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Comment by sdfgsdf | Hacker News Reader

I'm interested in this, but I'm doing something wrong.

On the one hand, I've downloaded AnkiDroid and played with it a bit. But I have the impression that just "seeing" the card isn't helping me. I need to be forced to write down the answer.

On the other hand, I've struggled to understand what "kind" of things should go in to a card. For example, verbs: I'm learning a language that has a complex verb conjugation structure. What I really need is to study the conjugation table. But instead the usual cards I download just ask the infinive form, and then display the conjugation table in the back - I'm not going to sit down and study the conjugation table when I'm swiping cards. When I sit down and study I do without cards, so I don't see the benefit...?

I feel I'm missing the trick.

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1. Definitely use Cloze cards. These allow you to highlight a section of text which you have to type in order to pass the card. They are much more effective than regular flash cards, especially for foreign languages (or anything that requires accurate spelling or precision typing, e.g. code syntax.)

See the Cloze Deletion section: https://docs.ankiweb.net/editing.html

2. Try to make the cards into real-world examples. For instance, don't add the conjugation table, create example sentences for each of the conjugations and make each one a card. For foreign languages, I try to add audio to my flashcards, too.

3. Always make your own cards. Downloading premade decks never works and you miss part of the learning process.

4. For things that don't necessarily lend themselves to being on a flashcard, don't just write the information. Try to frame it in terms of a question and/or in a form that mimics the context in which you'd use the information.

For example, let's say you want to memorize the periodic table. Don't just write:

Carbon - Atomic Number: 6, Chemical Symbol: C, etc.

Instead, create cards with questions like:

What is the sixth element on the periodic table?, Is carbon before or after nitrogen?, What element has the chemical symbol C? and so on.

The more "viewpoints" you have of the topic, the better. I've found this to be a solid approach for virtually any topic.

I followed your link. It reads

> To create a cloze deletion note, select the Cloze note type, and type some text into the "Text" field. Then drag the mouse over the text you want to hide to select it, and click the [… ]

Select the Cloze note type, where exactly? I've searched both AnkiDroid and AnkiWeb (I was thinking that maybe I could creat cards from my computer and use them on my phone) and I can't find any button to make a note a "Cloze note".

Sorry I have actually never used AnkiDroid. I think it's just a mobile app for Anki on Android? If it's like the iOS one, you can create Cloze cards from it.

Here is a video that walks you through it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d__MjidDz8c

When you create a card, it should say Card Type or Type at the top. By default, this is on Basic. Click it and you can switch to Cloze. Then highlight the text and click the [...] icon in the toolbar.

> Downloading premade decks never works

In my experience it works just fine. For example, using a geography deck to learn the location, flag, capital city, etc. of every country in the world. It also worked well when I taught my kids the multiplication table, the NATO phonetic alphabet, and so on.

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