Using Anki

Matt_T

January 11, 2015, 04:20 PM posted in General Discussion

Hi Poddies,

Just wanted to make a post to see who all uses Anki and how everyone uses it, specifically the size/management of your anki decks and any tips/tricks you have come across.

Lately I have been getting to a point where I find that my Anki decks are getting too large. I currently have about 6 decks on the go with various amounts of cards in them but some have several hundred cards.

Given that some of these decks are so large I am finding that it takes an incredibly long time to go through all the card reviews each day and usually find that I can't make it through all my reviews in my given study time.I feel that I am spending too much time focusing on just flashcard review and it's eating into mylistening and character reviewtime.

I could always not study some decks or remove the number of cards but then I find that I start forgetting a lot of words due to not really using them during my speaking practice. So if I don't review them in flashcards I forget them entirely.

So my question is this, how do you keep your deck size from getting too large, but also ensure that you are not losing any vocabulary.

thomasdf

January 11, 2015, 10:31 PM

Interesting question! (after completing my message, I noticed you were already quite an advanced learner and may already know some of this, but I'll leave everything in case it's useful to somebody else)

Between my study of Chinese and other languages, I actually find myself spending 45 minutes each day reviewing my vocabulary. I try to cut it in 20 minutes sessions, as I commute to work for example (using the Anki App). This makes heavy workloads more manageable.

A way I found to make it more manageable (it's relative, but I have about 10'000 cards in total), is to have extra sessions for forgotten vocabulary. Everyday, at the end of my Chinese vocabulary, I will use the "Review forgotten cards" function and review all those forgotten up to 5 days prior. This makes me more likely to remember them and avoids having me have to review them a few days later.

Finally, if you don't do this already, try "optimizing" the vocabulary you put in there. Before, I used a lot the Chinese Support Add-on to automatically add definitions to words. This made me have the false impression that I learned all this vocabulary. Some words (in particular conjunctions or other small words) should rather be entered as part of sentences.

For example - "光". Using the Add-on, it will be entered in a flashcard as meaning "light/ray/bright/to use up/merely". All is true, but having it in a sentence, for uses such as "to use up", might be more productive and save you some head-scratching time thinking how to use it.

Hope this helps,

Thomas

Edit: here is a link to the Chinese Support add-on: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3448800906

It's a bit complicated to set-up, but once done, it will automatically search the meaning and add pinyin transcription to characters you enter.

Matt_T

January 11, 2015, 11:15 PM

Thanks for the info Thomas! You have 10,000 cards in total? Wow, are these custom decks made by you or ones you downloaded off Anki?

Wow, I didn't know about the "review forgotten flashcards" option, this is fantastic. It's a bit buried in the Anki app but I managed to find it under deck's custom study option. I also didn't know about the Chinese support add-on so I will take a look at this.

thomasdf

I created most of them in the past four years, but as you will see, it goes very fast with the Chinese Support add-on (no need to type-in translations and transcriptions!)

Glad to hear it was useful!

Gwilym-ChinesePod

January 12, 2015, 03:56 AM

I'll probably share my templates here, but for now, I found adding this bit of code to my cards was amzing. I'm in no way a 'coder', but when I got this Pleco link working on my iPhone I was pretty proud.

If you study on your iPhone, you can add a link to your cards to automatically open up Pleco and search the word/sentence on the card.

This is the code: <a href="plecoapi://x-callback-url/s?q={{Hanzi}}">Search Pleco Dictionary on iOS</a>

If you want to edit the font size you can use:

<a href="plecoapi://x-callback-url/s?q={{Hanzi}}">Search Pleco Dictionary on iOS</a>

Linked picture: http://cl.ly/image/2k3Z3C3R1T1S/Card_Types_for_Chinese__compatibility_-d2f39-4a048_and_Browser__200_cards_shown__1_selected_.png

Matt_T

Wow, this looks awesome! I can't wait to try it out on my phone. I am using an android phone so I may have to alter the code a bit. I will let you know if I get it working.

earls

Matt,

The last time I checked the plecoapi was not implemented on Android.

Gwilym-ChinesePod

You're right, the callback URL only works on iOS.

Matt_T

Android doesn't have the API? Darn :(

earls

I think Android supports x-callback-url. However, the Android version of Pleco does not implement and expose this function. I once sent a request to Mike Love about this and he said there was very little interest in this feature on the Android version. You might want to express your interest to him.

Matt_T

Hi Earls,

How did you contact Mike? Did you just used the support@pleco.com email?

earls

Matt_T, recently Pleco added URL-based lookups. If you are still interested here is the info from their release notes:

Pleco 3.2.10 for Android

Added a URL-based Pleco search API, for use on websites and other places where our intent-based system didn’t work well. For best website compatibility, we’ve used the exact same URL scheme as in our iOS app, plecoapi://x-callback-url/s?q=(your search term) but without the “return to X” button option since it’s not necessary on Android with its systemwide back button.

Matt_T

Awesome! Thanks for sharing Earls.

Matt_T

January 13, 2015, 06:07 PM

So I emailed Pleco support and ended up getting a response from Mike. He said that this feature is supported but just in a different way.

This is the response that I received from Mike:

We do support this on Android, but not via a URL - we do it via Intents instead, which are a more standard method for inter-app communication on Android. (this is how for example Skritter for Android sends words to our Android app)

Here’s some sample code if you want to try to get the AnkiDroid developers to support links via intents:

Intent plecoIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN);
plecoIntent.setComponent(new ComponentName("com.pleco.chinesesystem","com.pleco.chinesesystem.PlecoDroidMainActivity"));
plecoIntent.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_LAUNCHER);
plecoIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_SINGLE_TOP);
plecoIntent.putExtra(“launch_section", “dictSearch”);
    plecoIntent.putExtra("replacesearchtext”, INSERT_YOUR_SEARCH_TEXT_HERE);
    startActivity(plecoIntent);

earls

Matt, thanks for this info. I would like to give this a try whenever I find some free time.