1) I'm considering writing a guide to SRSing to put on the wiki (which I hope others will then edit/contribute to) but I want to work on it privately and then submit it when it's ready. Is there a way I can do this that will avoid me having to reformat everything when I do so?

2) Are there already some good guides that mean it's not worth the trouble?

Reading the comments on this forum gives me the impression that a lot of people are using anki very inefficiently (or giving up on it) without realising how much it has to offer, so I think it would be helpful.

Using anki inefficiently?

How so?

Well mostly they spend a lot more time reviewing than they should for the amount of cards they get through. I think that's because there is so little gudance available on the subject, for example two easy things that can make a big difference are:

1) Using a timer (I use a metronome) to limit the amount of time you spend on each card.
2) Making sure each card only tests one thing. (e.g. Reading and meaning on separate cards)

To put this in perspective, I used to struggle to do 50-60 reps in a ten minute period, but just looking at my stats for today I see that it says:

Anki Wrote:Studied 429 cards in 19 minutes today.
Again count: 160 (62.77% correct)
Learn: 236, Review: 140, Relearn: 53
Correct answers on mature cards: 7/7 (100%)

And that's getting better every day. In fact it would actually have been much faster today if it weren't for the high proportion of new cards. (That's also the reason for the low correct count)

I'm not saying my way is the only way of doing it, but the results I've seen from my own experiments have left me with the opinion that SRSing is an important learning skill* that deserves attention in the same way that proper note taking does, and the current situation is that each member of this forum is pretty much left to discover this (or not) on their own. There are occasional threads on the subject but they get buried (and you have to have the dedication to sift through them), so I think it would be helpful to create a guide that we can link new learners to that would put them on the right track. (Like Nukemarine's guide but focused on SRSing)

*For those who use an SRS.

Splatted Wrote:Reading the comments on this forum gives me the impression that a lot of people are using anki very inefficiently (or giving up on it) without realising how much it has to offer, so I think it would be helpful.

Although I think it's a good idea to help people getting started with Anki (or who don't know how to use it), I wonder why some people care so much about someone who don't like using Anki. Sure, one possible reason could be that these people don't know exactly how to use it which is frustrading for them. But what's about people who don't like using it, because it's boring?

Personally, I've experimented a very long time with Anki. At the end, I've stopped. Not because I don't know how to use it efficiently, but because it bored me to death. I've read texts beside of using Anki. I liked reading but there was no motivation to use Anki additionally. Since I'm using LWT and Rikaisama instead and reading interesting texts, the learning process is much more enjoyable and I've learned much more than with Anki. Not because I think it's not a good learning tool, but because it's not the right learning tool for ME.

I'm not against Anki. But I think it's overestimated. Everybody should figure out for themselfes which method work for them and which not. Even the "most efficient tool" can be a hindrance, if it makes you avoiding it. It's better so use other methods to keep learning, instead of stopping it (which is the case when you avoid using it because you don't enjoy it).

Guess I am doing anki wrong then :p

Splatted Wrote:Well mostly they spend a lot more time reviewing than they should for the amount of cards they get through. I think that's because there is so little gudance available on the subject, for example two easy things that can make a big difference are:

1) Using a timer (I use a metronome) to limit the amount of time you spend on each card.
2) Making sure each card only tests one thing. (e.g. Reading and meaning on separate cards)

To put this in perspective, I used to struggle to do 50-60 reps in a ten minute period, but just looking at my stats for today I see that it says:

Anki Wrote:Studied 429 cards in 19 minutes today.
Again count: 160 (62.77% correct)
Learn: 236, Review: 140, Relearn: 53
Correct answers on mature cards: 7/7 (100%)

And that's getting better every day. In fact it would actually have been much faster today if it weren't for the high proportion of new cards. (That's also the reason for the low correct count)

The whole point behind anki is that everyone can use it the way they want to. That's why it's so flexible and (relatively) beginner unfriendly. Trying to claim there is a way people "should" be using it is beyond me.

When I rushed through my reps, it just felt like I was doing it for the statistics rather than for actually remembering what was on the cards. It started feeling like a chore real fast, something I just wanted to get over with. Paradoxically, I got fed up with anki much faster rushing through my decks than when I took my time with it. So I went back to what I did before - that if, slower-paced SRS with lots of handwriting and attention payed to the stroke order. To prevent burnout, I simply integrated a timeboxing timer (5 minutes), and it all went like a charm from there, as I got much better result without having the dirty impression of having botched my studies.

