Something that's occured to me recently. I have a vocab deck, RTK deck, a grammar deck, a deck for specialist vocab, and an SRStoSubs deck.

Right now I am focusing on my Cloze Delete vocab deck the most. On average every hour I spend on this deck I can mangage to get 130-150 cards reviewed. (I usually have 70 a day to review though) I look at the english word, guess the meaning, read the sentence mentally and hit my answer. Usually I can guess the word from the english definition in 5 secs and place it in the sentence. If it's takes more time or the kanji for the word is hard for me to visualise than that I hit hard. If I forget the word completely, I hit Again. I write out the target words sometimes if I want to cement the kanji, but that extends to words I know really well, so that's kinda random. I'll finger trace more often than not though.

There are times on this deck where I will remember how to say the word, but not remember the kanji at all, sometimes I hit Again, sometimes I hit Good, if I feel the kanji makes sense to me. Don't know if I'm doing it wrong here. Most of these are new words though.

On my RTK deck, the same logic applies. If I remember it, Good, if I can't remember it perfectly, I hit Hard. I tend to hit Hard very often on this deck, but on average, I can knock out 150 in a half hour. Per day, I usually have 100-150 reviews each day.

I dabbled a bit in the Subs2SRS deck, and I just read it and listen along. There are alot of strange constuctions in this and I end up hitting repeat a few times per card while trying to follow along. I usually hit Good if the words are easy, Hard if the vocab is unknown. I have no idea if I am using this deck wrong or not. I don't use it often as I was trying to hit 1000 vocab words so I should have a bit more time in the coming month to really test it out.

I want to know if there is another way I could use the decks more effiecently or if I am doing it right. I have no intention of merging any of these decks as I find that interupts my train of thought.

There will definitely be a difference of time between decks depending on what they consist of. If you just have a recognition vocabulary deck, it's a lot faster to skim through it than a production based deck, especially if you write down the word each time. And a grammar deck may be a bit different also since you ar forced to read a whole sentence depending on how you set it up. I don't see any reason to make the studying times uniform if what you are trying to accomplish with each deck is different. I think that was your question or I may have misunderstood it.

PotbellyPig Wrote:There will definitely be a difference of time between decks depending on what they consist of. If you just have a recognition vocabulary deck, it's a lot faster to skim through it than a production based deck, especially if you write down the word each time. And a grammar deck may be a bit different also since you ar forced to read a whole sentence depending on how you set it up. I don't see any reason to make the studying times uniform if what you are trying to accomplish with each deck is different. I think that was your question or I may have misunderstood it.

I probably wasn't being clear enough, but yeah, that was it. I want to know if I'm spending too much time on each deck or not enough on the other.

I'm wondering if I am spending too much time in the Core Clozed Delete deck reading the whole sentence or not. It would take me an hour to read 11 pages from a book or magizine, but I've noticed my average in the last week has decreased to 40 mins. I still consider myself a beginner so I'm a bit skeptical that I can afford to miss out on sentence structure.

Then again, worth noting I haven invested much in the grammar deck yet, though I have read 25% of Tae Kim and all of Japanese the Manga Way before.

Review faster. My decks are all recognition so I don't know what kind of speed is reasonable, but I'm pretty sure taking longer than 5 seconds to remember should be close to an automatic fail (if you hit hard, it'll just take you even longer to remember next time. In real life, you want to remember instantly). Also, after you see the answer, you should rate it in a fraction of a second.

I go with Production on my decks.

I could go with Recognition on my RTK/specialist vocab decks, but not sure if I should for RTK. I tried using recognition for that awhile ago and it didn't turn out so well.

Depending on the deck (you might prefer to spend more time on your grammar deck, or more time on your Subs deck- I don't know; personal preference in the end) you might find it easier in the long run if you heed some of Vempele's advice.

In respect to RTK decks, if you are going keyword to kanji (I assume?), a lot of review time can be cut down by marking the card as hard/fail, if it doesn't come to you straight away. This depends on how comfortable you feel with your knowledge of the kanji.

As an anecdote, during the period when I was having around about and sometimes above 1000 RTK reviews a day, in the end I was hitting hard/fail if the kanji didn't more or less come to be straight away. Though you might want to take into account that I had already been through the book and every kanji I was reviewing, was something I had already studied. If I were something brand new or only seen, say, the day before, the review rationale would be different with those cards.


Long story short: for single word/kanji type recognition cards, if you're already familiar with the card (at least reviewed it once or twice: 10mins then a day in Anki 2), your reps are no longer the same "learning tool" and are simply there for triggering what you already know/have seen. Be as hard and fast as you want. It may mean more reviews but your reviews are more than likely going to be magnitudes faster than they were.


That is at least one way to dramatically cut down your review time, if it is causing trouble enough.

uisukii Wrote:As an anecdote, during the period when I was having around about and sometimes above 1000 RTK reviews a day, in the end I was hitting hard/fail if the kanji didn't more or less come to be straight away. Though you might want to take into account that I had already been through the book and every kanji I was reviewing, was something I had already studied. If I were something brand new or only seen, say, the day before, the review rationale would be different with those cards.

Why? Is this another difference between production and recognition? My reviews on new cards are over a second faster than average. If you've only just seen it, all the more reason to remember it quickly.

Vempele Wrote:

uisukii Wrote:As an anecdote, during the period when I was having around about and sometimes above 1000 RTK reviews a day, in the end I was hitting hard/fail if the kanji didn't more or less come to be straight away. Though you might want to take into account that I had already been through the book and every kanji I was reviewing, was something I had already studied. If I were something brand new or only seen, say, the day before, the review rationale would be different with those cards.

Why? Is this another difference between production and recognition? My reviews on new cards are over a second faster than average. If you've only just seen it, all the more reason to remember it quickly.

My rationale would be different because instead of actively recalling something already understood (at one point) I would be taking it in for the first time; reading the term, understanding how it is used in a given context, exploring any obvious neural short-cuts if it has the same kanji with shared readings of other related meanings for different phrases, etc.

At all it is real time process, however instead of recalling something, I would be actively analyzing the new input for potential easy mental storage. Why, because I approach known and unknown words with a completely different mindset.

It was mentioned rather overt that this shift in thought process was related to my anecdotal experience. As in an example of how I would approach it.
It really hasn't got a lot to do with production and recognition in this instance as it has to do with that people process things differently and some people seem to often initially respond to the expression of a different approach to be a challenge to their own cognitive process.

それと、 If you've only just seen it, how do you go about comprehending it in some manner that it is quickly remembered at a later point? This aspect seems to be a somewhat overlooked vital aspect which really needs to be addressed before your question is relevant.

Testing results for the past week:

Pretty much limiting myself to 30 minutes a day now with Anki and about an hour at most for reading. I need to workout and do my drawing before going to work after all. It's made me not dread Anki time anymore at least and it's.....FUN again.=p

I can get Core done in 10 minutes or less, 78-100 reviews a session.

RTK, production, 120 cards written in 20 minutes.

The strange thing is now, I am starting to speed read and I am coming across less and less unknown kanji, or kanji I've seen before and forgot the base meaning, yet my RTK reviews are pretty much all fails at this point. I can remember bits and pieces of most of them when it comes to writing them out, but when I see them in the wild, I have no problem identifying them. I don't even remember the stories for alot of them actually but I know what they mean when I see them.

uisukii Wrote:それと、 If you've only just seen it, how do you go about comprehending it in some manner that it is quickly remembered at a later point? This aspect seems to be a somewhat overlooked vital aspect which really needs to be addressed before your question is relevant.

I don't memorize comprehension. I memorize readings (or, in the case of RTK, names for kanji).