[s0apgun]

Hello everyone,

Lately I've been fighting motivation to study daily with Anki. I've been considering replacing it completely with reading, which I already read alongside Anki. I know its been discussed on here many times before but I'm having a hard time putting Anki down after so much time put into it. I haven't finished my core10k deck probably around 6k matured. Looking to take the JLPT N1 in December.

Can we discuss the advantages and disadvantages? Will my vocabulary increase enough without SRS to pass N1 in a year with just reading? Is the added time spent improving reading comphrension with things I want to read going to be enough to get passing marks on N1? Any other thoughts or ramblings? Thanks in advance!

I am also having trouble returning to Anki.

I'm looking to do something similar, but I'm unfortunately not at the point right now that I can read much native material (I'm about halfway through Japanese for Everyone and I did about 1500 kanji in RTK until I stopped).

I like the idea of Anki, and I have used it somewhat successfully in the past for a couple of months, but as soon as something happens that causes me to take a break for a few days (vacation, relative passing away…life in general), my willpower to do all the backed-up reviews fades and I stop using Anki for a while. So the reviews build up even more!

Anki was actually preventing me from learning Japanese. It was a roadblock that regularly made me procrastinate and thus do nothing.

After this happened the last time, I realized that I don't really like using Anki. Yes it is efficient (well…that's actually debatable), at least my knowledge wouldn't fade overtime if I used it regularly. It has many benefits and I think it is a powerful learning tool. But what is the point if I can't get myself to do reviews consistently? I wasn't even adding that many cards per day (10-25)!

Over the past week I've been pretty diligent about reading my textbook, memorizing words in it, and doing the grammar exercises. I actually enjoy reading my textbook! I find myself picking up my textbook and reading grammar examples in the later chapters for fun. I don't enjoy doing Anki reviews even when I keep up with them. So, I've decided to go back to the "stone-age" and try studying like how I studied in high school. I'm sure I won't remember all the words and grammar I'm learning right now, but eventually I'll get enough exposure. JFE reinforces quite a bit of the grammar/vocab I've learned in previous chapters, and I'm amazed (and amused) at the reinforcement I've gotten just through watching an anime like Naruto :-). I just learned the words for "salt" and "salty", and in the next episode of Naruto I watched they used them! Even words that I originally had trouble with, hearing them in context made them stick.

Eventually, I may go back and use Anki. I would like to finish RTK and I'll probably force myself to use Anki for that. I may also go back and do Core 2000/6000 once I finish an intermediate textbook. But, I'd use Anki for true review--to review vocab/grammar I probably already learned.

My problems with Anki are:

1) I think you actually spend too much time reviewing with Anki. It is efficient in some ways and very inefficient in others. You can change the spacing algorithm to help with this, but I wouldn't want to fiddle with it too much. There's a reason the spacing is the way it is, and I think if I spaced things too much my correct rate would decrease dramatically.
2) Even if I've learned a word in Anki, I may not remember it when I actually read or hear it. I recognize the word, but my mind is blank. This is where reading/hearing the word in context is so powerful.
3) Reviews are just so boring. It's difficult for me to be motivated enough to do them.

I can't answer your questions about passing N1, but I wanted to let you know that I'm in a similar boat, and I don't think there is anything wrong with disliking Anki! I'm amazed that people here talk about doing hundreds of reviews per day. If they have the willpower to do that or they enjoy it, more power to them. I probably have better motivation than they do in a different area. Maybe they are the opposite of me and they hate their textbook! :-)

Edit:
My advice to you: studying SOMETHING is better than forcing Anki down your throat and eventually procrastinating and burning out. It's more efficient overall to study using a method enjoyable to you and being consistent. You could even do some studying for N1, and then use Anki as a "test" once you have internalized most of the vocab and grammar. You'd then be able to delete a lot of cards that you already know and the reviews wouldn't be so overwhelming. Either way, Anki didn't used to exist and we all did just fine passing classes and learning languages in the olden days. That's my $0.02.

i dived straight into native materials(asahi shimbun , kotaku etc) after finished RTK , without any flashcard at all (except for RTK 1) . The word just stick if u learn it in context

I don't see a problem with studying Anki every other day (ie not daily), but iirc the OGs were saying Core words are really common, so I don't think you should quit altogether yet. This debate is usually for people around 15k. You've got 9 months, you can finish Core 10k in 3 months, imo it'll make the last 6 months of reading even more profitable.