My point being, just like there are no ideal study route, there are no ideal anki methods. I understand that you got good results using this methods, but in such fields as learning and memorizing, extrapolating from your own experience is indeed valuable ... but mostly for yourself and yourself only. Advices and personal experience accounts are valuable to people who might not know what to do, but claiming that there is a "proper" way to do SRS is just misguided at best, and plain wrong at worst.

So if you plan on going through with your guide (which you should, it might indeed be valuable to some) I'd recommend making sure that newcomers understand that this is a method that might or might not work for them. When you start in a field, it's normal that you should seek advice from more experienced people, but many newcomers just try to stick with a method that does not work for them, up to the point where they give up and blame the tool rather than the method, which might actually be the opposite of what you're trying to achieve.

@AnYa13: I'm not really interested in converting people to anki. I don't want people to give up on it because they're using it wrong and thus have a skewed idea of what it can do for them, but that's about it as far as my desire to promote anki goes. This guide (if I write it) will be to help those who do want to use it get the most out of it.

@Linval: You seem to be creating a bit of a strawman here. I specifically said "I'm not saying my way is the only way of doing it" and that I hoped others would contribute as well. The point isn't to tell people how they must use it, but to show them what's possible and give them a good idea of how to go about achieving what it is they want. Obviously if I'm the only one that ends up contributing to it we'll end up with just a how to do reps fast guide, but I'm hoping others will build upon it and we'll end up with a guide that presents the reader with various options they can adapt to what they want to do.

P.s. When I said people were reviewing inefficiently I wasn't really referring to those who take their time to complete some kind of qualitative activity. It's not rare to read posts by people expressing frustration over how few cards they can get through.

P.p.s. Reviewing quickly doesn't have to mean being slapdash about it. Part of it is being much stricter with marking cards (if you can't come up with the answer almost instantly it's a fail), and that means that a card must be well learned to pass. I actually have a 91.53% correct score for mature cards even with that.

@Dustin_Calgar: Well that's for you to decide.

Splatted Wrote:@Linval: You seem to be creating a bit of a strawman here. I specifically said "I'm not saying my way is the only way of doing it" and that I hoped others would contribute as well.

I understand that, and I didn't want to kill your initiative in the egg because for all I said I still think it's worthwhile, but I always get a bit annoyed when I read stuff like "should" / "proper" next to "speed" & "efficiency" (whatever that means) being hammered down as the only important factors in good Srsing - now I'm not saying this is what you advocate, and I probably overreacted. But what can I say ? I'm just a nitpicky little prick :p.

Splatted Wrote:P.s. When I said people were reviewing inefficiently I wasn't really referring to those who take their time to complete some kind of qualitative activity. It's not rare to read posts by people expressing frustration over how few cards they can get through.

Well, doing reps slower isn't necessarily that time-consuming. Hide the remaining number of reps, set up a timeboxing timer, activate the whiteboard on your "portable anki device" and just do 5 minutes here and there throughout the day. I really think that the best way to get bored of anki is to do all reps at once.

splatted Wrote:P.p.s. Reviewing quickly doesn't have to mean being slapdash about it. Part of it is being much stricter with marking cards (if you can't come up with the answer almost instantly it's a fail), and that means that a card must be well learned to pass. I actually have a 91.53% correct score for mature cards even with that.

Fair enough. I tend to prefer messy cards on my personal deck - as a way to get away from the clear-cut core decks & to get exposed to something more "native", because native material is never as simple as a single sentence in textbook japanese - but that's me I guess, and I think it's a bit beside the whole point of the thread ;p.

Looking at the stats you had for today, 2.65 seconds per card, not too bad.

I was closer to about 11 seconds per card, 254 cards, but I test both the reading and the meaning on the same card, and I have to read and understand the entire sentence, not just the specific vocab that it's there for.

Do you test the entire sentence, or just the vocab, when testing meaning or reading?

At least for now it's helping me internalize grammar better doing full sentences, and more of the vocab is still fairly new, since I'm earlier in my anki career ^^

@Splatted
Answer to #1:
You could use a personal wiki, then all the markup would be the same. I like TiddlyWiki, and you can Google "personal wiki" for others.

@Splatted wow, I never thought about doing reading and translation separately. I'm doing that now, and the difference in my learning speed is enormous. What's more important, I don't feel burned at all even after adding and studying a lot of cards. I was failing a lot more cards when I was doing reading and translation together, now I dont feel even nearly as frustrated as before. Thanks;d

There should be a guide for it or a place with different methods described. Actually it's strange there isn't one (we have user's study methods tho).

