Shadowing Practice: ANKI FOR BEGINNERS 🤓☝️ How to learn faster and remember more! - Learn English Speaking with Video

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If you've seen any one of my previous videos, you will know that I am an Anki girl.

Whether I'm in my bed, on my desk, in a cafe, on a hike, chances are that I'm probably running through those flashcards.

And if you don't know what Anki is, it's this flashcard application that utilizes my two favorite study techniques, spaced repetition and active recall.

Spaced repetition is a learning technique where you review information at increasing intervals to improve long-term retention.

Instead of cramming everything all at once, which I have been guilty of many times, you review what you've learned over time, with breaks in between.

And active recall is a study technique where you try and recall information without looking back at your notes.

And this method helps strengthen your memory because you actively have to retrieve that information from your brain, making it more likely for you to remember it in the long term.

And with Anki, it's kind of the best of both worlds

because we're taking these two very well-established study techniques

and we're sticking it all in an algorithm that is specifically tailored to you and what you do and you don't know.

And now that I'm deep in exam season once again and I spend most of my days doing my flashcards on Anki, and since a lot of you have also expressed interest in a tutorial,

I thought it would be a good idea to kind of give an overview about what Anki is, how to set it up, and how I personally use it.

But without further ado, let me stop babbling and present to you how I use Anki as a medical student.

And now I'm gonna do what I do best, I'm gonna shrink myself into a little circle and put myself in the corner, and we're gonna go ahead and get started!

Okay, so we're going to start from the very beginning and we're going to talk about how to set up Anki.

So you're going to go to ankiweb.net and I'm going to have all of the relevant links in the description down below.

So you're going to do that by pressing this download button right here.

I already have it downloaded but this is where you can find it.

After installation you can create a user account and this allows you to sync your Anki progress across devices.

As you may have seen I tend to do Anki on my iPhone, on my iPad, and my MacBook and I'm able to do that because they all have the same Anki account.

So when you When you download Anki, it should look a little something like this, and this is it in its natural state, no customizations, no cards, no nothing.

So let's start off by talking about the layout.

If we take a look at this top bar right here, we see that there are these five buttons.

This decks button allows you to manage your decks, create new ones, or change settings for your existing decks.

And a deck is just a collection of flashcards, it's just what holds everything together.

This add button right here is used to create new flashcards or new notes.

This is the browse button over here and it takes you to the card browser.

For stats, this is the button that allows you to access all of the statistics that's related to your study progress.

The sync button will allow you to synchronize your Anki across multiple devices like we talked about.

So in Anki, if we scroll up right here to the menu bar, there are different dropdown menus with various features and options.

The thing with Anki is that it's so customizable, so there's so many different options and you can really go into a deep dive in terms of it,

but I wanted this to be a very accessible intro tutorial to Anki, so I'm only going to show you what I personally use and what I think is the most relevant.

So if we go to this Anki menu over here, it includes options that are related to Anki itself, like the preferences, looking at updates, and quitting the application.

The most important part for me, and really the only thing that I use this menu bar for, are the preferences.

and this allows you to customize various aspects of the application to suit your study habits, your preferences, and your specific workflow.

I am going to highlight a couple of things though, like the theme.

A lot of people like to do Anki in dark mode just because it's easier on the eyes, and this is where you can change that.

There are also other options that you can change in terms of the scheduling, like when the next day starts.

So for me, the next day starts at 4am since I tend to do cards really late at night, and then you can really get into the nitty-gritty with networks and backups but I don't really touch anything there.

So that was the preferences for Anki and there are also other options like the file tab, edit, view tools, and help.

There are some important details in tools like creating a filtered deck

and all of the add-ons but we're going to talk about that a little bit later in the video.

Okay so now we're going to be talking about the decks

and like I said they serve as containers for organizing and grouping related flashcards.

So let's start off by making a deck which is pretty straightforward.

So we're going to go to the create deck button down here and we're going to give it a name.

As an example, let's call it GI,

gastrointestinal, and we're going to press okay and now we have this designated space to organize all of our GI flashcards.

With decks, you can also have sub decks

and it allows kind of for further categorization into a hierarchical structure and let me show you what I mean by that.

So what we can do is that we can go to create deck once again and maybe GI is too broad.

We want to break it down into the different organs in the gastrointestinal system.

So we could create a subdeck called stomach for example

and press okay and we can make another one for what should we do pancreas.

