I study flash cards from time to time, usually after reading, when new words are still fresh in my mind. I'm not a fan of spaced repetition determined by an algorithm. Too many words to learn. I prefer to spend my time letting my brain get used to the language, listening, reading and speaking. --- FREE Language Learning Resources 10 Secrets of Language Learning ⇢ www.thelinguist.com LingQ Grammar Guides ⇢ www.lingq.com/en/grammar-resource/ My blog ⇢ blog.thelinguist.com/ The LingQ blog ⇢ www.lingq.com/blog/ My Podcast ⇢ soundcloud.com/lingostevepodcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/learn-languages-with-steve-kaufmann/id1437851870 --- Social Media Instagram ⇢ instagram.com/lingosteve_/ TikTok ⇢ www.tiktok.com/@lingosteve Facebook ⇢ facebook.com/lingosteve Twitter ⇢ twitter.com/lingosteve LingQ Discord ⇢ discord.gg/ShPTjyhwTN
oh, one of the "experts" on youtube that "learned XXX language in YYY months" was like "I was studying 3 HOURS of flashcards every day". Even if it is true, it is a so bad advice for any normal human being
Hi Steve, im a happy LingQ user, thanks for this amazing app, I’m on it for 4 month now, very good resource, but I personally find srs very useful in the context of phrases, a good way of learning grammar and conjugations effortlessly + hundreds of words, 3-5minutes/day = 150 Words reviewed per day. On the + side I’ve noticed it improved my capacity to 1.understand meaning faster, and 2.activates words as well when I speak Portuguese with friends, and Romanian, which never happened in English when I was reading and listening a lot more, but no srs, my known vocabulary did improve slowly. I read now 5-10pages a day in my target languages, but coupled with srs, the amount of words recognisable and then activated improves significantly every month, I which LingQ could have srs similar system as anki, I would use it with pleasure instaid of using another app, thanks for sharing your content 😀 any news on adding Urdu to Linqg? All the best in Palm Springs
@@williambudd2850 zero evidence that SRS users acquire a language faster than non-SRS users. In fact I've seen the opposite. There is a reason that SRS is the least enjoyable part of language learning for most people. Artificial. Life is a natural SRS which ties events and emotions relevant to you. I have yet to see any evidence that SRS helps anyone acquire language any faster. It helps for medical school because that's 80% memorizing facts. Language learning isn't that.
Steve. Ignore the comments about your red eyes. We're here for your wisdom not your fashion advice :D Sit wherever makes you feel most comfortable and continue to share your ruminations on the process of language learning!
I think some people don't know how to use Anki. In order to really learn you have to read something in the language, get the words that you don't know and put a phrase with that word in Anki. That's it.
SRS are a great way to *start* learning a vocabulary. I used them last year for storing in my memory the first 600 - 700 words of the German language (I used Language Drops first and Memrise second). From that point on, they become a lot less useful. At this moment (German CEFR A2/B1 level), for example, I'm using Readle on Android to read some simplified German, I watch a lot of videos on RUclips and I read some books. No individual tool or technique can be enough for learning a language. It is always a matter of "mix".
@@futurez12 expressions and phrases that relate to things I say in English. Every person has a bunch of go to expressions and phrases they use in their everyday life. I find the translations of the things I say and study those. Especially the ones that are expressed differently than in English. The list of things is a lot smaller than you'd think.
Sure, but specific phrases (for a specific topic) I think are best revised by reading lots of material on it. It’s the only way to keep seeing those low frequency words repeatedly, and I think it’s better cos you’ll see them in new contexts thus strengthening the memory.
There's many things you say that I find very interesting. And I agree with you on most parts. I see SRS as a concentrated exposure to a language. Mostly efficient for a beginner when the brains didn't create theses links between all parts of the language and especially useful for a very unfamiliar language. I'm French and I use it for Japanese. I think it's very powerful in my situation with some necessary tweaks to be efficient. First it shouldn't take like all your day. That's pointless. (I've just done 2h immersion and 20 mins of anki reviews (and the time creating the cards, I'm not sure 5-10mins maybe, there's tool to help you with that to be more efficient luckly)). It should be used with a frequency list to add only most frequent words at first (and then I think you can add less frequent word because it'll be easier to retain them, with the knowledge you acquired with the language). Only sentences, not words. You need context, you need to have these links. SRS are exposure for me, like reading text would be. I'm not sure if it's that any different than reading a text over and over (where you obviously can't comprehend everything, where in Anki you should grasps the meaning of most of the sentences). And you shouldn't add everything you see, if you guess the meaning of a word when you first see it, it's pointless to add the word. The majority of your time should be spent on immersion. That's obvious.
Agree with mostly everything, however I also think Anki can be useful if you're very advanced and you're trying to remember words that don't come up that often. For example my German is fluent but in my deck right now I've got words like "unterschwellig" (subliminal). I may read 10 German books without coming across that word but I still want to know it, and Anki is the most efficient way to make sure it sticks.
@@sbonfiglioli Yeah that's probably true. I'm still a beginner in japanese and I didn't have the chance to use Anki in a different context so I wasn't sure in what ways it could be beneficial. I think I'll still use it in an avanced stage.
You are absolutely right! I've been using Anki for over a year and it is monopolising all of my study time to the extent that I have very little time to learn new content. Anki has become gruelling for me so I've stopped putting new words into it and I'm using the LingQ method now. It's more fun!
Because frequency drops off so rapidly is why I think an SRS can be helpful. By putting a word in the SRS (whole sentences clearly illustrating the context only, never isolated words), I can usually recognize the word almost instantly when I see it the 2nd time. I still might have to see a naturally a few times before I really got it, but my impression is judicious use of an SRS can help.. It's more of a booster to help make your other input more efficient. I think something like 5-10 minutes a day can be helpful.. Every minute you spend not getting input better be something that makes your other minutes of input more efficient... That's my current thinking but it could change.
I like flash cards, but I don't spend all my time on memorizing them for new words. The only thing I consistently use Anki for is learning Chinese characters and their pronunciation. Rote memorization is really the only option for those. I have picked up a few here and there from reading, but not nearly as many as I have from Anki.
true, in about a month I think ive picked up about 20 or 30 kanji from reading alone. In that same time ive gotten a 90% retention rate of ~300 kanji doing 10 a day through rtk anki cards. Now I havent even seen most of those in reading yet, but the information is there when I need it, and if ive learnt the meaning of a kanji through anki I am much more likely to remember that words readings through immersion.