Splatted Wrote:I'm not saying my way is the only way of doing it, but the results I've seen from my own experiments have left me with the opinion that SRSing is an important learning skill* that deserves attention in the same way that proper note taking does

I agree. Apart from "20 rules of formulating knowledge", there's no really helpful guide to SRSing. As a new user it's tempting to ignore the minimum information principle thinking "oh, I'm going to make exam-type questions so I'm better prepared"... I've also seen a lot of people who had no idea how to mark cards. Spaced repetition is often described as an infallible study method, so it's easy to never question the way you do it ("it's SRS, therefore it is going to work") as long as you're seeing some kind of results. And of course, a lot of people find it horribly boring, but not many have actively tried experimenting with ways of making it more bearable. Addressing some common criticisms might be useful too.

I'd definitely contribute to such a guide.

I think I saw a link leading to some peoples' study plans, but there were only 2 of them there I think, and it was a bit more broad.

I think there might be benefits to creating a guide to some of the more useful-sounding features of Anki beyond simple "put a word on the front and answer on the back". I personally don't know much about making cards beyond that, and while I have heard of a lot of Anki terms being thrown around, I don't necessarily understand them. I'm sure others might feel the same. I know that there is Anki documentation, but it is a bit long and sometimes confusing. A guide that summarizes some of the more useful functions that a beginner can understand beyond the basic front/back ;q/a cards, and how they can specifically be useful for certain types of Japanese studying (kanji, sentences,etc.)

...Or maybe I should stop lazily relying on my pre-made decks and go learn some Anki stuff.

Heron Wrote:And of course, a lot of people find it horribly boring, but not many have actively tried experimenting with ways of making it more bearable.

All you said is very true, but I think the heart of the problem lies here ; if you (talking in general terms here, not you particularly) find SRS boring, it's probably not because of the method or the format, though it does factor, but most likely because the actual content of the cards is boring.

I do my core deck, but I'd go insane if I were just doing it on its own - because it's insanely dull. Textbook Japanese is boring as hell. It's helpful and I'm happy to use it because it's clear-cut, but it's not exactly the most exciting stuff out there.

Which is why the first advice I'd give anyone wanting to improve their SRSing would be to actually input stuff they would enjoy reviewing. Pre-made decks are swell and all, but doing only that will kill you.

@OP
I gave your metronome idea a go, but not by actually using a metronome because it was too distracting. Instead I set AnkiDroid to automatically show the answer after 2 seconds. I am finding that there are cards that I can recall but after much more than 2 seconds, and there are others that are well within the 2 second period. Of course, I would love for all of them to be within the 2 second period, so I can definitely see value in this.

When comparing this to my other decks which I have been using for quite a while, I notice that most of the my mature cards I can recall but only after at least 5 seconds of thinking. Perhaps it's my issue and I need to modify my SRS timers somewhere, but I was wondering if you had modified yours at all? It seems like doing these ultra-fast reps is great and I would love to be able to recall at that speed out in the wild. But I'm thinking that at least in my case I would need to review them a bit more frequently than the standard intervals.

I also love the idea of testing only a single item, and I'm going to split off my decks and give it a shot. Thanks for sharing your ideas! I think it's a great idea to include this and other ideas in a wiki.

kazuki Wrote:I also love the idea of testing only a single item, and I'm going to split off my decks and give it a shot.

This is called the "minimum information principle". A must-read: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm (the minimum information principle is item 4)

By testing only one item, not only is the card easier and faster to review (2 important factors to reduce boredom), but you can rate it much more accurately. Trying to test more than 1 item per card is never, never a good idea (lists are complicated, but the closer you stay to 1 item/card the better you remember them).
I wished I had known about how important this rule is when I started using Anki back then (I knew about it, but thought I could ignore it). It would have saved me a lot of pain...

@Heron
Awesome link, thanks! For a single vocab item, do you just have 2 cards? One reading and one meaning? I imagine you include a source or example sentence as well for reference. This is how I'm thinking of trying it out. I also am thinking of dropping the interval modifier to something like 70 or 80% to increase reps, but hopefully decrease recall time. Maybe it makes it a bit more rote but... for me it seems like it would kinda work.

I also enjoyed the link, Heron. Thanks for posting it. I'm going to give this method a go, I think--possibly starting out at 5 seconds per card and working down from there. I don't really want to use a metronome, though, and am wondering how to get Anki to automatically display the answer after a few seconds has passed?

For what it's worth, I think the more information out there about effective study methods, the better. Anki isn't for everybody, and even those who use it have their own way of doing so. However, some people just use it the way they do because they don't know what else to do, and it's those people--people like me--that I think could really be helped by this type of thing.

