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I might stop SRSing... - Printable Version

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I might stop SRSing... - bodhisamaya - 2011-02-22

Nagareboshi Wrote:I am currently learning with Genki 2 and there is a whole bunch of words that i might likely never see, hear, or need to remember beyond the textbook again. But i was giving myself a hard time trying to remember stuff like 奨学金 or 卒業式. Yet they are in my SRS and i would have to review them.
Actually, 卒業式 is pretty important in Japan Smile They seem to be always graduating from something important throughout their time as a student.

I might stop SRSing... - Eastwood - 2011-02-22

Yeah, ditto what bodhisamaya said. Graduation happens frequently here!

I used Genki 2 during a study abroad program a few years ago and I'd say that most of the vocab in there is pretty common/useful.

奨学金 - probably not as much unless you're about to be a student in a Japanese school and you can qualify for such. Or it could be if you want to say that you have one at your US school. Wink

Just think of when you could use those words, Naga (especially related to life in Japan if you can find the context), and see if you see them coming up in any Japanese media that you might be using.

Actually, Naga, if you want, message me and I'll go through my copy of the book and tell you which words you shouldn't try to remember because looking at the book now, I think the vast majority of them are pretty common in Japan (I live here, so, hopefully that's some credibility).

Apologies for hijacking the thread. Good luck, Manske! Smile

I might stop SRSing... - mezbup - 2011-02-22

How come you have 500 reviews a day but you've only got 6K cards? I'm at nearly 14K in the deck but only have ~300 reviews a day.

I think if it burns you out then longterm it might not be sustainable. Though perhaps if you take a break from adds and let your reviews calm down to a more manageable level and then start adds up but do less (say 20 max a day). It might work out for you.

I find I can't go without it personally. A lot of people tend to make this argument that rare words are never used therefore you don't need to know them. However, I find that rare words are RARELY used therefore you DO need to know them, you don't however need to know how to be able to use them (I feel).

Personally there have been lots of times where I've needed a rare word, searched my brain for it, the answer comes up but i'm a little shaky on it - I have a feeling it's right but I don't know why... then I say it and it turns out I'm right. Why? Cos I've SRS'ed it. Today 指数関数的 was the word I needed and I managed to pull it out of the hat. So, the benefits are definitely there.

Though, I'll admit, Anki is a lot of work and the majority of people I've recommended it to thinks it's either too hardcore or just can't keep up with it. So, it's definitely not for everyone.

Perhaps it depends on how you use it too. I've found ever since getting Anki on my iphone that life has become lots easier because I can do it on the go (or in bed) so productivity increased 2 ~ 3 fold. Doing it on the computer stresses me out now. Maybe that's something to consider?

Anyways... whatever path you chose I'm sure it'll be the right one for you Smile

I might stop SRSing... - NoSleepTilFluent - 2011-02-22

Yeah I use genki Vocab all the time but also probably because it makes up about 90% of the words I know. I never thought some of those words were useless Except maybe Anthropology. (can't even recall it now)

I might stop SRSing... - aphasiac - 2011-02-22

mezbup Wrote:How come you have 500 reviews a day but you've only got 6K cards? I'm at nearly 14K in the deck but only have ~300 reviews a day.
Sounds like s/he fails a lot of cards..or maybe marks many as 'hard'..

I might stop SRSing... - kazelee - 2011-02-22

iSoron Wrote:I did 40 new cards a day for many months. No problem whatsoever.
Awesome! Though, I think it's safe to say you are the minority. Wink

It's a matter of how much information one takes in at a time compared with how much information one is used to taking in, with the added weight of any other activities or obligation.

In my year and a half of hardcore study I rarely did less than 50 new cards a day (sometimes as much 100). Things tend to bite you in the ass if you miss a day or two though. After my journey in Japanese, what I consider to be study is very different when compared to what I believed before I started.

I might stop SRSing... - Javizy - 2011-02-22

I can relate a lot to the OP. I'm not sure if stopping completely is the answer though. You'll notice that if you stop doing new cards, your daily quota will drop rapidly. I was doing 10-20 new cards per day, which gave me around 250+ reviews to do. After finishing the backlog of vocabulary lists I'd built up and not doing any new cards for just a month or so, it was coming down close to 100, and there weren't any young cards that were difficult to remember, so the reviewing process was much faster, or at least less mentally taxing.

Now I can add small vocabulary lists to my deck and go through them at my own pace, without really affecting the daily quota. I'm less inhibited to regularly hit good/easy as well, which spreads out the cards and lowers the daily quota. If you ever had any faith in SRS, I think it's worth trying some things like this before you give up and lose much of what you've painstakingly worked for.