I can't believe people would comment on your appearance. Palm Springs is magic. I hope you have had/will have time to go to Joshua Tree. Totally worth it.
I've found Anki to be an incredibly useful tool if used correctly. I always make two-sided sentence cards in my target language, like so: memorise ______ To learn a language, one must _____ thousands of words This is way better than trying to learn a word out of context. Anki should not, however, take up the bulk of your time learning a language. It should be 80% (or more) reading, listening, and speaking, and Anki the rest of the time. What you are doing with Anki is reminding your brain that this word exists. The way you REALLY get it to stick is by seeing it a few times in context. However I've had plenty of words that I encountered only once in a book, added to the deck, learned it that way, and either recognised them right away the next time I encountered them, or was able to speak them wihtout encountering them again. If the choice is whether to do ONLY Anki or ONLY comprehensible input (also known as reading and listening), then obviously go for comprehensible input. However I think a mutually self-reinforcing combination of the two is incredibly powerful and can bring you very quick results.
I used Anki before I got on LingQ. I had 700 cards, I think, before I couldn't take it anymore; I didn't want to make new ones and I didn't want to study them anymore. It did work, but only until that point when I got bored with it. (Although I did find that I wasn't very good at recalling the words in a new context. I think I memorized the sentence it was in more than I remembered the word and what it meant.) That being said, I do review the LingQ flashcards once every day or two. I quickly found I couldn't even attempt to keep up with all the cards and that because they're in alphabetical order, I tended to do the same ones over and over again because they defaulted to the top of the list. So what I did was go through and tag the words (mostly verbs) that I thought were really useful and that I really want to learn. So, when I have time, I run through only those. They are a manageable amount (and will, hopefully, drop off one day as I improve them) and I just get in some extra views of tricky words. So many Polish words look just alike to me because they love putting a small number of prefixes on everything. In this case, the flashcards being in alphabetical order actually helps because it shows me words that look alike in the same session so I have to learn to pay attention to the root. (I used to do something similar in Anki where I would make a sentence out of two words that were very close so I could learn to tell them apart. If I had them on two separate cards, I would have constantly had them confused. But I still remember Sędzia w sądzie (judge in the court) and ciężary są ciężkie (weights are heavy).)
I really like spaced repetition! And I've made a really good flashcard system with chunks, full sentences and even reading exercices inbuild. Because I won't remember things that show up once in a book and then the next time three books later. And I can see my vocabulary growing this way. But... I don't enjoy doing this for hours and hours! The *only* problem with spaced repetition is, in my opinion, that the growing vocabulary also means: More and more words need to be repeated. For me the problem that making such fine flashcards is time consuming does no longer exist, because, yes, I want to learn new vocabulary, but I have no time for that because I have to repeat the old ones. Well, more than 1500 for English and over 700 for Spanish, in less than a year. I think it'll take the rest of the year to kick them somehow out of my way.
It's a bit late for a reply, but nonetheless, here's how I deal with the problem of increasing amounts of reviews/day: My benchmark is not to learn X amount of new cards/day but to keep the amount of reviews/day constant. Let's say you'd stop learning new cards your amount of reviews/day should start to decrease (with some delay, let's say 2 weeks). If the reviews/day number falls below a threshold, say 50 reviews/day, then you can start learning one new card/day. If after say 2 weeks of doing so your reviews/day is still below the threshold you can start learning 2 new cards/day. If after say 2 weeks the reviews/day get above the threshold you decrease the number of new cards/day...and so on.
@@the_real_glabnurb Thank you, it's never too late for a good piece of advice! And there are other people out there with this kind of problem. Since the time I wrote the comment above, I already decided to reduce the reviews. I don't do it the systematic way you recommend, because I use only a special kind of "dead time" for it now. As long as there are reviews enough, I don't take new vocabulary in. And I doubled the spaces between reviews. I used to use a pattern of 2, 4, 8, 15, 30 (days) and so on. Now I use 2, 7, 30 (days), 3 (months) and so on. Of course that means to accept making more mistakes! But I don't see that as a problem any longer. The problem was too many reviews of vocabulary I already knew.
SRS is not as bad as some people could think. It's still a good idea if you want to have less headache and have some fresh easy start with CORE 1-2K words. But no point to have more words than 2k, because it will have lots of vocabulary you will not need at all.
First of all, I just want to say that you look for very healthy and happy Steve. Hopefully the negative comments were not meant to attack you because if so, they should not be given any stock. (Also the bat story was wild) Secondly, I really appreciate this perspective! When I first started learning Mandarin, I relied solely on flashcards and pure "test" memorization. I think as I've gone through the process and picked up more and more, I realize that I really enjoy the flashcard memorization style ONLY at the very basic levels (i.e. the first 100 words or sentences). Once I have this small foundation, I agree. I think they become the antithesis to what they're there to do, which is help you become accustomed to seeing and using these terms. If you have too many flashcards, it becomes about getting through the deck of cards and not learning and understanding their content, imo.
After seeing your video I will definitely avoid using Anki often, i have been using it for some time and feel it’s not working anymore. I have also found that words stick better when I am reading content I like.
Another great video - as I navigate different methods that work for me - flash cards bore me too - I am really liking LingQ - one of my top 3 tools! Thanks!
Love your content Steve. You are so inspiring. I think during the first few months of learning a language, when I am super excited, it's nice to use Anki to force myself to remember boring stuff like: numbers, day of the weeks, etc. I feel that my excitement can defeat the boring moment during that few months. It's more efficient to learn things like numbers and days of the week from flashcards. But other than these words, I do agree 100% that it's much more fun and sustainable to learn naturally from interesting content.
