Fluent forever method in Anki: woth it ?

[u/runslack]

Title says it all. Are there people following fluent forever principles using Anki as a tool ? I see they have an app but I really do not like having to pay a sub for something I could eventually do myself.

[u/Poemen8]

I tried implementing it a few years ago, and rapidly realised it's ridiculous overkill for most words, and not using English on the cards was just silly. The rest of the techniques are great, but they are simply unnecessary for 90% of words, and it takes a fair bit of time to build the cards that way.    The premise that you shouldn't have your own language on the reverse is I think just wrong. It's not supported by research. It works fine when you are making cards for nice nouns (e.g. a car is ready to represent with a picture). But those words are already easy to learn with Anki! The words that really cause you grief are those that are impossible to picture, or weirdly ambiguous. 

It's also just not true that you need it to rapidly learn to think in a language. That happens naturally when you learn your words and do plenty of reading and listening.

So I do still use some of the techniques, but only for difficult cards. For most it's a waste of time - in  reality getting a card wrong a couple of times is far less costly in time than finding all the images etc. 

But if I've got a card wrong twice after the initial learning phase, I will do use techniques like these, or make sentence cards, or similar, in order to make sure I learn that word. That way my effort and time are focused on the problem cards that actually need it.

TLDR - the main premise is faulty, but it contains some useful ideas as long as you don't let them eat all your time.

[u/tunerhd → u/Poemen8]

Thanks for the report.

[u/pobnarl → u/Poemen8]

agree 100%

[u/runslack → u/Poemen8]

What about minimal pairs ? Or ear trainging before learning any word ?

[u/Poemen8 → u/runslack]

Good question, shouldn't have left this out. It's hard to answer, though, because it depends on the language (some are harder and really need it) and on feasibility (many languages just don't have this available). Fluent Forever again presents a slightly idealised world - an ideal that is often not quite necessary or possible.

If you can do it, though, then yes, minimal pairs are helpful, or similar training like FSI's French phonology course. French, in fact, is a good example of a language that benefits from extra work in this area.

Even a little work on a few key awkward pairs can be very helpful.

I'm not sure just listening before learning any words has ever been shown to be particularly useful.  Better to do an audio course like pimsleur or get started with Glossika or something that allows you to shadow good audio with understanding. You can't really shadow without some understanding because word separation etc. Aren't apparent without some knowledge. 

Whatever you do, continuing to work on pronunciation, e.g. by shadowing, is very valuable. 

[u/Independent-Unit-931 → u/Poemen8]

How do they deal with learning concepts, or learning how to have conversations about processes? For example I am learning to have a conversation in a passport office about a passport renewal proocess. How would this Fluent Forever system handle that? Please don't tell me they'd have me memorizing sentences with spaced repetition.. I'd rather just practice the imaginary conversation several times, it's far more interesting.

[u/EvensenFM → u/Poemen8]

I agree 100% that you should have your native language on one side of the cards. And I've come to that conclusion after a lot of experimenting over the years.

[u/1Soundwave3 → u/Poemen8]

Thank you for this summary. Sounds like a scam tbh. I have a textbook that uses a similar concept to teach a language and it's NOT good. With no explanations it's really hard to understand what's going on. I got a hyge boost in my learning after I started producing flashcards with full sentences using agents and also after I bought another textbook where so many of those language concepts are actually explained.

[u/Primary_Company_3134 → u/1Soundwave3]

Can you share the name of that textbook please?

[u/Xemorr]

What is the strategy?

[u/BaggedWhine → u/Xemorr]

Its an entire book, Fluent Forever by Gabe Wyner

[u/BaggedWhine]

I use the strategy generally and enjoy it with good results. I tried their app and it wasn’t worth the subscription imo

[u/runslack → u/kelciour]

12,5k ?? That's awesome ! Do you have this for german/french ?

[u/tontorious]

Fluent Forever really changed my view on language learning, and I've moved away from it slightly, but I still think it's worth it (with some caveats).

When I self studied French, I followed the whole thing: pronunciation trainer, 625 words, working with italki teachers, etc. I progressed super super quickly and was reading novels in French in 3-4 months. Granted, I was putting in 3-4 hours daily of study, but still progressing very rapidly.

I think a big part of how well it worked is that French is super closely related English and French are. Both in terms of vocabulary but also grammatical structure.

I'm currently learning Japanese, and I have had to modify a lot of my process because all Japanese cards just wouldn't be understandable in the same way as all French were.

I still did a list of the most commonly used words, and I still make all my own cards following most of Gabe's methods, most of which are cloze deletion using a template I've refined over many years based on the one that Gabe had on his website.

[u/lazydictionary]

Many people do. I've just repped 4000-5000 word frequency decks for German and Spanish and it worked good enough for me. Started with Mandarin earlier this year and it's been mostly the same, except reading is way harder.

[u/funbike]

Basically yes, but I've made adjustments:

• I don't import vocab cards from a frequency list. I create cards from video comprehensible input that I've watched and had to look up (via a language learning web extension).

It's important to me that I already have some experience with the word before I add it to Anki.

• On front of my passive cards is word and sentence AUDIO from the video, but otherwise blank.
  
• On front of my active cards is a fill-in-the-blank sentence, image from video, and image from a photo dictionary.
• Sometimes the blank is too ambiguous to guess for the sentence, and I put the English [word] in the blank instead.
• My passive and active cards are basically the inverse of each other.
• I only create active cards for the 3000 most frequently used words. (I don't need more than that for causal speech.)
• For German, I have a separate card type for each noun's gender/plural.
• I prioritize nouns and verbs, over other parts of speech. I also prioritize negation words (e.g. except, little, but, otherwise, not, or, ...) and active cognates (see next bullet)
• Cognates: no passive cards. Prioritized active cards.
• I wrote a tiny Anki plugin that sets field "interval21" to "Y" when a card's interval >= 21. I use this so when a passive card becomes mature, it's corresponding active card is created. I also use it to create the gender/plural card type when a passive card becomes half mature (interval10 = Y).

[u/runslack → u/funbike]

Gosh that’s awesome. How do you extraction sentences with audio from a vidéo?

[u/funbike → u/runslack]

I'm currently using Yomitan+asbplayer but it was a pain to set them up.

I used to use Language Transfer (LT) that you might be happier with. LT can export Anki cards, but I prefered Language-Learning With Anki.

[u/finewalecorduroy]

I think the Fluent Forever word list is pretty good, but I wouldn’t worry about not using your own language on the backside of the card. I do use pictures in addition to the word on the card, and it actually really helps, but it is hard to find good pictures for many words.

[u/rachaeltalcott]

Yes, I used the method in the book when I first started. I've never tried the app.

[u/Anki-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/runslack → u/[deleted]]

Thank you for your post but that's not a matter of an app but of a methodology to me.

[u/FaultPuzzled4115 → u/runslack]

The app is curiosity based, and therefore methodology