Anki is probably the best flash card software out there, not to forget that it is free. Of course flash cards are not only good for learning languages but that is what I use i for and I think most other people, too. I find it an extremely efficient tool to memorize words for several reasons.
For me, building more vocabulary was always a problem for me. I just couldn't sit down with a book and learn vocabulary like this. But I also didn't just want to sit there and wait to learn new words during my normal working day. I wanted some structure also. Then there is a problem that I think almost all of us have: lack of time and a busy working day. I am not carrying a book or a set of flash cards around with me all the time. Highly unpractical. But with the rise of smartphones, flash card software has seen a revival for good reason. I have my smartphone with me all the time, so every time I am waiting for the subway, at lunch, or any other situation where I might have 5 minutes to spare I fire up Anki and go through some of the cards I created before. If you have never used a software such as Anki you will be surprised how it only takes about 2, 3 times until you memorize a word.
Anki lets you create lessons, then learn these lessons by showing you the front side of the card, then you can think about the answer and then clock on proceed to be presented with the correct answer. Then you get a choice of how to continue with each word. You can let Anki know if you knew this word or not and also how fast you could think of the answer. Based on your input Anki will ask you for this card again very soon (if you didn’t know it) or it will put it way back (for the ones you know alerady very fast) and you will be presented with this card again at a later point in time. The reason for this is that you start memorizing words in short intervals at first but once you already know them pretty quickly you now want to get these words into your long term memory. So Anki will ask you at intervals that are getting longer and longer to get these words memorized properly.
It also presents you statistics on each lesson you created so you always know which are the ones that still need work and which are the ones you are good at already.
By the way, Anki flash cards can include text, audio, and graphics, so you could even include a sound file on how to pronounce a word for example.
My workflow goes sth. like this:
1. I have the Anki windows version on my PC where I create and store all my lessons.
2. Those lessons I then transfer to my Android phone.
3. Then I review all my lessons on the Android version of Anki. The Android version is called AnkiDroid and available for free on the Android market.
That is pretty much it. From my point of view, Anki is not everything you will need to learn a language such as Thai effectively. But it is the best companion to language lessons with a professional teacher. Every time after a class, I will take my language book, create new Anki lessons with the newly learned words and patterns and start reviewing those. Normally I can remember about half of them, then that is a good factor if you keep studying frequently. You will memorize more and more over time.
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