As a side note, I think it's worth adding a sentence or more on the reverse of your card to give yourself a little more "bearing" on the word. I've changed the format of my deck a few times, and at one point I had the same one as the OP, and I really felt out of my depth after switching from the previous model, and it didn't seem like I was truly understanding the more abstract words.

I might stop SRSing... - thurd - 2011-02-22

I've got around 7200 vocab in my deck (also from core2k+6k+my own), but only around 200 reviews daily (recently its more like 180) although I've also been adding cards like crazy and my deck life is very similar to yours.

But my circumstances and attitude are a bit different:
1. I do my reviews on my mobile during the day, this leaves lot more time to actually do stuff besides sitting and watching Anki all day
2. I also use that "raw knowledge" once a week during a lesson so this helps me with pushing a few of those words into my "active" vocabulary
3. I've also started to work on "quality" of my cards by adding sentences (jap+eng from JDIC), pictures to them etc. So far I do this to my new cards and all that I've encountered in the wild but forgot them and they sit in my deck (not that many). In case of many words context is really really really important so having no sentences or outside (non SRS) knowledge about them makes them useless for you (good luck with figuring out 掛ける just from its definition in dictionary/SRS).

Thanks to having more time I work more on Japanese outside of SRS which helps reinforce vocabulary and this translates to fewer reviews. Everything you do outside SRS translates indirectly into fewer reviews.

Overall SRS is a great tool that helps you gain some foothold in that discipline (here its language acquisition) but without other methods of study its basically pointless or limited to stating facts.

I might stop SRSing... - bodhisamaya - 2011-02-22

kazelee Wrote:
iSoron Wrote:I did 40 new cards a day for many months. No problem whatsoever.
In my year and a half of hardcore study I rarely did less than 50 new cards a day (sometimes as much 100).
Wait a minute! You were fluent in one year, remember?
No, I think, uh... Was that Ropsa? Cool

I might stop SRSing... - fakewookie - 2011-02-22

How do you change the number of cards per session? It limits me to 5 but I can't see an editable "5" anywhere.

I might stop SRSing... - kazelee - 2011-02-22

bodhisamaya Wrote:Wait a minute! You were fluent in one year, remember?
No, I think, uh... Was that Ropsa? Cool
Of course!

I SRS English words as well. Tongue

Also, fluency isn't measured by how much you know, but how well you know it <-- My thoughts.

And please stop associating me with that Ropsta character. No class that one Cool

I might stop SRSing... - Ryuujin27 - 2011-02-22

iSoron Wrote:As I said in a previous thread, most verbs and nouns appear only once or twice in a typical light novel series. You could conclude that most words are not worth remembering.
Wait, what? Where did you get this from? I read novels all the time and often find, especially in novels by the same author, and especially especially especially in novels of the same series that verbs and nouns are used many times over and over, sometimes multiple times per page.

Naturally you're going to find words that will only appear once or twice, but that's how it works all the time. However, usually, you will encounter similar words since that is just how we write as human beings (unless we make a point of using a thesaurus, which is usually a bad idea).

EDIT

Might as well add my thoughts on the overall subject, as well.

I stopped SRSing a while ago. Well, that's not 100% true. But for all intensive purposes, I don't do it anymore. Occasionally I'll throw some stuff in, but reviews happen sporatically and certainly never daily.

I feel this is the better way for me to learn. I simply use Japanese and thus learn more and more words and become better able to express myself. The biggest proprietor of this is speaking in Japanese, of course, but when that opportunity doesn't arise, simply THINK in Japanese. Doing that has helped my speaking dramatically. My reading was always very good, and my speaking always lacked behind that. But once I started thinking in Japanese and trying to translate my own thoughts, I slowly became able to speak more and more fluidly.

Good luck.

I might stop SRSing... - Cranks - 2011-02-22

Probably, somebody has said this, but the one thing that saved my arse and put me back on track was selecting all of the cards due in under a month and resetting them as new cards. You save the deck and you save your brain. You can then start again more responsible and wiser for the experience. I lost a month on burning down 3000 reviews a day of trash cards. Don't be like me...

On another matter, I have made a few conclusions. 1st, dump the word lists. If you are N4+ and have RTK done, you are wasting your time. Just make vocab lists from the stuff you read and listen to. I mean your vocabulary's only job in you 1st language is to let you understand stuff you like; why shouldn't your second language be the same.

Currently, I'm working on a method for getting speaking up fast. Basically, you need only a tiny vocabulary and a bit of imagination to say pretty much anything, right.

Idea: Learn the 200 most useful verbs you think you will use everyday (what would you use in English? That's your starting point). Rip them from Japanese sentences using Rikai-chan. Do the same for adverbs and adjectives (maybe 50 of each) That's your vocabulary 250-500 words, but no nouns, as you'll pick them up from SRS - it's the verbs, etc. that need attention.

