Anki note
I really like Anki, the flashcard management and scheduling application (Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, etc.—and it’s free!). I ran through flashcards daily over the break—you don’t want to skip a day, or the number of cards to review can get out of hand—and I noticed how some cards are becoming quite infrequent.
When you attempt a card, you can click one of buttons:
Again—Card will show up again in this session; you use this automatically for new words. The idea is to keep clicking “Again” until you get the card right, even if it ends up being the last card, so you get a new attempt immediately. By ending with a success, you are better able to remember the next time.
Hard—Card will show up soon. If you clicked “Again” and then get the card right, you click “Hard”. In that case the card shows up the very next day. But if on the next day you manage to get it right and click “Hard” again, it will probably show up in 2 days, then 3 days… The idea is that, even though it’s “Hard”, if you’re getting it right, the next encounter can be a little later.
Good—Card will show up, though not so soon as if you had clicked “Hard”.
Easy—Card will be scheduled to show up after a decent interval, depending on how you did on this encounter. For example, if this card is showing up after a week, and you click “Easy”, it will probably not show up again for two weeks. And if you click “Easy” again, the interval gets longer and longer. I noted this morning that I won’t see some cards again for 3 months. When I do see them again, if I miss and have to click “Again,” the interval drops sharply—to the next day possibly, and I have to keep getting it right in future sessions for the interval to become long. But even with a very long interval, I suspect I’ll remember those that are now easy: el día, el sol, el animal, el hombre, etc.
I make my cards with the front and back active, so that I see both the Spanish side and have to provide the English, and also the English side and have to provide the Spanish. So it acts like two cards, though I have to create only one card in the database: the program just shows me the card both ways.
And, of course, a given word might be easy one way (Spanish to English, for example) and difficult the other (English to Spanish), so the intervals for the two sides might diverge a lot. But the program handles all that for you.
Anyone who is tasked with learning stuff should investigate the Anki program. I will say that it is essential to watch the videos, and even then a certain amount of experimentation is needed to learn the program.
Cards can include hyperlinks, images, audio or video recordings, and so on. Fantastic program.
