When you are ready to start learning and using your Speakada flashcards for the first time, you might be wondering what are the best Anki settings for language learning? What is the optimal setting for Anki and what do we recommend using to maximize the use of Anki?
The great thing about Anki is that the settings are generally all set up for you and you can start learning straight away. Generally, for the settings, we recommend that you use the default Anki settings.
You can just leave the Anki settings alone, especially if you are an Anki beginner.
Focus more on actually studying your flashcards, and making a regular habit of that.
Here are 3 reasons why we believe that using the default settings is the best option:
1. Anki Knows Best
The first reason why you should be using the default setting is that Anki has already tried and tested the best setting for you. Because the main purpose of Anki is to help you harness the benefit of Spaced Repetition in order to help you learn a language and memorize everything you learn in your long-term memory, Anki has already done the hard work figuring out the best Anki settings for language learning that will generally work for most circumstances. Anki’s built-in Spaced Repetition software system is powerful on its own and is automatically set without having to change any of the settings.
This is why Anki is the most superior software on the market and why many other tools fail to replicate. It is made to do this and therefore the general settings are already set up to be at its optimal best. Therefore, there’s no need to change any of the pre-set settings.
2. Our Expertise and Experience
After years of testing and using Anki, both our customers and team members at Speakada have found that the most useful settings are the default settings that automatically come when you install and use Anki. Changing any of these settings comes down to personal preference, but what we found was that the default settings do a great job already and there’s no need to be tinkering with the settings and wasting potential time that can be used to learn the language.
The one thing that you may want to tweak for your personal circumstance is the New Cards/Day. This is the amount of new cards per day that you will be exposed to. This is dependent on the amount of time you have to study your cards and whether you can manage the amount of reviews you currently have. The current default setting for this is 20 new cards per day. We recommend starting off with this over the next few days. If it’s too much to handle per day, then decrease this amount to what works for you.
If you find that you learn these easily while also reviewing all of the past cards, then you can increase this. Please note that with 20-30 new cards/day, it may take you 30 minutes to 1 hour to study per day over time (which includes learning new cards, and reviewing old ones). But of course this depends on your personal speed. You can read more about how many cards you should be doing per day here.
3. Avoid Procrastinating and Start Learning
One of the biggest hurdles of learning a language using Anki is finding time to actually study and avoiding procrastination. It can be overwhelming, stressful and difficult to learn a language and figure out how to use Anki. And some users will want to have everything perfect setup in order to start learning. While this is great, it can also mean that you never start learning because you are too busy trying to have everything perfect.
As we have made it clear in the first 2 reasons, there’s no need to be changing the settings. We therefore encourage you to go ahead and start learning instead of changing settings on the backend.
If you every want to view your settings, then you can click on the gear icon located on the top-right of any card or deck. Then select “Options” to view your settings.
In conclusion, if you are wondering what are the best Anki settings for language learning and what setup you need to do before learning, it is important to know that Anki is already set up to work well with the default settings that are already in place. There is no need to change any of these settings, other than changing the number of new cards shown per day. The only thing you need to do is start reviewing your cards and start learning the language.