In my opinion, spaced repetition system is really good especially when it supports and completes our immersion in language and culture. If we only do SRS without immersion, it is not that good, and it is even worse if we do not create our own personal flashcards with some "contextual sentences" in order to learn well vocabulary. So it is important to keep immerged in language and culture (listening, reading, speaking), daily, which allows SRS to show its biggest efficiency. And when times passes, when we think our language's level is enough, we have to learn to "detach" from SRS, gradually, until we do not need it anymore. Just a matter of "balance" to find between SRS and immersion. Autrement, j'ai bien remarqué vos petits clins d"oeil en français sur "Le Petit Prince", ainsi que vos commentaires sur la "récession économique", le "reconfinement" et la COVID en France, sans oublier d'autres petites références dans certaines de vos récentes vidéos. Cela donnerait presque envie que vous refassiez une vidéo en français. ;-) Bon courage : j'espère tout de même que votre pays gère cette période délicate nettement mieux que le mien (mais j'avoue ne pas trop suivre l'actualité à ce sujet afin de me préserver et de ne pas devenir fou, sachant que les voyages à l'étranger commencent sérieusement à me manquer).
Now i can understand more of korean language. For me Now is so easy learn with words in context. Like the first course in LinQ "이 코스는 흔히 쓰이는 표현으로 이루어진 이야기예요." The sentence and words still in My brain. 선생님 너무 많이 감사합니다 ㅎㅎ 너의들 비데오를 너무 사랑해요😊
Pay no attention to those negative comments. I love the awesome content you put out. As an aspiring language learner, your videos have been really helpful.
The flashcards could be in the form of sentences. And you could delete/suspend sentences that you understand (i.e. the equivalent of being able to recognize all the words in a sentence at LingQ). You could also create flashcard decks based on books for example. What I often do after having gone through a flashcard deck containing the 5-10k most common words in the context of sentences. I will start converting ebooks to flashcards (this can be done in a matter of 5-10 minutes using Word to parse the book into individual sentences, copying to Sheets, exporting as CSV then importing into an Anki Note template). I like it because I can delete/suspend all the sentences I can understand (counteracting the downside you mentioned of doing needless repetition), and gain some repetition on the sentences I understand less well. The downside of all this is of course the learning curve and the necessary technical knowledge. The benefit with LingQ in contrast would be that everything technical is essentially done for you in advance. I would never use SRS with individual words or phrases. Always using full sentences if I am trying to acquire meaning. So in this way SRS is not necessarily just a bunch of words scattered randomly. Since you can read a book in the correct sequence first. And then simply get som SRS repetition on the sentences you understood less well. And then you simply suspend/delete sentences as you recognize that you can understand the sentences.
Thank you. I watched this and one of your linked videos. I hate memorization, so I've avoided ANKI, Memrise, Busuu and so on. But your "permission" means a lot, because you're so right about so many other things. I can focus my time and effort on things that I enjoy -- and that help me learn.
I think it comes back to one of the things you said at the beginning: You should enjoy the language acquisition process. I’ve tried Anki and Memrise. Found the activity boring. Quit. Felt guilty about it for a bit. Decided life is too short and time too precious. Don’t do SRS anymore. Thanks for another interesting vid.
I can only do SRS flashcard review for like 10-15 mins before getting bored. I think its a great efficient way to revise for a test if you need to study specific information for school. For language learning I like to make flashcards for specific vocab, not every word i don't know. I have a Harry Potter SRS deck of vocabulary I wanted to remember when I was reading Harry Potter in French. I think if SRS is done in a short, specific, targeted way its helpful and fun for me. Otherwise its just another boring drill! But for overall learning i do activities more stimulating like Steve says listening and reading, as well as movies and watching vloggers in my target language. I have seen such an improvement in my french from reading books I already liked in English in French! excited for this journey!
Having spent a lot of time with Anki and many of its add-ons, creating decks and managing them long-term is a chore (even managing shared decks). It’s ok for more discrete information such as STEM material, but for languages I haven’t used it at all. I’d probably use it for non-Latin alphabets and characters, but I haven’t the need yet. Repeated exposure to the language and time is all you need, until you’re at a high level. At this point you can take on deliberate, targeted training to improve upon any aspect of your use of the language that you’d like.
srs really does make you wonder if it’s worth it. My only success with it is actually reading and listening to a crap ton of sentences. Around 6000 sentences separated over 600 cards, all from the dictionary of japanese grammar (pre-made deck). So basically I did my reading and listening on anki and used it as my reminder to review my comprehensible input. My sort of mini stories you could say. I get really bored playing visual novels so that deck was my next best thing since the difficulty started from basic sentences to complex paragraphs. The happiness I get when I understand a whole paragraph or even just a sentence is so good and helped motivate me to spend more than 3 hours a day reading and listening since I could feel tangible improvement. I’ve recently finished the deck 2 weeks ago and I am comfortable just watching anime that the ambiguity is tolerable enough for me to enjoy. Definitely a massive change for me compared to two months ago.
I am thinking of instead of doing SRS with flashcards, I'll do it by reading the lesson a few times on the day that I would do the flashcards for all the individual words in it. I call it spaced reading.
I use SRS (specifically Anki), not to learn individual words but to learn complete sentences from my mother tounge (English) into my target language. I create these myself either from transcribed conversations, or sentences based on things that I want to be able to express. The new sentences I create are based on structures that seem new, interesting or complex. Typically, I will only start learning 4-5 sentences each day, which means I can usually complete my daily session in under 20 minutes. If you have ever used Busuu, this will sound familiar and indeed, this is where I got the idea. I think that one of the problems with getting past the 'intermediate plateau' is that there is a tendency to stick with the simpler structures. I have found that drilling more complex structures really helps the difficult aspects of the language stick.
I agree entirely. I initially built an Anki deck for French mostly by choosing words from the top 700 or so and putting them into short sentences to give context. More recently I started building another deck based on either everyday useful phrases (usually only 2 -3 words) or really useful bits of syntax - again, placing them in SHORT sentences, otherwise the reviews become daunting and tedious. I'm finding this latter deck is building the patterns in my brain that Steve talks about.
Anki for 3000 most frequent words + glossika + busuu + innovative language + netflix + youtube. Super best combination. Great result in 2 years. I speak 5 languages. Thanks.
Just in terms of your comment about Anki, you can read for the 3000 most frequently used words. For instance, subtitles from shows, articles and books cover you beyond those 3000 words, and you can learn something from the material, have a laugh, etc while doing it. Clearly though, from the rest of your listed materials you likely never would need Anki in the first place.
