That’s pretty much the same conclusion I’ve come to, and honestly its quite refreshing.
I’ve used Anki for years, and while its a little less thinking, as its algorithm tries to determine if you’ve learned a word…for me, often the algorithm is just wrong. I wrote custom scripts to retire words using its built in FSRS custom scheduling, but even then, its an algorithm that is trying to guess if you know something.
With PhrasePump, I try my best to recall the Cloze target word.
Once I feel like I’ve mastered it (I try not to rep it so much that I memorize the sentence), I will mark it as learned and move on. Sometimes I’ll Star the sentence and practice listening if I find some value in it.
If I fail a word too many times, or I’ve memorized the sentence, I just delete it and wait for another instance of it to show up in immersion and try to learn it in a new context.
With PhrasePump, I know when I’ve learned a word within a given context, because I’m literally the judge lol
I went back and tried Migaku’s Study (basically a standard SRS like Anki), but it felt dated and overly complicated—I had zero motivation to review the cards I’d saved there.
Funny enough, I used to HATE PhrasePump. Now I think its probably the best way for me to learn vocabulary combined with immersion.
Here is my breakdown of PhrasePump if you’re interested: I Changed My Mind on PhrasePump - Its Amazing