Elphalpo Wrote:I've been adding about 150 cards a day the past month and I've been doing basically what you're doing, only in somewhat larger blocks. Your post inspired me to try shortening the blocks even further (around 10-20 minutes a session), and it seems to work even better.

For those who are curious, I get about 750 expired cards a day, so if you add cards at such a pace it could definitely overwhelm you if you're not loaded with free time. It's not exactly fun, but I figure at this rate I'll be done going through the JLPT list I'm working through in just a few more weeks and from there I'll be able move on to the fun stuff.

cloudstrife543 Wrote:Care to elaborate on the what 'JLPT list' you are talking about?

Tobberoth Wrote:This is why Anki had timeboxing added. You're not supposed to sit down and do 300 reviews in a row, that's boring and ineffective. You're supposed to review for all you're worth for 10 minutes, then rest. Then take another 10 minutes. If you feel flipping between adding and reviewing is a good idea, do that (remember though, you will have over 1000 reviews a day in a while). Personally, I think it's enough to just add what I want each day, then timebox the reviews. No matter how good your techniques are, you aren't going to have enough time to add 200 sentences each day in the long run anyway.

Elphalpo Wrote:[...] shortening the blocks even further (around 10-20 minutes a session), and it seems to work even better. [...]

blackmacros Wrote:I've set it to 2 minutes because its more effective to "sprint" multiple times than to do a marathon.

Elphalpo Wrote:Lately I've been stuck at learning 100 words a day, but maybe I can bump that number up using your methods.

captal Wrote:If 100 new words a day is "stuck", I'm moving backwards. That's 3000 words a month!

Elphalpo Wrote:

captal Wrote:If 100 new words a day is "stuck", I'm moving backwards. That's 3000 words a month!

Hehe. Well, it might sound like a lot, but I'm a non-working college student who has the summer off, so I have plenty of free time. At this point I probably actively study about 8 hours a day, so considering that I'm not sure 100 words a day is anything to brag about. I'm sure the rest of you could do it if you didn't have pesky things like jobs, families, responsibilities and whatnot.

mafried Wrote:Yeah I've been doing 3-minute sprints for a while now, and I've noticed the difference. Almost twice the productivity. But I have noticed that by the 3rd, 4th, or 5th sprint in a row you start to lose those gains. Makes sense to switch gears at that point.

blackmacros Wrote:New Method:
9:30- Wake, review my first 30 cards. Add 15 sentences. Continue repeating this pattern.
12:00- By 12:00 I have finished all reviews as well as added my first 20 kanji
12:00-onwards: Since all old due cards are done, I start reviewing my newly added cards. Then I add 15 more sentences. Then I review 30 of my new cards. And so on.
6:00- By 6:00 I've added 60 kanji. Not only that, but all of my reviews are done and I've reviewed all of the new kanji already.

Summary: 60 new kanji. Reviews are easier.

nac_est Wrote:

blackmacros Wrote:New Method:
9:30- Wake, review my first 30 cards. Add 15 sentences. Continue repeating this pattern.
12:00- By 12:00 I have finished all reviews as well as added my first 20 kanji
12:00-onwards: Since all old due cards are done, I start reviewing my newly added cards. Then I add 15 more sentences. Then I review 30 of my new cards. And so on.
6:00- By 6:00 I've added 60 kanji. Not only that, but all of my reviews are done and I've reviewed all of the new kanji already.

Summary: 60 new kanji. Reviews are easier.

Maybe I'm repeating myself and I may sound harsh, but this all seems a very silly way to spend one's "free time" in the sentence phase. In my opinion the SRS should occupy no more than 10% of your time, and genuine Japanese input the rest of the time. Doing reviews/adding sentences from 9:30am to 6pm is like spending the whole summer preparing your bags and then not having time for the actual vacation.
That said, if this is so much fun for you to be better than reading a book/manga or watching a movie/drama/anime, then I guess you should probably be doing it...

