I instantly fell in love with Anki, because it systematizes everything for you. It's the pinnacle of convenience and efficiency, and it never feels like cheating.

I've converted a friend in law school who now swears by it for her exams.

I found that people who don't like anki are either :

1) Using only crappy premade decks
2) Overwhelmed by the software itself
3) Have very unrealistic ideas about what it can and can't do.

I always stress out that Anki is only as good as what you make of it. It's nothing more than a system, a framework upon which you have to build something. Using only an impersonal premade deck is a surefire way of hating it.

For what it's worth, I've given up. The class in question did the usual 'ooooh, that looks great' thing and then never tried it.
But whatever, I'm making them learn 5 words a week (any more and they would probably rebel) - it's probably not going to make a huge difference if they learn them efficiently or not.
(I really think I am wasting my time teaching Japanese people English though. I have no idea why they're even bothering in the first place)

Helena4 Wrote:I actually hated anki at first. I didn't know which decks to choose, didn't know where or how to sentence mine properly, and the first things I downloaded were a horrifying complex over-stimulating kanji deck that I couldn't bear to look at, and a dry JLPT vocab deck with no graphics or sound. I literally loathed it so I uninstalled it.

Later, I began reading AJATT and he kept going on about srs and I still didn't know how he expected me to find 10, 000 sentences. But, I reinstalled anki because I wanted to start properly learning kanji and decided to use it as a testing tool. I started to enjoy anki for that and so I looked through some of the shared decks and found a Death Note deck.

Anime or manga?

Aikynaro Wrote:For what it's worth, I've given up. The class in question did the usual 'ooooh, that looks great' thing and then never tried it.
But whatever, I'm making them learn 5 words a week (any more and they would probably rebel) - it's probably not going to make a huge difference if they learn them efficiently or not.
(I really think I am wasting my time teaching Japanese people English though. I have no idea why they're even bothering in the first place)

Anki is for self-learning, for people who don't have access to a competent teacher.

You could do so much better than Anki (or giving people word lists as homework), as an English teacher, if you put some effort into it.

Aikynaro Wrote:But whatever, I'm making them learn 5 words a week (any more and they would probably rebel)

Yes, if I was taking a language class, and the teacher's idea of "teaching" was to tell me to learn by myself, at home, I'd be pissed off too.

I would maybe understand the homework, if it was preparation for a class activity (i.e. reviewing some material you then plan on talking about in class - and this was the kind of class where students are motivated to get a lot done every session - because it costs them money, or need to learn English fast). But just handing out five words for them to memorize isn't teaching.

And, if your students aren't motivated to begin with, the last thing you want to do is give them extra work, beyond what they do in class.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Anki is for self-learning, for people who don't have access to a competent teacher. Yes, if I was taking a language class, and the teacher's idea of "teaching" was to tell me to learn by myself, at home, I'd be pissed off too.

I think most language learning takes place outside of the classroom, and a good teacher will help equip students with study techniques and tools because they understand that.

I occasionally show people anki when I think that it can possibly help them. From my observations, most people don't actually use it afterwards, and I'm fine with that, as there are many good reasons for it:

1) Anki is not very beginner-friendly and takes quite some effort to get started.
People here are a bit spoiled because we have quality shared decks for RTK, core, KiC, grammar books and so on. This gets us started and once we're convinced of anki, we take the additional step to make our own cards. Once again, we're very spoiled as there are a lot of excellent tools which take the pain out of making cards - sub2srs, epwing2anki, etc.
For learners of Japanese, the road is well paved. I actually don't really know the situation for learners of English, but I'd guess that it's worse and hence much harder to get started.

2) Anki is just one tool among many.
If somebody doesn't like anki, there are a lot of different ways to achieve the same goal. In my eyes, anki is glorified too much here and abused for all sorts of things where it might not necessarily be the best tool. I'm always surprised by the huge diversity of methods that learners of Japanese successfully applied.

3) Anki is mainly good for memorization, not much more.
In order to learn Japanese there's a lot of memorization that has to be done, so naturally anki is attractive. Especially because initially there are high barriers to be overcome in order to be able to understand anything at all. For other languages that's not necessarily the case. I don't think I'd ever use anki for studying English, French or Swedish because I can do more enjoyable things like consuming actual media and still learn a lot from it.

Lately I've been thinking a bit about my anki usage and I think that I'll change my habits. Now that I have a solid knowledge of commonly used vocab (such as core10k), I am questioning the returns from reviewing those words in anki. As they are quite common, I'd wager that one would encounter them often enough in native media to have enough repetition anyways. In a way, anki was a crutch to get started. But now that I can mostly stand on my own feet, it isn't really required anymore.

Stansielf123 Wrote:

Aikynaro Wrote:But whatever, I'm making them learn 5 words a week (any more and they would probably rebel)

Yes, if I was taking a language class, and the teacher's idea of "teaching" was to tell me to learn by myself, at home, I'd be pissed off too.

I would maybe understand the homework, if it was preparation for a class activity (i.e. reviewing some material you then plan on talking about in class - and this was the kind of class where students are motivated to get a lot done every session - because it costs them money, or need to learn English fast). But just handing out five words for them to memorize isn't teaching.

And, if your students aren't motivated to begin with, the last thing you want to do is give them extra work, beyond what they do in class.

