I have trained people in my environment and they have improved enormously.
It is a very good idea that you read a book about mnemonics, and all the techniques, things like exaggerating pictures or places in your head, remembering faces, what a neural connection is and so on, and start applying it.
My upper limit (in anki) is over 400 new words in a different language (like chinese or japanese) per day with extreme exhaustion, not doing anything the entire day but memorizing. This is the equivalent of running a marathon for me on the mental field(I have done real marathons too).
My lower limit is learning 40-50 new words per day. It takes 1 hour,more than a minute per word and no significant effort, I do this as daily routine with now consequences for my work.
Over time, learning new languages become easier and easier.
The world opens a lot when you can go to places like China or Japan and at least you understand what the symbols on the street or the people say. You get a much deeper knowledge about things.
Anki is one of the most amazing things ever invented.
Do you have any particular books in mind? Thanks!
Most people that feel they need a language class, but those are terrible for learning vocabulary. Vocab learning is best done solo.
I'm also using Anki for Finish vocab, and it had helped me a lot. To the point it does feel like a super power.
If you are going to use Anki, it's important to switch the knobs to adapt to what you are learning.
I will share some of the things that have worked for me, for Finnish vocab:
- Intervals for new cards (until they are considered 'learned'): 1 10 15 50 240. The 240 is critical for me: if I forgot it after 4 hours, it goes back to 1 again... if I got it after 4 hours, then it will have better chances in a couple of days. Of course this is personal, I have been tweaking those until something makes sense to me.
- Lapese (when a known card is forgotten, and how to re-learn): 10 30 240. Again the 240 check.
- Set an ammount of new cards and max reviews per day that does not make you feel misserable... there needs to be some joy on learning...
If I may ask, are you just learning the vocab ? have you taken courses? Where are you getting the vocab from ?
Memory is also a skill. People have all kinds of techniques to remember things more easily, for instance med students use a lot of mneumonics. The key is to make memories stronger by building associations. Memories that are islands die faster. Associations with places are especially strong, which is the genesis of the "memory palace" technique where you imagine a palace with rooms containing the things that you want to remember. But any association will do. For instance, when I'm learning a language I like to make up a little story for each word. Using your episodic memory is a great way to increase strength of memories.
Lack of motivation, some mental issue like depression, attention problem while learning. You can't learn stuff like you sweep a floor, tune out and just do the movements.
I am incredible good remembering faces and facial expressions, very good remembering places. I see a place on a picture, I know where it is if I have traveled there.
But I am very bad remembering sounds. So I never try to remember using sounds like other people do.
You should learn about yourself, what are your strengths and use them. Buy different memory books and just try them like I did. Some techniques will work for you, some not.
The people that popularize things like Anki the hardest are those that built and stuck with their own systems from the start. That's more of a referendum on their personality type than on the utility of their way of using Anki.
My hunch is that most people end up struggling because a lot of the most popular systems end up doing the exact opposite of spaced repetition once you consider the complete universe of foreign language input a learner is getting.
I've found that for me, Anki works really well for the first 1000 words, letting me jumpstart early vocab while most of my other time is spent on basic grammar.
For words 1000-5000 or 10000 in frequency, it's easy to get stuck in a trap I see a lot online: every time you encounter a new word, add it to Anki. This is a great way to burn out. You'll encounter most of these words with a natural spacing as you read native materials, if they're in the higher frequency bands. Doing reviews becomes excruciating, since you're losing the efficiency benefits of using the SRS unless you adjust review frequency based on the native input you consume (a good machine learning side project, perhaps?)
I've had a lot more success using Anki for words off in the long tail that I wouldn't otherwise have a chance to remember.