Glad to see there's some interest in this. For the record I'm not trying to set myself up as some anki guru, I just feel like and can contribute something, and something is better than nothing. I've actually been pretty inconsistent about using anki and even ditched it completely for a long time. My opinion is that anki is at it's best when used to support other learning, and while it's really good at that, given a choice between native materials and anki I'd definitely say ditch anki.

I want to say that I think adhering to the minimum information principle is probably the most important improvement anyone can make. Decide what you want to learn from each card and then make sure you're that's what you spend your time on when you review it. If something's worth learning it deserves it's own card, and if it has it's own card it doesn't need to be shoehorned on to others. There is no qualitative or quantitative advantage to padding out your cards.

@Linval: Thanks for being open minded. I completely understand why you reacted the way you did since I would probably have done the same if our positions had been reversed. We all put a lot of effort in to finding what works for us so it's no surprise that we don't like it when someone starts telling everyone to do the opposite.

@Dustin_Calgary: I definitely should have mentioned that I'm just doing vocab cards ,since I spend most of my Japanese time with native material, so there aren't even any sentences for me to read. That sounds like a pretty good pace if you are reading a sentence per card and testing two fields on each, but I would strongly recommend you consider splitting your two card types. (not really sure how practical that is though...)

@Bokusenou: Thanks, this sounds like something that might be useful for other things as well.

@meeatcookies: Glad I could help. I feel the same way about the lack of SRS guide. It such a big part of so many people's study that I can't belive there isn't more guidance available.

@Heron: Good post and I'm glad to hear you're interested in helping. I agree that the 20 rules of formulating knowledge is a good start but there's definitely scope for more to be said.

@mc962: Unfortunately I think the anki documentation is so long because there are so many useful features that need documenting. I can't see my way to writing a concise version. My idea is to approach it from the other way and simply provide explanations of the features required to carry out my advice on how to use anki.

@kazuki: I'd forgotten about the in built timer. XD I haven't had to shorten my intervals at all (in fact I deleted the ten minute "learn" step). I think recalling cards quickly is partly a result of knowing the answer well, but also partly a general skill that you should seek to improve. At first it can be pretty brutal doing reps so quickly, but as you get used to the speed you'll find it starts to feel quite comfortable. I think you'll find that if you stick to this pace you'll get used to it and even cards that you learnt more slowly will become recallable and you won't fail as many as you think. I recommend you find a pace that is challenging but doable (I started with 2secs like you have), and then keep increasing the pace as you get used to it.

It's also worth mentioning that a slight increase in the amount you forget can feel like a lot more than it actually is because it's not nice. Imho this is actually one of the biggest advantages to fast reviewing though: You start to feel like failing a card is much less of an issue when reviewing it again is so quick.

@weatherman: Glad you like the idea. To automatically show the answer on ankidroid you just hit menu (on your phone not in app) -> Preferences -> Reviewing -> Automatic display answer. I don't know how to do it on the desktop version.

@splatted no new cards today, just reviews, did 114 cards in 13 mins, 6.8 seconds per card. ( the new stuff I tend to spend a little longer on the tougher cards trying to internalize it a bit more.

Quite honestly I think the biggest things in terms of efficiency tends to be failing them quickly enough rather than fighting to remember.

Nice that's a pretty big improvement. I think you're completely right about the time spent trying to remember stuff. It's a huge waste of time, but at least that opens the door to some huge efficiency improvements.

kazuki Wrote:For a single vocab item, do you just have 2 cards? One reading and one meaning? I imagine you include a source or example sentence as well for reference. This is how I'm thinking of trying it out. I also am thinking of dropping the interval modifier to something like 70 or 80% to increase reps, but hopefully decrease recall time. Maybe it makes it a bit more rote but... for me it seems like it would kinda work.

