FINDING THE TIME TO STUDY

Like many people, Im a busy guy! Im trying to work, write a book,

dramatically improve my level of a language, have a social life and grocery
shop/clean/sleep/eat/write blogs & e-mails/exercise etc. every day. But
there areways to make time get it back from the time spent waiting.
Note: the next paragraphs are taken from Fluent in 3 Months Premium
You wait for the bus/metro/train to arrive, you wait in it while going to
work/school or home, you wait in the supermarket queue/line, you wait in a
traffic jam in your car, you wait when ordering coffee in the morning, you wait
for your water to boil if you prepare it yourself, you wait for your friend to
arrive, you wait at the doctors/dentists, you even wait for a minute or two in
lifts, elevators, at traffic lights, when waiting for something to load on your
computer, for someone to answer the door after you knock etc.
In most of these situations you may be alone so if you cant talk to someone,
what do you do? Stare into space? Read advertisements around you? Twiddle
your thumbs? Press the pedestrian cross or lift button again in frustration that
nothing has happened yet? These little segments of our day fly by unutilised
and actually add up to a huge amount of time wasted. You cant avoid these
situations they are natural parts of your day.
For most people, these little segments are annoyances why is the other
person so late? Why does there have to be so many people ahead of me in
the supermarket? Why did my computer have to crash to be rebooted now of
all times? Waiting in frustration is simply what we end up doing considering
how much time per day we spend doing this, this is an unneeded source of
stress!
I actually dont mind when these occasions arise! Seriously if someone is
arriving a little late, or if I just missed the bus and the next one wont come for

15 minutes, or the Internet goes down and I cant work rather than cursing at
my bad luck, and adding stress to my life by being angry during this time, I
think to myself great! Another chance to study some vocabulary!!

IMPROVING ON THE OLD-SCHOOL METHOD

For several years, in these situations I would take out my phrasebook, or
pocket vocabulary book for these moments, open it up to a random page and
learn whatever I saw. Sometimes Id see a word I never did before and
sometimes Id see something I needed to review and had already long
forgotten and need torelearn rather than just remind myself. It did the job but
to be honest, in retrospect it was inefficient and sloppy. (Although, if you learn
by listening, these moments are good times to take out your MP3 player and
press play!)
Randomly or even systematically going through vocabulary in order like this
means that you might not review the hardest words when you need to, or
youll keep seeing the easy words too often, or youll forget words because
you didnt review them for a very long time.
SRS answers all of these issues by letting you decide when you should see a
word again based on certain criteria (usually, how hard you felt it was). So the
easy words are pushed way off into the future, the hard ones keep constantly
reappearing until you are finally happy with them, and the middle-difficulty
ones will reappear just when you need them most, to refresh your memory.
Deciding when to study a word again when you see it in a printed list is too
hard, but thats where technology comes in!

ANKI

Anki (for iPhone, for Android, and for everyone

else) is an application developed by Damien Elmes for reviewing things you
need to learn, using SRS. Not just vocabulary, but city/country capitals,
medical terminology, a script for a play etc. Anything you need to apply to
memory really!
Its a completely free download (or low-bandwidth website) and works on
Windows, Mac, Linux and on smartphones!
On the surface, the program does more or less what you would expect from a
flashcard it shows you a word with no translation (the word can be either in
your native language or in the target language) and you can decide if you
know what it means. Then press Answer and it will show it to you.
If you thought it was super easy, press the button on the right (which includes
a distant time factor, depending on how you reacted to the word in previous
attempts), if you had absolutely no idea press the button on the left (it will
reappear very soon), and otherwise press one of the other buttons. I like
having 4 levels to decide how easy I thought it was, and I use each one
accordingly.

If it sounds drastically simple, thats because it is! The most important part of
the interface is actually pretty much just that the impressive part of all of this
is actually the algorithm working in the background to decide
precisely when to show you the words.
You dont really have to think about that aspect though, since the system
covers it for you. All you have to do is think about the word and then grade it
on difficulty (hardest one if youve never seen it before).

USING THE PROGRAM

There are broadly two ways to use this application and they depend mostly on
the resources available to you. Everyone can use it for free on their computer,
and you can simply decide to devote 30 minutes a day to using it and make
sure to set aside that time every day.
Based on the time-wasting description above, you can guess where I do my
studying! On the go! You can see in the posts main picture that I even swipe it
out for 2 minute waits before crossing the road! Those are the moments when
I swipe out my smartphone and study Anki!
Its use is pretty self-explanatory, but here are some videos of how it works.
The set-up takes a few minutes but then you just have to open the program
and use it whenever you can! All the little minutes add up very quickly. Since I
havent found some websites too helpful for learning vocabulary, Ive done
most of my studying over the last weeks in Berlins U-Bahn, on buses and in
cafs/supermarkets etc. without ever carrying any books with me!

SRS MUST BE USED WITH OTHER LEARNING

STRATEGIES

Despite how obviously enthusiastically Im sharing this system with you, it is

important to be aware of the fact that it is just one way to acquire new
vocabulary. The best way by far is to hear and apply it in context with native
speakers. Even if you knew all the vocabulary in the world you still wouldnt
be able to actually apply it in actual conversations if you didnt work on other
skills important to language learning.
Since you are usually hearing words in isolation (although its possible to
include example sentences), it means you have no context and this is quite an
artificial way to learn words, as simple translations of something from your
mother tongue, rather than understanding how to use the word itself. You cant
learn anylanguage just by learning translations. Someone using too much
SRS would not necessarily be any further along compared to someone using
other strategies.
On top of this, just looking at the word is not enough and SRS can turn into
nothing more than a fancy version of rote learning by pure repetition if you
dont think harder while using it. If you are exposed enough times you will be
forced to remember it, but what I prefer is to try to make an image
association of the word and/or to think of an example to use it in and say that
to myself, so that I use it in its right context. This way Im much more likely to
remember it next time.
SRS by itself is far from perfect, but if you use it while thinking independently
too, its potential is much greater. Im sure lots of you know the feeling that
you have learned a word, and you are sure of it, but you just cant say it. This
may simply be because its been too long since you reviewed that word, and
using SRS a few minutes a day will make sure that all words you use in the
system will never be neglected if you use it right.
Another thing to take into account for learning words efficiently and avoiding
forgetting them is to avoiding learning the vocabulary only one way: foreign
language to native language, focusing on recognition rather than production.

This focus means a lot of people understand languages but are at a loss when
the time comes to speak them. In this case, its important that you see words
appear in SRS for translation to the foreign language too.
When used on a computer, you can acquire single-word vocabulary very
quickly (it works easily with the keyboard 1,2,3,4 & space keys for quicker
navigation than with the mouse) if you set aside 30 minutes a day to review
words. And in its mobile form you can take advantage of time that you would
otherwise waste, to improve your vocabulary!
I interviewed the Anki developer Damien as part of the audio for Fi3m
Premium, to understand SRS better, and he is going to continue to develop
different versions of this open-source software for people to enjoy. Give Anki
(for iPhone, for Android, and for everyone else) a try!