I've learned six foreign languages in the course of mine and I found flashcards to be an invaluable method at every level. I used them to acquire a foundation of the most frequently used words, and then I added the vocabulary that was most interesting/useful to me. They're especially helpful for learning languages that don't have a lot of cognate words. Going from one Romance language to another, or one Slavic language to another is nothing like going from French to Japanese, for example. We could compare flashcards to exercise: some people just want to jog around the neighbourhood. That makes them happy and healthy and that's great. Others have bigger fitness goals, so they use techniques that the casual jogger might find unnecessary and boring. Neither is more correct: it just depends on what our objectives are. So if one is happy just being able to get by in another language, using creative circumlocutions to compensate for a limited knowledge of words and grammatical structures, then that's great! If we want to become truly proficient, however, we might have to resort to studying big grammar books, reading literature, and using SRS flashcards. Yes, those methods will definitely put some people to sleep, but people differ. I love crosswords but sudoku would make me sleepy.
Amazing.... first of all... I don't particularly care what color your eyes are or look like. LOL Just hand over your info whether in your kitchen or yard. Thanks Steve. I'm new to LingQ and I think after way too much time attempting to acquire Spanish, I've found the way, a way, which excites me and makes it so much more interesting.... it's called LingQ! Having so much fun with it... thank you again.
I agree with you. Anki can be a very cruel mistress. I can't do simple word Anki card. I need images and audio. I still do them but only as an aid and not as my primary means of acquisition.
I see where you're coming from and you make some good points. Anki might not be the stimulating thing in the world, but for me there is no better way to build vocabulary. (At first anyway) But once you have a solid base in the language it's probably best to take off the training wheels
I don't know why you have a opinions for you appearance, you are amazing! Ignore that and record where you feel more comfortable. Anyway, try to be care with audio. 💖💖
Thank you so much sir. I have a question...when you said "Read" what should we understand, I mean should I understand all thing that I Read or is it enough just read..Thanks again for your all support.
Not a big fan of flashcards, id would rather spend that time on listening and reading to the things im interested in, though, i must say, at LingQ, flashcards are nicely done, and i do use them from time to time, after the text i read, but only as an addition not as the main thing…Once again, thank you Sir, for sharing your wisdom with us all.
I suspect the challenge toward optimal vocabulary and grammar structure learning is selecting, first, age-appropriate, and then second, content-appropriate texts for different levels of subject-matter and content learning. Basically, it's the job of finding school books or story books or novels or college texts or professional tomes that are at the best level for an individual's present learning level, interest level, or cultural competence, and then working with that material systematically over enough time to master it, while enjoying the process. Graded grammars embedded within curated vocabulary lists may sound like boring requirements, but created with enough talent and sensitivity and knowledge of their use context, they well may be the best, quickest, and most enjoyable route to practical fluency, whatever that is for a particular individual. Having such materials available in both audible and readable formats working with synergy together sounds grand.
In my opinion srs is by no means a substitute for reading and listening, it should only be treated as a way to quickly recap on words and it get's more useful when dealing with rarer vocabulary since you won't find those words frequently enough in the wild to remember them. Also if it takes more than about 15 minutes a day it starts to grow tedious in my opinion, in that case the time is better spent reading.
I use anki with my kids. They get a treat for every 2 right lol. However I have it set for 8 new words and 40 review cards. Takes about 20 mins. I see it more as reinforcement or review of words so I know the SRS is off with only 40 review cards and don't worry about it. I saw a huge jump in my kid's language ability after starting this. Of course my kids do a ton of listening, online tutors, reading, workbooks and activities in Chinese. For myself I make physical flashcards of characters I come across in books. Reading alone isn't enough to learn characters for me. Especially the less common characters. I'm trying to do more re reading short articles but I find re reading more boring than flash cards. Thankfully reading with my kids forces me to re read.
Steve often recommends starting Chinese by learning Pinyin and starting to listen and read through that. To learn the characters, flashcards are one of the ways to go about it. I would recommend the book remembering the hanza by james hiesig. Steve has a video called 'how i leant chinese' that could helpful for you.
I haven't figured out how to use the flashcards in LingQ yet. I'm doing Japanese, and I think it played a sound and just had a blank spot for me to type in... Was I supposed to type in the meaning? Or the hiragana/kanji/katakana? Or the romaji? I didn't know. I tried one of them and got it wrong. So then I turned off the flashcards. But now I feel like I'm not retaining a lot of the words as efficiently as I could be.
The problem with srs systems is that they are extremely boring. I've been learning Japanese for 14 months and have never used any srs system I just read and listen,so what uf took me longer to learn japanese or kanji for that matter ,I prefer to enjoy myself for many years than doing something boring for even an hour
I study flash cards from time to time, usually after reading, when new words are still fresh in my mind. I'm not a fan of spaced repetition determined by an algorithm. Too many words to learn. I prefer to spend my time letting my brain get used to the language, listening, reading and speaking.
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oh, one of the "experts" on youtube that "learned XXX language in YYY months" was like "I was studying 3 HOURS of flashcards every day". Even if it is true, it is a so bad advice for any normal human being
Hi Steve, im a happy LingQ user, thanks for this amazing app, I’m on it for 4 month now, very good resource, but I personally find srs very useful in the context of phrases, a good way of learning grammar and conjugations effortlessly + hundreds of words, 3-5minutes/day = 150 Words reviewed per day. On the + side I’ve noticed it improved my capacity to 1.understand meaning faster, and 2.activates words as well when I speak Portuguese with friends, and Romanian, which never happened in English when I was reading and listening a lot more, but no srs, my known vocabulary did improve slowly. I read now 5-10pages a day in my target languages, but coupled with srs, the amount of words recognisable and then activated improves significantly every month, I which LingQ could have srs similar system as anki, I would use it with pleasure instaid of using another app, thanks for sharing your content 😀 any news on adding Urdu to Linqg? All the best in Palm Springs
I've been creating lingqs on Lingq but I usually go ahead reading and listening new content through the lessons!
I have a lot of fun listening your speaches, so that's why I've improved my English, thank you so much!
@@williambudd2850 zero evidence that SRS users acquire a language faster than non-SRS users. In fact I've seen the opposite. There is a reason that SRS is the least enjoyable part of language learning for most people. Artificial. Life is a natural SRS which ties events and emotions relevant to you.
