We recently got a shoutout on r / learnfrench for our French deck, and I want to explain why we built it and why it’s the most efficient way to learn basic vocab.

The problem with most French Anki decks

The most popular French deck on AnkiWeb has 33,474 cards to learn 5,000 words. At 20 cards per day, that's 4.6 YEARS to finish.

Let's be honest: studying Anki sucks. It's boring, and unless you're actually engaging with French content regularly, memorizing flashcards isn't particularly useful anyway.

Our approach: Get you out of Anki as fast as possible

We designed our deck around one goal: get you enjoying REAL French content ASAP, with minimal time spent on flashcards.

Here's what we cut out:

• Cognates - You don't need to study "étudiant" when you already know "student." We manually reviewed 6,000 high-frequency words and removed everything an English speaker can pick up naturally from context.

• Derivative words - If you know "travail" (noun), you can figure out "travailler" (verb). We only included one.

• Babying sentences - Many decks obsess over "one new thing per card" and create awkward, artificial sentences. Ours are written by native speakers, roughly ordered to build on previous cards, but prioritize sounding natural over being strictly 1T.

• Slow audio - The hardest part of French is listening. We use natural speed audio because you need to train your ears for real content, not textbook pronunciation.

The deck is also comprehension-focused (recognition, not production) because memorizing for comprehension is way easier than trying to produce words from scratch.

The result:

1,000 words + basic grammar study + 2 hours daily of French media (intensive w/ lookups) = B2 comprehension in 100 days.

That gets you past the "fun threshold" where real French content becomes comprehensible. Speaking and writing at B2 takes more work, but it's much easier once you have that solid listening/reading foundation.

Click here to learn vocab the right way

I have a hunch that listening to incomprehensible Japanese all day really doesn't do much, and instead it's repping i+1 sentences on anki that's granting language ability.

It'd be interesting to compare someone who only immersed (no sentence reps on anki) to someone who only did i+1 sentences on anki and see how they both progressed. Surely, if the immersion in incomprehensible Japanese was truly that useful, the immersion person would progress faster?

If the latter is the case (sentence repping is what's doing it) then certainly it'd be easier for newbies to just get a premade i+1 deck, rather than making a new one each time?

AJATT is a good method that encourages immersion learning and spaced repetition to learn a target language. However, I think its advice on output and other practices can be debated. I will explain these pieces of advice and how I think they should be improved. Of course, feel free to critique my points.

You should only output once you have enough input experience

Outputting, writing and speaking specifically are separate skills that should be trained on. While input can compliment these skills, actively trying to produce the most fluent sentences will help you to acquire faster due to the scientifically backed principles of deliberate practice and free recall. Input just doesn't help you retain as much compared to the former.

Translating is bad

I don't think translating is that bad for the following reasons:

• When you are immersing for the first few months, you are essentially translating into your native language anyway to get a better grasp of its meaning.

• As long as you don't translate literally, you should be fine with not "thinking in your native language". The more you study through input and (tested) output, the more you will also develop acquisition regardless.

• I believe languages are complex enough to explain the nuances of vocabulary well. The other aspects of their nuance can be discovered through immersion.

If you output too early you could develop bad habits that are hard to break

I don't consider this to be a large threat, especially with the benefits of outputting. If you practise input and output in tandem then the risks will be minimal. Also these habits can be prevented by testing your output. This can be done by doing the following:

1. Find teacher/language partner -> Output -> Teacher/Language partner corrects you -> Acknowledge correction

2. Find a sentence from your immersion -> Translate the sentence into your native language -> Translate the sentence back into your target language -> Check for mistakes

Yes, for method 1, the language partner won't always correct you. I also think the issues caused by this are minimal as long as your output gets tested most of the time.

For Anki, you should find, save and recognise comprehensible input from your immersion

From my experience using Anki, the words you review are quite hard to remember because you are only using active reading to learn, which isn't a good way to learn vocabulary. This is the case especially with Kanji in Japanese. I think a better way of using Anki is as follows. This is similar to method 2 of the last point:

1. Find a sentence from your immersion -> Translate it into your native language (Try to make the translation as literal as possible, adding notes below to make up for loss in meaning) -> Translate back into the target language by speaking and writing -> Check for mistakes

2. Mark the card as good if you managed to translate well

This method will take much longer than the former, but I think it is worth it and a good way of practising your output without having to worry about doing Anki as another task.

The best way to develop the correct accent is through input only

I don't agree with this. Having a correct accent involves the use of your mouth muscles as well as muscle memory and input. To achieve that, you must practise listening to the accent, speaking in the accent, reviewing how you use your muscles with some sort of guide (Dogen) and listening to your recordings. Shadowing is also a good method.

If you are listening/watching content without subtitles, it is OK to use subtitles in your native language to get a reference for what is being said instead of using subtitles in your target language as long as you aren't dependent on it. There are benefits to this:

• You can grasp the context of what is being said by comparing it to the translation in your native language. The subtitles are made by translators, who are fluent in both your native language and your target language, so you can get context from their perspective. This will help you to understand what a word or grammar piece means to an extent, and more reliably when it should be used.

