Where Can You Get Pre-made Anki Flashcard Decks When Learning A Language?

When you are getting started with language learning you will be told to just download some Anki decks as well as make your own.

Downloading a pre-made deck can be a good idea as it can give you some basics and help you get started, but where exactly do you get these decks from and how do you know if they are any good?

I will explain all below, but basically you get them from the Anki website and I will tell you what to look for to make sure you get something that actually helps you.

Use The Official Anki Website

The best place to find pre-made decks is from the official anki website.

https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/

You will see they have the popular categories, which have a lot of the main languages. Just click on the one you are learning to see all the decks. You can also use the search box if your language is not on the list.

It is important to remember that these can be uploaded by anyone, so while everything from here is going to be legit and actually work with Anki and be safe …it doesn’t mean it will be the best quality.

However, the point of using this trusted site is that you know what you are downloading is safe. If you download Anki decks off other sites …they could be anything. I am sure most of them will be what they say they are, but you never know. Computer viruses can be sneaky these days!

Just always make sure you can trust any site before you download and install something.

(You can read more about – Is Anki The Best Flashcard App For Learning A Language?)

What To Look For In A Pre-made Language Deck

Since the pre-made decks are all user generated, it is important to look out for a few things before you download them to make sure that they are actually going to be useful.

The first thing to start with is going to be the name of the deck. This should hopefully give you a clue to what is in the deck and of course it makes sense to go with something that sounds good.

You will always find decks that say “1000 most common words” or similar. This is a good start. You will also see some decks with random names, or maybe something like “Japoński po polsku (Japanese in Polish)” which is not going to be relevant for everyone. I’m sure it’s a good deck… but I don’t speak Polish.

Next to the name you will see some basic information such as the average rating, which basically means people who have downloaded it can give it a thumbs up or down …of course the higher the score the better.

You will also see the number of notes. This may seem irrelevant, but it’s good to check.  If it is called “1000 words” …you want to make sure there are at least 1000 notes. (Notes basically means cards)

There is nothing wrong with downloading a smaller deck, but if it only has 13 cards, you really have to ask what exactly will you gain from this.

Then lastly you can see the number of audio and images that are in the deck. I guess this depends on what you are after. I do like the audio on a pre-made deck, but if this is missing it’s not the end of the world, the deck can still be decent without these. 

(You can read more about – Should You Learn The Most Common Words Of A Language?)

Click On The Deck For A Preview

If you want a bit more information and a preview, then click on the deck that you like the look of.

This will open a new page that will give you a short description of what the deck is about as well as some example cards.

This can usually be enough to tell you if a deck is any good as you can see what you would be downloading. However, if you need more help there is a review section at the bottom.

You will see here what other learners think of the deck and they will not hold back and usually point out anything they don’t like which is always helpful in making sure you don’t download a bad deck.    

Use Reddit To Get Recommendations

Another great place to get recommendation is Reddit. It doesn’t matter what language you are learning, there will be a reddit page for it and it will be full of other learners talking about all sorts of things.

These groups can be great and they are especially helpful for Anki information. People will ask for opinions on a certain deck, or just straight up recommend one.

You will usually see the same the couple of decks being mentioned over and over again which is a very good sign that they are useful.

Use Other Social Media/Friends

While I think Reddit is usually the best place for Anki recommendations, other social media can be useful too. If you are in any sort of language learning group on social media then there will probably be some discussions around Anki and what decks are best.

The same can also be true people you know. If you know anyone who has already learned the same language, just ask them if they recommend any Anki decks, or even if they could share their own with you. It is very easy to export a deck, so they could easily send it over to you.   

You can also get recommendations from websites, but I would usually expect them to link to Ankiweb, then you know it’s a legit. Just don’t just download a deck off any random site, in case it something else. The files should always be an Anki Add On file, so if it’s not that …don’t download it and certainly don’t open it.

Make Your Own Anki Decks

While I am mainly talking about getting premade decks here, you can’t forget that you should really be making your own deck.

The pre-made decks are always going to help you get some basics, but once you move past this you need to making your own decks, creating cards from things you have come across in your immersion.

Making your own cards is always going to be the better option, so make sure you don’t avoid that.

Conclusion

Now you should have a better understanding of where you can get pre-made Anki decks …which is of course from the Anki website.

More importantly, you can understand what to look for when picking a deck. Not all decks are equal in quality, so hopefully now you will be able to pick one that is actually going to benefit you and actually help you make progress in your language.

(You can read more about – Are Flashcards Effective When Learning A Language?)