English Anchor keeps New Concept English notes, and admits which video links are dead

A textbook companion repository, not a learning application

The scope is narrower than the name suggests. English Anchor is a personal study repository organised around the New Concept English textbooks, holding lesson notes, vocabulary lists and Anki cards, and the README says the material is compiled starting from book two. There is no application here, no build step and no command to run. The repository root holds `NCE2/`, `NCE3/`, `NCE4/`, `Other/`, an `img/` directory of screenshots, a LICENSE file and the README.

That framing is worth keeping in mind when you read the project description, which lists itself as notes, English learning material and tool sharing. The learning content is genuine and substantial, but nothing in the repository is a tool you extend.

The division of labour across the three book directories is uneven in a way you should check before committing time. Book two offers PDFs, mini notes and a self-study guide, and the README says those notes were mainly compiled from material found online. Books three and four were reorganised from existing courseware, and those notes are complete: Lesson 01 to 60 for book three, with a merged PDF, and Lesson 01 to 48 for book four. Book one has no directory at all.

Why the decks moved off AnkiWeb and onto GitHub Releases

The most concrete engineering decision in the repository is a distribution migration, and the README explains it in operational terms rather than vaguely. AnkiWeb caps the sync space available to a single account. A deck with heavy media, which is exactly what these sentence-level text, audio and image cards are, cannot be uploaded, synced or updated reliably under that cap.

The workaround is a two-stage split. Anki stays as the local authoring and export tool, and the finished `.apkg` files ship as GitHub Release artifacts instead. Deck templates and release notes moved to a separate repository, AnkiShare, so this repository holds study content while AnkiShare holds the build and versioning side.

Three decks are published with explicit version identifiers and update dates. NCE2 Practice and Progress is at `nce2-v1.0.2` dated 2026-08-14, NCE3 Developing Skills is at `nce3-v1.0.1` dated 2026-08-16, and NCE4 Fluency in English is at `nce4-v1.0.1`, also dated 2026-08-16. Each file is fetched from a versioned release URL under the AnkiShare releases page rather than from a moving latest link, which is the right way to hand someone a study file.

The older AnkiWeb shared decks, including the sentence recitation decks for books three and four and a Longman 3000 plus Academic Words deck, are still linked as historical versions, with an explicit warning that those pages may predate the current releases and that the GitHub links take priority.

Dead links are marked, not quietly left in place

Most repositories of study material rot quietly. This one keeps the rot visible, and that is the most transferable thing in it.

The cause is stated plainly: the New Oriental official YouTube account `koolearn` was deregistered around June 2024. Every playlist that depended on it, plus the unofficial reupload addresses that mirrored it, is now unreachable. The README keeps those links in the repository as a historical index rather than deleting them, and marks each one with strikethrough inside a collapsed section titled as failed links. Two categories are separated inside that block: the official New Oriental playlists, and the unofficial reuploads and writing-companion playlists.

Four playlists are listed as still current, and those are the ones a new learner should actually start with: New Concept English book two and book three lecture series by 刘飞飞, a New Concept English listening practice playlist, and a 20000 word vocabulary and root-and-affix course by 刘彬.

A maintenance note dated 2026-08-13 states that the local notes for books two, three and four are all archived, and that the old video links are retained as history with some already broken. The README's own guidance is that broken links are not recommended as learning entry points, which is a deliberate policy rather than an oversight. The broader caution is honest too: links can fail because of takedowns, account changes or copyright, so treat any link in the repository as a claim to verify, not a guarantee.

What is actually inside: notes, vocabulary spreadsheets and pronunciation references

Beyond the lessons there is an `Other/` area of supporting references. The pronunciation material includes a 谢孟媛 phonetics playlist, a 史嘉琳 advanced pronunciation course hosted as NTU OpenCourseWare, and a Bilibili copy of the same course. Reading and listening practice includes American Accent Training 4th Edition as a PDF with audio on Google Drive and a 走遍美国 playlist.

Vocabulary and example sentences are also assembled into Excel sheets, and the README shows screenshots of those sheets rather than a schema, so the column layout is something you would have to open to judge.

The Anki card format is described as suitable both for reading and for import, and suited to sentence-by-sentence review. Each book deck carries Chinese comprehension, sentence patterns and full notes for book two, and grammar, vocabulary, expression and knowledge-point notes for books three and four. Import works through Anki Desktop, AnkiMobile, AnkiDroid or any application compatible with the `.apkg` format.

One licensing point to note before you reuse any of it. The repository is GPL-3.0, and the README separately asks that source attribution be kept when notes or cards are reprinted or reused. The licence governs the repository files; the underlying textbook material and any audio are a separate question the repository does not address.

Where this repository stops, and what to use instead

Several expectations it cannot meet. First, book one: there is no `NCE1/` directory, and the README says compilation starts from book two, so anyone starting from the first textbook gets nothing here.

Second, there is no audio of its own. The decks contain media, but the listening material in `Other/` is links to third-party courses and a Google Drive file, which have the same failure mode as the dead playlists above.

Third, it is a single maintainer's record. The README describes the project as personal study notes that get revised when errors are found, the repository has no GitHub releases of its own, and the versioning that does exist lives in AnkiShare. That makes it a good reference and a poor foundation for a team that needs an SLA.

The realistic alternative is not a competing project but the same work done locally: build your own Anki decks from the textbook text and keep them under version control, which also sidesteps the AnkiWeb size cap entirely. For a course with working video, the four current playlists are the better use of time. What this repository adds is the legwork, and the honesty about which links no longer work.

Editorial conclusion

Take this repository if you are working through New Concept English books two to four and want sentence-by-sentence notes plus ready-made Anki decks rather than building your own, and skip it if you need book one material, audio, or a maintained course, because the notes start at book two and every former New Oriental video link is marked dead. Before you plan around it, download the deck you need from the AnkiShare releases and open it in Anki Desktop, AnkiMobile or AnkiDroid, and check the maintenance note dated 2026-08-13 against the current state of the linked videos yourself, since the author states that some links are already broken and the last push was on 2026-08-23.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. andylee1890/NewConceptEnglish on GitHub
2. Issues
3. License: GPL-3.0
4. Project website
5. README