I am new to Anki and would like to ask the most experienced users about their approach to using Anki and spaced repetition.
Suppose I have created cards from a technical course, with questions focusing on technical concepts(i only use basic cards format). On the first review session, would you make sure to get all the cards right — no matter how much time it takes (I am not implying rote memorization) — in order to consider that review session complete? And would you apply the same approach in subsequent review sessions?
In other words, do you believe that making sure you fully understand and answer all cards correctly from the very first review leads to better long-term retention, compared to allowing yourself to make mistakes not mastering many things the first session or getting them memorized and then gradually adjusting through later reviews?
I would appreciate hearing your reasoning and arguments on this. Thank you in advance.
Let’s say you want to learn a chapter from a textbook. The steps you’d have to go through are:
- Understand what you’re reading.
- Research more / ask other people if you do not understand the material.
- Create answers and questions (one question per card only).
You should already understand the material. Ankis job is to help you remember what you already understand.
Your retention will be much better if
- you understand what you’re learning and
- can place it in a bigger, greater picture.
Effective learning requires active recall. Which means you have to try and remember the answer to the question. But – at the beginning you will very likely find yourself in a position, where you don’t know the answer to most of the cards. Not because you don’t understand it, but because you simple forgot / cannot recall the information.
What I do is basically this:
- Read the question.
- Try to remember it for 10 – 30 seconds.
- If I fail to remember the answer in that time frame, I just click the again button and relearn that question (and say I had to remember 4 symptoms but only remembered 3, then I did obviously forget something. Which means I’d press again for those cards as well).
There really is no use sitting over e.g. 1 hour on the same question, trying to remember it. You most likely still wouldn’t remember the answer and you’d waste a lot of precious time.
And, of course, always complete all reviews for the day. You can make breaks in between if you realize your concentration is getting a bit worse, but try to never build up a backlog of cards.
And stay very consistent with your answer button usage. I do it like this:
- Again: I forgot something or everything of the answer.
- Hard: I answered correctly but retrieving the knowledge felt difficult.
- Good: I answered correctly.
- Easy: I never use easy.
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