Tutorial

Anki

Most of the information here is taken from the Anki Manual itself. Give it a read. It has a lot more information and is very well made.

This page is only here to set you up and running with Anki with what I consider the essential informations, so do read all of it before starting.

If you want more information on how Anki works and more info with addons and all that, it's in the next page. I recommend to at least give it a look, otherwise move on to the morphman tutorial.

What is Anki ?

There are two simple concepts behind Anki: active recall testing and spaced repetition.

Active Recall Testing

Active recall testing means being asked a question and trying to remember the answer. This is in contrast to passive study, where we read, watch or listen to something without pausing to consider if we know the answer

Spaced Repetition

The goal here is to move the information you have in you short-term memory to your long-term memory. The way to do this is through spaced repetition, by spreading out reviews over time. You see a question for the first time, then 3 days later, then a week later, then two weeks later, then a month later...

Price

Anki is free on all platforms but iphone. You can sync your progress, so if you start your reviews at home, you can continue on your phone as you commute. You can also have access to your decks with any webpage through ankiweb.

What it looks like

Anki works just like your typical paper flashcard that's an Active Recall Testing system as well. Question on the front, answer in the back.

But instead of paper, consider that the front and back of the card is basically a webpage. That means you can do a lot of things with it.

Here's an example with my Anki deck for the video game Pokemon Let's go:

On the left, you have the front. The "question" is "探す".
The goal here is to make sure I know what that word means. To help me remember the word, I added context: the sentence from where the word comes from and a picture.

On the right, you have the back. The "answer" is "to look for".
I have the definition (in the grey area), the english version of the dialogue, and an embedded website that parses (analyzes) the sentence automatically for each card.

The line at bottom is where I have to answer if I remember correctly. It's recommended to only use again or good. Keep it binary. You either know it or you don't. Above you can see the when I'll see the card again depending on what I choose. See the settings below to know more about the learning steps.

How Anki works

Fields, Notes, Cards, Decks

Fields

A field is where you put your information, by default you have two fields called "Front and Back".

In my example above I created a lot more fields for each specific information: Japanese sentence, english sentence, screenshot...

Creating a specific field for each information comes in handy for editing it, and to style your card.

Let's say I have my vocabulary and my sentence in the same field called "Front". If I wanted to increase the size of the text, I'll have to increase both at the same time. Having 2 separate fields, I can have different sizes for the word and the sentence.

Notes

The fields are contained in what is called a Note. I usually have one note for each line of dialogue in a an anime or a video game.

This is a spreadsheet that contains all the information for my deck based on Akira. I use it to export / import the data in Anki.


Each line is a note. You can see here the first notes of the movie.
Each column is a field. I don't use the first two in Anki, they're just for organizing all my sentences in my spreadsheet.
You can see that each field contains only one information.
Image and Sound columns are for files and not for some text. The code to display those files in the note is written in html here.

In Anki, you can view your notes in the browser. *I used an addon to enhance the browser, by default it doesn't look exactly like that.

  • You can see the list of my notes on top.

  • On the bottom, you can see the information in each field.

  • You can see the image is displayed directly in the field. I opened the html editor for the screenshot field to show you that the text is the same than in the spreadsheet.

    • If you're curious the code says that it's in image and the source is named "A-Akira_1_0.2.18.575.jpg". That file is stored in Anki's directory.

Cards

A question and answer pair is called a card. That means that one note can create multiple cards.

When you're studying, you're studying cards not notes.

Let's say you have a simple note, with just one word in japanese, and the translation in english. You can create 2 cards:

  • Card 1: Japanese word on the front, English word on the back = Recognition (you try to recognize the word)

  • Card 2: English word on the front, Japanese word on the back = Recall (you try to recall how to say a word in japanese)

I should point out that making "recall (or production) cards in japanese is not really a good idea. Generally speaking those cards are more beneficial to your memorization, but japanese and english work very differently, and a lot of words don't have an exact counterpart in english. And vice versa.

