Has anyone had any success in convincing language learners in the real world to use Anki?

A while ago I tried to convert one of my classes which really needs to improve their vocabulary. I showed them how to use it and tried to explain why it was a good idea. They were all quite sceptical looking but everyone downloaded it.
I've been setting vocabulary to memorise. Yesterday I asked them how they were reviewing. Two of them were skimming the articles that the vocabulary came from and one was writing out the word and its definition fifty times. None of them did particularly well at recognising the words when I tested them.
So I figure I've failed in my first attempt. But I have another class for which new words don't seem to stick well and the main thing stopping them from getting anywhere with English is vocabulary. I think they'd be even more resistant to a technological solution than the other class but, well, I have to try because I'm tired of them sucking at English and they're probably tired of sucking at it too.

Does anyone have any experience in this area? Or a neat, simple way to explain why Anki/SRS is wonderful and how they should use it?

I disagree with this in the strongest possible terms.

Anki is not at all required for language learning - you are just using a crutch.

We don't need your evangelization. You derive your sense of worth from reinforcing the orthodoxy in these pages and ganging up and mocking anyone who disagrees with the official dogma.

Your comments about me in another thread were out of line.

Where is the moderator in this forum? I want this individual banned.

[s0apgun]

louischa Wrote:Your comments about me in another thread were out of line.

Where? Please use the report function if there any issues that need to be looked at by a moderator. We can't be everywhere at once.

I reported the comments.

You win; I am done with this forum.

Aikynaro Wrote:Has anyone had any success in convincing language learners in the real world to use Anki?

lol, nope. I have had 0 success in convincing people to use Anki. I've tried with people learning kanji, people learning Chinese vocab, & people learning Spanish vocab. It's never worked out.

I've just resigned myself to feeling that: it takes a certain kind of person to successfully pick up the Anki habit. Anyone might stumble upon mentions of Anki on the Internet, and start using it. But they have to be intrinsically motivated and keep believing in its possible usefulness to keep using it. That motivation can't come from someone else.

I feel the same way about RTK & Tadoku. =/

I tried it with RTK. Language tool evangelism never worked for me The best way to get people to use anki that I've found is to get at least somewhat good at Japanese. After that, eventually people will see you doing something in Japanese and be impressed. After asking if you have Japanese relatives, etc, some, people will ask you wow you did it. This is when you mention things like anki. Others will say things like "Oh I could never do that! You must have a thing for languages.". They aren't interested & lack motivation, so leave them be.

Those are my experiences with individuals/small groups. If you teach classes though, you might be able to make them use anki, but most won't use it for very long unless you make them *want* to use it. Find a way to show that Anki improves retention. Show them results, and then show how they can get the same results by using Anki. I don't teach classes or anything though, so I'm just guessing what things I might see in a class which would get me to use Anki if I already wasn't.

I actually did manage to convince someone to use Anki recently. Although not so much "convince" as just "highly recommend it" and leave it to the person to look for it themselves. I think this is the key point; namely, you just can't force it on someone if they don't want it for themselves.

Bokusensou Wrote:The best way to get people to use anki that I've found is to get at least somewhat good at Japanese.

I think this is probably the best way to go about it. I'm by no means good at Japanese but I can retain vocab and stuff thanks to Anki. I guess this was enough to convince someone else to pick it up. If you're good enough and they want it enough, they'll pursue it for themselves.

Flamerokz Wrote:

Bokusensou Wrote:The best way to get people to use anki that I've found is to get at least somewhat good at Japanese.

I think this is probably the best way to go about it. I'm by no means good at Japanese but I can retain vocab and stuff thanks to Anki. I guess this was enough to convince someone else to pick it up. If you're good enough and they want it enough, they'll pursue it for themselves.

