The fact is that education revolves so much around memorisation that it’s often our memories, and not our aptitudes that let us down in exam situations. That’s what Anki really helps with – converting things in your short term memory into something that’ll stay in your long term memory for as long as you need them to.īecause of Anki, I didn’t pass my exams, I aced them. Not my short term memory – my long term memory. But with Anki by my side I not only prepared myself for my exams, I felt unafraid and even confident going into each exam because I had all of those cards deeply embedded in my memory. In other words, I seriously left everything to the last minute. I gave myself 3 months to learn eveything on my Leaving Certificate course. Day in day out I made more cards for different chapters, and I reviewed a billion cards a day (or so it seemed). I made HEAPS of Chemistry cards, Maths cards, English quotes cards, and language cards.
I was sceptical of how to use a flashcard system for things like chemistry/biology diagrams, learning English quotes, or maths theorems – but that’s exactly what I ended up doing.Īnki became my favourite study tool for my Leaving Certificate exams. However, Anki is an invaluable tool not only just for languages but for any fact/information based subject.
In which case you can create your own digital flashcards, or if you’re feeling lazy (or think your flashcards are shite) you can download shared decks that other people have made, and uploaded.
Most people use Anki for the purposes of learning a language. And if you muck up, it’ll bring that ‘flashcard’ right back to square one, to learn all over again in the same way. As you get the words/information right, it spaces out the next time you’ll see it again. You could do this yourself, but if you have the time to keep track of every individual word or fact you learn and when to review them – you have too much time on your hands! So Anki does this for you. So on and so forth, with the spaces getting bigger between each review. If we review it the next day (and get it right), we can wait, let’s say, 3 days before reviewing it again. It’s been found that soon after we learn something new, unless we review it within a day or two, we forget it. Anki is a memorisation app with a smart spaced repetition algorithm that is the key to its success. At the time I was learning Japanese (and struggling very much) and so this was right down my street. And the best part? It’s free (on desktop and Android)! The iPhone app costs a fairly hefty €25 or so, but before you say no, remember the desktop version is completely free, so if you can’t afford the mobile version, that won’t get in your way! I stumbled across Anki a couple of years ago when one of my best friends linked me to this video by Abroadin Japan here. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Anki, it’s an app for both desktop (PC and Mac) and phones.
This post is dedicated to one of my best friends, who has saved my skin countless times before – Anki.