well let me see.... these couple months i've really seen a drop in my sentence recall performance, every morning i find doing my reviews to be boring and energy draining. i have about 990 cards in my deck most of which contain sentences from boring boring text books. im thinking to completely delete my deck and start fresh with more sentence coming from sources i actually care about.... so heres my question should i?

I did something similar when I switched from mnemosyne to Anki... The problem is that I have forgotten most of the stuff in my mnemosyne deck (~700 sentences). If the information is really not worth reviewing, then just dump the deck. However, just keep in mind that you may not be able to recall the information on your deleted cards when needed.. My advice is to slug it out and get all your cards mature, then start adding new cards in later. Also, you could try deleting any cards that you feel are redundant or "boring" to lighten your load. But I suggest against deleting your whole deck, which you may regret in the future.

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...throw-away

Honestly? I say do it - delete em and start fresh.

Personally, I've deleted at least 1,000 of my cards so far (including a deck of about 900 sentences), and I haven't missed them for a second. In fact, another of my decks just broke 1,000 mature sentences recently, and I'm considering ditching most of them as well since they just feel so boring to me now. Boring sentences kind of seals the deal as far as I'm concerned. DELETED!

hmm....i guess i will delete it boring sentences is like poison anyways. thanks guys!

haha, good job As long as you keep reading and learning new sentences, it won't matter if you delete a ton of old ones.

I would personally be quite a bit hesitant of deleting so many sentences, especially if you've already put a lot of effort into learning them. Surely you don't hate ALL of your sentences?
If you are using anki, it added leech detection in a recent version. I would personally just delete the cards that anki identifies as leeches, along with any others that you particularly hate.
But thats just me.

Anki's new leech will weed some out for you

idk what to do....my deck is still in my recycling bin....but should i really bother with it? i mean its boring so its not AJATT right?

konakona50 Wrote:idk what to do....my deck is still in my recycling bin....but should i really bother with it? i mean its boring so its not AJATT right?

So you're sitting on the fence on this one? Ok, I'll be direct, harsh, blunt and bitter:

Delete them. Right now.

---You can skip the following and only read the last paragraph if you want.---

If you're doing anything like AJATT, you should have deleted them by now. Why? Because you said they were taken from your textbooks and you don't think they're too easy.

Apparently anything from textbooks for learners should be simple and basic. And you're supposed to be reading/listening to a lot of real Japanese. So you should have already been familiar with all the grammar points/words/idioms/whatever on your cards because you should have come across the allegedly important things again and again in real stuff.

So why haven't you run across them? That's because your textbook sucks hard. Throw it away right now. There is no point in using a textbook that doesn't teach you what you hear in real life unless you just want to get an A in your Japanese class. If your teacher forces you to use it, you might want to look for a better teacher who teaches you what you want to learn.

I'm guessing you're mining sentences like "How do you do?" instead of "Hey, how's it going?" If your card is like "How do you do?" then you'll end up memorizing the sentence before you ever hear it in real life. If you mine a sentence like "I'm pretty sure you're right," you will delete it soon because you come across similar sentences multiple times in your favorite songs, books and whatnot so it will have been too easy.

You've only mined 1000 odd sentences, right? Then, never mine a sentence you don't hear in real life. Ever. I understand advanced learners have to mine very rare phrases to build their vocabulary; just because it's important doesn't mean it appears frequently in your favorite materials. Everyone more or less crammed boring stuff when they were grade schoolers. Some native speakers resort to word-of-the-day, thesauruses or something along those lines to hone their language skills. But why do you want to learn those advanced things when you've only mined less than a few thousand sentences?

If you often hear a sentence you put into your SRS, then you'll soon realize you don't need to review it any more. If you don't come across it in your favorite materials, then beginners don't need to learn it. Either way, you delete it. It's that simple. Immersion is kind of SRS itself.