In Anki, if you create a new card, it will create it for all your notes.

So if you have 10 notes, and you wish to create Card 2, 10 new cards will be created. You'll still have 10 notes, 10 Cards 1, and 10 Cards 2.

If you don't want that, you'll have to create a new Note Type. See below.

Decks

A deck is a group of notes.

Decks are best used to hold broad categories of cards, rather than specific topics.

Example: you can have a deck for kanji, grammar, vocabulary.

You can also have subdecks, so maybe in vocabulary, you have 2 deck with Akira, and Pokemon Let's Go.

It's best to avoid having too many subdecks though.

Each deck can have different settings, such as how many new cards each day, or how long to wait until cards are shown again.

Recap

It can be a lot of information at once the first time, so let's recap.

  • A field contains the information (word, sentence, picture, sound ...)

  • A note contains the fields

  • A card is what you study. It's the pairing of a question and an answer, front and back. You can have multiple cards by notes.

  • A deck contains all the notes.

Note Types and Card Types

Note Types

We saw that a note contains the fields displayed on the card.

Well, if you want cards with a different set of fields, you'll need different Note Types.

You can access your different Note Types in Tools - Manage Note Types. You can see here that I have basically note types for Grammar, Kanji, and vocabulary (Morphman). If you press "Fields...", you get the second windown when you add, delete, rename or reposition the fields.

If you press "Cards...", you have access to the Card Style.

Card Types

A card type is where you choose how you want to display your fields on your card.
It's divided in 3 part: Front, Back and Styling.

  • Front and back are used to choose what you want to display on each side of the card. It's written in html.

  • The styling part, is how you to display the information and shape your cards. It's written in css.

Any cards in with the same card type, will look exactly the same.

Codes like this can be a bit scary if you don't know anything about it. It's okay, you don't need to. You can simply press "Add Field" at the bottom. And choose if you want to put your field in the back or front.

If you want some premade card style, or tips to customize yours, check the anki card style tutorial.

General Settings

Everything should be self explanatory, and you have the manual for more info so I'll just point out two things.

Go to tools - Preferences, or just Ctrl+P.

  • It's easier on the eyes to use the Night mode, even during the day. Promise, once we get to have a night mode for this website, I'm changing asap.

  • In the scheduling tab, consider "Show new cards after reviews". It's pretty simple, you want to check if you remember the words you started learning, before starting to learn some new ones. The point of Anki is to have Space Repetition. Not finishing your reviews in time means you're not following Anki's algorithm, making the whole thing pointless. Make sure you complete your reviews each day.

Now, you have to set up when and how often you'll see a card if you get it right. For that go to the deck options.

Set up how often you see the cards

Next to the deck you can select the option for the deck. Note that you have options group, so you can apply the same set of settings to different decks.

These are my settings, but don't follow them blindly, I change them from time to time. Like I changed them after making this tutorial. The important thing is to understand how it works.

I'll explain what they do, but you may need a couple of days or weeks to realized if the settings work for you or not. This is the part that made me stop anki a couple of time, because I didn't spend 10 minutes to set it up right.

Type of cards

Anki has four different types of cards. When reviewing cards, you can see how many cards you have left for the day at the bottom.

In my case, from left to right:

  • New = Blue (5)

  • Learning/Re-learning = Red (50)

  • Graduated = Green (12)

This is the path for all your cards, they start as new, then your review them (learning phase), and once you reviewed them enough, they've graduated. You still review graduated cards but they changed status.

The more you review a card the later you'll see that card again. That's the point of SRS. You don't need to review things you already know.

The Learning phase

Here the problem is I should drop a bunch of maths to explain, and it's not everybody's cup of tea. So I'll explain what to do, if you want to know the why, I go in details on the next page in the section called "Ease Hell".

If you just care about making it work, here's what you need to know: Mistakes (answering again) should be made during the learning phase.

Think of it that way: reviewing a card during the learning phase is memorizing it. Reviewing a card once it's graduated is checking if you still remember.

