes. That, one graded reader and comic books got me to being comfortable in an L1->L1 dictionary, and then it's over. You don't need language learning material any more, just material. People are just repeating this advice about making your own decks, and it's based in nothing but having had it repeated to them. Spaced repetition is boiling in pseudoscience and ancient studies that don't say much other than that there's a forgetting curve. Most people are just parroting stuff they read on the Supermemo wiki (or somebody read off the Supermemo wiki and repeated to them like they came up with it), and all of that is just thoughts off the top of one guy's head. His innovation is that he wrote a program to do Leitner boxes before he had ever heard of a Leitner box, but people treat every word like gospel. The only five things I can say for language learning is to go really hard on systems in a new language that are completely unknown to you (like Romance conjugations for an English speaker); only drill sentences, not individual words; always say your Anki answers out loud, and read out loud as much as you can; comic books have pictures, too; and once you get comfortable in an L2->L2 dictionary, you're a more comfortable reader than a lot of natives. ----- * Random Anki decks for a few European languages: https://sookocheff.com/post/language/cloze-deletions/ https://sookocheff.com/post/language/cloze-deletions/ (Edit: the lovely thing about 10K algorithmically generated clozes is that they're utterly disposable, unlike cards that you make yourself. If one is a leech, forget about it. You'll see another one just like it when you get to the point that it won't be a leech for you.) * Instructions on how to generate your own in other languages, for developers: https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating-cloze-deletions-for-learning-a-language-with-anki/ https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating-cloze-d... (You could probably point out the above URL to an LLM and it would generate the code for you.) * Anki to learn Romance conjugations first: https://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_ultimate_spanish_conjugation.php https://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_ultimate_spanish_conjuga...
  - mtalantikite 1y ago
    Did you get through the entire KOFI deck for Spanish? I started the French one, but didn't make it past a month or two before I fell off. I'm thinking of going through the French -> Spanish Assimil course soon and might give the KOFI deck another go, this time in Spanish.
    - pessimizer 1y ago
      I very much did, and sticking with it was the best choice I made. You will get very very fast at it after a while, and the first verbs are the hardest and most irregular (and you should spend the most time on them.) Throwing in the messy clozes after doing your conjugations is relaxing, and you can do as many of those as you're in the mood for, whereas the conjugations are systematically introduced and you shouldn't speed it up too much. Took me 7 months, but complete mastery. But literally some of the conjugations from the first hard couple months will bother you until the end. I feel even better than natives sometimes because they learn conjugations in order at school, and when asked to recall them out of order (or hop from form to form) get confused. Once you have conjugations, you can read anything with a dictionary (and the online dle is the best dictionary I've ever used.) I'm about to start again with KOFI French, but I had to do a lot of work to get my mouth and ears adjusted to hearing French as anything other then murmurs, and to be able to read (luckily for me, French is the opposite of perl and read-only instead of write-only.) There's a lot of stuff in French I want to read; reading all of the stuff translated into Spanish from French (but never into English) has got my beak wet. Also, Spanish-language comic books will make you forget about English-language comic books. And they are very online, examples: http://columberos.blogspot.com/ http://columberos.blogspot.com/ and https://comicsmexicanosdejediskater.blogspot.com/ https://comicsmexicanosdejediskater.blogspot.com/ Also lots of other good material for vos: https://ahira.com.ar/ https://ahira.com.ar/ including https://ahira.com.ar/revistas/skorpio/ https://ahira.com.ar/revistas/skorpio/ and https://ahira.com.ar/revistas/hora-cero-suplemento-semanal/ https://ahira.com.ar/revistas/hora-cero-suplemento-semanal/ which is a landmark of literature that is too good for us (El Eternauta spans the entire length of the series.)
      - codyb 1y ago
- codyb 1y ago
  Ah, that's interesting. I've definitely learned a ton through the vocabulary and conjugation decks and they're a great way to continue learning even on days when there's little other stimulus. I think what's key is that I'm taking the words and conjugation rules I'm learning and using them relatively quickly, often that day or that week. I.E., I'll come across words in Anki, then hear them in a baseball broadcast or see them in a news article. Or I'll recognize what tense something is because of the rules. So it's supplemental, and maybe that's why it's sticking better. I don't think I'd want to create decks constantly, I created one 140 card deck and that was enough. Finally, I do frequently use memory tricks to create associations so maybe my experience with memory castles, mnemonics, and other techniques (which I use on cards I forget frequently to create links I'm unable to create quickly on my own (or to differentiate similar words (or words that are the same but in different tenses))). Yea, it's _work_!
- borroka 1y ago
  It's not true that “you should build your own,” especially in the beginning. There's no need for complex customizations when the student knows little or nothing about the language. Start with excellent, generic decks already created by others and thank them. You can suspend cards, delete some, add new ones. Especially in the beginning, it is necessary to eliminate any friction, any reason that could stop the work on the skill (“it's so boring to create my own cards”). After you know, say, 1k or 2k words, you can think about the next steps.
mtalantikite 1y ago
For sure! I've gone through some pre-made verb conjugation and vocab decks -- and actually have been meaning to upload one I made for learning Bengali script -- but I still find grinding Anki decks to not be that effective for me. Which sucks, because all you hear is how magic Anki is, but I guess I've always struggled with rote memorization.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

by codyb 1y ago

There's a large number of prebuilt Anki decks available here as well if this is useful for anyone exploring the space - https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search

piva00 1y ago

As far as I know about decks for language learning, you should be building your own. Pre-built decks don't work so well exactly because you don't spend the time to create the links that work for you personally, I know a few people who tried to shortcut it by using pre-built decks but gave up after noticing it wasn't working well. It sucks though, it's also the one thing that makes me constantly not be consistent using Anki, I get tired of creating cards and stop for a while.