I have yet to see any evidence that SRS helps anyone acquire language any faster. It helps for medical school because that's 80% memorizing facts. Language learning isn't that.
Steve. Ignore the comments about your red eyes. We're here for your wisdom not your fashion advice :D
Sit wherever makes you feel most comfortable and continue to share your ruminations on the process of language learning!
You right!!!
if you start caring for what random ppl comment on the internet it is a road to disaster
Facts i just want the knowledge
Yes, you're a handsome man. Don't worry about negative commentary like that.
Btw please do "Steve and Luca tour Lisbon Cuisine" or something like this. We all want it.
"Creating patterns and recognizing them" is the best way to get familiar with a language. I agree with that wholeheartedly. Input, input, and input.
I think some people don't know how to use Anki. In order to really learn you have to read something in the language, get the words that you don't know and put a phrase with that word in Anki. That's it.
Yeah
SRS are a great way to *start* learning a vocabulary. I used them last year for storing in my memory the first 600 - 700 words of the German language (I used Language Drops first and Memrise second). From that point on, they become a lot less useful. At this moment (German CEFR A2/B1 level), for example, I'm using Readle on Android to read some simplified German, I watch a lot of videos on RUclips and I read some books. No individual tool or technique can be enough for learning a language. It is always a matter of "mix".
I find SRS works best as a surgeons scalpel. I use it to focus on key phrases or vocab that I want more specific exposure to.
Key phrases? Aren't all phrases 'key'?
@@futurez12 expressions and phrases that relate to things I say in English. Every person has a bunch of go to expressions and phrases they use in their everyday life. I find the translations of the things I say and study those. Especially the ones that are expressed differently than in English. The list of things is a lot smaller than you'd think.
Sure, but specific phrases (for a specific topic) I think are best revised by reading lots of material on it. It’s the only way to keep seeing those low frequency words repeatedly, and I think it’s better cos you’ll see them in new contexts thus strengthening the memory.
There's many things you say that I find very interesting. And I agree with you on most parts.
I see SRS as a concentrated exposure to a language. Mostly efficient for a beginner when the brains didn't create theses links between all parts of the language and especially useful for a very unfamiliar language. I'm French and I use it for Japanese.
I think it's very powerful in my situation with some necessary tweaks to be efficient. First it shouldn't take like all your day. That's pointless. (I've just done 2h immersion and 20 mins of anki reviews (and the time creating the cards, I'm not sure 5-10mins maybe, there's tool to help you with that to be more efficient luckly)).
It should be used with a frequency list to add only most frequent words at first (and then I think you can add less frequent word because it'll be easier to retain them, with the knowledge you acquired with the language).
Only sentences, not words. You need context, you need to have these links.
SRS are exposure for me, like reading text would be. I'm not sure if it's that any different than reading a text over and over (where you obviously can't comprehend everything, where in Anki you should grasps the meaning of most of the sentences).
And you shouldn't add everything you see, if you guess the meaning of a word when you first see it, it's pointless to add the word.
The majority of your time should be spent on immersion. That's obvious.
Agree with mostly everything, however I also think Anki can be useful if you're very advanced and you're trying to remember words that don't come up that often. For example my German is fluent but in my deck right now I've got words like "unterschwellig" (subliminal). I may read 10 German books without coming across that word but I still want to know it, and Anki is the most efficient way to make sure it sticks.
@@sbonfiglioli Yeah that's probably true. I'm still a beginner in japanese and I didn't have the chance to use Anki in a different context so I wasn't sure in what ways it could be beneficial. I think I'll still use it in an avanced stage.
You are absolutely right! I've been using Anki for over a year and it is monopolising all of my study time to the extent that I have very little time to learn new content. Anki has become gruelling for me so I've stopped putting new words into it and I'm using the LingQ method now. It's more fun!
Because frequency drops off so rapidly is why I think an SRS can be helpful. By putting a word in the SRS (whole sentences clearly illustrating the context only, never isolated words), I can usually recognize the word almost instantly when I see it the 2nd time. I still might have to see a naturally a few times before I really got it, but my impression is judicious use of an SRS can help.. It's more of a booster to help make your other input more efficient. I think something like 5-10 minutes a day can be helpful.. Every minute you spend not getting input better be something that makes your other minutes of input more efficient... That's my current thinking but it could change.
Love the open nature of your viewpoint. Presenting your approach, and leaving room for the other study methods out there.
You are my inspiration for learning languages, thank you.
I like flash cards, but I don't spend all my time on memorizing them for new words. The only thing I consistently use Anki for is learning Chinese characters and their pronunciation. Rote memorization is really the only option for those. I have picked up a few here and there from reading, but not nearly as many as I have from Anki.
true, in about a month I think ive picked up about 20 or 30 kanji from reading alone.
In that same time ive gotten a 90% retention rate of ~300 kanji doing 10 a day through rtk anki cards.
Now I havent even seen most of those in reading yet, but the information is there when I need it, and if ive learnt the meaning of a kanji through anki I am much more likely to remember that words readings through immersion.
I can't believe people would comment on your appearance. Palm Springs is magic. I hope you have had/will have time to go to Joshua Tree. Totally worth it.
I've found Anki to be an incredibly useful tool if used correctly. I always make two-sided sentence cards in my target language, like so:
memorise
______
To learn a language, one must _____ thousands of words
This is way better than trying to learn a word out of context.
Anki should not, however, take up the bulk of your time learning a language. It should be 80% (or more) reading, listening, and speaking, and Anki the rest of the time. What you are doing with Anki is reminding your brain that this word exists. The way you REALLY get it to stick is by seeing it a few times in context. However I've had plenty of words that I encountered only once in a book, added to the deck, learned it that way, and either recognised them right away the next time I encountered them, or was able to speak them wihtout encountering them again.
If the choice is whether to do ONLY Anki or ONLY comprehensible input (also known as reading and listening), then obviously go for comprehensible input. However I think a mutually self-reinforcing combination of the two is incredibly powerful and can bring you very quick results.
I used Anki before I got on LingQ. I had 700 cards, I think, before I couldn't take it anymore; I didn't want to make new ones and I didn't want to study them anymore. It did work, but only until that point when I got bored with it. (Although I did find that I wasn't very good at recalling the words in a new context. I think I memorized the sentence it was in more than I remembered the word and what it meant.)
