Have you ever needed to teach yourself something? Maybe you need to memorize something and you are having trouble with it?

Well, Anki helps you learn and memorize vocabulary of a new language through the magic of flash cards. Yup, Anki is billed out as a spaced repetition system (SRS) or in plain English - a flash card system.

It works on almost every operating system.

I downloaded the application from here, installed and ran it on a Vista workstation and I was greeted with this screen after launching it:

Very interesting! I can not only create my own deck of flash cards, I can also download the decks other people have already created! I love saving time. Let's see what's available.

Alright, a lot of Japanese and Chinese language flash cards -- that should be expected because of the nature of the product. Those are very visual languages. Not exactly what I was looking for but let's use this English Vocabulary guide I selected in the above screenshot as a jump off point.

I downloaded it and it opened automatically.

I hit 'Start Reviewing' and I was off.

Wow that was a little over my head.  Maybe a week of these and I will start writing articles that will make everyone grab a dictionary! You can mark a word as Hard, Good or Easy and that selects when it will be shown in the set again. Click 'Again' to show it soon and 'Hard' for 12 hours, 'Good' for 4 days and 'Easy' means 8 days.

Do you have a favorite learning technique? Share it with us in the comments!