IceCream Wrote:Maybe everyone already does this, but I find this method so incredibly useful in cutting down reviews:

After reading a post by Nukemarine, I downloaded all of the SmartFM sentences into an Anki deck (half reading and half listening cards, e.g. step 1 listening, step 2 reading, etc) [thanks NukeMarine ]

Whenever I hear a new word in something I'm watching, and want to SRS it, I go to my Anki Dictionary deck and search the word or Kanji.

Of the sentences that come up, I tag all the sentences for which I know every word except the new one. If I'm feeling energetic, I then choose one more sentence that has the new word, and one other word I don't know in it - and search the other word, and add all sentences that I know all the words in except that new one.

By doing this, I'm not only getting through all the IKnow vocabulary, at a good pace, it cuts down the reviewing time so massively, since by the time you've read 3 or 4 cards with the same word in different contexts, you know it pretty well. It also lets you see the words with different conjugations, which is helpful to grammar. This method allows you to add far more cards than you would be able to if you had to learn the new vocbulary though 1 card only. The cards end up spread out, so it's not like you end up seeing them in chunks. I also find this helps to not simply memorise the sentence, or remember the word through the position in the sentence.

When I start to get low on sentences in my dictionary deck, I will be able to see which ones I still need to add, rather than having to take time searching for them online. And I'm not restricted to someone else's order, but get to pick my own way through without sentences ever becoming too difficult.

A dictionary deck doesn't have to just be from SmartFm, but can add sentences from all kinds of different sources - subs2SRS, whatever. But once you have one together, the time it takes to search and mark sentences, then import them to your normal deck is also A LOT lower than doing the same thing through IKnow or wherever else online.

Hashiriya Wrote:what do you guys intend to do once you complete KO2001 (all 2001 kanji i assume not just the 1st 2 books) and grammar? that's what i am trying to figure out... (even if i still got the rest of this year until i finish out the 常用漢字) KO2001 only covers so many words in the big scope of things, but i think it's biggest advantage would be how familiar you are with the kanji once you complete it... i wonder if SRSing words from a kanji dictionary like the Kodansha one http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4770028555/ref=s9_simx_gw_s4_p14_t1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0SPZBAMWMJ2NKPB77H9V&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846 would be useful? any advice here would be great...

Nii87 Wrote:So if there are 2 or 3 new words in a KO2001 sentence, you unsuspend other cards with one of those words as a new vocab only? I don't think I've reached that level yet. So far almost every card has more than 1 new word =/

Nii87 Wrote:How did you review the cards? Did you make sure you understood everything in that sentence to pass it? Or just the whole Kanji compound of the kanji that was being tested? Or just the onyomi of that kanji in that compound?

I realise this has been asked before, but I'm still curious about how people do things.

Hinode Wrote:The thing I noticed with this method is that I don't necessarily work faster (maybe a slight increase in speed, but this is not what makes this method work for me), but that I just keep on going without burning out. Normally, after having reviewed 80 old cards or so, I wouldn't feel like adding new ones right away and procrastinate further SRSing. This way when I finished my reviews I would already have added the majority of the sentences I want to add that day, and later just keep reviewing small junk of due cards that accumulate over time and add some more sentences throughout the day.

Is this similar to your experience Blackmacros?

I'll post again later to keep you up on how this turns out to be for me in the long run (a week? ;p).

IceCream Wrote:Blackmacros: Wow. 3 months. I really admire your dedication to study! i've had 2.5 months so far, all day every day, and haven't achieved anything like that!! How do you cram all that information into your brain, literally?? When i try that, seems like the new things im shoving in are shoving old stuff out the sides...

did you do RTK, Tae Kim, and KO2001 consecutively or at the same time, time boxing? With the KO2001 sentences, are you typing them out as an answer, or just reading outloud?

I've got tons of questions for you:
How much do you find you remember in other contexts? For instance, now you finished Tae Kim, do you ever still need to look up grammar points? If you watch a TV show or listen to the radio in Japanese, how much of it can you understand? Is the Kanji from RTK connected to the Kanji from KO2001 (so when you think the Japanese word you could write the Kanji now)?

Seriously, amazing!