This is how I made my Anki setup 1,000% more effective.
Ok, I don’t actually know if 1,000% is accurate, but it certainly works significantly better than it did.
Words stick more easily, and it’s more fun.
The only downside is that cards take more time to create, but the payoff is worth it.
The key is the note setup.
Anki lets us customize notes and how they are transformed into cards. This means that I can fill in the relevant data for a word and then Anki does the rest.
In this case I have 5 fields on my notes:
- word
- meaning
- picture
- audio
- personal connection (which I often don’t use)
Then I have Anki setup to create 3 cards:
- Card 1:
- Front: Word + audio + input box for meaning
- Back: meaning + image + personal connection
- Card 2:
- Front: Image + input box for word
- Back: word + audio + meaning + personal connection
- Card 3:
- Front: Audio + input box for meaning
- Back: word + image + meaning + personal connection
I found this setup from [Josh Muller’s post](https://joshmuller.ca/writings/2022/koine-greek-resources/#flashcard-software and added the input boxes after staring to use Biblingo to increase the level of active recall required. Biblingo has input boxes and I typing in the answer has been beneficial so I tried to duplicate it in Anki.
Active recall is the key here.
This setup requires active recall of:
- Word (audio, text) -> Meaning
- Meaning (image) -> Word
Also I’m increasing my personal connection to the words when I create the cards because I’m searching for an image online that makes sense to me to represent the meaning of the word.
And I record myself saying the word. That saves time, and, anyway, I’m learning dead languages where native speakers don’t exist anymore.