When Should You Stop Using Anki When Learning A Language?

When you start learning a language you will always hear that you should be using Anki and there is a general push to get you to also use it. It is a great app and it has helped so many people master their new language so you should be using it …but when do you stop?

Anki is the kind of thing that can go indefinitely, but for most people it doesn’t last forever, so I will go through when you should actually stop using it.

This is going to be different for everyone, but in general you will stop using Anki when it feels like it is not giving you enough value anymore.  

You Should Quit Anki When You Feel Its Right

There is no exact time when you should stop using Anki, but you will know when it’s the right time.

Basically you will feel that it is no longer benefiting you and is becoming more of an annoyance. You will kind of feel like you have outgrown it and you will feel like it’s pointless.

Once you reach a certain level in the language, it will just not feel productive reviewing cards anymore.

If you think about this in your own language, you don’t use flashcards. Maybe when you where young you might have, but I am sure you will have done some sort of spelling exercises …but at a certain point you stopped these, you don’t need to keep practicing spelling forever. You  have reached the point where you are good enough and just use the language, if you need to learn something new you just do that unaided.       

You will reach that same point in the language you are learning too and this is the point where it will just make sense to stop using Anki.

Quit When It’s Not Fun

Sometimes you should quit when it’s just not fun. I think I need to be clear …Anki isn’t always fun, language learning is hard and it can be a real challenge at times …but overall you shouldn’t mind doing it.

If you are in tears everyday and forcing yourself to review the cards, it is maybe not the best thing for you and you should probably quit.

If this is really how you feel then you might want to try something else, although I would imagine that 99.99% of us are not hating it this much and while it is a little painful, it’s bearable and the progress we see makes it worth it.

Quit When You Have Completed the Deck

A sensible time to quit Anki is when you have completed a deck …but when is a deck finished?

This would be of course be when you have completed all the cards and they are now showing for review. However, you need one more thing; you need the review times to be very large.

If we look at a deck I used it will make more sense. I downloaded a premade deck to help me learn the Japanese hiragana letters. It was only 104 cards, so I had gone through all the cards after a few days.

I then did the reviews for a while and each time I did them I of course got stronger at remembering them, but more importantly the review times got longer and longer.

I think the last card I did was saying it would next be reviewed in 1.5 years. For me, this deck is done.

If I log in now there are no reviews and probably won’t be for a few months. I’m not going to wait 18 months to look at some cards again and even if I did, their next review after this would probably be something like 2 years or maybe longer.  

The intervals can get insanely large and I’ve heard people saying they have seen some cards saying 20 years for the next review.

If you are seeing these kind of review times I think it is safe to say you have completed this deck and you can walk away from it.

Quit When You Are Not Adding Any More Cards

You could also quit a deck when you are no longer adding any more cards. This is going to be pretty normal for pre-made decks, like the example I discussed above. It was just for the letters of the alphabet, so there wasn’t any more I could add to it.

However, if you are making your own deck you can add thousands of new cards …but you will reach a point where you have pretty much covered everything.

When I say “everything” I mean everything that you are likely to need or actually use. You can never know every word, just think of your own language you don’t know “everything” …but you also know everything you need to function.

If you reach this point with your Anki deck then you are have probably reached a very high level in the language and are probably feeling quite fluent, or at least capable of using the language well.

If you stop adding new cards, just review the ones that are currently there and when they start to get long review times, like I just discussed above, then you can stop the deck.

(you can read more about – How Many New Flashcards Should You Do A Day When Learning A Language?)

Don’t Quit Anki Too Soon

You also want to make sure you give Anki enough time and that you actually put enough effort in to it before you quit.

It can be easy to say after a month that you have done enough, but really you haven’t. You really want to get through a significant number of cards… I’m talking in the thousands. Once you have done something like 5 thousand cards, then you can say you have done enough. However at that point, you may love the progress you are seeing and be hungry for more, so maybe now is not the time to quit and instead go even harder.

It can also be easy to want to quit when you log in and seen 300 reviews and you know it will be the same tomorrow too …but that’s all part of the journey and you just have to fight through it and put the effort in.

Just because it gets tough doesn’t mean you should quit. Give the process enough time and effort and you will see results.

If you really are getting overwhelmed and want to quit, then slow down. Stop adding new words for a while just focus on reviews until they become more manageable.

Quitting before you have seen the progress is not worth it. Keep going and then quit when you have made the progress. You want to outgrow Anki, not be overwhelmed by it.  

(You can read more about – What Happens If You Miss A Day Of Anki When Learning A Language?)

Conclusion

As you can see, there is no exact time when you should stop using Anki, but you will kind of know when the time is right.

You will feel like there is nothing new to learn and will stop adding cards, and you will also start seeing the review times get longer and longer. Basically you will have mastered this part of the language and you will feel Anki is not really benefiting you in the same way it once did. 

So long as you have put plenty of time and effort to reach this point, it will feel right. Don’t cheat yourself and give up too early.