Conjunctions are kind of a pain in the ass. Also, I started using Anki as a precaution for when I start going into a dormant state. I actually came to find it as a treat of some sort, but I’m neurodivergent, so…
There are some words that I already know the meaning to before I could retrieve the English word in my mind, those are what I put into “Easy”, the ones where the English word comes first I put into “Good”, and those where I stumble on or shuffle through is “Hard”.
(Btw for those using AnkiDroid, Learning Ahead limit is automatically set at 20 so when you press ‘Again’ the card will immediately be available, which defeats the purpose of spaced repetition. So, I set it at 0.)
For once I feel like I actually might be doing sustainable progress. Doing Anki requires minimal setup and I made sure daily study on there will take only a few minutes at most. I have this problem where for months I would be obsessed with the language I’m learning and make huge progress but then on some months I am dormant.
I used to learn Japanese but of course, I fell short on the kanji, and I haven’t played Japanese MMOs in a while so I haven’t had any reinforcement in a while. But with Latin I actually learned how to spontaneously generate sentences. My internal thoughts often fire randomly and sometimes it’s in Latin. I never had that with Japanese!
There is just something so satisfying with the thought of gaining an additional ability to understand more of the world. I have read and was moved by a fanfiction on Ao3 that was written in French and only because there was Google Translate. But say, if someday such services no longer existed, how would I be able to understand and read it again?
Welcome to the Anki journey! I agree it’s really good for those stretches where you might be less active in studying. Just be careful not to let it pile up too bad - then it can feel overwhelming and be a bit of a discouragement.
Like you mentioned the starts and stops - totally get that. As far as Anki, when I’m excited about learning and I’m on it, I think “why not just do a hundred new cards today while I’m into, and let the SRS balance it out over time”. But the important thing is to consistently do some reviews every day so that doesn’t bite you.
There are some words that I already know the meaning to before I could retrieve the English word in my mind, those are what I put into “Easy”, the ones where the English word comes first I put into “Good”, and those where I stumble on or shuffle through is “Hard”.
I do the same, and it seems to work out pretty well. All the advice I’ve read says to just do yes/no, but I’m not sure why.
(Btw for those using AnkiDroid, Learning Ahead limit is automatically set at 20 so when you press ‘Again’ the card will immediately be available, which defeats the purpose of spaced repetition. So, I set it at 0.)
I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s too bad actually. Depends on your goals, but for me the point is long-term retention of words. I find that usually if I learned a word enough to pass now, I’ll still know it in 20 minutes, so the lookahead doesn’t hurt. That said, I did add an extra initial.learning step to mine - a 2hr one so that I can get another review later the same day maybe. Not sure it’s worth it tho, it slows down the pipeline a bit.
Ive been feeling incredibly stuck recently. I’ve kinda fallen into the trap of learning vocabulary just to learn vocabulary and despite knowing what feels like a lot of words, I can’t actually understand whenever anyone says anything to me.
I cant stop trying to translate the stuff in my head and by the time I’m done with one sentence the next sentence is already over and I missed it.
Started reading some level 2 (Japanese) Tadoku (paperback) books this week. I had received some level 3s last year, but finally saw the 2s on sale a couple months ago. Breath of fresh air going down to stories at my level.
Feeling more improvement understanding podcasts. My attention is kinda shot for videos though. Feels like I get bored too fast with learner videos, but don’t get much out of anime or native content yet.
Work hosted a brief primer to American Sign Language this week. I didn’t retain much of the little bit they shared, but fun thing to get a taste of.