That being said, I do review the LingQ flashcards once every day or two. I quickly found I couldn't even attempt to keep up with all the cards and that because they're in alphabetical order, I tended to do the same ones over and over again because they defaulted to the top of the list. So what I did was go through and tag the words (mostly verbs) that I thought were really useful and that I really want to learn. So, when I have time, I run through only those. They are a manageable amount (and will, hopefully, drop off one day as I improve them) and I just get in some extra views of tricky words.
So many Polish words look just alike to me because they love putting a small number of prefixes on everything. In this case, the flashcards being in alphabetical order actually helps because it shows me words that look alike in the same session so I have to learn to pay attention to the root. (I used to do something similar in Anki where I would make a sentence out of two words that were very close so I could learn to tell them apart. If I had them on two separate cards, I would have constantly had them confused. But I still remember Sędzia w sądzie (judge in the court) and ciężary są ciężkie (weights are heavy).)
Good to know you're vaccinated and safe.
I really like spaced repetition! And I've made a really good flashcard system with chunks, full sentences and even reading exercices inbuild. Because I won't remember things that show up once in a book and then the next time three books later. And I can see my vocabulary growing this way.
But... I don't enjoy doing this for hours and hours! The *only* problem with spaced repetition is, in my opinion, that the growing vocabulary also means: More and more words need to be repeated. For me the problem that making such fine flashcards is time consuming does no longer exist, because, yes, I want to learn new vocabulary, but I have no time for that because I have to repeat the old ones. Well, more than 1500 for English and over 700 for Spanish, in less than a year. I think it'll take the rest of the year to kick them somehow out of my way.
It's a bit late for a reply, but nonetheless, here's how I deal with the problem of increasing amounts of reviews/day:
My benchmark is not to learn X amount of new cards/day but to keep the amount of reviews/day constant.
Let's say you'd stop learning new cards your amount of reviews/day should start to decrease (with some delay, let's say 2 weeks).
If the reviews/day number falls below a threshold, say 50 reviews/day, then you can start learning one new card/day.
If after say 2 weeks of doing so your reviews/day is still below the threshold you can start learning 2 new cards/day.
If after say 2 weeks the reviews/day get above the threshold you decrease the number of new cards/day...and so on.
@@the_real_glabnurb Thank you, it's never too late for a good piece of advice! And there are other people out there with this kind of problem.
Since the time I wrote the comment above, I already decided to reduce the reviews. I don't do it the systematic way you recommend, because I use only a special kind of "dead time" for it now. As long as there are reviews enough, I don't take new vocabulary in. And I doubled the spaces between reviews. I used to use a pattern of 2, 4, 8, 15, 30 (days) and so on. Now I use 2, 7, 30 (days), 3 (months) and so on. Of course that means to accept making more mistakes! But I don't see that as a problem any longer. The problem was too many reviews of vocabulary I already knew.
SRS is not as bad as some people could think. It's still a good idea if you want to have less headache and have some fresh easy start with CORE 1-2K words. But no point to have more words than 2k, because it will have lots of vocabulary you will not need at all.
First of all, I just want to say that you look for very healthy and happy Steve. Hopefully the negative comments were not meant to attack you because if so, they should not be given any stock. (Also the bat story was wild)
Secondly, I really appreciate this perspective! When I first started learning Mandarin, I relied solely on flashcards and pure "test" memorization. I think as I've gone through the process and picked up more and more, I realize that I really enjoy the flashcard memorization style ONLY at the very basic levels (i.e. the first 100 words or sentences). Once I have this small foundation, I agree. I think they become the antithesis to what they're there to do, which is help you become accustomed to seeing and using these terms. If you have too many flashcards, it becomes about getting through the deck of cards and not learning and understanding their content, imo.
I have no luck with spaced repetition as I eventually for get to do it over long stretches of time.
After seeing your video I will definitely avoid using Anki often, i have been using it for some time and feel it’s not working anymore. I have also found that words stick better when I am reading content I like.
Another great video - as I navigate different methods that work for me - flash cards bore me too - I am really liking LingQ - one of my top 3 tools! Thanks!
Love your content Steve. You are so inspiring. I think during the first few months of learning a language, when I am super excited, it's nice to use Anki to force myself to remember boring stuff like: numbers, day of the weeks, etc. I feel that my excitement can defeat the boring moment during that few months. It's more efficient to learn things like numbers and days of the week from flashcards. But other than these words, I do agree 100% that it's much more fun and sustainable to learn naturally from interesting content.
In my opinion, spaced repetition system is really good especially when it supports and completes our immersion in language and culture. If we only do SRS without immersion, it is not that good, and it is even worse if we do not create our own personal flashcards with some "contextual sentences" in order to learn well vocabulary. So it is important to keep immerged in language and culture (listening, reading, speaking), daily, which allows SRS to show its biggest efficiency. And when times passes, when we think our language's level is enough, we have to learn to "detach" from SRS, gradually, until we do not need it anymore. Just a matter of "balance" to find between SRS and immersion.
Autrement, j'ai bien remarqué vos petits clins d"oeil en français sur "Le Petit Prince", ainsi que vos commentaires sur la "récession économique", le "reconfinement" et la COVID en France, sans oublier d'autres petites références dans certaines de vos récentes vidéos. Cela donnerait presque envie que vous refassiez une vidéo en français. ;-)
Bon courage : j'espère tout de même que votre pays gère cette période délicate nettement mieux que le mien (mais j'avoue ne pas trop suivre l'actualité à ce sujet afin de me préserver et de ne pas devenir fou, sachant que les voyages à l'étranger commencent sérieusement à me manquer).
Now i can understand more of korean language. For me Now is so easy learn with words in context.
Like the first course in LinQ "이 코스는 흔히 쓰이는 표현으로 이루어진 이야기예요." The sentence and words still in My brain. 선생님 너무 많이 감사합니다 ㅎㅎ 너의들 비데오를 너무 사랑해요😊
Pay no attention to those negative comments. I love the awesome content you put out. As an aspiring language learner, your videos have been really helpful.
