Never stray from the "minimum information principle"
I read the "20 rules" page when I started using Anki, but thought I knew better and that making cards resembling exam questions made more sense.
Here is one of those old cards:
Q. What was the Age of Pope associated with?
A. the rise of satire, novels and literary periodicals
The answer contains 3 bits of information - satire, novels, periodicals. I am also not being quizzed on "the Age of Pope" itself as it is mentioned in the question. I should have made 4 cards from the material: one per fact to be memorised.
Because those cards were ill-formulated, I failed them very, very often and stopped reviewing after the exam, as I found them tedious to study. They were also hard to evaluate: if you omit only "novels" from your answer, for example, should you mark the card as "failed" or "hard"? Whatever your choice, this will mess up the spaced repetition algorithm, since the information you give it will be inaccurate.
I am in the process of converting those old cards into effective reviewing material. Here is what I did with the example given above, combining multiple old cards into one:
[Alexander Pope], [Jonathan Swift] and [Daniel Defoe] are associated with the [Age of Pope], characterised by the rise of [satire], [novels] and [literary periodicals].
Everything between square brackets represents a cloze (my convention; the code is different in Anki). So, in practice, Anki will show me these:
Q. [...], Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe are associated with the Age of Pope, characterised by the rise of satire, novels and literary periodicals.
A. Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe are associated with the Age of Pope, characterised by the rise of satire, novels and literary periodicals.
Q. Alexander Pope, [...] and Daniel Defoe are associated with the Age of Pope, characterised by the rise of satire, novels and literary periodicals.
A. Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe are associated with the Age of Pope, characterised by the rise of satire, novels and literary periodicals.
...and so on, one for each cloze. As you can see, each important fact now has a card of its own, and can be rated individually. The cards are also easier to answer. Maybe surprisingly, this does not translate with a decrease in performance in the "real world" (outside of SRS study), on the contrary. Working on smaller units means you can really master the material.
Dealing with lists
The card I gave as an example contained two lists, one of authors (Pope, Swift, Defoe) and one of literary concepts and media (satire, novels, literary periodicals). Lists can seem challenging as you have to remember their individual items AND that these items are linked together.
Once again, stick to the minimum information principle: do NOT attempt to learn a whole list at once (like I did with my bad cards - thousands of them). This will NOT work well. Instead, make one card for each item on the list, and possibly, once you have mastered the individual items, and if you really need to remember the list well, higher level cards that group some of those items.
Here is an example of a list I want to remember (from Campbell Biology):
Four emergent properties of water contribute to Earth’s suitability as an environment for life: cohesive behaviour, ability to moderate temperature, expansion upon freezing, and versatility as a solvent.
The first step is to create a card like this:
Four emergent properties of water contribute to Earth’s suitability as an environment for life: [cohesive behaviour], [ability to moderate temperature], [expansion upon freezing], and [versatility as a solvent].
(You may want to break it into even smaller units if you want to remember the exact wording of the list; I only want to remember the concept behind each item.)
Once you know this first card well, you can group some items and create these:
Four emergent properties of water contribute to Earth’s suitability as an environment for life: [cohesive behaviour, ability to moderate temperature], expansion upon freezing, and versatility as a solvent.
Four emergent properties of water contribute to Earth’s suitability as an environment for life: cohesive behaviour, [ability to moderate temperature, expansion upon freezing], and versatility as a solvent.
Four emergent properties of water contribute to Earth’s suitability as an environment for life: cohesive behaviour, ability to moderate temperature, [expansion upon freezing, and versatility as a solvent].
When you have mastered those 3 cards, you can create the last one:
Four emergent properties of water contribute to Earth’s suitability as an environment for life: [cohesive behaviour, ability to moderate temperature, expansion upon freezing, and versatility as a solvent].
You could probably memorise poems rather easily using this method, but I haven't tried.
Anki - Making cards quickly using clozes
As we have seen, cloze deletion is a good way of making sure you are respecting the minimum information principle, and that you are creating a question for each fact and not leaving anything off. I am a big fan of cloze deletion and strongly encourage you to use it every time you can. Reviews will also feel less like an exam and more like reading.
In Anki, this type of cards is also very quick to make. Simply paste the sentence to be clozed into the card (remember to choose the "Cloze" note type, or your own custom cloze model), select what needs to be clozed and either click on the [...] button or use Ctrl + Shift + C (remember: keyboard shortcuts are always faster!).
Each cloze is given a number:
Proteins are built from {{c1::20}} kinds of {{c2::amino acids}} arranged in chains that are typically {{c3::hundreds of}} {{c2::amino acids}} long.
As you may have noticed, this card has two "c2" clozes. In practice, this means both will be hidden at the same time. This is a handy tip to deal with reoccurring words or phrases, so the answer doesn't appear later in the sentence.
You can add a hint like this:
{{c1::20::number}}
Instead of showing you [...], the question will show [number]. Use it whenever you may get confused about what kind of answer is expected: failing a card because you thought the answer was something different, but still correct, would be a pity! Here is a good example of how that can happen:
Q. The Canterbury Tales were written in [...].
The answer could be a date, a place, or...
A. The Canterbury Tales were written in popular English.
Even though you may remember what the question is about during the first weeks of review, it is likely you will ultimately forget, and fail the card as you give the right answer to a different question. So here is what my card looks like:
The Canterbury Tales were written in {{c1::popular English::language}}.
What about foreign vocabulary?
Spaced repetition is a great way of memorising foreign vocabulary, something I have not done actively for about a year. My cards were of the type word -> translation, with an optional field for examples and phonetic transcription. I suspect, however, that adding more context would be both more pleasant and more efficient. Following the way clozes work in Anki, you could experiment with something like this:
Card: {{c1::Le chat::The cat}} {{c2::dort::is sleeping}}.
Cloze 1: [The cat] dort.
Cloze 2: Le chat [is sleeping].
If you use a similar approach, I would like to hear about your experience.
Note: I know some people are uncomfortable mixing their native language with the one they are learning. I have never, ever paid attention to this and have been successful nonetheless. I suspect there is no or very little evidence to back the belief that this would be detrimental. One thing I am sure of, having experienced it countless times, is that being able to translate between your two languages is extremely handy, and made infinitely easier if you learn words with their translations. I am often lost for words when talking to my family in my native language, since I use English in my daily life and rarely translate anything anymore. This is extremely irritating and might be damaging in a professional setting - don't let it happen to you!
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