Anki's bad points
I have to assume this a non-surprise to anyone who has used Anki in the past. Though, I imagine everyone has their own reasons. For me, I mostly love the application. It has been the most useful thing in my quest to learn Japanese for everything aside from speaking and writing, and it can be some help to speaking, it just isn't great there.
With the right decks it can be great for listening, reading, grammar and vocabulary.
If misused, however, it can be the greatest nightmare known to man depending on your personality. And, once you screw something up, you're screwed. You basically need to either give up, or start from scratch.
From my perspective, if I'm leaving anything left unfinished, then I'm not making the most of the application. But, this tends to mean learning things in a VERY slow manner at first.
And this is where the pain starts. Spaced Repetition Systems are good, but neither perfect, nor even great. No matter how I tune the settings or leave them alone, there are cards I remember more easily than others. This is true no matter how much or how little I put into remembering them. I have never once screwed up the Kanji for "Nara" for instance (I have no particular clue why). But certain vocab words are so similar I can get them right for a week, or a month, or several months and then at random... poof, I'm screwing them up again.
Knowing this about myself, I want test myself against a random subsection of cards I've already studied. I can't do this. If I do a random sampling, I get a random sampling of ALL cards in the current deck. A real pain in the ass if you're not done the deck. A bigger pain in the ass if you're just starting a deck.
Anki discourages lots of smaller decks for several reasons, but that would actually help with this problem.
The next problem is studying ahead. Like I said, it starts out SLOOOOOW. BUT, if you study ahead, you burden yourself with more review cards for the foreseeable future. This isn't a problem if you don't mind capping daily reviews. But, as I said, I like to finish EVERYTHING. And, the spaced repetition system isn't able to do it's job if you defer reviews. It just exacerbates other issues.
The idea behind spaced repetition systems is that they schedule a card to be reviewed "just before you'd forget it". And nothing is perfect. Even if we assume it were. If you cap your daily reviews, then you are pushing reviews PAST the point where the SRS thinks you'll forget them. When you add in the fact that these systems aren't perfect and often you've got a mix of cards you've long since forgotten and then others you've handily memorised you start to realize just how important it is that you try and finish 100% of your reviews every day.
Also, I have to imagine that most people who use Anki hit a point where, if they don't adjust settings, entire decks have been marked as leeched. Again, the SRS algorithms ain't perfect. Especially for large volumes of learning material. My Kanji deck has been in use for the better part of a year. I was hitting a point where every 3rd card was getting marked as leeched. I want to learn all of the Kanji, NOT arbitrarily ignore the ones I suck at. In fact, I want to be bombarded by the ones I suck at even more.
In fact, I'd have to say, the entire notion of leeching cards is just idiotic to me. I can see how some people might want the feature included if they aren't serious or are easily deterred. But anyone seriously trying to learn something? I think leeching cards should be entirely optional and the default should be OFF.
And there you have it. If I could study random cards without it pulling in new ones, and I could study ahead purely for practice sake rather than affecting the cards in my decks and if I could totally disable leeching, Anki would be perfect for me.
With the right decks it can be great for listening, reading, grammar and vocabulary.
If misused, however, it can be the greatest nightmare known to man depending on your personality. And, once you screw something up, you're screwed. You basically need to either give up, or start from scratch.
From my perspective, if I'm leaving anything left unfinished, then I'm not making the most of the application. But, this tends to mean learning things in a VERY slow manner at first.
And this is where the pain starts. Spaced Repetition Systems are good, but neither perfect, nor even great. No matter how I tune the settings or leave them alone, there are cards I remember more easily than others. This is true no matter how much or how little I put into remembering them. I have never once screwed up the Kanji for "Nara" for instance (I have no particular clue why). But certain vocab words are so similar I can get them right for a week, or a month, or several months and then at random... poof, I'm screwing them up again.
Knowing this about myself, I want test myself against a random subsection of cards I've already studied. I can't do this. If I do a random sampling, I get a random sampling of ALL cards in the current deck. A real pain in the ass if you're not done the deck. A bigger pain in the ass if you're just starting a deck.
Anki discourages lots of smaller decks for several reasons, but that would actually help with this problem.
The next problem is studying ahead. Like I said, it starts out SLOOOOOW. BUT, if you study ahead, you burden yourself with more review cards for the foreseeable future. This isn't a problem if you don't mind capping daily reviews. But, as I said, I like to finish EVERYTHING. And, the spaced repetition system isn't able to do it's job if you defer reviews. It just exacerbates other issues.
The idea behind spaced repetition systems is that they schedule a card to be reviewed "just before you'd forget it". And nothing is perfect. Even if we assume it were. If you cap your daily reviews, then you are pushing reviews PAST the point where the SRS thinks you'll forget them. When you add in the fact that these systems aren't perfect and often you've got a mix of cards you've long since forgotten and then others you've handily memorised you start to realize just how important it is that you try and finish 100% of your reviews every day.
Also, I have to imagine that most people who use Anki hit a point where, if they don't adjust settings, entire decks have been marked as leeched. Again, the SRS algorithms ain't perfect. Especially for large volumes of learning material. My Kanji deck has been in use for the better part of a year. I was hitting a point where every 3rd card was getting marked as leeched. I want to learn all of the Kanji, NOT arbitrarily ignore the ones I suck at. In fact, I want to be bombarded by the ones I suck at even more.
In fact, I'd have to say, the entire notion of leeching cards is just idiotic to me. I can see how some people might want the feature included if they aren't serious or are easily deterred. But anyone seriously trying to learn something? I think leeching cards should be entirely optional and the default should be OFF.
And there you have it. If I could study random cards without it pulling in new ones, and I could study ahead purely for practice sake rather than affecting the cards in my decks and if I could totally disable leeching, Anki would be perfect for me.
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