Now find yourself a list of N5 and N4 grammar and create cards for each, MCD, production, anythings ok as long as it has enough detail for you to remember the item and produce from it later. Have a physical list too.

Basically, cram those 250-500 words and 100 grammar points all day, everyday as much as you want, but no less than once through. In addition, everyday, make VERBAL sentences with each point once per day. Also, pick off 7 a week and make sentences on Lang-8 (that's your feedback) everyday or whatever you can manage.

Simply, you do what they do in language class: hard review over time + understanding of language point + heaps of practice + a bit of feedback.

I reckon it will get my speaking way way ahead, but we'll have to wait and see. Why not try it if you want a change? The resources are easy enough to find. (It won't do anything for your listening, whatever, but we all want to speak, right, so why not!?!)

I might stop SRSing... - Cranks - 2011-02-22

Oh, by the way, I do:

700 new words per week, crammed daily (1 hour or less, as I don't really care much about failing due to them sticking over time) <-- all from my books or TV.

About 200 reviews of old decks (sometimes 500, mostly less).

That 200 reviews takes as long as it takes me to push the screen twice (4.6 seconds on average per card.) Realistically, I burn about 15 minutes per deck.

What I've found with Anki is that it doesn't really do much for you. It's a tool to make things you read easier to understand, keep grammar you've learned in your brain, and sort of make your listening more understandable. Also, you won't be able to tell if it makes you better, as you normally can't tell if you've gotten better unless you have one of those "Oh, I got better" eureka moments.

I might stop SRSing... - ta12121 - 2011-02-22

Cranks Wrote:Oh, by the way, I do:

700 new words per week, crammed daily (1 hour or less, as I don't really care much about failing due to them sticking over time) <-- all from my books or TV.

About 200 reviews of old decks (sometimes 500, mostly less).

That 200 reviews takes as long as it takes me to push the screen twice (4.6 seconds on average per card.) Realistically, I burn about 15 minutes per deck.

What I've found with Anki is that it doesn't really do much for you. It's a tool to make things you read easier to understand, keep grammar you've learned in your brain, and sort of make your listening more understandable. Also, you won't be able to tell if it makes you better, as you normally can't tell if you've gotten better unless you have one of those "Oh, I got better" eureka moments.
Usual I've noticed the things that where hard(some audios/text), become easier in a month with the srs. Plus eventually, the srs if one wants to write kanji from memory (should work wonders, I'm doing a production deck for writing, I can already write a lot from memory). All in all, it's a powerful tool to make your life easier for learning. Why wouldn't anyone want that? (If your reviews are too high, take it easy are just don't add. If you want to add, add like 5-10 words. So you won't even feel it)

I might stop SRSing... - vix86 - 2011-02-22

Manske Wrote:Overall, I haven't really improved over the past year apart from kanji/vocab recognition.
I skimmed through the other posts and everyone has good points, however I want to toss something else out there. In the field of Second Language Acquisition there is something known as the Plateau effect (One article on it, google cache since main article was broken for me. Plus Shorter, bullet points, type posting about the effect)

The long and short of it is, you are experiencing something that is very normal. Just keep at it and eventually you'll start seeing progress. Maybe change things up a bit.

I might stop SRSing... - iSoron - 2011-02-22

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Wait, what? Where did you get this from? I read novels all the time and often find, especially in novels by the same author, and especially especially especially in novels of the same series that verbs and nouns are used many times over and over, sometimes multiple times per page.
That's an illusion. There is a small set of words that gets repeated all the time, but most words are very rare. Here's the frequency of all suru-verbs that appear in the first 13 volumes of Spice and Wolf. That's roughly 4000 pages of Japanese by the same author about the same theme, and yet almost 1500 of the 2100 suru-verbs appear at most 5 times through the entire thing. If you're lucky, these words show up once every 800 pages (~2.6 books). If you're not lucky, they appear five times in the same paragraph and never again. That's not nearly enough repetition. The same thing is true for nouns; and for other light novel series. You can check the data yourself.

I might stop SRSing... - ta12121 - 2011-02-22

vix86 Wrote:
Manske Wrote:Overall, I haven't really improved over the past year apart from kanji/vocab recognition.
I skimmed through the other posts and everyone has good points, however I want to toss something else out there. In the field of Second Language Acquisition there is something known as the Plateau effect (One article on it, google cache since main article was broken for me. Plus Shorter, bullet points, type posting about the effect)

The long and short of it is, you are experiencing something that is very normal. Just keep at it and eventually you'll start seeing progress. Maybe change things up a bit.
That happens to me a lot, but eventually that went away and I kept making progress. Sometimes it;'s hard to even know your making progress sometimes

I might stop SRSing... - Manske - 2011-02-22

Thanks for you input, everyone. I've been cramming vocab and kanji recognition so hard over the past year that my grammar (and consequently reading and listening) skills have lagged far behind. Instead of SRSing random words and burning myself out, I'm thinking about using subs2srs to improve my listening and go back (well, I never really did) to SRSing sentences to strengthen grammar. I've tried passive listening over the past year and a half with live.nicovideo.jp, but I still have trouble understanding what anyone is saying, so that's obviously not working out too well.

