Update on Anki...

A long time ago I posted about how I use Anki. I never really updated that in detail, but I ended up doing much less with it. I currently just use two decks - one I downloaded from the public lists (German Intermediate to Advanced) and one I am making myself. For the latter, I originally intended it would just be words I didn't know in Lesetraining B2, but lately I have been using it for basically all new words - when I'm reading the news, or listening to German radio, or when after I've had a conversation with my German-speaking friends. I've found that the words that I add myself stick much better. The public list I downloaded has a lot more words than my own (currently) but I often find that they don't stick very well because they are context-free and sometimes vague or contradictory to what I already know. Still, I kept going with this big list and recently finally got to the stage where I have no more new words to learn - it's all revising from here and MAN, does it go faster now. I find it no problem to revise both my lists within just 15 or so minutes spread throughout the day.

So I've realised something... When learning an Anki list for the first time, don't try to learn too many lists at the same time if you're time poor. You'll just end up doing badly at all of them. However, now that I've finished the initial phase of learning the list, I can see that I could easily start learning another list without the first one being too much of a cost time-wise.

Not that I plan to add more lists. I will just keep expanding my own list as I do more from Lesetraining, and learn more from conversations, radio, etc.

I am now past my original deadline, and am still in the phase of deciding on how to reach my goal now that I should have a good idea of what's left to achieve. One idea I toyed with was completing Perfectionnement Allemand after all, aiming to be at a book-learning level of C1, which would help push me into a higher confidence level for the B2 test, hopefully...

I resumed my Stammtisch at work this week after a couple of weeks without it, and I'll also hopefully resume my in-person German conversation classes with my Austrian friends this Thursday. Fingers crossed. I am looking to ramp up my studies again now that I've got a bit of a rhythm with my training for the City2Surf in mid-August!