Learn French with flashcards: Anki tutorial

If you are convinced of the power of flashcards to boost your French vocabulary, or at least curious enough to give it a try, there are a lot of apps to choose from.

While I grew to prefer Brainscape, Anki is well-known for the quality of its algorithm. But it’s definitely not the most intuitive app and it requires practice to harness its full potential. Hence this tutorial which is by no means exhaustive.

I intentionally keep it simple because I believe creating / sorting / editing flashcards should not take up much of your time. What counts is spending time reviewing the material, to maximize exposure through repetition and integrate these items to your real life.

My intent is to stick to the basics so that you can start using Anki and improve your French as quickly and easily as possible.

After downloading the app and opening it, you have to create your first deck and choose a name for it (you can always change it later).

• Structure your learning using several decks

You can categorize them:

- by source (class, newspaper, book, podcast, series…)

- by tenses (présent, passé composé etc.) or grammar points (pronouns…)

- by situation (restaurant, hotel, talking about myself…)

I will focus on 2 modes : basic and cloze.

• Basic card

For basic mode, you just have to fill in the front and back card. You can click one of the icons on the top to add an image or an audio file, and even record yourself (or a kind native speaker).

Remember to use your native language for the front and French for the back. Your aim is to be able to produce French, not merely recognize it. And as much as possible, avoid words in isolation. Choose groups of words or sentences that you can use in your daily life.

You can add a tag which will allow you to find the card later (using the browse section) or even to study a group of tagged cards.

• Cloze card

Select Type: Cloze on the top left of the card. Write down your sentence in French. Select the part that you want to learn and tap the […] button.

Add on the same side (on a new line) the English translation of the selected part or a translation of the full sentence. When you will test yourself, you will see the selected part being hidden and then appear in blue in the sentence.

Using cloze mode is very convenient when the sentence is not literally translatable, or when the structure is too different. Don’t overthink it. We learn by editing cards and their quality and effectiveness improve with time.

Once your first flashcards are made, take a minute to create an account on Anki web so you can sync all your content and have a backup should anything happen to your phone or computer.

• Delete a flashcard

(From the flashcard) Settings (low right) / Scroll down to All Actions category / Delete note

• Move a flashcard to another deck

Browse / Filter / Select the deck / Select the card / Actions / Change Deck

• Review tagged flashcards

(You need to be inside a deck) Settings / Custom study / Review new cards with a certain tag

• Prioritize the study of new flashcards

(From home screen) Settings / Review / Scheduling / New/Review order

Enjoy the flashcards adventure !