The flashcards could be in the form of sentences. And you could delete/suspend sentences that you understand (i.e. the equivalent of being able to recognize all the words in a sentence at LingQ). You could also create flashcard decks based on books for example. What I often do after having gone through a flashcard deck containing the 5-10k most common words in the context of sentences. I will start converting ebooks to flashcards (this can be done in a matter of 5-10 minutes using Word to parse the book into individual sentences, copying to Sheets, exporting as CSV then importing into an Anki Note template). I like it because I can delete/suspend all the sentences I can understand (counteracting the downside you mentioned of doing needless repetition), and gain some repetition on the sentences I understand less well.
The downside of all this is of course the learning curve and the necessary technical knowledge. The benefit with LingQ in contrast would be that everything technical is essentially done for you in advance.
I would never use SRS with individual words or phrases. Always using full sentences if I am trying to acquire meaning.
So in this way SRS is not necessarily just a bunch of words scattered randomly. Since you can read a book in the correct sequence first. And then simply get som SRS repetition on the sentences you understood less well. And then you simply suspend/delete sentences as you recognize that you can understand the sentences.
I like so much anki,
anki changed my life. '-'
Thank you. I watched this and one of your linked videos. I hate memorization, so I've avoided ANKI, Memrise, Busuu and so on. But your "permission" means a lot, because you're so right about so many other things. I can focus my time and effort on things that I enjoy -- and that help me learn.
I still use Anki, but yeah, tops 10 minutes. If it took up much more of my time I'd probably go bananas. ^^
I like to go through a dozen or so words in the morning when I get to work, and that's about it.
I think it comes back to one of the things you said at the beginning: You should enjoy the language acquisition process. I’ve tried Anki and Memrise. Found the activity boring. Quit. Felt guilty about it for a bit. Decided life is too short and time too precious. Don’t do SRS anymore. Thanks for another interesting vid.
Steve, thanks for your videos, I am writing to you from Colombia
I used anki to learn the 1,000 most common kanji that japanese use, and have been learning the rest through exposure. It was very helpful for that.
I'm a fan of space time repetitions. I've got a memory like sieve without special computer program I wouldn't be able to remember much.
I can only do SRS flashcard review for like 10-15 mins before getting bored. I think its a great efficient way to revise for a test if you need to study specific information for school. For language learning I like to make flashcards for specific vocab, not every word i don't know. I have a Harry Potter SRS deck of vocabulary I wanted to remember when I was reading Harry Potter in French. I think if SRS is done in a short, specific, targeted way its helpful and fun for me. Otherwise its just another boring drill! But for overall learning i do activities more stimulating like Steve says listening and reading, as well as movies and watching vloggers in my target language. I have seen such an improvement in my french from reading books I already liked in English in French! excited for this journey!
Having spent a lot of time with Anki and many of its add-ons, creating decks and managing them long-term is a chore (even managing shared decks). It’s ok for more discrete information such as STEM material, but for languages I haven’t used it at all. I’d probably use it for non-Latin alphabets and characters, but I haven’t the need yet.
Repeated exposure to the language and time is all you need, until you’re at a high level. At this point you can take on deliberate, targeted training to improve upon any aspect of your use of the language that you’d like.
Thank you for sharing your honest opinions. You are great!
srs really does make you wonder if it’s worth it. My only success with it is actually reading and listening to a crap ton of sentences. Around 6000 sentences separated over 600 cards, all from the dictionary of japanese grammar (pre-made deck). So basically I did my reading and listening on anki and used it as my reminder to review my comprehensible input. My sort of mini stories you could say. I get really bored playing visual novels so that deck was my next best thing since the difficulty started from basic sentences to complex paragraphs. The happiness I get when I understand a whole paragraph or even just a sentence is so good and helped motivate me to spend more than 3 hours a day reading and listening since I could feel tangible improvement. I’ve recently finished the deck 2 weeks ago and I am comfortable just watching anime that the ambiguity is tolerable enough for me to enjoy. Definitely a massive change for me compared to two months ago.
I am thinking of instead of doing SRS with flashcards, I'll do it by reading the lesson a few times on the day that I would do the flashcards for all the individual words in it. I call it spaced reading.
I use SRS (specifically Anki), not to learn individual words but to learn complete sentences from my mother tounge (English) into my target language. I create these myself either from transcribed conversations, or sentences based on things that I want to be able to express. The new sentences I create are based on structures that seem new, interesting or complex.
Typically, I will only start learning 4-5 sentences each day, which means I can usually complete my daily session in under 20 minutes. If you have ever used Busuu, this will sound familiar and indeed, this is where I got the idea.
I think that one of the problems with getting past the 'intermediate plateau' is that there is a tendency to stick with the simpler structures. I have found that drilling more complex structures really helps the difficult aspects of the language stick.
I agree entirely. I initially built an Anki deck for French mostly by choosing words from the top 700 or so and putting them into short sentences to give context. More recently I started building another deck based on either everyday useful phrases (usually only 2 -3 words) or really useful bits of syntax - again, placing them in SHORT sentences, otherwise the reviews become daunting and tedious. I'm finding this latter deck is building the patterns in my brain that Steve talks about.
Anki for 3000 most frequent words + glossika + busuu + innovative language + netflix + youtube. Super best combination. Great result in 2 years. I speak 5 languages. Thanks.
Which
Just in terms of your comment about Anki, you can read for the 3000 most frequently used words. For instance, subtitles from shows, articles and books cover you beyond those 3000 words, and you can learn something from the material, have a laugh, etc while doing it. Clearly though, from the rest of your listed materials you likely never would need Anki in the first place.
Et veus molt bé Steve! No podem esperar més per tenir el tailandès a Lingq! Petons des del cor, des del cor de Catalunya, des de la Cuina al Cor!
象形字有用
字卡 用在 高頻文章
少頁 文本復習
Treat flashcard as a tool of exposure, a tool for memory
和 選擇克漏等活動並用 才有趣
I learned three foreign languages in the course of my life and never ever used a single flashcard. Just the word flashcard puts me to sleep...
I've learned six foreign languages in the course of mine and I found flashcards to be an invaluable method at every level. I used them to acquire a foundation of the most frequently used words, and then I added the vocabulary that was most interesting/useful to me. They're especially helpful for learning languages that don't have a lot of cognate words. Going from one Romance language to another, or one Slavic language to another is nothing like going from French to Japanese, for example.
