How it works
A deck you can see all of at once
Flashcard apps show you one card at a time, which makes it hard to tell how big a syllabus is or where you’re weak. Ankinity puts every card on a map instead, grouped by module. You still study one card at a time; you just always know where you are.
Reading the map
- Faint squares are cards you haven’t studied yet.
- Half-filled squares are cards you’re still learning. They come back within minutes or hours.
- Solid squares are cards you know. They come back in days, then weeks, then months.
- A dot means a card is due: now is the right time to review it.
Colours mark the module or unit, so the layout follows the syllabus.
Spaced repetition, briefly
You start forgetting something as soon as you learn it, but each time you successfully recall it, the memory lasts longer. Spaced repetition schedules each review for just before you’d forget: a card you know well comes back in a month, one you struggled with comes back tomorrow. It’s the most reliable way to keep hundreds of terms, theorists and phonemes in your head until exam day.
Anki and FSRS
Anki is the free, open-source flashcard app most people use for this. After you look at a card and try to recall the answer, you rate yourself Again, Hard, Good or Easy, and Anki schedules the next review.
The scheduling here is FSRS, the algorithm built into recent versions of Anki. For every card it tracks how stable your memory is and how difficult the card is for you, then picks the day your chance of remembering drops to about 90%. Each rating button shows how far it would push the card, so you can see the effect before you choose.
Studying here
- Press study (or Space) and Ankinity serves overdue cards first, then new ones in syllabus order. After each answer it moves to the next card, and the map moves with it.
- Open any card by clicking it, or press / to search.
- Use the keyboard: Space to reveal, then 1–4 to rate, or Space again for Good. Arrow keys pan, + and − zoom, 0 shows the whole deck.
- No account needed. Progress is kept in your browser. Signing in with Google copies it to your account and keeps every device in sync.