y.l.d.u.

[leaden hearth]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

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[wise coral]

premade decks are great for beginners

but later on, it's better to create your own cards

hi flynn

[oblique vector]

when you don't have a good enough understanding of the language, you can't really read and listen to media. You're not gonna encounter new vocab naturally.
Your main way to learn vocab will basically be "hey, here's some words, you can learn them" which is basically what premade decks do.

Once you have built up some knowledge, and are able to read and listen to media, you can and will end up encountering new vocab all the time naturally, and you're going to do so in context. In that case, you'll see what words you'll encounter more frequently, or want to learn. You can build your own deck by that point, plus encountering the words in context and making your own cards is already helping you learn the words. The other thing is that you won't necessarily learn the same words as other learners. Beyond the very basics, you'll be able to focus on the things you actually interact with

in any case, both are effective methods to learn vocab, so long as you keep the exercise going, so it's up to you. Just remember that anki is not sufficient by itself, plus you really need to see words in various contexts to really make them stick, and anki only provides one such context