Learning new cards in anki

[naitorii]

I keep hearing all this great stuff about anki, so I decided to try it, and I don't understand how to use it.
Do you just memorize what's on the cards and say how well you were able to recall it?
Like, on a kanji card, one, for example, I didn't know there were that many readings for it.
Would I try and learn ALL of those?

[Underlig]

That's pretty much it, yeah, but I find it hard to memorise Kanji in Anki because of the reading problem(you don't know if all the readings are necessary or when they're used if there are no examples), I mostly use like Kanji land.

[AlanP]

Apr 27, 2014 0:19:04 GMT naitorii said:

I keep hearing all this great stuff about anki, so I decided to try it, and I don't understand how to use it.
Do you just memorize what's on the cards and say how well you were able to recall it?
Like, on a kanji card, one, for example, I didn't know there were that many readings for it.
Would I try and learn ALL of those?

That's about it yes.

How Anki works is depending on how easy you were able to remember. It works by spaced repetition.
Spaced repetition is a simple study principle: it will show you the front side of a flash card showing, say, a new Kanji. You then have to think of the meaning. If you got it right and it was very easy, I won't ask you again in another two weeks; if it wasn't so easy, I'll ask again in a week; and if it was really hard, I'll ask again tomorrow. In this way, you don't have to spend time going over material you already know–the system adapts to the data you've acquired.

You can create your own cards and make changes in the settings to customise it.

[Jembru]

Like Alan and Underling already confirmed, you do just give the answer that appears on the reverse of the card when you flip it. However, based on what you have said, I'd like to add something;

It sounds to me like the deck you're using isn't great. I personally don't think you should be shown a kanji and then expected to remember all the readings in one go. That is like parrot style learning of dead, stagnant facts rather than teaching your brain to connect sounds and symbols with meaning so that it can gradually grow into a language.

Not everyone builds their own decks like I do (it's not snobbery btw, it's just that I found anki so late that it isn't possible for there to be a pre-made deck that wouldn't contain an annoying amount of words I already know and thus waste my valuable review time), but even if you're going for pre-made decks, I think it is far kinder on your brain to learn the readings over time as they appear in compounds. So for example, when I learnt 行, I didn't learn that this could be read several ways. I simply learnt it as 'iku'. Then as time went on, I discovered it is used to write another verb. I wasnt' using anki at the time, but if I had been, I'd have added 行う (okonau) as a separate word. The same is true of compounds. When I learn a new kanji, I practice writing it in my kanji notebook and create a little mnemonic to remember how to read it, and then I check out my kanji books and jisho.org for 5 or 6 useful/common compounds that use the kanji. I then add them to anki (sometimes suspending a few to stagger when they appear). So to use 行 as an example again, if I had learnt it while using anki, I would have added compounds like 流行 (ryuukou/haya.ru: the 'in thing', becoming popular)、行方(yukue: one's location)　行事(gyouji: event)　行き来(ikiki: coming and going). It wouldn't happen over night, but eventually, I'd have learnt all the possible readings for the kanji. It has to be better than having to say, 'i, yu, gyou, okona, kou' every time I see that kanji on anki.

So you might find that something like the core vocabulary decks allow you to learn kanji in a more natural and sensible way, as they appear in frequently used words.

Oh and about the buttons.. you know, I very, very rarely click 'easy'. I have to literally use the word on an almost daily basis before I'll let it slip into the depths of my anki decks. I also sometimes pretend I got a word wrong, even when I didn't, just because I feel the reviews are getting too far apart and it's a word I forget exists until I'm prompted for it, but would like to start using more often. Basically, it's my own fault I end up with upwards of 200 reviews to get through most days ^^