Kindle Vocabulary Builder - Limitation

I use a Kindle for reading English novels. It's quite convenient looking up the unknown words in the dictionary. Of course, this works on an iPad too. But only on the Kindle can I see all the words I've ever looked up in a list — and even the context where I picked up the words is shown there.

That way, I've collected a lot of words in the last two months. Unfortunately, the built-in flashcard functionality is very basic and if you have more than a few hundred words, it's not really handy any more.

That's why I began to transfer the words to a software specialized for flashcards and "space repetition" called Anki.

Reading the books went better than expected, although I really had to look up a lot of words. Although I had deleted the words in the Kindle list immediately after transferring them to Anki, the list got longer every day.

Yesterday I wondered why the list stopped growing even after I had read a rather difficult passage containing many unknown words. I checked up on this and found out the reason: there is a limit of 2000 words, which means the Kindle throws away the oldest entries.

First I was kind of shocked: large parts of the beautiful words I had collected were gone even before I had started to learn them. How frustrating!

But this morning, I did some research on the internet and this broadened my horizon.

To be continued ...

Kindle Vocabulary Builder - Limitation

I use a Kindle for reading English novels. It's quite convenient looking up the unknown words in the dictionary. Of course this works on an iPad too. But only on the Kindle, I can see all the words in a list, which I ever had have ever looked up in a list - and even the context where I picked up the words is shown there.

Like this I collected a lot of many (we try to avoid using "a lot" - the same reason why in German we are asked not to use "tun" :) ) words in the last two months. Unfortunately, the build in built-in flashcard functionality is very basic and if you have more than a few hundred words, it's not really handy any more.

That's why I began to transfer the words to a software specialized to for flashcards and "space repetition" called Anki.

Reading the books went better than expected although I really had to look up a lot of words. Although I deleted the words in the Kindle list immediately after transfer to Anki, the list got longer every day.

Yesterday I wondered why the growth of the list had stopped although even though ('although' and 'even though' mean basically the same thing, but 'even though' carries a bit more emphasis) I read a quite difficult passage quite difficult containing many unknown words. I checked this and found out the reason: There is a limit of 2000 words, which means the Kindle throws away the oldest entries.

First I was kind of shocked: Large parts of my beautiful words I had collected were gone even before I had started to learn them. How frustrating!

But this morning, I made did some research on the internet and this enlarged broadened my horizon.

To be continued ...

Kindle Vocabulary Builder - Limitation

I use a Kindle for reading English novels. It's quite convenient looking up the unknown words in the dictionary. Of course this works on an iPad too. But only on the Kindle can I see all the words I ever had looked up in a list - and even the context where I picked up the words is shown there.

Like this I collected a lot of words in the last two months. Unfortunately, the flashcard functionality is very basic and if you have more than a few hundred words, it's not really handy any more.

That's why I began to transfer the words to a software specialized to flashcards and "space repetition" called Anki.

Reading the books went better than expected although I really had to look up a lot of words. Although I deleted the words in the Kindle list immediately after transfer to Anki, the list got longer every day.

Yesterday I wondered why the growth of the list had stopped although I read a quite difficult passage with many unknown words. I checked this and found out the reason: There is a limit of 2000 words which means the Kindle throws away the oldest entries.

First I was kind of shocked: Large parts of my beautiful words I had collected were gone even before I had started to learn them. How frustrating!

But this morning, I did some research on the internet and this enlarged my horizon.

To be continued ...

(very well written; I like the idea of flashcards myself. If you want to overcome their limitations here mentioned, why not transfer all the words to MS Excel and write some VBA code to suit your exact needs?)