So right now we have three separate decks but

if we want to create a subdeck what we can do is we can drag the subdeck

and we can put it until we see a line under our main deck

and that will turn it into a sub deck and now you can see this little plus button next to GI.

So under GI we have pancreas and we can do the same thing for stomach

and now under GI as the main deck we also have pancreas and stomach as a sub deck.

In these decks what we can do is make flashcards

that are related to them but making flashcards are a lot of work

and if you're fortunate enough like me to have uprears

that already made Anki decks for you or if you want to use a pre-made Anki deck that's available online, this is how you import a pre-made deck onto your Anki account.

To import a pre-made deck, I typically just google that kind of deck that I'm looking for.

So as an example here, I searched up French Anki deck download.

We're going to download the first one that we have here

and if we scroll down there should be an option

that says download and now we're going to go to our downloads folder, just open that up and it should automatically open up in your Anki account you'll see

that all of these cards were added without you making a single thing

and so now that deck shows up right here

and now we're able to do our Anki cards as we wish

so next we're going to talk about filtered decks

and this would make more sense if we already had flash cards in it

so we're actually going to jump from my tutorial Anki account to my actual Anki

and I can show you what a filtered deck is and what it looks like.

Okay, so we've swapped over to my Anki account, and as you can see, I have a lot to do.

I should definitely be doing my Anki instead of recording this video, but c'est la vie.

So just to highlight the decks that we were talking about, for example, Unit 2 is my main deck, and within that I have all of these sub-decks grouped by organ systems.

So I have gastroenterology, endocrine, repro, and then anatomy, embryo.

All of that are sub-decks under my Unit 2 main deck.

And if we keep pressing plus, you'll see that it's even further subdivided based on lecture.

So let's talk about filtered decks.

These are study decks that allow you to create custom decks based on a set of criteria.

These decks are temporary and it allows you to focus on studying a subset of cards from the larger collection.

So as you can see, I have hella cards.

I have hella cards to do.

But if I only wanted to study a specific subset of information from this main deck, I can do that using a filtered deck and this is how you do it.

So let's say I just wanted to study the female physiology cards within the reproductive deck.

What I can do is press that deck and I can click F on my keyboard and this creates a filtered deck.

This filtered deck is going to contain the female physiology cards that are due within this reproductive deck.

So if I build that, you'll see that instead of the thousands of cards that I have to do, we've really focused on just this set of parameters.

This is a special deck that allows you to study outside of your normal schedule

and doing these cards or deleting this filtered deck will not affect the algorithm set in your main deck.

Okay so now that we have our decks and our sub decks let's talk about flash cards.

So flash cards are the core learning units of Anki that facilitate the active recall and the information retention itself.

Let's start off by talking about all of the different flash cards that you can make.

This is an example of the basic card in Anki and it's the simplest and most straightforward kind.

So it consists of a front side which is the question and a back side which is the answer.

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So for example here the front card asks us what is the treatment for hepatitis A

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and if we press space or next you'll see the answer which is it's symptomatic and you want to avoid acetaminophen.

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So this is a closed deletion card

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and it involves removing specific parts of a sentence or paragraph and prompting you to fill in the blanks.

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So in this kind of card it allows you to create them with these hidden segments

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and when reviewing you're prompted to recall whatever this missing information is.

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So for this example here it says blank is the common cause of death in patients with hemochromatosis

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and if you press the space bar you'll get the answer which is hepatocellular carcinoma.

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There you go.

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And finally image occlusion cards allow you to hide specific parts of an image such as labels

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and you can test yourself on this concealed information over here.

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And this is especially useful when you're reviewing diagrams or flow charts or anatomy images, especially for example here We have this image over here

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and this is blocked off and it prompts us to recall what they're pointing at here, which is the surface antigen There you go So now that we talked about the three main cards that I used,

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let me show you how to actually make these flashcards Okay, so let's start off by making a basic card

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So we're going to go into the deck

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that we want the flashcard to go in let's call it stomach

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and we're going to press either a on our keyboard

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or the add button up here

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and this opens up a new window where we can create our flashcards

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if we look at type here in the top left we can choose what kind of card

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that we want to make and we are making a basic card

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and this is the front and the back or the question

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and the answer so to make a basic card we're just going to go ahead

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and put the question that we want to ask

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and we're going to put the answer in this back card

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and we can either press add or command enter for mac or control enter for windows to add the card.

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So here's our question what is the level of obstruction in Hirschsprung disease

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and if we press space or enter or press the show answer button down here oh I just spelled obstruction wrong.

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Anyway you'll see the answer which is rectosigmoid colon.

