Are You Using Anki For Thai? How Do You Use It?

[OldChinaHam]

I do not think we have had a thread which tells us how our Thai learning members use Anki.

I have seen a few members mention Anki in passing.

But I think that Anki deserves a thread of its own.

WOULD IT NOT BE A FANTASTIC CONTRIBUTION TO THAI LEARNERS EVERYWHERE IF we could collaborate among ourselves on TVF Thai Language to produce the definitive Thai Language Learning Flashcard Deck.

Some members have their own very extensive decks.

But it might be useful to somehow collaborate.

We could use one member who is very familiar with Qt software language just to make things easy.

Then we ought to have a way for us to vet submissions to the deck, and correct the deck, and maintain the deck.

It would be worth the effort, and it would be fun to see that it was produced by Thai Visa Forum members.

Maybe some of you have some ideas about this?

I hope so.

The niceness about Anki is that it is opensource, and it provides many features and ways to tweak it, such as multimedia and just about anything you might wish to add to it.

We also should have a Q & A help thread for using Anki, maybe.

Anki already has one, but the problem is that this help forum seems to not get questions answered in a timely way (I may be wrong, and hope I am wrong about this point)

A good and proper Thai language deck can be useful to those who have already mastered the language also, just as the Anki decks can be useful to native English speakers who wish to increase their vocabulary.

I hope you have some ideas here.

Thank you very much.

(Oh, yes, pardon me. It would be very remiss of me not to at least post the Anki link here so that you can download the software: http://ankisrs.net/ )

(And for the Qt software, anyone who uses it will know where to find the How-To's for this)

Tks. Cheers. OCH

Edited September 6, 2013 by OldChinaHam

[bunnydrops]

Looks like no bites. I use it for vocabulary and reading practice. There is already a couple decks that are pretty good. The " 1000 most common words" is good. but remember that if you want sound you have to be connected to the internet. I think you have to change the default in the program though. 10 new words a day is way too many for me. I would like something like the 100 most useful phases.

[OldChinaHam]

Looks like no bites. I use it for vocabulary and reading practice. There is already a couple decks that are pretty good. The " 1000 most common words" is good. but remember that if you want sound you have to be connected to the internet. I think you have to change the default in the program though. 10 new words a day is way too many for me. I would like something like the 100 most useful phases.

Thanks for the input.

I have found that you can still use the audio files of a deck if you produce it yourself and use the audio files from the internet.

The audio files become synced onto your PC, and when the internet blacks out, you can still have the audio files to help with pronunciation.

Perhaps the setting need to be adjusted to achieve this result.

Regarding the number of words to be added per day, this is dependent on the amount of time you devote to study i guess.

Even 10 words per day, no matter how difficult, still only provides you with a passive vocabulary of about 3500 in one full year, which is not much.

College courses which are intensive expect the student to do more than this (I think).

Trying to build up your active vocabulary can be more difficult.

[bunnydrops]

First language is not my strong suit. I don't think that any book learning or program is where I "really" learn. Most of the words in the 1000 most used I use rarely in my day to day, so of the 70 a week, 280 a month added to the review of the 280 of the month before, maybe I will remember say 20% (that could be an over or under estimate since I don't really know). Now the next month I have over 500 to review, meaning maybe if I review 50 a day, I get to review each word very 10 days on top of that the 10 new words a day. I know, I know I will drop the ones I learned from the review but if I don't get to use them will I remember them in another month. Yes I know the system works because I hear the words come up in conversations, in context, and that builds on what I already know.

On the other hand I bring my Easy Dic with me everywhere. Now I need some ใบมีดโกน. That I have learned will not forget. Learned to get something I need at the time I needed it.

I use Anki because it helps me learn to read Thai with the added advantage of learning some new vocabulary, but I think it is only a fraction of vocabulary I learn.

[OldChinaHam]

I am sure you are right about one of the main advantages being with reading Thai, both to verify correct reading of tones for each written word, and to improve the speed of recognition for reading correctly the words of Thai presented in a random list without contextual references.