Go get a decent textbook and pick up sentences you actually care about. Your "textbook" can be anything as long as you like it. They're the stuff you need, want and love. You review sentences and they just sink into oblivion because they're boring? Delete them. You don't want to learn them. Believe me. Everything beginners should learn will appear in materials you enjoy sooner or later. That's the definition of "basics" in the first place.

Oh, by the way, I heard you should always back up everything on your computer just in case. This has nothing to do with Japanese, but, um, you know, people can be stupid enough to take seriously what a random guy on the internet spits out. Back up and you'll be safe.

If you're finding it boring, chances are you're finding SRS'ing boring. A sentence from a textbook could easily be the same as a sentence you find in a drama (well... depending on the textbook ^^).

Remember the SRS is just a tool for memorisation - personally, I don't see how such a thing can ever be truely fun. I don't particularly enjoy doing my SRS reps, but I tend to keep the sessions limited to 10 mins a piece and then go and read a news article or something then go back to the SRS; just something to help break it up.

I would see doing your SRS reps as eating your vegetables when you were a child. You don't like vegetables(reps), but you eat(do) them anyway because you know in the long term the benefits of eating(doing) your vegetables(reps) are worth it.

My view is, SRS'ing isn't fun, but the knowledge it helps provide makes it all worth it as your understanding of Japanese increases.

All isolated sentences are boring. It doesn't matter if they come from a textbook or your favorite novel.

Now what makes a sentence "interesting" for SRSing is the language it uses. It's interesting as in "oh, I didn't know that" not as in "wow, awesome story I wonder what will happen next".

Now if your sentences are too easy, just hit the easy button and very quickly you won't see them again If they are too difficult, suspend them and add easier cards for a while.

I'm of the "First 1000 to 2000 sentences can be Text book type sentences". If you got them from a text book, these are not mined sentences. These are structured training aids in the same vein as RevTK kanji. You did not 'mine' RTK book or RevTK for kanji. It was there, in an organized easy to learn fashion. As such, it can be a bore and a chore to learn and memorize.

Just like I would not recommend you delete your RTK cards, I would not recommend you delete your "training" cards if they're there for a purpose. These are just organized insights into the Japanese language. Boring if it's all you do, but if you use enough to build a baseline for literacy then extremely useful.

Now, when you are MINING sentences, you're going to find that those learning cards (RTK kanji, Vocabulary cards, Grammar cards) are making your task easier. Now you can get those jewels than Magamo is talking about and get rid of the rocks.

To make your task easier, change up how you review these learning aids. For Kanji, I write out each one. For Vocabulary sentences, I just write out the vocabulary word. For Grammar sentences, I use Anki's typing comparison feature and type out the sentences (Kanji to Kanji to speed it up). So these "boring" reviews at least are done fast yet still reveal any weaknesses in my base knowledge.

As such, I am finding that mining real sentence becomes more fun. I'm essentially dissecting an episode sentence by sentence, adding sentences as I go along that I think are good enough. When I'm reviewing, I find I have no problem deleting sentences that seem way too easy now.

On top of that, I have about 3800 suspended Vocabulary sentences. As I come across new vocabulary during sentence mining, I activate the vocabulary sentence. This just saves a step which others would look up the sentence on Yahoo.jp or the Edict for the new word (which is itself another option).

Point being, no need to delete your sentences if they're serving a purpose (likely teaching grammar points). No problem trimming them as you go through reviews or you can let the SRS do that for you via spacing. Change up how you review them to speed it up.

Codexus Wrote:All isolated sentences are boring. It doesn't matter if they come from a textbook or your favorite novel.

Now what makes a sentence "interesting" for SRSing is the language it uses. It's interesting as in "oh, I didn't know that" not as in "wow, awesome story I wonder what will happen next".

I disagree. There are sentences that are genuinely more interesting than some textbook sentences. In fact, i don't find many of the sentences that I pick boring at all. Typically, the "fun factor" also has a lot to do with the context that you found the sentence in; often, there will be funny ones that make me laugh every time I see it in my reps.