Making mistakes on a graduated card will severly punish you, and you'll see the cards way too often. If you graduted your cards too soon, you'll do too many reviews.

The steps allow us to determine how long that learning phase is. Think of it like an exam at school. You want to go over the lesson a couple of times before the test right ? Same here.

The learning phase should be long enough for you to actually learn the card. Once you know that card well, it should be a graduated card.

How long it takes you for a card to be learned depends only on you and your abilities. That's why you shouldn't copy the setting of other people.

What are the steps ?

Think of steps like regular steps on a staircase. Everytime you remember a card correctly, the card goes up one step on the stairs.

The top of the stairs is when you know a card, and decide it should be graduated.

At any point during the learning phase, if you get the card wrong, it goes back to the first step.

The goal is to have a card reach the top of the stairs.

The steps are counted in minutes.

By default, it's' 1 10. That means, if you get your new card right you'll see it again in 10 minutes. If you get it wrong then or on the first step you'll see it again in 1 minute.

By default, graduating a card would mean answering it right once and 10 minutes later.

Being able to repeat something 10 minutes after being told is not a memory test, it's a cognitive test. Rememember that "Person Woman Man Camera TV" ? That was a cognitive test, not memory. So we need to change those steps.

Choosing your steps.

That comes through trial and error really. It also depends on what you're studying. If you're studying vocab, maybe you recognize some through immersion, making it easier to remember. I know that for some Kanji I needed to see some of them 3 or 4 times before finding a good story and starting to answer the card with good.

Example

I'll recap my setting here for the sake of example, again, I'm not saying you should use this, it's just for illustration.

My steps are : 480 1440 2880 4320 5760 7200

My graduating interval is : 7 days.

Picking you lowest number

That's how soon you'll see the card again if it's graduated. I like to do my reviews twice a day. Once in the morning, and once in the evening where I'll retry the cards I failed in the morning.

480 minutes is 8 hours. Which suited my process. Maybe if you a lot of 5 minutes breaks for sessions during the day, you don't need to wait for the evening and you can pick 180 minutes or lower. Just don't make it too close, otherwise you're just testing your short term memory. Give it at least an hour.

Picking the following numbers

Your card starts as a new one. Let's call it Day 1.

My first step is 1440 minutes, which is 1 day. If I answer my new card correctly, I'll see it in 1 day, so Day 2.

My next step is 2880 minutes, which is 2 days. If I answer my card correctly again, I'll see it in 2 days, since we are on Day 2, that will be Day 4.

My next step is 4320 minutes, which is 3 days. If I answer my card correctly again, I'll see it in 3 days, since we are on Day 4, that will be Day 7.

My next step is 5760 minutes, which is 4 days. If I answer my card correctly again, I'll see it in 4 days, since we are on Day 7, that will be Day 11.

My next step is 7200 minutes, which is 5 days. If I answer my card correctly again, I'll see it in 5 days, since we are on Day 11, that will be Day 16.

If you notice you fail your card on the same step, then maybe time between this step is the previous one is too long. If you're always correct, maybe the time is too short.

Picking the last step.

You need parameters. How long does it take you to learn a card, and how often during that period you need to learn that card.

For me, 5 times over 16 days seems to be working. I knew that card by that time. I could maybe take away step 2 and go from day 1 to 4 instead.

You need to test it out for yourself.

Graduating Interval

Back to the settings, below the steps, you have a graduating interval. That's how long after your last step you're going to see the card again.

So on the picture above, my last step happen on Day 16. My graduading interval is 7 days, so my next review, will be on day 23.

It would make sense that your graduading is bigger than you the your last step since it comes after it. My last step is 5 days, this one is a bit bigger with 7.

The following reviews are calcuted with an algorithm, check the next page if you want to know about it.

Using your results to refine the settings

80 to 90%

Reviews are more effective when they're difficult. The harder a review is the more it boosts your memory.