I've been using the Core template from the Core deck popular around here (Core 10k optimised I think?). As a disclaimer, I've been using Anki for years but have only started using it for Japanese recently. I studied Japanese to a lower intermediate level a while ago and started studying it again one or two months ago (?), so for now I'm re-learning vocab I'm familiar with, and concentrating on meaning, not reading. For now I have 2 cards per item: the default sentence card, which I use for word recognition (I have mouse-over furigana over every sentence in case there's a word I can't read), and a production card from English to Japanese (single word), with the sentence I use for the sentence cards on the back for context. Audio is on the back. As I said, I am reviewing old vocab, so everything is really easy now, but as soon as I'm done with that I will be adding a reading card (I'd like to use the provided sentences for that, but I'm not sure it's a good idea, since I tend to memorise the audio and am worried it might give the reading away too easily, and that I wouldn't remember it in a real-life context... we'll see) and possibly writing (kanji), in the hope of using this as a replacement for my RTK deck, which bores me to death now. I don't have any listening cards as I don't feel the need for it.
Example sentences are always nice to have. I have an English deck that started as a single-word-cards deck, but I've since added a sentence field on the back. I've found that it helps with retention. It's full of rather rare words so having context also means I don't forget how the word is used.
I've never fiddled with the interval modifier itself, however, I've changed the default steps for new cards for all my decks. The default is 1 minute then 10 minutes, or 1 10, and I've changed it to 10 30. It's probably not the best (I'm sure there are many studies into what intervals are the most efficient) but it's still much better. You can add a repetition too, for example 10 30 120. You can change it by clicking on the "Options" button at the bottom of the window you get when you click on one of your decks in the main window. You can also change the intervals for failed cards in the "Lapses" tab (same window). Most of my cards are easy enough so I haven't bothered.
If you do change the modifier, be aware that this might substantially increase your workload. I feel it is better to ensure you learn or re-learn the cards very well instead. Do tell us what happened if you try.

Splatted Wrote:Glad to see there's some interest in this. For the record I'm not trying to set myself up as some anki guru, I just feel like and can contribute something, and something is better than nothing. I've actually been pretty inconsistent about using anki and even ditched it completely for a long time. My opinion is that anki is at it's best when used to support other learning, and while it's really good at that, given a choice between native materials and anki I'd definitely say ditch anki.

I've given up on Anki a few times too (boring course material and lack of motivation). It just means we know what it's like to see cards pile up, and that we think it's good enough to keep trying
Giving up can be a learning experience too. It also makes you realise that, yes, you can just stop using the software, nobody is forcing you, but also that the benefits of using it can be huge. It leads you to question the material you've been using, and how you've been using it.

The Core decks make it very tempting to learn through Anki instead of using it to remember what you've just learned. Maybe that's why how many users use it?
Subs2srs cards apart (and even then, I suspend everything and only unsuspend cards I can understand without too much effort), I never learn anything language-related through Anki. I do so with biology/psychology, but make sure I understand everything really well before making the card.

Yeah I made the classic mistake of trying to learn Japanese by SRSing Core 6000. Ditching that and focusing on native material was probably the best thing I did for my Japanese, but starting to use anki to support that was probably the second best.

Thanks for the replies guys! I toyed around today in a new deck with a mixture of RTK cards and vocabulary items that were added in the last few weeks. I rescheduled them as new cards and went through them all, strictly adhering to the 2 second rule. If a card was not remembered within the 2 second period, I marked it incorrect. This is strictly a speedy recall deck for me to play around with for the time being.

I completed RTK a few years ago, but have since forgotten a lot of the meanings, even after staring at them for a bit. So I decided to just run through them again from start to finish. I sat down at Starbucks after work two nights last week and plowed through the first 850, so those are the ones I used in this deck... all somewhat familiar since i learned them a while ago, but at the same time somewhat fresh.

Anyway, here are the stats for today: Studied 3435 cards in 127 minutes today.
I modified the learning period because I wasn't sure if I would be able to get under two seconds for most of the cards... so the learning period consisted of 4 repetitions at intervals of 1, 5, 10 and 15. I definitely didn't need it so I'll probably see how I do tomorrow with only the default learning period of 1, 10. I still like the learning period because I'd rather solidify the speedy recall portion before putting the card off to the next day.

So, for today, it's around a card every 2.2 seconds, taking into account some of the time spent on more difficult cards if I was real lost. Most of them were done in less than 1 second I think, vocabulary *reading* as well... super fast. Vocabulary meaning was a bit trickier because I had trouble stopping myself from thinking of the reading first.. and then switching my brain to thinking of an English meaning, or a mental visual. It takes getting used to thinking of only the meaning! The minimum information principle is great, just got to get used to it for the meaning cards in particular.

Anyway, and alternative to this might be to have a slightly less strict timer for learning and maintaining a more accurate(?) representation of what I can actually remember by changing it to 5 or 10 seconds, with no learning period. But occasionally I can build a cram deck and run through with the 2 second rule and mark some cards for future cramming to aid in speedy recall. Maybe. I really don't want to spend that much time in Anki so I'll probably see how this deck matures. It's a lot on the front-end but it's not like I'm going to be adding 800-1000 cards a day.

Anyway, just thought I'd share my experience with it today.