During my two years studying various languages at university, a lot of people asked me how I always managed to get high grades (I'm not bragging here; universities in my native country are not particularly challenging, and we all know what happens when people only rely on classes to learn a language). I told them about extensive reading and Anki/SRSing, only to hear things like "oh, but I like what I do, I don't want to change anything".
Some friends and I learnt vocabulary lists together; after a while they realised they forgot most of it after a few days, and I didn't. I also learnt those words much faster than them (seeing them once was usually enough), which I assume was simply a result of daily practice. Did they try using my study methods? Of course not And those were high-achieving students who devoted all their spare time to studying, so I don't think laziness was the issue.
Ironically, despite their complete lack of interest in the processes involved in learning, most of them wanted to become teachers.

The only person I've ever convinced is my partner. She's obsessed with efficiency and science-based everything, and I suspect that's why. I've been telling other friends about SRS, they agree they should use it in their studies, but told me they can't be bothered.

In short, I don't think you can convince people who are not actively trying to study more efficiently (my lazy friends), or who don't understand why spaced repetition and the like should work (my hard-working friends).

Only person I've managed to convince is my girlfriend. She likes the method and we've gotten good results with Italian. All the people I've told about the program seemed to be quite interested in it.

The flipside is that I've been convinced to use Anki by a fellow classmate back when I was 18. He was already very good at Japanese so that was a significant factor that made me research what Anki is about. It took me few years before I really started using Anki however.

Heron Wrote:In short, I don't think you can convince people who are not actively trying to study more efficiently (my lazy friends), or who don't understand why spaced repetition and the like should work (my hard-working friends).

Yep, agreed! This was what I wanted to convey but I was a little unclear.

louischa Wrote:Anki is not at all required for language learning

Obviusly it's not required, one can learn without it. The right question is "it is as much efficient / effective ?"

To learn is one thing, to mainain what you've learned is another thing. Everyone must do other things beside Anki (reading etc..) but, other things being equal, the one who uses Anki has an extra weapon, and you cannot deny its usefulness.

So if one tries to suggest (convince is the wrong word) Anki as an ADDITIONAL method to IMPROVE results, I see nothing bad about this.

Also being fanatical in the other way, and to take too seriously a post like this of Aikynaro, is a sort of evangelization What's bad in using a "crutch" if it make learning more effective?

I think Anki is something you have to discover on your own and learn to use. I think only the people who are self-motivated enough to maintain and improve their language learning will be receptive to it.

Also I think it's hard to customize if you don't have some basic understanding of how HTML works, and possibly some understanding of simple programming. I could see someone who has no understanding of html and little interest in Anki get immediately turned off.

However I will recommend it to people and tell them that if they're interested in using it and they have questions they can talk to me.

I've never been successful convincing someone to use Anki. I have explained it to many people, but there is a certain degree of learning that needs to be done to get to use Anki. Anki seems more aimed at people that are really struggling to find ways to optimize their language learning and not everyone is interested in that.

I don't think its worth it to force the issue of using Anki, just explain how it works and its strong points and if they are interested try setting them up with it. Maybe get them a pre-made deck to use with it and customize it for them. Also show them the online syncing and maybe the phone apps.

louischa Wrote:You win; I am done with this forum.

Great! We don't need trolls around here anyway.

Instead of trying to 'convince' them, how about just making it a required part of the curriculum? Make it as EASY as possible for them to use

Some hints:
- make anki reviews as part of the participation marks (Ie. 'fudge marks'). You can tell the class you will look at their stats to grade them. Whether you do actually do grade them on this is irrevelant. Just make them believe they are doing it for marks. In case some kids say they don't have a computer and can't do this give them a less desireful option instead (eg. Writing out each vocab word 50 times)

- make all the vocab cards for them so all they have to do is download them. (If you have a star student you could give them extra marks to make them for you ahead of time)

- Always take the little opportunities to promote Anki use. (Eg. Little Kenta is going to bathroom and always takes forever - "Kenta do some Anki reviews while in the bathroom"). When a kid is playing with phone in class. "How about playing a few anki reviews?"

- show them the results of the grades after anki use (preferably with a chart). Contrast grades between those who did anki well and those who neglected their reviews. If their grades improved, it will be postive reinforcement. If their grades didn't improve... well then anki isn't a good for your students.

