Say you have decided to brush up on your first grade math, and you make a card for multiplication. Instead of just making one "2 2 = 4" card, you make one card containing three potential questions, so you add "5 4 = 20" and "3 * 3 = 9" to the same card. Each time this card is scheduled to appear, Anki will randomly choose one of the questions to display.
This way you prevent your memory from overfitting to the irrelevant context and force it to remember the actual concept, because you have to use your knowledge of how multiplication works every time. You have to pick a large enough selection of possible questions for that to work, for me three is usually enough. Additional bonus : anki reviews get less tedious, because you don't feel like always seeing the same old stuff.
Here's a template for creating such cards: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/947272864
Very interested to hear what others suggest.
I had the same problem when I was initially only put in definitions into Anki. I was able to say the definition 1:1 but didn't form the concepts very well. My 2 (very similar) solutions for this (which I found to work pretty well), are:
1. Cross-referencing cards. I started editing a lot of cards, to add cross-references to other definitions that I also have cards for. For all the new cards I write now, I always try to have at least one reference to something that is on another card.
2. Meta-cards. I specifically add cards that test the knowledge of concepts, and me explaining it by adding cards like "Explain the difference between A and B".
3. Epic cards. When I started learning the periodic system of elements, along with the individual elements, I added a card for each group, a card for each group where I also have to know the element symbol, and a card for each group where I have to know the element symbol and atomic number. Obviously, I can only correctly solve a card if I know the easier versions of it, but it both provides a bigger goal to work towards, and also helps to put the smaller individual pieces of information I'm am learning into a context.
1. Slow down your review session. I run into this problem mostly when I lose discipline and start skimming the question.
2. Put more effort into breaking info down into very atomic parts. For complex info, I'll still put in a high-level card, but I'll also put in cards that represent pieces of the info.
3. Add different cards for different methods of recall. I frequently add pairs of cards. For example, I added both "what is Betteridge's law?" and "what adage states that any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered with no?"