I have a love-hate relationship with Anki. I'm not nearly as advanced as you but right now I'm sitting here staring at my screen with like 2000 reviews due. How did this happen? I kinda went to Japan for 2 months and reviews started to pile up until I didn't feel like doing them anymore. I'm really eager to learn right now but Anki reviews are draining all of my motivation, even then I can't force myself to stop using it for some reason. I figure I will just stop adding cards for a while and do about 200-300 reviews a day and spend the rest of my time on grammar and reading until they eventually slow down.

I'm not too sure how many reviews you have per day or how many words you add, but maybe just try decreasing that amount and dedicate more time to reading without totally forgoing Anki?

My problem with Anki is when reviews really start to pile up. You can dig yourself out from that hole, of course, but I often found myself just not wanting to deal with it. If you take 2 or 3 weeks off, you come back to quite the mess. If you just read, then you don't have to deal with that.

I feel like I should do more SRSing, but it's not something I want to spend a lot of time doing.

Doing a lot of reading is a really good way to consolidate the meaning and usage of words that you already know (which actually is far more important than learning new words after a certain point -- I wouldn't say 15k, I would say more like 7k). I feel like it's perhaps a bit less efficient for learning new words. If you read without much dictionary use, there will be a lot of words where you're not quite sure of the reading or meaning. And if you read with a lot of dictionary use, then it's slow, and you'll just forget a lot of the rarer words before you see them again. In both cases, it's fine! It's fine to have a lot of words that you know bits and pieces of, and it's fine if you look up a rare word and then forget it.

My problem recently with learning Chinese is that I tried reading native materials way before I had the vocabulary to support it, and so 95% of the new words I looked up... I wasn't going to read them in the next 3 pages, so I would DEFINITELY forget them before I encountered them again, because I was reading so slowly. So in a situation like that the solution is either read easier materials for a while, or do some hardcore vocabulary drilling.

I think once you have enough vocabulary to be reading native materials, it's really helpful to focus on that, and maybe use Anki not as a long-term thing, but a thing to do for a month or two at a time when you feel like vocabulary is a big limiting factor for you.

(Also potentially helpful: if you ditch the Core cards for now and only add vocabulary cards that you draw from what you're reading.

[RawToast]

s0apgun Wrote:Lately I've been fighting motivation to study daily with Anki. I've been considering replacing it completely with reading, which I already read alongside Anki. I know its been discussed on here many times before but I'm having a hard time putting Anki down after so much time put into it. I haven't finished my core10k deck probably around 6k matured. Looking to take the JLPT N1 in December.

Whilst I am not at such a stage, I have thought about stopping adding new cards to Anki and replacing the time with more reading. If you simply review your due counts should drop drastically within a week.

If you have the time to spare you could give it a try for a week/month and see if your able to retain any new words without Anki. I was considering then just adding new words via Rikaisama/manual input and setting the 'new cards' limit to a small number like 5 -- even if I added more cards per day -- simply to keep my Anki time under control.

I have been influenced by Steve Kaufmann and many lingq users who claim to simply do the lingq flash cards -- which are less demanding than Anki -- alongside reading on the site. Unlike those users, I'd rather not pay for lingq so rikaisama will do for me!

Another alternative would be to increase Anki's intervals some more and keep reading.

[Zgarbas]

Why not both?
Just limit the reviews to how many you do in 10-15 minutes and just ignore the pile-up (it'll fix itself up eventually; maybe add more reviews when you're in a drill fever). it's not exactly the most time-consuming ordeal, and it's a good warm-up for reading.

Reading is more useful for learning natural expressions than for vocabulary, but that doesn't mean that vocab can't be learned that way. It can. I did so with English, so I know it works.

Doing SRS is not a bad thing, but not so much for learning, but for remembering. You best learn stuff from other sources first.

I only do RTK with ANKI right now. I'll continue through 2014, even after I'm done, then ditch it next year and just read.

Good luck! I did Core 2k/6k and then did the tanos JLPT decks, deleting each word I knew, and adding a sentence from the Green Goddess dic to the rest, while reading a lot of books and editorials. I also made a kanzen master deck with the grammar points I didn't know. While maybe I could have passed without Anki for the vocab, I don't think I would have for the grammar. Anki was a great help when I passed N1, that said, if the reviews are piling up, you might want to decrease your reviews and focus on reading and practice tests.