The routine
- Read or watch something you would choose anyway. Interest keeps you going far longer than a textbook does.
- Look up only what stops you. If you can follow the sentence without a word, keep reading.
- Save the few words worth keeping. Words you meet more than once are the ones to save.
- Review them later, not now. Once a week, move them to Anki and let it schedule the reviews.
Reading articles
Pick topics you already know something about. Familiar subjects let you guess more words from context, and the guesses you check are the ones that stick.
- News sites in your target language, or ones written for learners or younger readers.
- Wikipedia articles on subjects you know well.
- Blogs and forums about your hobbies, for everyday language.
When a word blocks you, select it and open the VocabKit panel. It shows the meaning that fits the sentence, so you do not have to pick from a dictionary list. If the word is worth keeping, press Save.
Watching YouTube
Videos give you pronunciation and natural speech that text cannot.
- Turn on captions with the CC button.
- Pause when a word stops you.
- Select the word in the captions. The translation opens next to the player.
- Save it and keep watching.
If the subtitles are part of the picture, pause and press Alt+O, then drag a box around the line. Watching at 0.75x speed the first time, then again at normal speed, also helps.
Saving words well
A saved word keeps its translation, part of speech and example sentences. It does not keep the sentence you were reading, so when that sentence is what makes the word memorable, copy it into the word's note. A word you met in a sentence you cared about is far easier to recall than one from a list.
Reviewing
In VocabKit
Open the extension and go to Vocabulary. Look over the week's words, star the ones that matter, play them again, and delete the ones you no longer need.
In Anki
On Premium, select the words or export them all as an Anki deck (.apkg). In Anki, choose File, Import and pick the file. Each card has the word and its translation with audio, the part of speech and the examples. On the Free plan, export a CSV file and import that instead.
Anki then shows each word just before you are likely to forget it. Words you get wrong come back sooner.
A sample week
- Most days, 10 to 20 minutes: read one article or watch one video. Save three to five words.
- Once a week, 15 minutes: look over the new words in VocabKit and export them to Anki.
- Every day in Anki, 5 to 10 minutes: do the reviews it schedules.
Consistency matters more than the length of a session. A short session you do every day beats a long one you skip.
More on what the extension does: saving words, translating on a page and text in images.