Glad to be talking to an expert on my class.
They're words that came up during the class which they didn't previously know but inevitably forget if they're not reviewed. I think reviewing class material is pretty standard practice.
That said, it is literally impossible to teach the tens of thousands of words in the English language in weekly 1.5 hour classes within any reasonable timeframe, so 'go home and learn them yourself' is a perfectly valid strategy for anyone who wants to progress at a greater-than glacial speed.
No one is pissed off at my class. I am just unhappy that I'm wasting my time when they forget everything week-to-week. Not making progress is frustrating. They don't seem to mind to much though - not enough to do anything about it on their own initiative, anyway.

Self-learning is fundamental, even if there is a competent teacher. The exception being, perhaps, if you're taking classes every day or so. The English language is just too big to be taught an hour and a half a week.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Yes, if I was taking a language class, and the teacher's idea of "teaching" was to tell me to learn by myself, at home, I'd be pissed off too.

Well, this is... maybe I shouldn't say it straight out or I might be banned. In the politest terms, anyone who thinks they can learn a language without doing any work outside the classroom is insanely wrong, and anyone who doesn't appreciate a teacher who eases them into that by supplying them with vocabulary lists is a kid who doesn't really want to be in their language class - (Because that is teaching if I ever saw it! What wouldn't be teaching is wasting class time by making them learn the ENTIRELY NECESSARY HEAPS OF VOCAB in lessons). Since you'd probably prefer not to be called insane or wrong we can only assume you are a kid who doesn't want to learn languages.... oh wait, then why are you on this forum?

Helena4 Wrote:

Stansfield123 Wrote:Yes, if I was taking a language class, and the teacher's idea of "teaching" was to tell me to learn by myself, at home, I'd be pissed off too.

Well, this is... maybe I shouldn't say it straight out or I might be banned. In the politest terms, anyone who thinks they can learn a language without doing any work outside the classroom is insanely wrong, and anyone who doesn't appreciate a teacher who eases them into that by supplying them with vocabulary lists is a kid who doesn't really want to be in their language class - (Because that is teaching if I ever saw it! What wouldn't be teaching is wasting class time by making them learn the ENTIRELY NECESSARY HEAPS OF VOCAB in lessons). Since you'd probably prefer not to be called insane or wrong we can only assume you are a kid who doesn't want to learn languages.... oh wait, then why are you on this forum?

I think this applies to any subject, the teacher role is to explain things and help students to understand them, but after that it is the student that must study at home, otherwise homeworks would be useless! Too big expectation that you go to school, the teacher explain things and you magically learn them without effort

Just on the subject of getting them to learn only 5 words a week - why don't you turn it into a competition between them? Please just take this as a suggestion - I'm not a teacher, but anyway:

My French class had software for vocabulary learning online, with sound and some pictures. The teacher took us to a computer room to introduce it, told us to do it and home, and would show our scores on a table every lesson through the monitoring software that was integrated into it. Then she would congratulate the top people and give a comical tut-tut to the underachievers. Everyone did about 20 a week min; some people did like, 200 a week.

You can't monitor their anki, but you can give them a huge custom deck, and ask them each lesson how many they did, and give them a short test on the vocab they should have learnt by that point. A table could be made of peoples scores . You could even turn it into a term long tournament, with the ultimate, term winner awarded chocolate or a novelty pen or a badge.

If I was you, I'd try and create a deck that gets them interested, with pictures, just search google images, or sound, whichever's easier. It may be too much work but... they're not going to do it if it's not pleasant, and if they hate it, they're not going to try and make it nicer, they're just not gonna do it.

Whenever friends/family talk about learning a new language I always mention Anki/SRS, but no, they just illegally download Rosetta Stone and use it for a day and then never continue on.

The reason why Anki worked for me is because it regulated my studies and it made me put in a certain amount of time every day, it's a habit for me now and the habitual study made me progress really well in Japanese, more than anyone I know that has attempted another language.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:I certainly convinced one person of the value of Anki. The interesting thing is he was learning ... I forget the name of it but the less common of the two main philipine languages.

Is it Ilocano?

If they made a reverse Anki, it would be really useful for people trying to lose weight.
Just give it all your food at the beginning and your daily "reviews" get smaller and smaller, after which it eventually stabilizes.
As for exercising...hmm...

Helena4 Wrote:Just on the subject of getting them to learn only 5 words a week - why don't you turn it into a competition between them? Please just take this as a suggestion - I'm not a teacher, but anyway

A teacher of mine tried something similar, and it didn't turn out so well. There were basically two groups : the overachievers who crammed like madmen (pretty much defeating the whole purpose of the SRS), and the others, who couldn't be bothered to even try. Many considered it a bonus activity, outside of the course's program, so they didn't take it seriously.

I really believe SRS is a personal thing, that shouldn't be put to a "competitive" use, since it pretty much kills the whole "learn at your own pace" thing. Not to mention that unless you monitor what they do every single day, most of them are just gonna cram before a test anyway.

Kuzunoha13 Wrote:As for exercising...hmm...

Easy. Between the food cards, the workout cards ! "Do five pushups", "go out and walk" and then you rate yourself on how you did (and most likely you go to the bathroom and vomit, since you're doing exercise while you eat).