• Not having target language subtitles forces you to try to comprehend what is being said, but you may not be able to hear the foreign phonemes in the language you are studying. However, using subtitles in your native language can help you to get an idea of what words are being used by searching the translated words in the dictionary and comparing what is being said to what you find. This might be better than using subtitles in your target language as you have less references.

Using subtitles in your target language aren't a strict substitute for looking up words in the dictionary as the translations are not always literal (certain lines can be made to be figurative for artistic reasons), but for getting context it can be brilliant. Using them when needed can be an aid to your learning.

Hi,

I'm looking for, but cannot find, a good website to watch Japanese anime with Japanese subtitles for free for my immersion (preferably with decent quality video and audio).

Is there any kind soul that could point me to some good websites?

Hey all, I was looking to start memorising japanese vocabulary and was just wondering if anybody could recommend so anki decks. Something like core 2000 etc

Are there any programs that work with the Decks? I'm sorry this is an unpopular opinion but I LOATHE Anki! I just want to study ALL the content. I can use Reword for Spanish (I'm learning Spanish) but I can't add everything I want for the minimal pairs. Do anyone have solutions/apps where I can import the Anki deck. Please don't suggest Excel either.

Edit: Not sure why I'm downvoted for saying I don't care for Anki. This is my PERSONAL opinion! Disregard, I figured it out.

This post summarizes the things im going to do the first three months of learning this languages.

I have before me a difficult challenge: learning several languages ​​at the same time. Some of these languages ​​are the ''dead languages'' (Greek and Latin) that I study, without success, of course, at the University with the grammar-translation method, and the rest are ''living languages'': Japanese, French and modern Greek.

I know three languages: Spanish (native), English (very good level, but I never speak it or write it) and Italian (good reading and comprehension level). I feel that I have a certain facility for languages, and I don't see it as a problem. In any case, we will see it in three months. But the question is reasonable: why write about these topics, about the projects, impressions and ideas that are being had along the way? Well, I have some ideas about that. First of all, to be consistent and encourage oneself. Second, to share the experiences with everyone and receive feedback. Third, because it's fun.

As far as Latin is concerned, I have found and started using the Lingua Latina per se Illustrata, which shows great results, as expected. Greek, on the other hand, has proven to be a bit more difficult and the Athenaze method, while not ideal, seems to work. What led me to these “different” methods of learning classical languages ​​was the apparent impossibility of reading the materials that interested me, even when studying well. I didn't learn vocabulary and the thing seemed more like a math game than a language, which isn't hard to see. In addition to Athenaze and LLPSI, I use Anki as a complement to better learn the vocabulary and the different supplements to the books. In the case of LLPSI it is simple: I read the chapter until I understand everything, I do the exercises and think about them and read the complementary stories, and everything is finished in a single day, even though the exercises are many. In the case of Athenaze, because it is more difficult and less perfect as a book, I take two days per lesson:

Day 1: reading the chapter until I understand everything and copy the vocabulary list in my notebook.

Day 2: grammar reading, exercises, and Anki (letter creation and review). Also, in addition to reading aloud, I transfer the entire lesson to my notebook and read it out loud while recording myself.

In terms of modern languages, not all of them interest me the same. The greatest interest is in Japanese, which I love and would like to be able to read, followed by French, which I need for professional reasons, and finally modern Greek, which I want to learn not only for literary reasons (Kazantzakis and others) but as a bridge to ancient greek. Obviously, the pleasures of modern Greek are wide and there is a rich culture, and I don't want to say that I don't care at all, but at the moment I have more ideas about ancient Greek.

I study Japanese very simply, focusing on LingQ and Anki. With Anki I make sentences (I'm with Tae Kim and I plan to continue with the Grammar Dictionary) and kanji with the Core 2k/6k deck. In both cases I am already advanced: about 650 sentences and 150 kanjis, although I restarted both of them to start over (this for reasons that are beside the point). A few days ago I downloaded LingQ, which I plan to use every day for at least an hour. So, to summarize, we have the following:

1. Anki: prayers.

2. Anki: Core 2k/6k (34/ day without problems, I find it quite funny).

3. Ling Q

For French I started with a deck of words and a deck of sentences, but I quickly realized that it didn't work. So I decided to see what LingQ was like and I loved it, so I'm going to do LingQ every day for two hours. With that, I think, in principle it will be enough to advance a lot. As part of my tests, I took the introductory course ''Getting Started'', and I found it extraordinary.

For Greek I have a word deck and a sentence deck, of which I plan to do a certain amount per day (between 10 and 30 of each) while doing LingQ for some time per day. If I see that LingQ works better than sentences and vocabulary I will go that route. The first month I'm going to use Pimsleur, but just to see how it works.

General resources:

Anki, LingQ, Pimsleur.

See you in three months.

P.S: as I wrote all this in spanish, I used google translator because im lazy, but it seemed to work very well.

I started this yesterday, I've recently quit working and want to go through RTK quickly so I can get started with a kanji deck for kanji that I see in immersion. I will update at each 500 kanji milestone/every 5 days. I am not doing recognition RTK , I am learning how to write each one and if I fail to write it correctly I'm hitting again. (I only use again and good for card rating).

