Anki - the intelligent flashcards

Anki is a program which makes remembering things easy. Because it is a lot more efficient than traditional study methods, you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying, or greatly increase the amount you learn.

Anyone who needs to remember things in their daily life can benefit from Anki. Since it is content-agnostic and supports images, audio, videos and scientific markup, the possibilities are endless. For example:

• learning a language
• studying for medical and law exams
• memorizing people's names and faces
• brushing up on geography
• mastering long poems
• even practicing guitar chords!

This is how Anki´s developer describes it´s program on http://ankisrs.net/

Studies have shown that 48 hours after a study session, we have generally forgotten 75% of the material. When undertaking something that requires a lot of memorization, such as studying a new language, forgetting 75% of the material you learn can be very demotivating. So I have decided to try it out myself. And it works :)

After testing some existing decks I´ve realized it would be much effective if I use my own cards, to remember for example, the vocabulary from a given lesson. Indeed, now I can remember much more easier the new words. One of my tricks are to introduce together with the word expressions and examples. Here is a model:

What do you think? And of course, I try to make so that the explanation is also in German, to learn the language as naturally as possible for a non-native. 

One of my friends, Helen, suggested me to make a deck with the words requested at official tests, as for example a list of words for "Start Deutsch 1" for the level A1. This means a lot of work, there are more then 500 words, and I am already over that level. But I think this could help a lot for someone at the beginning. Of course, I would make the cards much more easier.

For example:

kommen < kommt, kam, ist gekommen >

Intr.Verb

_______ mal her!

Woher _________ das Brot?

Er _______ aus Italien.

Wir _______ spät nach Hause.

and on the other side would be the answers:

Komm mal her!

Woher kommt das Brot?

Er kommt aus Italien.

Wir kommen spät nach Hause.

 

So I said it is better to ask first, is there anybody who would be interested to have such a deck? 

Please leave your comments below or on Facebook.

Also if you have any other suggestions or observations share them.

Download Anki today or use it online, as it better suits you. Just give it a try. For me, it works great.