But it you can't remember the answer at all, then it's too hard. So you should aim for a result between 80 to 90%.

Check the data

Go to deck screen. On top, click on stats. There's a part with your answers buttons. Check young and mature cards (that's your graduated cards).

If you answer good, less than 80% of the time, then your cards are graduated too fast. You should add an extra steps for the learning phase.

If you look at my numbers, I'm below 90% on my learning phase, but above 95% on my graduated cards, that means my graduation interval comes at the right time for me. Because hitting 90% gives me satisfaction and motivation to keep going.

With all that being said, that's my setting, make sure you find the ones that work for you.

Adding Material

Self-made versus pre-made

I make and share decks, so obviously, I'm team pre-made. It just depends on what you'are after.

Self-made cards are easier to remember because you have a connection to the card you're making, you're adding you're own context of when you encounter the word or kanji. So if you're adding cards based on what you read, or watch or listen, and you're adding cards from time to time, self-made cards are better, and various tools make it easy to add them.

However, if you're going to study something definitive, it's more effective to use pre-made decks, and use your time studying cards than making them. If you're studying Kanji, everyone goes through the same 2000 something cards, there's no need to lose time making a deck. Pick one (pick mine) choose what you want to display or not or the card to make it personal, maybe add a field of your own, and use that. Just customize a pre-made deck if need be, but the idea that a card is no good unless you made yourself is a bit absurd.

Importing Decks - Shared Decks

Ankiweb has a whole section where you can download anki decks from anyone. The japanese page is here, but you can have decks about anything, other languages, but also geography, art...

Importing a deck will import the note type in your data. If you already had a note type with the same name, it won't be erased, the imported one will have a suffix after it.

It will also import the cards data. So if someone started to review the cards and then shared the deck, you'll have to go in the browser mode, select the card and select reschedule to erase the cards progress made by the previous user.

Importing Decks - Change the Note Type

When importing a deck, the only thing that matters is the content. Why ? Because you modify the rest easily. You like the deck but not the presentation ? You already have a favourite card style that you already use ? Good. Go in the browser mode, select the cards, go to Note - Change Note Type. You just have to transfer the data from one field to the one in you card style. Maybe the deck you've downloaded has a field called snapshot, but yours is screenshot. Change one to the other. You can leave some fields blank.

Importing Deck - Spreadsheet or text file.

Now, this what I do all the time, and if you're making subs2srs decks, that how you do it.

I usually import the export of a subs2srs deck into excel so I can modify it. The main thing is adding an unique Id field for each card instead of the SequenceMarker by defaut.

Excel is far more easier to edit a whole deck than doing it into Anki, but maybe you don't need it at all. Copy you cells into a a classic notepad.

On the main screen, click on import file at the bottom.

  • Pick your note type, remember, fields depends on it.

  • Pick the deck you're going to import your cards in. Unless you have deck like "sentence", create a specific deck for your new cards before you import.

  • Fields will usually be seperated by tab. If it's comma, and you don't want that (usually when the file has html for tables), simply click on it and the cancel, it will revert back to tab.

  • Next part is really important.

    • Update means, if the first field matches between your files and Anki cards, it will update the rest of the fields over what's already present. If none, it just imports.

      • That's why I have an unique Id field. It allows me to easily update my cards / decks if I correct some mistakes.

    • Ignore lines trips people up. If the first field is the same for all your cards, it's only going to import the first card. Do it again, it won't import at all, because you said to ignore.

      • Watch that first field yo !

    • Import even if existing field has the same first field is what you want to do if you cards have the same first field but the all the others fields are different like subs2srs decks,

  • Allow html in fieds is a box you probably want to check. Again in subs2srs decks, the audio and picture field are in html.

    • If doesn't affect text. However if you want to import text in bold or something, make sure you import the text with the html like this: <b>This text will be bold</b>.

  • You can add tags if you want.

  • Field mapping is where you tell Anki wich column is which field. You can leave some of them blank, and you don't need to have your columns in the same order as your fields.