I know this might sound weird, but I really like learning grammar. The first thing I buy when learning a new language are: grammar and vocabulary books with exercises and then graded readers. It somehow feel great filling in the answers, then checking them and recognising the structures and patterns in the text or speech. Am I the only grammar freak here? But I am not saying I am mastering it, I just love staying it ;).

Does anyone get exhausted in their head when trying to think and learn and talk in their target language? I try to talk to my bf in his language, and it makes me tired 😂. But i will say speaking has helped me retain words much more easier.

How long did you manage to mantain that C2 level after the exam? How long it took you to prepare? Do you recommend to other people taking a C1/C2 exam in their TL?

Estou tentando entender melhor como as pessoas estudam idiomas no dia a dia.

Uma coisa que sempre me incomodou em flashcards é que muitos decks vêm com frases prontas, mas nem sempre elas têm relação com o que eu realmente quero falar. Por outro lado, criar cards manualmente dá trabalho e às vezes a pessoa acaba desistindo.

Para quem estuda inglês ou outro idioma:

• Vocês costumam criar as próprias frases ou usam listas prontas?
• O que dá mais resultado para vocês: repetir vocabulário solto ou frases completas?
• O que mais desanima na hora de criar flashcards manualmente?
• Vocês acham útil estudar frases que vocês realmente usariam no dia a dia?

Queria ouvir experiências reais de quem estuda idiomas, porque acho esse tema bem interessante.

Obrigado!

I keep seeing two different camps in language learning:

One says you should speak from day one, even if you sound terrible, because speaking is a skill and you only improve by doing it.

The other says early speaking can be frustrating or even counterproductive because you don’t have enough vocabulary/input yet, so you should build a base first through listening, reading, Anki, grammar, etc.

I’m curious what people here have actually experienced.

For those of you who reached conversational ability in a language:

Did speaking early help you, or did it just make you feel stuck?

And at what point did speaking practice start becoming genuinely useful?

Personally, I’m starting to think the issue isn’t “speak early vs don’t speak early” but whether the speaking practice is scaffolded enough. Like, beginners might need tiny 2-4 word exchanges with lots of support, while intermediate learners need freer conversation.

Would love to hear what worked for you.

I tried to avoid extensive listening throughout my journey of learning my TL but as I go further into this learning journey I am starting to understand the importance of extensive listening. However I cannot STAND half understanding something. How do I deal with this?

In this community it's frown upon to learn multiple languages at a time (for good reasons). You'll confuse yourself with vocab and it's really challenging and time consuming (life time commitment just to learn 1 language for most people). Even polyglots will tell you not to do this

I feel like it's really challenging to learn a language and learn literally anything else at the same time. Like learning a language and learning to code at the same time? Super challenging. Being a student going to school while learning a language on the side? Super challenging. Feels like the time you spend on language learning could've been used on those other things or vice versa. Makes you just procrastinate and end up not doing either.

They say that most people have about an hour of Anki a day before they see crazy diminishing returns. Reason being is that spamming vocab like that is so cognitively demanding, super taxing on the nervous system. After a session like that you have nothing left in the tank. How can you then learn anything else?

I have a language exam in a month, I'm thinking of going crazy. I know long term this can lead to a burn out but for a month. What's the max per day i can push this to?

currently at 45 new cards per day. it's still pretty high but survivable. I'm talking about 100-200 new cards per day.

anyone doing this? I seen some YouTube videos of people doing 1000 cards in one day. ik it's hard to remember that much, but after that it's just reviews. so it's still better than nothing.

How far have you guys pushed the limits?

> Note: this survey is for people who use Anki to study a language. If you don't use Anki, this one's not for you, but feel free to read on if you're curious.

TL;DR:

The problem: there's no public dataset of what real language learners actually study and how their memory responds to it. Existing data captures either the words without the memory patterns, or the memory patterns without the words. This bottlenecks both research in this area and the learner-facing tools & apps that could come out of it.

What this survey does: it collects both the words people study and how their memory responds to them, from Anki users learning any language - specifically your Anki cards (the words) and review logs (the memory data). Participation takes ~10 minutes, and the survey runs entirely on your device before submission for privacy. You review every card and exclude anything you don't want to share. It is fully GDPR-compliant. The dataset will be released openly so anyone - not just commercial platforms - can build on it.

Survey link: https://nekear.me/research

Below is more information on why this may matter to you, participation, privacy, the purpose of this research, and its novelty - in that order.

Why this can matter to you as a learner

The most immediate benefit is that in just 10 minutes you're directly contributing to research that hasn't been done before, and to a dataset that will become a permanent public resource for the entire language-learning research community.