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To create a closed deletion card what we can do is go back to our ad browser.

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We're going to go to type close

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and now instead of asking a question in the front and an answer in the back, we're going to create a fill in the blank question.

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So we're going to say chief cells are primarily, and the correct answer is basophilic.

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So what we're going to do is press command shift C for Mac or control shift C for Windows, and that will open up our close function.

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And we're going to put the answer that we want to be revealed once we press enter.

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So the correct answer is basophilic, and we can just press command enter again, and that creates our card and that's going to look a little something like this.

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Chief cells are primarily blank and the correct answer is basophilic.

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Another thing that we can do, we're going to edit this card by just going to the bottom left corner over here,

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is that if we wanted to give options for the answer to show up, we can press colon colon again and here we can put any text

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that we want to see that may prompt us to the answer.

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So for example, if I want to give the option for is it basophilic

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or eosinophilic and we put that in this format.

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Let me make this longer so you can see it clearly.

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So now what this looks like is that when we see the question, it says chief cells are primarily and it gives us the option.

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Is it basophilic or eosinophilic?

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The correct answer is basophilic.

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To create an image occlusion card, we can go to the image occlusion type over here.

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This is an add-on that you have to add yourself, we can go to this image section and then paste the image that we want to occlude.

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So this is going to be parts of the stomach.

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We can give it a label.

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And now what we can do is we can press this little frame up here

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and it'll open up a new window that allows us to do the occluding.

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There's a lot going on here but we're just going to focus on the things that we actually need.

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So this is a tool that allows us to block off the label.

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So now we can do is make sure that it's clicked

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and we're just going to drag it over the label

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that we want to hide and we can do

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that for the rest of the labels as well

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but i'll just show you how to do it with this one there's an option here depending

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if you want to hide all of the cards

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and just guess one or you only want to hide the one

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that you have to actively guess so we're going to press hide all guess one

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and it'll show that that one card was added

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so here's the image occlusion card that we just made we hid this off

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so now we're asking ourselves what is

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that part of the stomach is it the fundus spacebar yes it is and that's how you make an image occlusion card.

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And now the next thing we're going to talk about are tags.

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In Anki, tags are labels that you can assign to flashcards to categorize them based on specific criteria.

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They serve as a way to group related cards together, making it easier to manage and study specific subsets of your decks.

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Here is a breakdown of how tags work in Anki.

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So to add tags, there are two ways that you can do it.

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You can assign it during the card creation process or afterwards in the card browser.

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So let me show you how to do both.

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So let's go ahead and make a new card here.

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So that is the card that we created and

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if we look here in the bottom left corner we're going to see our tag button

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and if we click that it gives us an option to type in what we want to tag it as.

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So you might want to tag cards based on topics or chapters or difficulty levels or study priorities.

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You can really customize it based on what you want to do with it.

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So for example, I can call this esophagus because that's the topic that it's related to.

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And we can just press enter to create that tag.

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But maybe I also want to tag it as an easy card.

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And because it's an easy card, maybe I want to tag it as a low priority card.

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And we can press add.

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And another way to add tags is in the browse button in pre-existing cards.

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So here are the cards that we made earlier.

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We can go ahead and add tags here as well.

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So we can label this as stomach, maybe we find this hard, and maybe we consider this medium priority.

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So now that we've created the tags, this is a really fun way that we can use it.

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Anki allows you to filter cards based on the tags so you can study specific subsets of your deck.

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And so something that we can do with our tags is

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that we can bring back our friend the filter deck and we can create decks based on those tags.

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So for example, oh my god my exam is tomorrow, I really want to study the concepts that I find hard.

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So we're going to create a filter deck by pressing F.

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We're going to set the parameters that we're looking for.

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So in this case, we're going to search for tag and we're going to say, let's just do the hard cards.

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And we're going to press build or enter.

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And you're going to see

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that it's going to create a filter deck containing all of the cards that we tagged as hard.

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Okay, so now using our filter decks and using our tags, we've created this kind of cram filter deck, just showing you all of the cards that you tagged as hard.

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So let's say you have 30 minutes to study, you just want to do the hard cards, this is how you do it.

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And now the settings.

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If we go to this gear icon that are next to your decks, we can go to options and this opens the settings up.

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There are entire YouTube channels that are dedicated to optimizing all of these settings

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and making all of these tiny tweaks to see what happens.

