AnkiReview is a flashcard app/plugin which works in conjunction with AnkiDroid and focuses on a smooth reviewing experience. I realized early on when reviewing Chinese flashcards that I frequently need to mark or annotate a card if the definition or usage is unclear.
In my case, this need would come up in under the following circumstances:
- I am not sure how to use this word that I’m being asked to learn.
- I don’t understand the English definition.
- The definition seems incorrect or needlessly long (particularly if copied from the dictionary).
- I need an example sentence to really memorize this word.
The way the Anki ecosystem addresses this need is through tagging. both AnkiMobile (iOS) and AnkiDroid (Android) support “marking” a card, which adds the “marked” tag and lets you locate that card later. I say later, because frequently, modifying the card to my satisfaction requires asking my teacher, and I can only do that during our scheduled lessons. So I want to tag/mark while reviewing in my daily review sessions, and fix the card later.
Having the “marked” tag is useful, however it’s not immediately clear what I thought was wrong with the card a few days earlier. For this reason, I use more specific tags such as “definition” when I think the definition could be improved, or “clarify” when I want my teacher to explain again how to use this word.
AnkiDroid does support custom tags, however applying them requires a couple of taps (Menu, Edit Note, Tags, checking a tag, OK and Save Note. 6 taps!) I sought to make this process quicker in AnkiReview, hence the QuickTags feature:
Selecting Add QuickTag pops up the following dialog. I type in the “example” tag, which didn’t previously exist. I use this tag when I want my teacher to give me an example sentence which uses the word.
After tapping OK, the card is immediately tagged, and the “example” tag is available immediately for future use:
If the card was already tagged, you will see that particular tag as greyed out:
Once you’ve defined a QuickTag, it only takes 2 taps to apply it. It’s very fast and lets me keep my flashcard collection neat and tidy !
In the future, I want to add support for Suspending and Burying in AnkiReview. Do you know what those features do ? I only learned that recently:
- Burying prevents Anki from showing you the card again today. You would use this if you don’t want to answer the card today, for example if you know for a fact the card is wrong somehow, and you expect to fix the issue in the evening. This allows you to skip the card without having to answer a score (which would falsify stats)
- Suspending indefinitely hides the card until you unsuspend it. If you know the card is wrong, you can suspend it until you get a chance to fix it.
However for these features to work, I have to wait for the release of AnkiDroid 2.9 (AnkiReview uses the AnkiDroid API, which will get updated in 2.9).
I hope that article was useful to you, feel free to share your flashcard reviewing habits in the comments ! Are you an AnkiDroid user ? Please try AnkiReview !
