r/Anki • u/BlaiseLabs • 1d ago
Add-ons Using Computer Science and Anki to Learn More Vocabulary With Less Memorization
https://youtu.be/j-xJ8mhyt0EA couple days ago I made an anki add-on that made it easier to guess the meaning and reading of Japanese words in any anki deck.
Someone requested the same for Chinese so I made a sequel to the add-on called GuessWithAnki. It brings the same learning benefits as the original add-on with support for Japanese, Chinese, English and medical decks.
To learn more about how the add-on works and how I made it, you can watch the video in the post or read the r/hacktoberfest article here.
Any feedback on the process and analysis is appreciated. I am curious to know if this is a pattern other anki users have noticed and how helpful they found it for language learning.
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u/jaimepapier 1d ago
This is really interesting! I’m actually doing some research now as part of my PhD into learning vocabulary with applications (like Anki). I think what you’ve found and created is a really good idea and could really reduce the learning burden.
A few thoughts:
- Learning in this way depends a lot on the quality of the deck and its pertinence to the learner. Learning antidisestablishmentarianism will be easy if you already know antidisestablishmentarian, but neither word is useful. Fortunately, a lot of existing decks based on word frequency already exist. I would just say that this method for a beginner is probably more appropriate on a smaller deck, or otherwise one that makes sure you learn a bunch of the most common words before you get down to doing all words in the “employ” word family.
- For English, I think there’s more ways of breaking down vocabulary than into morphemes. Some research suggests that learners actually don’t guess words in the same word family that easily for one. Also, vocabulary is also multi-word units, which are really important to learners (like “could I please have…?”). Something like this could help people learning phrasal verbs (take on, take out, take in, take up…) if you could distinguish the different roles that the propositions can have in the words to increase guess-ability.
- One thing to be careful of is that wrong guesses can be learned, especially when guessing is somewhat arbitrary. However, the effect of this is reduced when feedback is instant, which is the case in Anki. Learners should not be encouraged to make arbitrary guesses though (they should guess when the evidence is good - if they are thinking about it then that will help memory).
Is your code for this open? I’d be really interested to hear learn more about this.
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u/BlaiseLabs 1d ago
Wow thanks for the feedback, the code is open but I haven't combed through it myself yet. Here is the link, GuessWithAnki. It is under an MIT license so you are free to do with it as you please.
My initial intention was to just do this for Japanese, since that is the language I am currently learning. With the other languages like Chinese and English I am not as well informed. Especially with English, since it is my native language, which makes it hard for me to see the underlying patterns in it if that makes sense. I don't have a traditional linguistic background so there are a lot of things that I miss.
As far as your research in using software to learn languages, I'd say I am very invested in the topic. An unexpected side effect I've experienced learning Japanese over the past 6 months is a sharp increase in my technical skills. Technical concepts I've spent years trying to learn or better understand have come to me a lot easier since I started taking Japanese seriously.
Not sure what you're two cents on this phenomenon might be but its something that I've been continuing to chase since I've noticed.
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u/jaimepapier 1d ago
It ties in with my personal observations and with what I’ve read. I definitely find that I can guess words and retain words better in languages that I’m good at.
Regarding spotting patterns, the ideal method might be to train a machine learning model to know what vocabulary is more likely to be memorable based on all previous learning and on the learner’s native language. But then you might be putting in an enormous amount of effort for relatively small gains.
Ultimately all vocabulary needs to be put into context, with opportunities to see/hear it and use it as much as possible. Without that, no amount of optimisation for memorisation is going to help you learn the language.
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u/tunerhd 1d ago
As a Turkish native speaker I always do grammar mistakes when it comes to European languages. Like it doesn't matter which one it is. English, German, Swedish...
I would like to know if there's a trick to fix that via memorization apps.
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u/BlaiseLabs 1d ago
I've found studying verb noun collocations to be useful but again I am not a language expert.
I find them useful because they punish direct translation harshly across languages. For example in English we tend to say catch a cold or play video games, in Japanese the correct phrase is closer to "pull" a cold or "do" a video game.
When I first learned about these I was surprised at how often I was using the wrong verb to describe an action because I was directly translating from English to Japanese (which I shouldn't do).
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u/jaimepapier 1d ago
OP mentions learning multiword units (aka formulaic sequences). It’s a very good idea.
There’s no magic trick that replaces plenty of exposure and opportunity to practice though.
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u/Ok_Tie7944 1d ago
I'm on zorin OS and I can't open the settings through the tools menu. Through the extensions menu, the settings open. I threw the debug message at Claude and he responded with this:
The error is in the add-on itself, not in your installation. In ui.py, inside settings(), GuessWithAnki calls Anki's config editor passing the main window (mw). The editor expects the add-on manager dialog (dlg.mgr) instead, which is why you get 'AnkiQt' object has no attribute 'mgr'. This is probably caused by an internal change in Anki 26.09 that version 0.1.1 of the add-on hasn't been updated for.
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u/BlaiseLabs 1d ago
Appreciate this, I will take a look at it now. If you're comfortable with programming, I can add you to the repo as a contributor if you're interested.
Either way appreciate the info.
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u/Ok_Tie7944 1d ago
You're welcome.
Thanks for the invitation but I don't know anything about programming. My area of study is spoken languages. But I know how important feedback is for those who program. Whenever I can, I report on the experience of using the applications.
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u/Danika_Dakika 1d ago
This is interesting. It seems similar to the ideas behind AnkiMorphs/MorphMan, and any "n+1" language-study methods.