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I considered including a detailed explanation of all of the settings

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that I use but I realized that my understanding of it is so rudimentary compared to someone like A-King

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so I'm just going to link his videos in the description below

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if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty about what settings might be the best for you

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but instead of doing that I'm just going to show you the settings

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that I've set up and the ones that work for me and if you want to replicate it please go ahead.

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So these are the standard settings that Anki has to offer

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but let me go to my actual Anki and I'll show you what I do instead.

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So these are all of the settings that I use.

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So new cards are the cards that you haven't seen yet, you're doing it for the first time, your reviews are the cards that you've already seen, and it's now going through the Anki algorithm.

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So under new cards, learning steps just relates to the four buttons that you see whenever you open a flashcard.

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So let's open up a flashcard over here, and once we show the answer, we have these four buttons, and you'll choose that based on how easy or how difficult you found the answer to that card was.

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So let's say for the question, where's progesterone produced, I was like, it's easy, it's in the ovaries and placenta during pregnancy, I can just press good or easy and this means

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that the card will show up next in two days or the card will show up next in seven days.

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Let's say I struggled with it a little bit but I still had an idea of what was up, I could press hard and it'll show up in one day

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or if I had no idea what the answer was at all, I would press again and it would show up in 15 minutes.

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You'll see

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that those four times don't exactly correlate with the learning steps

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this just sets up the algorithm something something i'm not even going to try

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and explain it because guys i'm gonna get

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so much hate there is a whole subculture dedicated to this

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so i'm going to leave that to the experts

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so i'm just going to leave this here

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if you want to copy exactly what i'm doing please feel free to do it

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if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty

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and customize it based on your needs i would highly suggest watching the anking videos

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that i'm going to link in the description below

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but this is a little bit no this is a lot of bit above my pay grade

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so i'm going to leave it to the people that actually know what they're talking about.

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But what I do know about are customizations, so let's talk about that next and let's go back to our tutorial screen.

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So now that we know about decks, now that we know about flashcards and tags, and we've updated our settings to suit our needs,

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now let's make Anki a little bit pretty because honestly this is a little bit ugly.

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So the first thing that we're going to do is create a new background

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and to do that we're going to need something called an add-on.

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Add-ons are extensions or plugins that kind of enhance the functionalities or the look of the Anki software.

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So to download an add-on and as an example I'm going to show you the add-on

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that allows you to customize your background.

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All of the pre-made add-ons can be found on ankiweb.net

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and we're just going to scroll down until we see a little box with a bunch of numbers

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and that's what we're looking for.

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So we're going to copy that, we're going back to our Anki, we can do command shift a for mac control shift a for windows

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or we can go to tools add-ons

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and this is where you're able to input the code for your add-on

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so we're going to go to the blue button

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that says get add-ons we're going to paste what we just found press ok

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and that's just going to process just like that

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and for it to take into effect we are going to have to reset angie

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so we're just going to exit and come right back in.

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So now that we have that add-on, as we can see we have this custom background.

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Not really my style but it allows us to customize it.

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So to change up the background what we can do now is go to the menu bar.

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You're going to see there's a new one that says Aang King.

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We're going to do custom background over here.

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Okay so what we're going to do is we're going to open our image folders

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and it should open up something like this.

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Oh it's a little messy.

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So we're going to take the image

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that we want as our background we're going to drag it into this background folder

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and we can see it over here

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and now what we're going to do is go back to the custom background settings window

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and we're going to choose the image that we're looking for and i think we called it this one

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and as you can see we have our custom background just like that and when we do our cards

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it keeps the same background i wouldn't do anything crazy so it's not super distracting

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but if you don't like the boring beige-y gray that it comes with, this is how you customize the background.

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Okay, now that we've talked about customizations and I introduced you to add-ons, let's finish off by showing you some of my favorite Anki add-ons.

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This heat map is an Anki add-on that visualizes and tracks your study progress using these color-coded squares.

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And it kind of provides a graphical representation of my study habits by showing the days in which I did my Anki, and also how many cards that I did.

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So these colors indicate the frequency and intensity of my study sessions over time

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and you know that I have a midterm or an exam coming up when you see the darker greens pop up.

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So this was right before my final exam.

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This you can see is the summertime so I didn't do any Anki during that time.

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And this visualization really helps me track my consistency in studying and also identify patterns in my reviewing habits.

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It's also just a really good incentive to do your cards every day because it's so painful losing your streak.

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So it's just a good visual representation of when I do my cards, how many cards that I do, and also just kind of gives me a push to do my cards every day.

