I stopped doing Anki reviews for a month and built a browser extension instead. Here is what I learned about "Contextual Learning".

on

I'll be honest: I hit a wall. I've been learning Japanese for about 8 months. Like everyone else, I was told "Anki is King". I spent hours grinding decks, optimizing FSRS settings, and stressing over my retention rate. But I realized I was getting good at flashcards, not reading. When I tried to read actual news articles or tech blogs in Japanese, I still felt lost. The words I "knew" in Anki felt unfamiliar in the wild because I lacked the context. So, being a developer (and a bit lazy), I decided to run an experiment. I stopped Anki. Instead, I spent my weekends hacking together a Chrome extension that uses AI to swap English words on regular websites (like Reddit, TechCrunch, BBC) with their Japanese counterparts. But not just random swaps it keeps the context.

The Theory: If I'm reading an article about "Artificial Intelligence" in English, and the tool swaps "Artificial Intelligence" with "人工知能 (Jinkō Chinō)", I don't need a dictionary. I know what it means because I know the context. I'm learning the word by seeing it used, not by flipping a card. The Result after 30 days: 1.Less Burnout: I don't "study" anymore. I just browse the web. 2.Better Retention: I remember words because I associate them with articles I actually cared about. 3.It's fun: Seeing a Japanese word pop up in a heated Reddit thread makes the word stick way better than a sterile white card. I'm still tweaking the "Immersion vs. Confusion" balance (i.e., how many words is too many?), but I feel like this "Passive Immersion" approach is missing from a lot of our tooling.

Question for you guys: At what point did you switch from "Flashcards" to "Pure Reading"? Do you think tools should force you to read native content earlier, or stick to the basics first? (Edit: I'm currently beta testing this tool with a small group. If you are interested in the "Contextual Immersion" method, feel free to DM me or check my profile, but mostly I just want to discuss the methodology here.)

submitted by /u/Ok_Climate_7210
[link] [comments]

from Language Learning https://ift.tt/QBtMqIW
via Learn Online English Speaking

Comments

Post a Comment