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What do you think of "animecards" (high quality vocab cards)?

October 27, 2022 — Tatsumoto

When people say "animecards" or "high quality vocabulary cards", they mean WCCs.

WCCs contain the same information as TSCs, but the information is ordered differently. There's only the target word on the front, other fields are shown on the back. WCCs have context — an example sentence, and it's shown on the back as well. The difference between WCCs and SWCs is that you have context which is shown on the back of a card.

WCCs are designed with the intention of mining from anime and similar audio-visual sources. Often a WCC will contain a screenshot from the scene and an audio file with the example sentence said by a voice actor.

SWCs and WCCs essentially test the user on the same information — a single word out of context. The extra info on the back of a WCC is only used for reference to explain usage of the word and is added so that when learning the card the user could form more vivid memories.

Although this type of of cards might be preferable for certain people, my personal opinion is that TSCs are better than WCCs. I don't use WCCs in my studies.

  • WCCs are harder than TSCs due to the lack of visible context. They place more mental burden on the user.
  • WCCs can't fully protect from context-dependent memories, but it's fair to argue that the memories that you create are less likely to be context-dependent.
  • Use-cases of WCCs overlap with SWCs, and making a SWC is often faster.
  • There's maybe a slight benefit in time spent repping compared to TSCs, but they're pretty close.
  • A lot of times when WCC users rely on a hint field, TSC users don't need any modifications.
  • WCCs violate the practice how you play principle since most words in immersion do have context. When using the SRS ideally we want to replicate real life situations.

Tags: faq