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Another add-on that I like to use is something called the speed focus mode,

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and it trains your attention and speed by performing automated actions if you take too long to review a card.

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So there are three different levels of encouragement that are provided with this add-on.

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These settings can be changed in options, but it's only available in the old version of the Anki options and to access that So these are the new options.

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This is what it looks like

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But to access the old options you can hold shift

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when you press it and press options and you'll see that this is kind of the og Anki settings.

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So if we go to general, there's this option that's related to the speed focus mode It says that after eight seconds, they're automatically going to play an alert

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and after 12 seconds they're automatically going to show an answer

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and I find this really helpful because sometimes

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when I'm doing my reviews I have a tendency to just wander off somewhere in space

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and just stare at the ceiling and this makes it so

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that if I've been looking at a review card for too long it automatically just shows the answer

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so it makes me go through my cards a lot faster

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because I don't have a choice and let me show you what that looks like in action.

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Here we have a card where is progesterone produced let's say I'm just dilly-dallying

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and in eight seconds you're gonna hear a warning.

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There you go and it says I've been looking at this card

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and if I still don't have the answer it's just going to automatically show up for me.

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So the speed focus mode is very helpful if you're like me

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and you have a tendency to just stare off into space while you're reviewing your cards.

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And the very last add-on that I want to show you guys

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that I used to have last year

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but I don't have anymore is the connection to something called Habitica

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and Habitica is kind of a gamified task management and productivity app

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that can take your Anki and turn it into kind of like a role-playing game.

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It's a lot of fun.

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So this is what Habitica looks like.

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There's an add-on that can connect it to your Anki.

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So as you do your cards, you can build up XP, you can get more coins, you can buy different things.

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This is me.

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I look a little bit scary.

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But yeah, it was so much fun because sometimes the only thing

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that would get me to do my Anki was the knowledge that if I do more cards, I can get more coins so I can buy more animal eggs

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and I did Anki so much that I unlocked all of these animals.

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I was so excited and the best part about this too is

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that especially in med school all of us use Anki

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so we were able to build up a really big party and we could all see how everybody is progressing.

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This is everybody and their little mounds and their little pets

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and we got quite a big group and

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that was my overview of Anki and how I personally use it as a medical student.

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I know it may seem like a lot

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and it may seem a little bit overwhelming

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but trust me once you actually get into the habit of using it

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and you do a little bit of your cards every day

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it's kind of unbelievable how much you're able to learn in a short period of time.

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As always if you have any more suggestions for me please put them down in the comments as well.

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I made this Anki video because I saw

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that a lot of you guys were curious about it

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so I always read your comments even if I don't respond to every single one.

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And with that thank you so so much for watching this video

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and will see you guys in the next one bye

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What You'll Learn

This video helps you build two key speaking skills: clear, conversational pacing and natural stress placement. The speaker’s friendly, conversational tone models how to explain complex ideas (like Anki’s features) in simple, approachable English—perfect for practicing everyday communication. You’ll also learn to follow a step-by-step explanation, which boosts your ability to recount processes aloud, a vital skill for work or school.

Listen For These Sounds

Notice the connected speech in phrases like “chances are that I’m” (where “are that” links smoothly to “I’m”) and “sticking it all in an algorithm” (where “it all” blends into “itall”). The speaker often reduces “you’re” to “you’re” (not a full “you are”) and shortens “I am” to “I’m,” which is common in casual speech. Also, listen for the soft “t” in “settings” and “statistics”—a typical feature of native pronunciation that makes speech flow better.

Say It Like a Native

To mirror the speaker’s rhythm, focus on stressing key words like “spaced repetition,” “active recall,” and “customizable.” These terms carry the most meaning, so emphasizing them helps your listener follow along. Try the shadowing technique: pause the video after short sentences, then repeat them immediately, matching the speaker’s speed and tone. For example, when she says, “And with Anki, it’s kind of the best of both worlds,” copy her relaxed pace and the slight rise in pitch on “best.” Use a shadowing app or shadowing site to practice this daily—consistency will make your speech sound more natural. Don’t forget to mimic her warm, encouraging tone; it makes your English more engaging and easier to understand. With time, you’ll notice your pronunciation and fluency improve, making even complex topics sound effortless!

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if we keep pressing plus, you'll see · if I build that, you'll see · if we press space or next you'll see
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	I've been looking
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	you've seen · have been · have also expressed
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	were added · is blocked · be revealed

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: ANKI FOR BEGINNERS 🤓☝️ How to learn faster and remember more! - Learn English Speaking with Video

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