We could compare flashcards to exercise: some people just want to jog around the neighbourhood. That makes them happy and healthy and that's great. Others have bigger fitness goals, so they use techniques that the casual jogger might find unnecessary and boring. Neither is more correct: it just depends on what our objectives are. So if one is happy just being able to get by in another language, using creative circumlocutions to compensate for a limited knowledge of words and grammatical structures, then that's great! If we want to become truly proficient, however, we might have to resort to studying big grammar books, reading literature, and using SRS flashcards. Yes, those methods will definitely put some people to sleep, but people differ. I love crosswords but sudoku would make me sleepy.
Amazing.... first of all... I don't particularly care what color your eyes are or look like. LOL Just hand over your info whether in your kitchen or yard. Thanks Steve. I'm new to LingQ and I think after way too much time attempting to acquire Spanish, I've found the way, a way, which excites me and makes it so much more interesting.... it's called LingQ! Having so much fun with it... thank you again.
I agree with you. Anki can be a very cruel mistress. I can't do simple word Anki card. I need images and audio. I still do them but only as an aid and not as my primary means of acquisition.
I see where you're coming from and you make some good points. Anki might not be the stimulating thing in the world, but for me there is no better way to build vocabulary. (At first anyway) But once you have a solid base in the language it's probably best to take off the training wheels
8:44; 9:04: ver aplicaciones en otras áreas además del aprendizaje de lenguas.
I don't know why you have a opinions for you appearance, you are amazing! Ignore that and record where you feel more comfortable.
Anyway, try to be care with audio.
💖💖
Thank you so much sir. I have a question...when you said "Read" what should we understand, I mean should I understand all thing that I Read or is it enough just read..Thanks again for your all support.
Not a big fan of flashcards, id would rather spend that time on listening and reading to the things im interested in, though, i must say, at LingQ, flashcards are nicely done, and i do use them from time to time, after the text i read, but only as an addition not as the main thing…Once again, thank you Sir, for sharing your wisdom with us all.
I suspect the challenge toward optimal vocabulary and grammar structure learning is selecting, first, age-appropriate, and then second, content-appropriate texts for different levels of subject-matter and content learning. Basically, it's the job of finding school books or story books or novels or college texts or professional tomes that are at the best level for an individual's present learning level, interest level, or cultural competence, and then working with that material systematically over enough time to master it, while enjoying the process. Graded grammars embedded within curated vocabulary lists may sound like boring requirements, but created with enough talent and sensitivity and knowledge of their use context, they well may be the best, quickest, and most enjoyable route to practical fluency, whatever that is for a particular individual. Having such materials available in both audible and readable formats working with synergy together sounds grand.
In my opinion srs is by no means a substitute for reading and listening, it should only be treated as a way to quickly recap on words and it get's more useful when dealing with rarer vocabulary since you won't find those words frequently enough in the wild to remember them. Also if it takes more than about 15 minutes a day it starts to grow tedious in my opinion, in that case the time is better spent reading.
Saludos desde Mexico por favor haga mas videos en español.
I use anki with my kids. They get a treat for every 2 right lol. However I have it set for 8 new words and 40 review cards. Takes about 20 mins. I see it more as reinforcement or review of words so I know the SRS is off with only 40 review cards and don't worry about it. I saw a huge jump in my kid's language ability after starting this. Of course my kids do a ton of listening, online tutors, reading, workbooks and activities in Chinese. For myself I make physical flashcards of characters I come across in books. Reading alone isn't enough to learn characters for me. Especially the less common characters. I'm trying to do more re reading short articles but I find re reading more boring than flash cards. Thankfully reading with my kids forces me to re read.
I like your videos, inside or ouside.
"I've got a deck, I've got lots of them"
Exploded in laughter
Great video Steve. If you had to learn to read Chines from scratch today would you use flashcards? If not what would your approach be?
Steve often recommends starting Chinese by learning Pinyin and starting to listen and read through that. To learn the characters, flashcards are one of the ways to go about it. I would recommend the book remembering the hanza by james hiesig.
Steve has a video called 'how i leant chinese' that could helpful for you.
@@ItMeLily Thanks, I’ll check it out.
Come on! Who’s messing with you about your eyes? We’re here for your great content. Tell them to buzz off.
Hi Steve. Your LingQ looks different at 2:42 ... has there been an update to the design of the app?
This guy is amazing
Bat-flying mouse in German and Russian, and probably some others.
I always use your arguments when my Arabic teacher tries to get me to use Anki. Thank you for the ideas.
I haven't figured out how to use the flashcards in LingQ yet. I'm doing Japanese, and I think it played a sound and just had a blank spot for me to type in... Was I supposed to type in the meaning? Or the hiragana/kanji/katakana? Or the romaji? I didn't know. I tried one of them and got it wrong. So then I turned off the flashcards. But now I feel like I'm not retaining a lot of the words as efficiently as I could be.
Отличное видео. Поздравляю!
I 200% agree !
ヘイトコメント書いた人は、とにかく話すべき。英会話は短期間で習得できる。って考え方の人だと思います。流暢とただのコミュニケーションレベルの区別がついてない人。
The problem with srs systems is that they are extremely boring. I've been learning Japanese for 14 months and have never used any srs system I just read and listen,so what uf took me longer to learn japanese or kanji for that matter ,I prefer to enjoy myself for many years than doing something boring for even an hour
Is anyone else feeling Mr. Kaufmann kinda sad?
to hell with the haters steve. go redden your eyes as much as you want. you deserve that
When you'll do an exit video in indonesian?
haha, you know so little about SRS and the basic principles behind, and to compare Anki with Memrise/LinQ etc is just even more so.
the best!
agreest👌
用來複習剛看過的短文，而不是 讀一堆列字
Ok i will delete my anki, it feels like a chore
I like your teachings
Use swimming googles when in the pool !
Tried anki. Don't like it. They're boring
Der Ton ist viel zu leise! Bitte das Microphon näher an den Mund halten. So ist das sehr anstrengend!
Audio so poor
OK
Does anyone can be billingual...?
Of course
@@onlinearmeygames without friend who can to invited to talk?
Use one of those language exchange apps like tandem, there 1000 of people on them
Is there such a video call..?
Yes most of them
I thought this video was going to be about how sexual reassignment surgery boosted language ability. I'm slightly disappointed.