Sentence mining, with or without Anki

Sentence mining means collecting new words from things you actually read and watch, along with the sentence you met each one in. The sentence gives the word context, and a card made from it is tied to a moment you remember: a line from a show, a sentence from an article.

Most mining setups were built around Anki. With Flashfriend Pro, the same tools send words straight to Flashfriend, with no Anki or AnkiConnect installed.

When to start mining

Mining works best once you can read a little: when most of the words around a new one are already familiar. Before that, every sentence has several new words, and it’s hard to pick which to keep. Many learners start with the most common words first, then begin mining after a few months.

In Flashfriend, the most useful words come to you anyway, so mining is for the words you run into: the ones from your shows, your games and your reading.

The tools

• Yomitan is a pop-up dictionary for your browser. Hover over a word on any web page to look it up, and click to send it, with its sentence and audio, to Flashfriend.
• asbplayer plays videos with subtitles you can click. Save a line from a show, with a clip of it being said, in one click. It also works on YouTube and streaming sites.

Both take about five minutes to connect, once.

A mining routine

1. Read or watch something you enjoy, at a level where you follow most of it.
2. Save only the words you’d like to use. If a word turns up twice, it’s worth keeping. Skip rare words you’ll never see again.
3. Keep it to a handful a day. Every word you save becomes reviews later. Five to ten mined words a day is plenty alongside your usual new words.
4. Make the cards soon, while you still remember the scene. In Flashfriend, mined words wait in your Inbox with their sentence and audio.
5. Review every day, so you’re tested on each word just before you’d forget it.

What happens in Flashfriend

Each mined word lands in your Inbox with the sentence you found it in, where it came from, and its audio clip if you saved one. When you’re ready, you make its card like any other: pick a place and a scene, and Flashfriend paints the picture. The sentence stays on the card as an example.

If you mine a word you already have, your card stays as it is, and the new sentence shows up on that word as a sentence you found. You can add it as an example, or hide it.

With asbplayer, the subtitles can also be coloured by what you know in Flashfriend, so new words stand out as you watch.

Mining without Pro

Without Pro, you can still mine into Anki as usual, then import your Anki deck into Flashfriend with its whole review history. Importing again later only adds what’s new.