I am wondering: for how long you tend to use Anki when you are learning a language? Also, you have changed the way that you use it as you have gained more experience with it? I am trying to decide if it is time for me to let this daily habit go and perhaps only do it weekly or stop using it entirely. Have any of you used it longer than 3 years and found that to be helpful enough that you would do so again if you were learning another language? Or is it´s value really in getting the more common words?
I have been using ANKI daily for almost 3 years now and am gradually getting less enthused about it. I now have a lot of words that it is not going to show me again for more than 5 years. With many of the words that it is showing me more frequently, I now realize that they are the words that are very uncommon in the language that I put in ANKI when I did not realize how uncommon they were.
I think ANKI was very useful in the beginning. One change that I did make after a few months of using it was to change which language I put on the front of the card vs. which language I put on the back.
I learned over time that just putting the word of the target language on the front of the card and being able to recognize it and know the definition in my own language was not as helpful for learning to actually SPEAK the language. It worked better to put the word or concept in my own language on the front so I had to come up with the word in my target language. It is harder the second way but is what is needed to be able to use the word actively instead of just recognize it when reading or listening.
I've used Anki off & on since 2009, and currently am using it every day to build basic vocabulary in Arabic, for continuous improvement in advanced Spanish, and to practice Catalan verb conjugations. I spend 30-60 minutes per day and switch between languages to avoid burning out on any one deck. I recommend Anki to all my ESL students -- for studying phrasal verbs if nothing else -- but I do also spend at least an hour showing them how to use it effectively.
Cards that aren't going to be shown for 5 years have supposedly been learned, which should be a good thing. If you want to see them again sooner, that can be changed in the Browser.
There's no need to manually create separate "forward" and "reverse" Notes for each translation, you can create two (or more) Cards based
on each Note and Anki will mix it up for you. I find this both very challenging and
helpful, particularly for learning how to read and write Arabic. My "reverse" cards force me to type in the Arabic translation of the English word (via a Type: input Field) so I've been able to master the writing system and the Arabic keyboard in less than a month of daily practice.
Also, my Cards are modified with custom HTML and CSS, including buttons for WordReference and Forvo lookup. I find the basic card format too dry and flat, and I think adding some color and style makes them less visually boring so I stick with it longer than I would otherwise.