I have studied Japanese in college, lived there for a year, and like I said am no longer working. This is just my personal challenge, but to any who sees this as interesting feel free to join for the ride. I'm quite positive once I get about a week in the reviews will take quite a long time just from the way Anki's algorithm works.

Update 1

It's been pretty smooth sailing so far. It hasn't taken most of my day up and I've been completing them with low failure rates. Imgur album below with Anki stats so far. Around 90% retention, 218 reviews for my sixth day.

For my 5th day I..

Studied ⁨⁨380⁩ cards⁩ ⁨in ⁨2.17⁩ hours⁩ today (⁨20.54⁩s/card)

Again count: 11 (2.89%)

Learn: ⁨203⁩, Review: ⁨169⁩, Relearn: ⁨8⁩, Filtered: ⁨0⁩

Day 5 - https://imgur.com/a/2BqRhKp

Hello, I'm 19 years old, and my name is Federico.

I'm from Argentina, and I've been learning English for a year.

I finished high school having a B1 level of proficiency in English. But that was not enough for me. I wanted to understand movies (e.g., The Godfather or Pulp Fiction), song lyrics (like those by Bob Dylan or The Beatles), and Podcasts (my favorite is The Joe Rogan Experience).

All the things that I loved and still love are in English. So that motivated me to study seriously and not stop until I could read or listen in English without problems.

The assessments that I did tell me that I now have a general level of C1 in English.

The problem is that these assessments only consider my understanding of spoken and written English, but not my ability to speak English.

I studied Web Development, and I want to work as a Freelancer, but to do so, I need to speak English fluently. That would allow me to better communicate with my clients and thus grow professionally.

I already listed as high-quality resources Pimsleur, good tutors on iTalki, Shadowing (imitate a native speaker), training pronunciation with Anki, and language exchange sites like HelloTalk, Tandem, or servers in Discord.

But I am looking for more information.

Please comment. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. :D

I've always found doing Anki reviews a chore, and I always end up quitting eventually. However, I'm also concerned that I'm not learning optimally by not using it. I've compromised by just using it for quick review. I'm working through a few frequency decks, and I still spend a second or two trying to recall the meaning, but I pass every card regardless of whether I got it right or not. I'm doing 100 cards a day, and I assume that being exposed to so many words will speed up my acquisition of them during immersion. I'm curious if anyone else uses Anki like this.

Immersion is the whole point, but some weeks it just doesn't happen. This was one of those weeks for me. 9 hours of videos, and only 1h 16m of it was Japanese.

Without the numbers I'd probably have told myself I did fine. Seeing it like this is a kick, so next week the goal is at least 2 hours of Japanese everyday.

The image is from a tracker I made. It runs in Chrome and logs your time automatically on YouTube, Netflix, Twitch and more, and it can track Steam games too. It detects the language by itself, splits active and passive time.

It's free and you don't need an account to start: https://www.osmolog.com/ or at Chrome Web Store

How do you keep track of your immersion?

Came across this petition to help make a Gaelic Languages Act, would really appreciate any support if you're able to sign the petition!

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/578674

Hi. I'm studying Chinese and i'm still at the beginning. Is there any tips for practice tones and Pinyin. I'm already taking Chinese lessons for pronunciation twice a week but I would like some tips to better understand I'm doing it good when I'm alone. Thanks!

I'm B2+ and I immerse in English with TV shows and podcasts, no translation. Two things kept bugging me:

1. Looking up the words I miss is a pain. When I hit a phrase I don't get, I end up jumping to ChatGPT, DeepSeek or Google Images to figure it out. It's slow, it breaks the flow, and without the scene as context the answer is often off — I get a generic dictionary meaning, not what the phrase actually means there. As for me, ChatGPT is useful for learning languages, but sometimes it gives me excessive information I don't want to know (like why a particular grammar point is used in this sentence, or the etymology of words). I know it was designed to give you as much information as possible, but this process unfortunately gets you out of immersion.

2. At B2+, the new words are rare, so they don't stick. Early on you meet a word again and again naturally and it sticks on its own. Now the words I don't know show up maybe once and then not again for a long time — so natural exposure isn't enough to remember them.

So I started building a small tool around two ideas:
– explain the phrase right in the scene, in plain English, no translation;
– then bring the word back through short, compelling stories over the next days — re-exposure in context instead of flashcards. That's the part I think actually makes rare words stick.

It's still early and I mostly want honest feedback from people who actually immerse. Happy to share the link if anyone's curious — didn't want to just drop it in the post.

Imagine you have a deck containing the 10,000 most common words in your target language. Each card features native audio and an example sentence. You go through 50 words a day, simply reading the cards and passing all of them without grading. While this approach might not help the words stick as well as traditional Anki methods, you'll still end up with a significantly larger vocabulary by the end. The sheer number of words you'll encounter and the ease of reviewing them will outweigh the lack of active recall. This method provides bite-sized comprehensible input, similar to traditional reading and listening while allowing you to more efficiently learn the most common words in the language.

Edit: Bad title. I should've said "grading cards in Anki is unnecessary"