Core decks vs extensive reading

(2016-06-08, 3:58 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: I feel it's very easy for Anki to take away more time from reading and listening than it should. I can easily spend 6+ hours every day on Japanese, but when 1h+ of that goes into reviews and half of the remaining time goes into making flashcards... you get my point, right?

All of us who see Anki as an adjunct to massive input, rather than the core study technique, have this same problem.

How much time should we allow Anki to take away from the Real Thing (i.e. reading and otherwise ingesting Japanese - as well as speaking and writing it if we are doing output too).

Essentially each of us finds our own balance over time. Obviously is always a trade-off. At one extreme are the people who do core decks and RTK for many, many months before even touching any real Japanese. At the other extreme are those who never touch Anki at all and learn purely by immersion and massive input.

Clearly my inclination is more toward the latter approach, but I make pragmatic use of Anki to stop too much vocabulary from disappearing.

But yes, I get your point and I think the answer is that it is an individual thing and you will work out your own trade-off point between input and Anki as you go along (that point will also probably change over time. Essentially, reliance on Anki can be diminished as you progress).

Incidentally I find Anki can be a lot more helpful with listening and getting used to the sound of words if you add audio. (It has the added advantage of having a terse J-J definition "ring in your ears" when you encounter the word to be defined - but you don't need to worry about that aspect until you are ready for at least some J-J). I am planning to write an article on this soonish as it is a whole subject in itself.

Of course this makes setting up cards more time-consuming - though I find it makes reviewing quicker for me. I mostly don't even look at the backs of cards any more. So there's another trade-off to consider at some point.