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Learning Persian with Anki, ChatGPT and YouTube

cjauvin.github.io

51–60 of 96 posts

Re: Learning Persian with Anki, ChatGPT and YouTube

#51

I've had some successful sprints using Anki, but I always get fatigued making cards for it after a few months, even when leaning on LLM tools to speed up the process. One app I used early on when beginning French was Clozemaster, set to keyboard input (instead of multiple choice). The largest benefit was I didn't have to make all the decks, they progress you through the most common words (used in context), and there…

This is why for learning Chinese I use Pleco, which is a dictionary that allow has a button to instantly add any word to your flashcard list. So when I encounter a new word I just look it up and then add it to flashcards which I review each morning.

I don't know what similar tools exist for learning other languages but it does help a lot for Chinese.

Re: Learning Persian with Anki, ChatGPT and YouTube

#52
post #30

Wow. It's been 3 hours. This is the first submission I've seen that mentions spaced repetition that doesn't have a comment trashing spaced repetition!

I won't trash it, but for me, anything that means i'm using a screen/app means my retention is lower than if i just pick up a pencil and write on a flashcard.

The flexibility of being able to dynamically generate a ton of Anki cards using a script is trumped by just using ChatGPT to generate and grade answers. This will not work well for advanced language learners but for German it works really well - as much repetition as you need to master specific skills - up through intermediate level.

Re: Learning Persian with Anki, ChatGPT and YouTube

#53
post #30

Wow. It's been 3 hours. This is the first submission I've seen that mentions spaced repetition that doesn't have a comment trashing spaced repetition!

I won't trash it, but for me, anything that means i'm using a screen/app means my retention is lower than if i just pick up a pencil and write on a flashcard. The flexibility of being able to dynamically generate a ton of Anki cards using a script is trumped by just using ChatGPT to generate and grade answers. This will not work well for advanced language learners but for German it works really well - as much repetit…

There are two problems with physical flashcards:

1. The lack of a good spaced repetition algorithm.

2. You'll end up with an order of magnitude fewer flash cards. When it's easy to copy/paste, there's no way you can create all the flashcards you need by hand in a decent amount of time.

> The flexibility of being able to dynamically generate a ton of Anki cards using a script is trumped by just using ChatGPT ...

I would never advocate doing it with a script. All my flashcards were created by me - either by typing or selective copy/paste.

Re: Learning Persian with Anki, ChatGPT and YouTube

#54
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't trash it, but for me, anything that means i'm using a screen/app means my retention is lower than if i just pick up a pencil and write on a flashcard. The flexibility of being able to dynamically generate a ton of Anki cards using a script is trumped by just using ChatGPT to generate and grade answers. This will not work well for advanced language learners but for German it works really well - as much repetit…

There are two problems with physical flashcards: 1. The lack of a good spaced repetition algorithm. 2. You'll end up with an order of magnitude fewer flash cards. When it's easy to copy/paste, there's no way you can create all the flashcards you need by hand in a decent amount of time. > The flexibility of being able to dynamically generate a ton of Anki cards using a script is trumped by just using ChatGPT ... I wou…

[deleted]

Re: Learning Persian with Anki, ChatGPT and YouTube

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the advantage of building your own decks is choosing words you will actually use. this matters if you're practicing conversation, if your goal is just to read general material then using preselected word lists makes sense

You should be using all the words. If you want to learn words about cooking, buy cookbooks. I want to read all material. I want to read extremely esoteric subjects from UNAM's press, I want to read Cervantes, I want to read cookbooks, I want to read Mexican street fotonovelas from the 70s. > using preselected word lists makes sense I have never used Anki for word to word translation, because there is no Spanish word…

That makes sense as a long-term goal, but if you're still in the earlier stages it's much more fun to learn a variety of words and focus on the most common ones. Get depth at first, and later you can fill in the holes with e.g. a cookbook.

I know you consider it pseudoscience to force creating your own cards, but I do find premade decks result in a lot more leeches. How do you avoid them when relying on these thousands of auto-generated cards?

Re: Learning Persian with Anki, ChatGPT and YouTube

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it really great for quickly learning contents of a paper or books, my only gripe with anki is the integration between desktop and mobile, especially if you dont opt to sign in and getting things to sync was a pain in the ass. Hell even moving my deck from my old computer to new one wasnt straight forward

Could you talk about your method for breaking up the contents of papers and books into cards? I have a bunch of reading to catch up on for a midterm in a few weeks and I'm not sure how fine-grained to make my cards.

There is a category called incremental reading,you can find more elegant techniques if you look into it.

My method is more primitive, I first get a simple overview of the topic (LLMs are great at this). Once I have a feel , i flick through the material book/paper highlight important info that stands out or info that I want to remember and personally for me, Im not trying to understand things as I highlight, once I'm done a chapter or a big section, I pull out my anki and start making questions against the highlighted parts.

When Im making questions, usually I make one questions that corresponds directly and I use the highlighted part as the answer with minimum change expect for readability and then I make several other questions that takes different parts of the highlighted answer, so that I can have an almost lego like breakdown of questions that can help me recall the "bigger question", also I make sure the questions arent to direct and force my brain to think and retrieve the answer

I hope this helps, this is the article that inspired me to read this way: https://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html

Re: Learning Persian with Anki, ChatGPT and YouTube

#58

I've had some successful sprints using Anki, but I always get fatigued making cards for it after a few months, even when leaning on LLM tools to speed up the process. One app I used early on when beginning French was Clozemaster, set to keyboard input (instead of multiple choice). The largest benefit was I didn't have to make all the decks, they progress you through the most common words (used in context), and there…

I use yomitan + a spanish dictionary + ankiconnect for flashcard creation. i can browse whatever in spanish, hold shift and hover to see the definition(s) of a spanish word unconjugated + how its conjugated, and hit a + button to add it to my anki deck, either in context or just as a word

Re: Learning Persian with Anki, ChatGPT and YouTube

#60

I could learn Danish with Anki, YouTube, ChatGPT and a teacher in evening school. I think Danish is even harder to learn then Persian. ;-) Anki is a great concept!

How difficult a language is to learn is very subjective. My mother language is Danish and therefore learning German was relatively easy for me (relatively because it is always difficult to learn a new language!)

Manchmal, wenn ich ein Wort noch nie gesehen habe, kann ich die Bedeutung herausfinden, weil ich das entsprechende Wort auf Dänisch kenne.

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