Creating Anki Cards

Anki users often think of creating Anki cards as studying, but this is really just the preparation for studying! Creating cards doesn't teach us anything; studying does. Therefore, our goal is to create cards as quickly as possible.

In this lesson, we'll talk about how to build effective Anki cards. At English Tea Break, we define "effective Anki Cards" as cards that teach new vocabulary well and can be created in 30 seconds or less per card.

Let's go over how we can do that.

What Makes a Good Anki Card?

There are a few Anki card-making strategies that I like to follow. I'll talk about each topic one at a time.

Sentence Cards

For the English Tea Break method, we create sentence cards, not word cards. If I wanted to learn the word "dog", a word card would be something like this (if French were my native language):

Dog = Chien

A much better Anki card would be one that uses a full sentence like this:

My dog is an 8 year old German Shepherd. = Mon chien est un berger allemand âgé de 8 ans.

We're still only learning the word "dog", but a sentence gives our brains context. It teaches us how to use the word properly as a tool to communicate a message (the sentence). We'll talk more about sentence cards in a bit.

Images

I don't recommend using images for your Anki cards. A lot of people like using them because images help them remember. That's true! But there are two problems:

1. Images do help us remember, but usually we remember the picture, not the word. I've used images for my Anki cards in the past, and I realized that instead of learning new vocabulary, I was just memorizing the answer that fit the image.
2. Images take a long time to find. Yes, you could find an image for the word "dog" or other nouns easily. But what about "rather"? Or "because"? Or "that"? There are a lot of vocabulary words that hard to describe with an image, which causes you to spend a long time looking for the perfect one. You'll eventually have thousands of cards! You need to be able to create them quickly, so you can spend more time actually studying.

Pre-made Anki Decks

I'm really not a fan of these. A lot of websites like to sell pre-made decks, but I don't think they're worth the money because they're not as effective as Anki decks that we create for ourselves.

My dog really is 8 years old, but yours might not be! Maybe you don't even have a dog. So that card wouldn't have a good sentence for you.

A sentence that describes how you actually feel about dogs is going to be the best sentence for helping you remember the word. But a pre-made deck doesn't know how you feel about dogs or any other vocabulary, so it's not going to be as effective. Emotion is a great tool for learning, so it's a lot better to make your own cards with your own sentences based on your own emotions.

For you, a better sentence with more emotion for the word "dog" might be one of these:

1. I've always wanted a dog.
2. Dogs are my biggest fear.
3. I was bitten by a dog when I was young.
4. My dog is my best friend.
5. My apartment won't let me have a dog.

How To Find New Words for Anki Cards

Eventually, your new cards will come from your immersion content, but we'll talk about that in the next chapter of the Roadmap. For now, I have a couple of tips. At the end of this lesson, I'll give some more advice for finding vocabulary words for your first Anki cards.

Frequency Lists

A frequency list is a large list of words sorted by how common they are. A word like "the" would be near the top of the list because English uses it all the time. Common words are the most important to learn first, so frequency lists can be helpful.

However, you don't need to use a frequency list, and if you do use one, you don't need to learn every word on the list. For starting a new Anki deck, it can be helpful. You can look through the list and pick some words that you'd like to learn. That way, you won't have to worry about wasting time learning words you'll never use.

Creating a To-Learn List

When you find an English word you don't know on the internet or in a song, for example, a good idea is to quickly add the word to a list on your phone. Later, you can create Anki cards for those words, and you won't have to interrupt whatever you're currently doing. This method will be used a lot during immersion.

When I was learning French, I found words during my immersion, added them to my To-Learn List, and continued with my immersion content. The next day, I created cards for those words.

Some words have multiple meanings, and sometimes, the card you create the next day for a new word won't use the same meaning that was found in your immersion content. That's okay! If you learn a card for a word and the word confuses you again later, it's probably because there's a meaning for the word that you haven't learned yet. You can create another card for the same word but with the new meaning.

Anki Card Creation Process

Alright, now that we've covered the strategy, let's make some Anki cards!

From Anki's main window, press the A key or click the Add button in the navigation bar. In the "Add" window that opens, make sure the Type is set to "English Note" and the Deck should be "English". We created these in the last lesson.

Let's talk about what to put in each textbox.

English Sentence

This is going to be the hardest part of creating new cards. The rest is easy. There are 3 ways of finding sentences for the vocabulary words that you want to learn:

1. OPTION 1 (This is my favorite method) - Create your own sentences with a translator. Open your favorite translation tool, and create a sentence in your native language with the vocabulary word that you want to learn in English.

   By making your own sentences, you can create something funny, emotional, or relevant to your immersion content (but it doesn't have to be directly from that content). These are all ways of helping us learn faster. Here are some example sentences that I made:

   1. For the word carrot - "Mars likes some carrots with his dinner." (Mars is my dog.)
   2. For the word foot - "He ran over her foot with his car." (A shocking sentence.)
   3. For the word snow - "The Colorado mountains are covered in snow." (A sentence relevant to my life.)
   4. For the word grate - "Mom grates her own cheese, like a barbarian." (This makes me laugh, which helps me learn better.)
   5. For the word sponsor - "The famous motorcyclist was sponsored by Red Bull." (I find this sentence interesting.)
2. OPTION 2 - Use sentences from a dictionary. These can be hit or miss (sometimes good, sometimes bad). A lot of dictionaries provide partial sentences. For example, on Wiktionary, the word "alternative" gives the example partial sentence of "an alternative proposition". You'll know it's not a full sentence because it doesn't start with a capital letter and doesn't end with a period or some other punctuation. Always use full sentences for your cards!
3. OPTION 3 - Use AI sentences. You can use ChatGPT or whichever AI tool you like. Say something like, "Give me 3 simple example sentences that use the word, 'dog' in English." Then, choose your favorite one.