The problem with ANKI is, you have to download and install it, then download the deck you want, download the plugins you want etc etc etc - all in all more of a pain in the ass than many people think it's worth. Add to that that ANKI starts very slowly and picks up very fast. First time users tend to add a huge amount of stuff without being aware it'll come back at them after a few days ... after which they added so much, they'll be intimidated by the reviews due.

If smart.fm would still exist in its then-shape, I'd recommend that instead.
Since it's now a commercial product, I'd go with Quizlet. While it doesn't have a SRS, it does have activities like games, you can form groups, invite your students there, have them compete for the highscores in games for the lists you prepare, they'll learn the stuff that way just fine. You should keep in mind that, as long as it's high frequency vocab you're teaching, they'll encounter the words in for them meaningful context outside the learning environment, and that'll be enough to reinforce what they learned, without SRS.

If you just can't be without SRS, try memrise instead. Personally, I'm not a big fan, but it's "ready to use", and you can set things up for your students and "follow" them to keep track of their progress.

Currently I only know one person besides myself studying a language. My friend is in a non-school affiliated group class in Hawaiian, where the emphasis is on speaking. We were discussing the fact that for both of us our greatest barrier to speaking is our limited vocabulary, so I told her about Anki. She was interested, so I sent her links to the Anki download site AND a pre-made Anki Hawaiian vocab deck made by the university Hawaiian Studies program. Then I walked her through it a couple of times. She's very excited about it and came up with the idea of making a sentence deck on her own. It remains to be seen if she sticks with it, though. Consistency is the hard part. Ask me how I know....

I haven't used anki with a class because of what was mentioned in an earlier reply - you have to download it, download a deck, maybe play with deck formatting, maybe download plugins, etc.

If you want a class to use anki, you'll have to prep the deck yourself, decide at what minimum rate they should add cards (10/day, etc), and include their stats as part of their score. If possible, you could make vocab tests for them based on the words they have rated as knowing well, just to catch out people who are just clicking "good" without really remembering.

For Japanese, iknow is great, although it costs money, because everything's all laid out already. My Japanese is pretty good, but I bought an iknow membership because there are words in there that I don't know. It's a breeze to use. I know the sentences can be downloaded to anki, and I actually did that first, but it's just so much easier to use iknow. It's $60/year or something (I can't remember), so it's worth it for me. I don't mind spending money on language learning. But you can't make a class of students do that.

Memrise, being free, is a good way to go. I've used it with classes, and some liked it, but very few students kept it up once class is over. That's the thing - I've put classes on memrise, lang-8, introduced anki, and done other things, but pretty much nobody takes these things up on their own.

Given that anki is not really visually appealing, has a bit of a learning curve it (all the options, etc.), and can be intimidating for non-tech people, I think it might be a tough sell. But if you make it required, and integrate it into the class, you might be able to make a go of it.

I convinced my Japanese girlfriend to use Anki for English. She uses it all the time.

I tried to convince a few people to use Anki, but only one ever really stuck with it. The rest mostly just argued with me and complained about how having to do a thing every day was a dealbreaker. At a certain point I just kind of concluded that most people are only nominally interested in self-improvement or only interested until they have to work slightly harder or slightly differently.

The same thing happened to me with weight loss stuff. I lost 50 pounds by making a lifestyle change to cut down dramatically on carbohydrates, and I have overweight people in my life still arguing with me about whether or not it actually works.

You can give people information all you like, but lifestyle inertia is really hard to overcome for a lot of people. I no longer give advice to people unless they ask for it specifically. Then if someone argues with the advice that they asked for then I just kind of lay it down like this:

"Are you happy with YOUR way of doing things and the results you're getting? If so, then you already figured stuff out and don't need my advice. However, if you would like to have different results then you could try these things that I can prove to you work based on weight I've lost/Japanese friends I have that do not speak any English/language certificates/clients I've interpreted for."

