I have been waiting months to write this post, because I wanted
to make sure that I gave you the best tips and that I genuinely knew how to
best use Anki. In case you have never heard of it, Anki is an application,
which you can download online for free, or on your phone for a decent price. I first
found out about it when I read a book that gave practical tips on ways that you
could start making a better use of time when learning languages. Although I have
not been able to use it every day, due to being a full-time student and doing a
lot of extracurricular activities, I have used it for a total of over a year,
so I can confidently say that Anki alone is one of the most valuable tools of which
I have taken advantage over the years. I have not only increased my vocabulary,
but also now know how to teach myself abstract words that are harder to master.
The way that it is used is very simple. When you open up the
application, you have three tabs from which to choose: Decks, Add, or Browse. If
you click “Decks”, you can directly click on one of your decks and start learning
a fixed number of cards a day. For example, in my deck named “Deutsch”, it
currently says that I have 30 new cards and 0 new cards. This means that, based
off of the amount of cards that I want to learn per day, I should review all 30
of those cards today.
If you click on the tool icon to the right of where it says “New”,
you have 4 options: Rename, Options, Export, and Delete. If you want to change
the name of one of your deck of cards, simply click “Rename” and type in what
you want that deck to be called. In the options tab, you can choose “Default”
if you feel that you can study the amount of cards that the program is
defaulted as. You can also choose “Show new cards in random order”, or “Show
new cards in order added” under “Order”. Lastly, you simply choose how many
cards you want to learn a day in a certain graduation interval (ex: 1 day), as
well as change the easy interval and the percent of your starting ease.
I usually learn 10, or 20 cards a day, but what is great about
this application, is if you ever feel that you cannot learn, say 20 cards a day
like you originally set out to do, you can adjust that every day if you feel
like it is necessary to do so. Anki is an application that you can adjust based
on your particular needs and does not make you do something that you do not
want to do.
Now that I have covered the basics as to how Anki works, you
are probably wondering how I actually use it. Although I will try to do my best
to explain how this application works, please make sure to watch the video that
I attached above, so that you know how to properly use it step by step. Otherwise,
you will probably be very confused and will not understand what I feel like any
language learner should know how to use. The first step to adding cards to a
deck that you name is to click “Add” and to click on one of the decks that you
have, so that you are assured that the new cards that you will add are placed
into the correct deck.
Then, I go to www.google.com/images
and search for an unknown word in its original language (keep in mind that this
step is absolutely crucial if you want to get the most out of this
application). For example, if I did not know that “la Estrella” were “the star”
in Spanish, I would type in “la estrella” and would find the image that most
appealed to me. In other words, I try finding images that are not only visually
appealing, but that also help me remember what the word means without translating
it from Spanish to English. I then pu the word in its original language where
it says “Back”, or I will copy and paste a phrase that is attached to an image
and leave the word that I am trying to learn underlined like this: ___________.
Although this process can be time-consuming, what is great
about it is that there is truly no wrong way to do it. You do not have to add
100 new words every day. Instead, you have to be consistent and try to use it
every day when you are starting if you can. If you cannot, then try using it
several times a week. It should not take you more than 15 minutes to study the
amount of words that you asked Anki to show you, and it is a really fun and
interactive way to expand your vocabulary. Instead of simply using the
traditional notecard method that can be tedious to write and use, you are
using, reading, and saying new words in your target language. This forces you
to switch from, say German mode to English mode.
What is most important about this process is that you search
for words, or even phrases of the words that you want to learn in your original
language. Avoid translating words as much as possible, and only do so to
quickly check if you know the direct translation from your target language to
your native language, but avoid putting in any words, or even images that
contain words in your native language if you want to expand your vocabulary by
twofold, or threefold.
I hope that you found this post practical and helpful. Have
an amazing week and continue enjoying summer!
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