Exporting Terms to Anki from Learning With Texts

By Peter on Jan 27, 2012 in Study Methods

If you’ve been keeping up with the language learning scene online, you have probably heard of Learning With Texts (LWT), which is software to assist you in studying foreign language text. If this is the first you’ve heard of it, then I recommend checking out Benny’s excellent introduction to Learning With Texts, because the rest of this post won’t mean much to you if you are unfamiliar with it.  This article also assumes you are aware of Anki, so if you’re not then you should read this introduction to Anki and Spaced Repetition and forget about forgetting ever again.

So, you’ve been using LWT, and it’s great, but you want an easy way to take the brand new words you are learning in LWT and put them into Anki so you can retain them, right? I have made a video that shows you exactly how to do that!

These are the websites and other software I mention in the video:

• Learning With Texts
• Anki
• LibreOffice
• FluentIn3Months.com
• AllJapaneseAllTheTime.com

For quick reference, these are roughly the steps to export terms from LWT to Anki:

1. In LWT, go to Terms in the menu
2. Set Text to the name of the text you are getting words from
3. Set Status to Learning/-ed [1..5]
4. Set Tag #1 to UNTAGGED
5. Set All x Terms to Export ALL Terms (Anki)
6. Open LibreOffice Calc (or OpenOffice or MS Excel)
7. File -> Open
8. Set filter to Text CSV
9. Select the file you downloaded from LWT and click Open
10. Select Tab Separated and Unicode
11. Look at opened document
12. Note which columns you want for the front and back (in the video I choose columns E and B)
13. Open Anki, and open the deck you want to import into
14. File -> Import
15. Select the file you downloaded from LWT
16. Set the fields (which correspond to columns in the spreadsheet) to map to the Front and Back
17. Click Import. Your LWT terms are now in your Anki deck! Rejoice!
18. Go back to your browser window with LWT open
19. Set All x Terms to Add Tag
20. Type in “anki” so that these terms won’t appear in future exports. All done!

Where to find me if you have questions:

You may of course leave a comment here on the blog, but you can also find me on these social networks and contact me anytime:

• RhinoSpike
• Twitter
• Google+
• YouTube

Related posts:

1. Language Learning Tip #2: Read Children’s Books
2. Barra de Español 1.2 is now available!
3. Language Learning Tip #1: Start A Translation Project

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9 Comment(s)

1. Thank you, Peter, for using LWT and making a video about “Exporting Terms to Anki from LWT”.

   I would like to clarify a few things:

   The Anki export file created in LWT has the following fields/columns, tab-delimited:
   (1) term, (2) translation, (3) romanization (you said in the video “tags”, but these are in column 8), (4) Sentence without term (question of cloze test), (5) Sentence with term (answer of cloze test), (6) Language, (7) ID Number, (8) Tag list.

   “Export Marked Texts (Anki)” exports all terms that have a valid sentence with {term} for Anki. Terms that do not have a sentence with {term} will NOT be exported. Cloze testing of terms within sentence context can so be easily done in Anki.

   An Anki example deck is provided: “LWT.anki” in directory “anki” of the LWT distribution ZIP file.

   So you could also use this template Anki deck and modify within Anki what should appear on the front and back side of the flashcards.

   Thanks again for your nice posing and video!

   LWT Project | Jan 27, 2012 | Reply

2. Correction: “posing” -> “posting”.

   LWT Project | Jan 27, 2012 | Reply

3. LWT Project: Thanks for the clarifications!

   Peter | Jan 27, 2012 | Reply

4. It’s great tool for learning a new language, checked it out a couple times before and have recommended it to some students.

   Johnny Theprepbook | Nov 12, 2012 | Reply

5. I wasn’t previously aware of Anki so thanks for this. Was using Vocable Trainer on my Android phone but this is much better.

   Ray | May 11, 2013 | Reply

6. I’m studying Turkish and I read this post a couple of weeks ago, bookmarked the page and tried out Anki. Very impressed with my progress so far, would recommend anyone to give it a try.

   Robin Bremner | May 27, 2013 | Reply

7. Your method for combining LWT with Anki is just brilliant. By far the most useful thig I have learned this week! Thanks.

   Joe.

   Joe Mitchell | Jul 4, 2013 | Reply

8. Joe: Thanks! I’m glad you found it useful!

   Peter | Jul 5, 2013 | Reply

9. Thanks for sharing this and of course the video! I’m sure everyone will find it helpful, just like me. I’ve many wishes when knowing certain languages.

   Chris | Jul 31, 2013 | Reply

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