A pet peeve of mine recently is hearing "well, you just have natural language ability..." because it's a pretty big slap in the face to the thousands of hours I have spent studying and practicing. I also knew people who had real natural language ability from growing up bilingual, and I know for a fact I do not have a natural advantage for foreign languages.

erlog Wrote:A pet peeve of mine recently is hearing "well, you just have natural language ability..." because it's a pretty big slap in the face to the thousands of hours I have spent studying and practicing. I also knew people who had real natural language ability from growing up bilingual, and I know for a fact I do not have a natural advantage for foreign languages.

Yeah, this is annoying. As soon as I learned Japanese well, I started hearing, "Oh, you're naturally good at languages" despite having no significant foreign language ability prior to starting Japanese in my late 20s.

Okay, wait, so if a person doesn't want to use Anki, that means that they're unmotivated, not really interested in self-improvement and unwilling to put in a daily effort and work hard? That's the impression I'm getting from some of the responses in this thread.
Maybe, just maybe, a person doesn't want to use Anki because they simply don't like it and find that there's other methods that are a better use of their time.

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. It has like -no- premade decks so he had to make his own deck completely from scratch, the whole premade deck thing had no value for him. OTOH, he had a serious long distance relationship with someone speaking the language, so a) he had major motivation, and b) all he needed was a vocab builder because everything else was happening in natural conversation. Also he's a computer guy so, yeah, not scared of a little scripting here and there, nor of an unconventional interface, which is a huge advantage in adopting Anki.

Other than that, no idea. I've introduced a bunch of people to Anki and have no idea if it stuck or sometimes know that it didn't. But really, I don't care... I have no vested interest in 'spreading Anki'. I tell people about it because I want to help -them-, not to help Anki. I want them to know it's an option, but if they don't find it useful, that's their choice.

Re: quark ... It's not that people are finding a better way to put in daily efficient study, it's that they are either continuing with daily inefficient study (re-reading the same book or lecture notes, using untimed flashcards physically or with a non-srs flashcard program, and other similar basic study methods), or else simply not interested in anything that involves continuous effort. There certainly -are- people that have efficient non-Anki study methods (L-R method, wordlist method, etc.), but they are pretty rare.

I mentioned Anki to a guy in my Vietnamese class, and he initially blew it off, but came back later asking for me to show it to him again.

Semester is over, so no idea if he used it succesfully.

I think we forget this once we get comfortable, but Anki has a damn high learning curve,

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. Even though that was sort of above my level, I loved it, and so discovered add-ons like substosrs and started looking only for decks with pictures and sound. That's how I found the core 2k deck, which I recently switched to a 0-10k cloze deck that I found on this forum (I think it's clozed, I still don't quite get what that means). Now I use anki every day.

What I'm saying is, Anki is a clunky-looking, boring piece of software and only people entranced by the idea of perfectly spaced repetition will use it without some guidance and a bit of fun injected into it. That's the harsh way to put it.

Interesting thread, I've tried and failed many times and succeeded a few others. I swear by it as I wouldn't be fluent in Japanese without it and recently my best mate just started studying Japanese and he knows my level so he's like... I trust you man, tell me how you did it and I'll do that. Now he loves Anki, we even used it to nail our finals exams. I'm using it to study Korean through Japanese atm and in just 2 months my listening comprehension is at 25% ~ 30% when watching drama.

For whatever reason 80% of people just find it too much. It's too unfamiliar to them and they don't comprehend just how insane the results you can get are and how beautifully it systematizes language learning making an easy path to real language ability. If you do wind up demonstrating the benefits of it to the point where it clicks in peoples mind like...wait a minute... if I take things I don't know, turn them into things I do know, retain that information and repeat that process until there isn't anything I don't know....then i'll know everything...which means... I CAN GUARANTEE I'LL BE SUCCESSFUL???? That's when people start to love Anki. It's a bitch to do brutal review sessions every day... and making decks is sometimes a pain in the ass (I kinda love it though) but we do what we do cos it gets results.

It's like Ronnie Coleman said... "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weights"