Why I stopped using AnkiOpinion, Language Learning • Oct 13, 2024Disclaimer: This post is by the creator of KanjiKen, a language-learning app similar to Anki.
SummaryAnki decides when and how long you should study, which can make your schedule unpredictable and increase stress. While it offers powerful memorization tools, its design can reduce motivation and make it easy to create long-term problems if you’re not careful.
IntroductionAnki is often the go-to recommendation for new language learners. It’s a great tool, with pre-made decks and no cost attached, so why wouldn’t it be? But for me, it wasn’t quite right. After testing other SRS tools and reflecting on my experience, I realized my issue wasn’t with spaced repetition itself, but with how Anki implements it.
What Is Anki?Anki is a free flashcard app that uses spaced repetition to help you remember things long-term. It calculates optimal review times for each card based on how well you remember it.
Every day you’ll have a review queue. These are exercises anki wants you to study as soon as possible, for optimal retention. This queue grows over time unless you review your flashcards.
It’s open source, highly customizable, and has a large library of user-made decks. The science behind it is called the spacing effect, and is proven to work better than cramming.
The Problems1. Motivation Through PressureApps like Duolingo try to reward you for showing up. Anki punishes you if you don’t. Every missed day increases your workload. After a few months, even a short break can result in hours of catch-up reviews to get “back on track”. This creates stress and can hurt motivation over time.
2. Unpredictable Study TimeAnki doesn’t let you choose how long to study each day; your review count varies based on past performance and how many new cards you’ve added. This makes planning difficult. A time-based goal (e.g., “study for 30 minutes”) is easier to manage and stick to.
While you can tweak Anki’s settings to limit daily reviews, I never did since it felt like ‘cheating’.
3. Not Built for Language LearningAnki is a general-purpose tool. It lacks built-in lookup dictionaries, typo handling, and support for card dependencies; important features for language learners. While workarounds exist, they require extra effort and time that could be better spent learning.
4. Flashcards for everythingThere are certain skills used in language learning ill-suited for flashcards. Like building sentences, drawing characters, or practicing pitch accents. Custom exercises for these skills could be very useful.
5. Inconsistent Content QualityAnki doesn’t provide official content. Most decks are user-made and vary in quality. Beginners may not recognize mistakes until way later. If you spot a mistake, you can edit them locally, but correcting them locally means others don’t benefit from your edits, leading to duplicated effort across the community.
6. Delayed BurnoutAdding new cards to your queue is rewarding at first, but the daily review load builds slowly over time. Without careful monitoring, it’s easy to overwhelm yourself with the cards added today weeks or months later. Anki doesn’t warn you; it just lets the problem grow until it becomes a burden.
There are add-ons that help (like FSRS Helper), but they’re not built in, and you’ll probably only look for them once you’re already overwhelmed.
7. DependenciesLanguage depends on words, grammar, and characters. Learning a word before knowing the letters may be a bad idea, and studying sentences before grammar could be harder than it needs to be. Anki has no way to model inter-card dependencies, so you cannot guarantee a learn order.
ConclusionPros• Effective spaced repetition system
• Highly customizable and extendable
• Cross-platform with syncing
• Free and open source
• Punishes missed days with more work
• Daily workload is unpredictable
• No built-in language-specific features
• Content quality varies
• Easily leads to burnout without careful planning
Anki is powerful, but for me, the trade-offs weren’t worth it. It created more stress than value and reduced my motivation over time. I believe there has to be a better way.
Check out the appThanks for reading! If you’re interested in learning Japanese, check out KanjiKen on the App Store or Google Play. It contains Hiragana, Katakana, 2000+ Kanji and 10000+ words with interactive exercises and a spaced repetition algorithm built in. Essentially, everything you need to go from beginner to proficiency!