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Micro reading with Anki - Zarxrax - 2015-11-28
This post is about a new type of reading method that I have come up with, which I call "micro reading", and it is done through Anki. This should not be confused with incremental reading, which is something different.
Micro reading is basically reading a text in short bursts, as opposed to sitting down with a novel for an hour at a time. With micro reading you can read as little as one sentence at a time. The idea is that you can read in many short bursts throughout the course of the day, which in total will add up to a significant amount.
I came up with this because I personally have a lot of difficulty reading for more than a few minutes. If you don't have that problem, then this probably wont be so useful to you.
To begin, you basically need text in a format that can be imported into Anki so that each sentence will become one card. The deck settings need to be tweaked so that the intervals are far enough out that you wont see the cards a second time. I go into more detail about specific settings in a blog post here: Micro reading with Anki.
Then, Anki presents you with your text, one sentence at a time. If you can read it with no problems, you pass it. If you want to revisit the sentence later, fail it.
At the end of the day or week or whatever, go into Anki's card browser to look at your reviewed cards. Delete all the cards you passed. If you want, you can look over the cards that you failed (or just delete them too). Now is your chance to look up words or grammar, or move the card into one of your normal decks for review.
That's the gist of it. There are different ways that it can be set up though. For instance, maybe you just want to mark or suspend cards to review later, and then just pass all the cards rather than failing any of them. That could work well in AnkiDroid, because it lets you set up gestures to do actions like marking or suspending cards.
I've been doing this for about a week now, and I'm really liking it. I'm actually getting some reading done now, as opposed to never reading anything.
Here are some pros and cons of this method that I can see:
+ Read any time you have a minute free
+ Read freely without looking up words
+ Easy to revisit problem sentences later
+ If you want to turn a sentence into a normal card for review in Anki, you are already halfway there.
- Doesn't work with all types of material
- Requires some setup to get the material into Anki
- Requires follow-up to clean up the deck at a later time
RE: Micro reading with Anki - RandomQuotes - 2015-11-28
I do something similar, I take novels and format them to have once sentence per line in excel. I then import them into anki and the organize it with morphman. Then I regularly delete any thing that seems a bit on the easy side e.g. cards with one or two words, names, etc.
RE: Micro reading with Anki - kameden - 2015-11-28
Instead of putting a really high interval you could just hit suspend or delete.
(2015-11-28, 2:45 pm)Zarxrax Wrote: + Read freely without looking up words
This is a con for me.
RE: Micro reading with Anki - Zarxrax - 2015-11-29
(2015-11-28, 11:46 pm)kameden Wrote: Instead of putting a really high interval you could just hit suspend or delete.
Depends what client you are using as to how easy those functions might be to select. Setting up the intervals like that should work anywhere. But yea, I mentioned above that suspending cards is another way of doing it. Just comes down to what works for you.
RE: Micro reading with Anki - yogert909 - 2015-11-30
(2015-11-28, 11:46 pm)kameden Wrote: Instead of putting a really high interval you could just hit suspend or delete.
(2015-11-28, 2:45 pm)Zarxrax Wrote: + Read freely without looking up words
This is a con for me.
I don't think he means never look up words. In fact he explicitly said you can look up words at the end of the day/week when you are purging the easy sentences. I can imagine you might like that process of looking up words immediately as you encounter them, but I find it makes reading less pleasurable. And even if you do like to look up words immediately, there's nothing about this method making that impossible.
Thanks Zarxrax! I think I'll give this a try when I really start hitting reading hard next year. It seems to have promise for my working methods. I especially like how it makes marking hard words and/or sentences second nature.
RE: Micro reading with Anki - Zarxrax - 2015-11-30
(2015-11-30, 2:33 pm)yogert909 Wrote: I don't think he means never look up words. In fact he explicitly said you can look up words at the end of the day/week when you are purging the easy sentences. I can imagine you might like that process of looking up words immediately as you encounter them, but I find it makes reading less pleasurable. And even if you do like to look up words immediately, there's nothing about this method making that impossible.
Thanks Zarxrax! I think I'll give this a try when I really start hitting reading hard next year. It seems to have promise for my working methods. I especially like how it makes marking hard words and/or sentences second nature.
My issue with looking up words is that it is simply incompatible with reading for very short periods of time, as the looking up takes far more time than the actual reading does. I do think its an integral part of the process though. My goal is just to time-shift it to happen later, rather than in the middle of reading.