Longer term, this same research makes a new generation of learning tools possible:

• deck recommenders that know which words you're actually ready for;
• vocabulary sequencers tuned to your prior knowledge;
• smarter spaced repetition schedulers built on personal memory patterns instead of population averages.

And because the dataset will be public, anyone will be able to build them, not just one company.

Who can participate

To make the research outcomes meaningful, the dataset requires its content to follow specific rules.

You're welcome to participate if:

• You actively use Anki for language learning;
• You have reviewed at least some cards in your decks more than 5 times (this is when review patterns start to reflect actual memory rather than early-stage half-random answers). But submissions below that threshold still help.

What participation looks like

The survey takes about 10 minutes, and the steps are pretty straightforward:

1. Export your Anki deck (.apkg) with the following checkboxes ticked: "Include scheduling information" (the review logs), "Include deck presets" (the scheduler configuration) and "Support older Anki versions";
2. Open the survey link - it includes a built-in utility that opens your decks fully locally and lets you decide what to submit;
3. Fill out your language proficiency (your known languages affect how you learn new ones) and pick your domains of interest (they shape which words you've likely been exposed to);
4. Review your cards in a preview UI. The utility flags potential personal info (emails, phone numbers, names) for your attention. Exclude anything you don't want shared;
5. Click submit. Nothing leaves your device until this step.

You'll receive a one-time withdrawal token in case you change your mind later.

What's collected and how it's protected

In plain terms: you choose what to submit (and can exclude anything), the survey's built-in tool flags sensitive info to help you catch it, all identifying details about you are removed so you can't be identified as a learner, your data is stored in the EU, and you can withdraw any time after submitting.

A more technical TL;DR:

• Local-first review. The survey allows you to see every card/note before submission and exclude any of them individually should you deem it necessary. The tool also flags potential personal information (emails, phone numbers, names). Everything runs locally;
• Identifiers stripped or randomized. Your deck names are replaced with meaningless artificial names, all timestamps (e.g., when your card was created) are offset by a random value, and Anki internal IDs are replaced with synthetic counters;
• GDPR-compliant. Data is stored in the EU, and is encrypted at rest, with a withdrawal mechanism via a one-way token you keep;
• Special-category check. Cards mentioning health, religious, or political content trigger an additional explicit notice under GDPR Article 9.

The full technical schema (every field, what's collected and why, what's transformed, and what's dropped) is accessible here: https://nekear.me/research/data-handling.

About me and the research

My name is Michael. I'm a Master's student in AI at the University of Galway, Ireland, working on my thesis at the intersection of AI and language learning.

Simply put, the research involves training an AI model that predicts how hard a specific word is for you, given the words you already know and your learning patterns. The model is trained on three inputs:

• The word's morphological features (what parts it's built from) and distributional features (how often it appears in real-world usage) - that's the reason your cards are collected;
• Your performance history on similar words - the reason your review logs are requested;
• Your language proficiency profile, because your native and other known languages directly affect how you learn new ones - the reason your language profile is asked.

You can read more here: https://nekear.me/research/data-handling#what-is-collected or ask directly.

Why the research is novel

There's prior work on word-difficulty modeling: Duolingo has published a couple of important datasets in this area (HLR in 2016, SLAM in 2018), but both capture learning within Duolingo's own curriculum: platform-chosen words, platform-formatted exercises, platform scheduling. The publicly missing part is data on what learners themselves chose to study, in any language, scheduled by a memory-faithful algorithm like FSRS, with the full card content intact. As for existing log datasets like open-spaced-repetition (which FSRS was built on), they strip the content out for privacy, while other public vocabulary research datasets don't include memory data. Neither side of what's needed currently exists publicly.

This survey is building the first dataset that has both. Once released publicly, it removes a real bottleneck for anyone working on personalized vocabulary learning.

Beyond the dataset, the research contributes a model that predicts word difficulty by combining two things usually studied separately: the linguistic properties of a word (its morphology and how it's distributed across real usage) and an individual's own memory patterns from their review history. Most prior work treats word difficulty as a fixed, population-level property, while this approach makes it personalized.

Questions / concerns

Comment below, DM me, or email me at hi@nekear.me. I'm genuinely happy to discuss methodology, privacy specifics, or anything else.

Cross-posting note

You may also come across this post in r/Anki, Anki Forums and the Anki Discord #language-learning channel, where I posted / will post with mod coordination. Apologies if you see it more than once. And I appreciate any help spreading the word, as I hope we can make a huge contribution to language learning.

