Can I use Anki to practice grammar patterns?

[Friday]

I have some books that contain various grammar patterns. The books exaplain them simply, but without the benefit of a classroom setting, it is difficult for me to remember them. Is there some way to add these into Anki? What kind of card arrangement do you recommend for that?

[MaLaTang]

that is incredibly tough to answer without knowing what grammar patterns are there..can you give some examples as to what some of the grammar patterns are?

[Gleaves]

Just a thought, you could use the tatoeba deck (1600 cards of sentences with audio). Suspend all the cards ("browse items" from the edit menu, ctrl-a, toggle suspend), then search through for the ones with that pattern and unsuspend just those. Set up the cards any way you like. Maybe audio on the front, everything else on the back.

[Olle Linge]

I have lots of these grammar patters in Anki and I see no problem with studying them as you study normal words. However, remembering seemingly random combinations of words/phrases is quite hard, so in this case I definitely recommend using a clear and typical example (hopefully already provided in your textbook). That gives you both the usage and the meaning at once (the theory being that it's difficult or dangerous to separate them).

[WestTexas]

I put variables in the grammar patterns, so something like

Front: 不但A而且B

Back: not only A but also B (shows connection or similarity).

Then sometimes I will put in an example sentence as well.

[Olle Linge]

Yes, I do the same thing. I didn't mean to imply that I entered the example directly into the definition, I just add it apart from using the pattern with variables as you do.

[Hugh]

You can definitely do this. Use the cloze deletion feature in Anki, or just add loads of example sentences involving the grammar you want to study. Yale's Mandarin Essential Grammar site is a great source for grammar example sentences to mine.