Man, learning a new language is tough lol

I might stop SRSing... - Ryuujin27 - 2011-02-22

iSoron Wrote:
Ryuujin27 Wrote:Wait, what? Where did you get this from? I read novels all the time and often find, especially in novels by the same author, and especially especially especially in novels of the same series that verbs and nouns are used many times over and over, sometimes multiple times per page.
That's an illusion. There is a small set of words that gets repeated all the time, but most words are very rare. Here's the frequency of all suru-verbs that appear in the first 13 volumes of Spice and Wolf. That's roughly 4000 pages of Japanese by the same author about the same theme, and yet almost 1500 of the 2100 suru-verbs appear at most 5 times through the entire thing. If you're lucky, these words show up once every 800 pages (~2.6 books). If you're not lucky, they appear five times in the same paragraph and never again. That's not nearly enough repetition. The same thing is true for nouns; and for other light novel series. You can check the data yourself.
I'm just going to say I didn't read the links, as I am extremely tired and need to go to bed immediately.

However, let's flip this is a little. Ok, 1500 of the 2100 suru-verbs appear 5 times throughout the book. Well, that means that the other 600 probably appear more frequently, correct? This would mean that you keep seeing those ~600 words. So, since they have a decent repetition, you can learn ~600 words throughout the book.

I don't think I'm making sense. But in essence, language learning isn't Pokemon - you don't have to catch them all.

I might stop SRSing... - Cranks - 2011-02-22

Manske, good for you! I'm Subs2srsing songs right now and, as I like Bump of Chicken and Rip Slyme, it's just absolutely amazing! Trying to catch に、で、を、が、は at that level of speed and with the distortion of singing it is challenging, but I feel my ability to hear particles will shortly go through the roof (which means I can hear relationships better and, therefore, understand better. I plan to do this with Anime, but I don't have enough time with work and life at this point (gotta take it slow! Then again, if I can get to 8 hours of media I understand then it's all playback from there on in with gentle adding!)

Books: Yes there is definitely a subset of words in any book (particular in Manga, "heartattack" anyone - Deathnote) that gets mass repetition, but I agree that past a certain point there is a lot of variation (probably these words are related quite closely to the characters or content). Usually, it's the words you know really well that have this value and, hence, require less learning.

On the repetition aspect, a planned re-reading scheme can really achieve this for you. You can take out the aspect of the book doing the work and do the work yourself, or at least that's what I'm doing (5 dictionary look ups yesterday, 2 weren't in my anki deck, in 30 pages of bleach! I'm a slow reader, but having grammar points literally click in terms of recognition right in front of your eyes is motivating.)

I might stop SRSing... - ta12121 - 2011-02-22

Transcripts+audio+shadowing=success!

I might stop SRSing... - juniperpansy - 2011-02-23

Manske Wrote:I've tried passive listening over the past year and a half with live.nicovideo.jp, but I still have trouble understanding what anyone is saying,
I've got to totally agree. Passive listeming hasn't hepled me at all. I think about the only thing that really does help is Japanese (-NOT- English) subtitles with Japanese moivies.

And of course subs2srs. The toki o kakeru shoujyo deck was recommended to me by japanese friends as having really good proper slang/normal japanese. So if you like the movie, it would certainly be a great place to start.

I might stop SRSing... - Offshore - 2011-02-23

juniperpansy Wrote:I've got to totally agree. Passive listeming hasn't hepled me at all. I think about the only thing that really does help is Japanese (-NOT- English) subtitles with Japanese moivies.
Agreed. I've noticed the few times I watch JP stuff with English subtitles it makes it more confusing and like I'm not really learning anything...

I have one hell of a time finding many JP materials with JP subtitles though outside of video games. I only "just" recently got into watching J-drama but the only ones I've looked at so far have English subs.

I might stop SRSing... - kitakitsune - 2011-02-23

Offshore Wrote:
juniperpansy Wrote:I've got to totally agree. Passive listeming hasn't hepled me at all. I think about the only thing that really does help is Japanese (-NOT- English) subtitles with Japanese moivies.
Agreed. I've noticed the few times I watch JP stuff with English subtitles it makes it more confusing and like I'm not really learning anything...

I have one hell of a time finding many JP materials with JP subtitles though outside of video games. I only "just" recently got into watching J-drama but the only ones I've looked at so far have English subs.
http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/subtitles.php#Japanese

You're welcome