How I Completely Changed My Use of Mnemosyne

[Henrik in Oslo]

Flashcards have been my primary tool for learning Italian, German, and French (my native language is Norwegian) up to the B1-C1 level. I’ve also made an effort to learn Mandarin, and I will pick that up again when my Spanish is more solid.

For a long time, I had the misconception that everything I entered into a flashcard system based on Spaced Repetition Learning would gradually stick in my brain as if by magic. Over time, I have changed my approach, most dramatically the last couple of years. I am learning Spanish. After 1.5 years, I have reached level B2 (or close). 

1. 90% of my learning happens from Spanish to Norwegian/English. I do not stress at all about learning from Norwegian/English to Spanish.

2. I focus on topics that interest me and that I know I will be able to use in practice. All the flashcards are tailored to my interests and needs.

3. I closely monitor the statistics in Mnemosyne: if the "grade" is lower than 1.4, I simplify, postpone (using a custom "tag"), or delete the card. In the old Supermemo system, such cards were called “leeches” :-)

4. I meet a Spanish teacher about once a week, face-to-face. We speak Spanish, and the teacher writes down (in an electronic document) an improved version of what I tried to say. The teacher doesn’t correct my mistakes unless I ask directly.

5. All the sentences the teacher writes down, I translate into Norwegian and English using ChatGPT. The teacher checks the translation to ensure it's correct before I import it into Mnemosyne.

6. 95% of my cards consist of complete sentences from Spanish to Norwegian/English – almost none are just single words.

7. If I find a single word that’s useful and I want to “activiate” it, I create "cloze deletion" cards using copy-paste. In other words, many similar cards.

8. When I face systematic challenges (e.g., all words starting with "ll__" are difficult for me, or I am ready to understand a bit of the subjunctive), or special construction, I supplement with new simplified sentences that I create with help from ChatGPT. The teacher might check these before I import them into Mnemosyne.

9. After 1.5 years of intensive Spanish study, I now have more than 15,000 learning cards in Mnemosyne, daily “burde” approximatly 150 cards. I have now reached a point where learning is progressing rapidly: I can with little effort speak Spanish with people other than my teacher, and I actively use Spanish to learn more Spanish.

I find great value in combining Mnemosyne with ChatGPT. As mentioned, I always monitor "the leeches". Today, I used "tags" to create an extract of "all cards that last received a grade = and that have an easiness lower than 1.8." I exported this from Mnemosyne to a .txt file and wrote the following prompt in ChatGPT:

"I use the flashcard system Mnemosyne to learn Spanish. Attached is a file of the cards that are most difficult for me to learn. Based on the attached file, please create supplementary Spanish sentences that are personalized to my interests (I like dancing, learning a language, sailing, philosophy, etc.) at a level no higher than B1."

ChatGPT produced 60 great sentences that I will import into Mnemosyne to help reduce the overly time-consuming leeches.

I am deeply indebted to Peter and everyone else who has contributed to the creation of Mnemosyne.
Best regards
Henrik in Oslo

[Peter Bienstman]

Thanks for sharing!

Peter

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mnemosyne-proj-users" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mnemosyne-proj-u...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mnemosyne-proj-users/82651ca7-4f41-4ff0-8b62-2d9ef9b35520n%40googlegroups.com.