When you have your English sentence, copy and paste it into the first textbox of your new card, the "English Sentence" textbox.

TIP! It's really helpful to bold the word from the sentence that you're trying to learn. You can make your sentence in the textbox look like this: The dog is good at catching balls. When you're studying, this reminds you of the word to focus on!

Pronunciation

This textbox will be used differently depending on the written script of your native language.

If your native language uses written characters like English - This textbox is a clue to help you remember difficult sounds. Many students struggle with "Th" words because there are two different sounds for that combination of letters. As an example, let's say your sentence is "He threw the TV out the window". Then, in the Pronunciation textbox, you could write, "Hard TH" or "Unvoiced" or "like think". The Pronunciation text isn't required to relate to the target word either! If "window" is hard to pronounce, give yourself a little clue that will help you with that word. You could write "like think; wind-Oh!". Here's an example (I wasn't using a Pronunciation textbox back then, but if I were making this card today, I'd put "own-yon; koosh" in that textbox):

If your native language does NOT use written characters like English - The Pronunciation textbox will be used as a "transliteration" of the sentence, which means that the English sounds will be converted into your language's characters. Usually, the translator tool (like Google Translate) will give this to you if you're translating between languages with different written scripts. For example, Korean and English use different scripts, so I would copy and paste this into the Pronunciation textbox:

For everyone - As you become better with a new language, you won't need the Pronunciation field anymore. If the sentence does not have any confusing pronunciation for you, you can just leave the textbox blank for that card.

Audio

For the Audio textbox, you're going to drop an .mp3 file that you've downloaded from a TTS (text-to-speech) program. For English, this has the best TTS tool.

Copy the sentence from your English Sentence textbox, and paste it into the TTS tool.

Then, select a voice. The AI voices are better than the Regular Voices, but there are usage limits, so I'll recommend the Regular Voices. These are the voices that sound the best:

Choose the gender and nationality that fits your goals best. Then, click Download as MP3.

Open the Downloads folder on your computer. Drag and drop the .mp3 file into your Anki Audio textbox. This whole process to get the audio should take about 5 seconds per card. Copy/paste the English Sentence into the TTS program, download the MP3, and drag and drop it into the Audio textbox.

Native Sentence (your first language)

This is the translation of the English Sentence into your own language. You can copy that from the translator or just type it into the textbox for your native language (in my screenshots, it's the textbox that says French Sentence).

English Target Word

This is the new vocabulary word that you're trying to learn. In the first step, I recommend that you bold this one. Now, you can copy the English word from the English Sentence and paste it in this textbox.

Target Word Pronunciation

If your native language uses written characters like English, you probably don't need to use this textbox.

If your native language does NOT use written characters like English, then copy the part of the transliteration from the Pronunciation textbox for the new vocabulary word and paste it in this textbox.

Native Target Word

This is the new English word translated into your language. You can copy it from the native sentence textbox, or you can type it yourself, whichever is faster for you.

Note

This is an optional textbox. Sometimes, there's something tricky about the new sentence, and maybe it's not the pronunciation. I've used this box to remember a grammar rule or the root form of a verb. Usually I left this blank, but sometimes it was really useful.

A Completed New Anki Card

If my native language were French, and I wanted an Anki card for learning the word "carrot" in English, this is what a completed card would look like:

To finish a new card, click the "Add" button at the bottom, or do CTRL+ENTER on your keyboard.

Create Your First Cards

Now that you know how to create Anki cards, you can start filling your deck with cards! Please create at least 20 cards. You'll need them for the next lesson, where I'll teach you how to study with Anki.

For English beginners - Create cards for English nouns, they're the easiest to learn first. Create cards for items in your room, simple foods, animals, body parts, or clothing. Here are some examples:

• Dog
• Cat
• Mom
• Dad
• Desk
• Bed
• Pillow
• Window
• Apple
• Bread
• Cheese
• Shirt
• Pants
• Socks

For intermediate or advanced English learners - The above suggestions might be words you've already learned in English. To find new words, you can use a frequency list or a dictionary. You could also browse Reddit or a blog, then create Anki cards for some new words that you find.

If you're not coming across new vocabulary frequently enough, try consuming harder immersion content. Even as a native, I learn new English words all the time. I learned the word "inculcate" yesterday from an essay on The American Scholar.

How Many Cards Should You Make?

After creating the initial 20 cards, you'll need to keep creating more, so you'll continue learning new words. So if you set your Anki deck options to show you 10 new cards per day, then you should create 10 or more new cards per day, so you won't run out of cards.

Conclusion

This was a long lesson, but learning how to make effective Anki cards for language learning will pay off in the long run. Please create some cards, so you'll be ready for the next lesson where we'll be learning how to study with these new cards!