Anki

Anki is a flashcard program and app that lets you create your own flashcards and download decks other people have made. There are many benefits to using electronic flashcards over physical ones:

• You can study cards from different chapters (or however you separate the cards) at the same time
• Cards can appear truly randomly instead of several cards being shuffled together and always appearing back-to-back
• You can fix typos and add, edit, and delete cards on the spot without having to bring physical blank cards
• Pictures and sounds are an option, although on my phone they don't appear for some reason
• There are various options for creating reverse cards or cards with multiple sides
• Difficult cards appear more often, meaning time is spent on these instead of ones you already know
• Cards can be given tags so that you can thoroughly customize which cards you study
• Decks can be synced across devices
• There are many decks that other people have already made
• Cards are identical, so there aren't any bent corners to make certain cards easier

Flashcards in general are a great way to study vocabulary as well as facts that you need to remember. When studying a foreign language, I recommend studying from the target language to your native language and then vice-versa; this means that if you're a native English-speaker who's learning Spanish, you should look at the Spanish side of cards first and then look at English sides once you can recognize all of the Spanish ones.

Please note that for some reason, Anki is free on Android and PC but costs money on iPhones. If you have an iPhone, you might want to use the desktop version instead. The official manual can be found here, which goes more in-depth than I will here.

Creating Cards

Are you in a hurry or generally comfortable with new software? Follow the steps below. Skip the first step if you're adding cards to an existing deck.

1. Click Create Deck on the bottom and name your deck.
2. Click Add on top between Decks and Browse.
3. Click the botton to the right of Type. It probably says Basic.
4. Select Basic (and reversed card) and click Choose.
5. Look at the bottom to the right of Deck. If it's not your new deck, click it and choose the new deck.
6. Type tags in the Tags field on the bottom, such as ch1, PE, or para_empezar.
7. Type the front side of the card in the Front field and the back side of the card in the Back field.
8. Click Add or press ctrl + enter.
9. Repeat 7-8 until all cards have been created.
10. Close the Add window and click the sync button on the upper-right part of the program window. It's a circle with two arrows. You'll need to register if you haven't already.

Anki can be a difficult program to use at first, especially when you try to make your own cards. I'll try to make this as easy to follow as possible. Once you get used to it, it'll be much less frustrating.

This is what the Anki desktop window looks like as of this posting. For this tutorial, I'm going to create a deck called "Spanish." To do this, click Create Deck on the bottom and type in the name that you want.

If you're like me, you separate physical flashcards by chapter, section, or theme. You might have the idea of creating a separate deck for each chapter. Instead of this, I recommend creating only one deck and using tags to separate content that you want to separate. This way you can study multiple chapters together.

Once your deck is created, click Add on top.

Before we get started, you need to choose what kinds of cards you want to create. There are four types:

• Basic: There's one card with a front side and a back side. You see the front side and must recall the back side.
• Forward & reverse: There's a front side and a back side. One card is created going front to back, and one card is created going back to front.
• Foward & optional reverse: Same as the previous type, but cards will only have a reverse side if you add text into an Add Reverse field
• Cloze: Hide one or several words with [...] until it's revealed. This is useful for studying information, such as "Adjectives in Spanish normally go [after] the words they describe."

I personally always use foward & reverse, but feel free to experiment with this and other settings. For this tutorial, I'm going to create cards for the first section of Para Empezar in the Spanish textbook Realidades 1. The first term is buenos días = good morning, so I'll create a note with two cards. What do I mean by this?

There's a difference between a note and a card in Anki. A note is the information that the cards represent. If I have a card with "yo" on the front and "I" on the back of the forward & reverse type, then the note is yo = I, and its two cards are yo = I and I = yo. If you edit the note (let's say you typed "you" and want to delete the unwanted U), both cards will be updated. If this is confusing, don't worry too much about it now.

So, in the Add window, click the button to the right of Type at the top of the window (it probably says Basic) and choose the type that you would like. For this tutorial, I'll use forward & reverse. With your choice selected, click Choose.

Now, let's make sure that your new deck is selected. To the right of Deck (also on top), if the button doesn't have your created deck name, click it and choose it.

Before creating cards, there are a few things to consider. First, if you plan on separating cards, such as by chapter, create a tag for this without spaces. For example, you might create the tags ch1 and greeting for "hola." Type your tags here; they'll remain after you create a card.

You might also want to rename the fields, which by default are called Front and Back. If you change them to Spanish and English, you'll remember which language to put in which field. Click the Fields button if you want to rename them, but this is optional.

Lastly, the default size is a little small for me. I prefer changing the text size to 50 instead of 20. If you want to do this, click the Cards button and changing 20 to the size you want.

Back at the Add window, you're finally ready to create your first card. Type in the front side and the back side.

When you're done, click Add or press ctrl + enter. Note that the two fields have cleared but everything else (tags, text size, field names, etc.) is the same. Keep adding cards until you have the ones you want. I find that the quickest way to add cards is to type the text for the front side, press the tab key, type the text for the back side, press ctrl + enter, and repeat.

When your cards are done, you're ready to study! Don't worry if you made a mistake and need to change something; this can be done in the card browser (which is accessed by pressing B after you close out of the Add window).

If you haven't been prompted to already, you'll need to create an Anki account to sync across devices. Even with syncing, it's recommend to make a local backup because unused decks might be deleted after a few months.

Studying

In a hurry? Here's a quick version like in the previous section. If you add cards as you learn them, simply click on your deck in the Decks screen and then Study Now. Otherwise, follow these steps to study specific cards. Previewing cards is also recommended if you've never studied the cards before.

1. On the Decks screen, click the name of the deck you want to study.
2. Click Custom Study.
3. For a quick session focusing on cards you got wrong previously, choose Review forgotten cards.
4. If you want to study cards whose information is completely new to you, consider choosing Preview new cards.
5. To study cards from a specific section or sections, such as chapter 1 or chapters 2, 3, and 5, choose Study by card state or tag. Highlight one of the options below, click Choose Tag, choose tags to study or exclude, and click OK. On the Android version, go to Options and check Reschedule if you want this session to count; this is enabled by default on the desktop version.
6. If there are too many cards, click Options, choose a number in Limit to, choose how cards are selected, and click Rebuild.

Step-by-step walkthrough with pictures coming soon!