Inspirational Input
Language and
Life
aren’t
separate.
SRS. Besides learning how to read and listen to Korean, another great use for this tool, is to inspire and guide. I give great credit to AJATT for this. I gather quotes, I like, from AJATT’s twitter feed, good pieces of advice, cool quotes, or stuff I’ve discovered about Korean, and stick them in the PD (Personal Development) deck of my SRS. Whenever I feel even a little dread about anything to do with learning Korean I open up the PD deck and I’m reminded that I may need to change something with my study habits or even life in general. The quote cards that I feel I haven’t followed through with or have forgotten about, I fail those. The ones that are clear in my mind or the ones that I follow more or less, I give a better grade. It has worked out pretty well for me. After reading through about 30 cards I open up a Korean sentence deck and start crazy-deleting bad sentences (’cause it feels good), or I open up a Korean book I forgot about and begin reading, or I just do whatever…in Korean.
January 23rd, 2010 at 4:46 am
Matt, have you ever played with smart.fm? It appears to be similar to Anki, and I’d be interested in getting the perspective of someone who has actually used an online SRS tool… you’re the first person I’ve run into whose done more than kick the tires, as it were.
January 23rd, 2010 at 11:05 am
I tried smart.fm a few months ago and I should probably try it again sometime. I was almost ready to switch over because it seemed like a more refined SRS tool, but there were a few things that kept me from using it… like the way smart.fm presents material to me. I simply want flash card style where I’m shown the question side, then the answer, and i give myself a rating. With Anki I can rate myself from 1-4. (1 = I don’t have a clue, to 4= so so easy). Smart.fm give asks me if I know the material, yes or no, then gives me a multiple choice quiz if i answer yes. If there’s another way to learn material on smart.fm without the multiple choice quiz i might switch. Oh yeah, there’s also another thing. I can use the iAnki ipod app without being connected to the internet. I have an ipod touch with only wifi, and often I can’t get a connection when i want to review some cards.
Wait, one more thing: Smart.fm seems to have a big community of people learning all kinds of stuff who like to share information. Anki has deck sharing among members but its mostly people that are learning Japanese. I think i read somewhere Anki users will create decks in smart.fm or use decks that other have made, export them, then import them into Anki. I haven’t tried that yet but it seems like a cool idea.