pessimizer 1y ago
I used only pre-"built" decks and got to C1 in Spanish. One was actually prebuilt, the other was literally algorithmically generated disposable clozes. That, one graded reader and comic books got me to being comfortable in an L1->L1 dictionary, and then it's over. You don't need language learning material any more, just material. People are just repeating this advice about making your own decks, and it's based in nothing but having had it repeated to them. Spaced repetition is boiling in pseudoscience and ancient studies that don't say much other than that there's a forgetting curve. Most people are just parroting stuff they read on the Supermemo wiki (or somebody read off the Supermemo wiki and repeated to them like they came up with it), and all of that is just thoughts off the top of one guy's head. His innovation is that he wrote a program to do Leitner boxes before he had ever heard of a Leitner box, but people treat every word like gospel. The only five things I can say for language learning is to go really hard on systems in a new language that are completely unknown to you (like Romance conjugations for an English speaker); only drill sentences, not individual words; always say your Anki answers out loud, and read out loud as much as you can; comic books have pictures, too; and once you get comfortable in an L2->L2 dictionary, you're a more comfortable reader than a lot of natives. ----- * Random Anki decks for a few European languages: https://sookocheff.com/post/language/cloze-deletions/ https://sookocheff.com/post/language/cloze-deletions/ (Edit: the lovely thing about 10K algorithmically generated clozes is that they're utterly disposable, unlike cards that you make yourself. If one is a leech, forget about it. You'll see another one just like it when you get to the point that it won't be a leech for you.) * Instructions on how to generate your own in other languages, for developers: https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating-cloze-deletions-for-learning-a-language-with-anki/ https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating-cloze-d... (You could probably point out the above URL to an LLM and it would generate the code for you.) * Anki to learn Romance conjugations first: https://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_ultimate_spanish_conjugation.php https://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_ultimate_spanish_conjuga...
- mtalantikite 1y ago
  Did you get through the entire KOFI deck for Spanish? I started the French one, but didn't make it past a month or two before I fell off. I'm thinking of going through the French -> Spanish Assimil course soon and might give the KOFI deck another go, this time in Spanish.
  - pessimizer 1y ago
    I very much did, and sticking with it was the best choice I made. You will get very very fast at it after a while, and the first verbs are the hardest and most irregular (and you should spend the most time on them.) Throwing in the messy clozes after doing your conjugations is relaxing, and you can do as many of those as you're in the mood for, whereas the conjugations are systematically introduced and you shouldn't speed it up too much. Took me 7 months, but complete mastery. But literally some of the conjugations from the first hard couple months will bother you until the end. I feel even better than natives sometimes because they learn conjugations in order at school, and when asked to recall them out of order (or hop from form to form) get confused. Once you have conjugations, you can read anything with a dictionary (and the online dle is the best dictionary I've ever used.) I'm about to start again with KOFI French, but I had to do a lot of work to get my mouth and ears adjusted to hearing French as anything other then murmurs, and to be able to read (luckily for me, French is the opposite of perl and read-only instead of write-only.) There's a lot of stuff in French I want to read; reading all of the stuff translated into Spanish from French (but never into English) has got my beak wet. Also, Spanish-language comic books will make you forget about English-language comic books. And they are very online, examples: http://columberos.blogspot.com/ http://columberos.blogspot.com/ and https://comicsmexicanosdejediskater.blogspot.com/ https://comicsmexicanosdejediskater.blogspot.com/ Also lots of other good material for vos: https://ahira.com.ar/ https://ahira.com.ar/ including https://ahira.com.ar/revistas/skorpio/ https://ahira.com.ar/revistas/skorpio/ and https://ahira.com.ar/revistas/hora-cero-suplemento-semanal/ https://ahira.com.ar/revistas/hora-cero-suplemento-semanal/ which is a landmark of literature that is too good for us (El Eternauta spans the entire length of the series.)
    - codyb 1y ago
codyb 1y ago
Ah, that's interesting. I've definitely learned a ton through the vocabulary and conjugation decks and they're a great way to continue learning even on days when there's little other stimulus. I think what's key is that I'm taking the words and conjugation rules I'm learning and using them relatively quickly, often that day or that week. I.E., I'll come across words in Anki, then hear them in a baseball broadcast or see them in a news article. Or I'll recognize what tense something is because of the rules. So it's supplemental, and maybe that's why it's sticking better. I don't think I'd want to create decks constantly, I created one 140 card deck and that was enough. Finally, I do frequently use memory tricks to create associations so maybe my experience with memory castles, mnemonics, and other techniques (which I use on cards I forget frequently to create links I'm unable to create quickly on my own (or to differentiate similar words (or words that are the same but in different tenses))). Yea, it's _work_!
borroka 1y ago
It's not true that “you should build your own,” especially in the beginning. There's no need for complex customizations when the student knows little or nothing about the language. Start with excellent, generic decks already created by others and thank them. You can suspend cards, delete some, add new ones. Especially in the beginning, it is necessary to eliminate any friction, any reason that could stop the work on the skill (“it's so boring to create my own cards”). After you know, say, 1k or 2k words, you can think about the next steps.

mtalantikite 1y ago

For sure! I've gone through some pre-made verb conjugation and vocab decks -- and actually have been meaning to upload one I made for learning Bengali script -- but I still find grinding Anki decks to not be that effective for me. Which sucks, because all you hear is how magic Anki is, but I guess I've always struggled with rote memorization.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]