Survey link: https://nekear.me/research

(TL)

Hello, I've been using a textbook as a learning resource to teach myself, and it came with a series of spoken conversations. I have some .wav files and some .mp3 files. The files tend to be around 5 minutes long and contain multiple audio clips or sentences, not really suitable for flashcards practice. I was curious if people are taking files like this and cutting them up to insert individual sentences into Anki for practice, or if they're doing something else to practice. What tool are people using to clip the audio files into shorter, bite-sized lengths? Thanks!

I've studied Chinese on and off for years including formal academic study and professional training. In school I used flash cards. During the professional coursework our instructors told us that flashcards don't really help and that using words in context (listening, speaking, and writing) was what actually sets them in memory.

I'm partial to the learning-in-context approach (see an actual subway sign for example and the words becomes real.)

Thoughts? Do flash cards really create lasting word memory or are they just a way to pass a test and then quickly forgotten?

I am trying to learn Portuguese and have been going at it for about a month, lately I've been hearing a lot that watching a show that you've seen before is good for this so that you have a general idea of what's happening. So I have re watched like an episode or 2 of a show with dual subtitles but I always feel like I'm receiving nothing from the listening and maybe a little bit from the Portuguese subtitles after I read the English ones. What is the correct way to go about doing this to get the most out of it? Should I only do Portuguese subtitles and try to force myself to learn it to understand, should I be stopping and making flashcards of words I don't know? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!! (TL)

This is just a happy rant about how awesome it is to consume native content without too much struggle. It's such a wonderful feeling, and it's been carrying me for the past months.

It's now been a bit over 3 years since I started on my Ukrainian language learning (side-)quest, and I'm finally reaching a stage where I can, at last, consume two minutes worth of content without it turning into 30 minute of study time. I can finally watch YouTubers without having to stop, rewind, and re-listen to every sentence five times. Reading the news in the morning, before I'm fully awake, is slowly becoming an option. Heck, I had a meaningful conversations with a native speaker recently, with Ukrainian being our only common language. And, while doing so, I had to say «повторіть, будь ласка» (“please repeat that”) only like 20 times ;)

Sure, I still can't read a news article without having to look up some central words, and I still frequently have the displeasure of finding the lyrics for a song that I liked, only to realize that the real lyrics are completely different to what I thought they were.

But the feeling of having a real chance at understanding something is such a breath of fresh air! The high is incredible :D

Happy learning, y'all!

Hey! I tried to join a Spanish game and practice my Spanish (I’m A1) but everyone got angry at me because I don’t know enough. I have no people that speak Spanish who live near me, and I don’t want to use AI. How do people expect me to learn how to speak when I have no resources?? I can read perfectly fine. :(

I’m currently at a B-level plateau in French, and I’m struggling a bit with motivation. I genuinely want to improve and become more fluent, but I find it hard to stay consistent with self-studying. Every time I plan to sit down and study, either something comes up, I get distracted by other things, or I end up procrastinating and doing something else instead.

I think part of the problem is that I’m no longer a beginner, so progress feels slower and less obvious than before. At the same time, I know I still have a long way to go before I feel truly comfortable and confident speaking French naturally.

I’m trying to figure out how to make learning feel more engaging and less like a chore. How do you stay motivated when learning a language at this stage? Do you have ways to make studying more interesting, enjoyable, or easier to stick to long term?

I am currently about a fifth of the way through this method

I have made a massive list of ≈500 sentences from different areas of my life which I use in a daily basis into French on spaced repetition

I learn 5 sentences a day ensuring I speak the second the flash card appears to train active recall

Has anyone seen genuine results with this method ie they can come up with their own sentences near naturally after completing or are they just stuck with the scripted list???

update: thanks everyone, a lot of what people are saying makes sense. It didn't occur to me how much my first tutor has probably adjusted to the way I (try to 😂) talk/my accent/common mistakes I make over the time I have known her.

I have been studying Russian for a little over a year. I've taken some breaks when work got crazy, but generally try for at least 1 hour with my tutor a week. She usually has some homework for me, and I work on vocabulary and other small exercises throughout the week. I thought I was pretty realistic about progress. I can shove through a conversation about the weather or what I did over the weekend, and I'm a little better at reading comprehension. My tutor and I can chat a little at the start of class before we get into our lesson.

I recently have had some more time so I've been looking for another tutor to work with. I have met with someone 5 or 6 times and I really like his lessons, but I feel like he has no idea what I'm saying when we try to talk and when he asks grammar questions, I can't answer them (but can recognize them while reading?).

I don't know what I'm asking, maybe reassurance that this happens when people switch teachers? I'm wondering if I've just been butchering everything for a year and my original tutor is too nice to say anything 😬

Thx!