I hate to break it to all of you, but summer is nearing its end. Camps are winding down and language refresher is over. Most of us have less than a month before we return to our posts full-time. I think it’s as good of time as any that we start brushing up on our Russian and Ukrainian before we’re fully immersed again.

A lot of my friends use the low-tech means of studying by making flashcards out of note cards and other paper products. But, seeing as how this is a Tech Tip and that I don’t have access to note cards, I’m going to offer you my preferred method of studying using flashcards. I use a free program called Anki (http://ankisrs.net/).

Anki is available, free of charge, for all major operating systems. Also, if you own a phone or device with Andriod or iOS operating systems, you can buy the mobile version of the program to study on the go.

There are two things that I find immensely helpful when it comes to studying Russian using Anki. The first is that a handful of already developed flash card databases are free to download (I’m a fan of “1000 Russian Words”). This saves you the time of having to create your own. Unfortunately, as of writing this, there are no Ukrainian decks available. However, help your fellow PCVs out and create your own deck and upload it.

The second thing I find great about Anki is that it has built-in features for you to put the words you know on the back-burner while you study the words you don’t know. If you know the meaning of “Я” like I do, you can tell Anki to show it to you in one day, or two, or one week and it will bring it up as a review when that time is up. It really helps you focus on learning what you don’t know already.

So get out there and start studying. If you have any tech related study tips, feel free to send them my way. I’ll be happy to try them out and share them.