Most people on this site seem to study mostly via a SRS, either through mining their own sentences from various sources, collaborative efforts, or simply utilizing decks that other people have created.

My question is, do you ever dispense with the SRS and study the "old-fashioned" way by for example just reading a textbook and doing the drills provided?

I've been using a SRS almost exclusively (smart.fm) for the last few months, now I have decided to cut back a bit, and review some grammar the traditional way. More for a change of pace, rather than because of any deficiency in studying using a SRS.

I'm using a textbook in language class which is mostly about Japanese history and modern Japanese society. However, I usually learn the vocabulary by using an SRS. Other than that, we learn the traditional (Japanese) way. And I can safely say the Japanese way of learning is not for everybody. It involves lots of listening and repeating, but at least the teachers are kind of cool.

I don't even know what this SRS is... (I'm not studying using this site :O) Everybody's talking about it, I tried to to read about it on Khatzumoto's blog, article too long, lost interest. Studying by textbook here, cuz I bought so many, not using them would be もったいない don't you think Although I do use smart.fm to study extra sentences (I really dig the site and method) cuz books, now here's something surprising, BORING...but a necessity to me. And somehow learning using a book has something aesthetic like you're really 'learning' something 笑

I think using books is just as effective, people have been using them forever. I think it be good to SRS (still dunno what it is) and combine it with good 'ol books to variate. What I do is for example, do half an hour or 45 min. learning stuff at smart.fm and then study grammar using a book for a bit, do some story reading (also book), learn some 単語 on your DS, watch some J-series or listen to podcasts etc. I try to variate a bit of everything (just to make learning more fun) since studying 3 hours straight out of a book gives me a 頭痛.

smart.fm is an SRS. All it is is a program which shows you facts and lets you rate how well you remembered said fact. The SRS then schedules when you will be shown that fact the next time, depending on how many times you've correctly remembered it.

SRS isn't some form of substitute, it's a tool which makes memorization extremely easy. No matter how you study something, using an SRS is extremely beneficial. What you're talking about isn't the use of SRS, you're talking about the 10 000 sentence method.

Musashi Wrote:I don't even know what this SRS is...

SRS is just a fancy way of saying you use flash cards, and each time you get one right you check yourself on it in an increased amount of time. So if you keep getting the card right it will keep moving the card further and further into the future.

I've always used SRS with cramming for specific stuff that will be tested in my classes. Flash cards got me through college. By the time I graduated I had the system down so pat that I could efficiently memorize about 100 bits of information in about 2 hours.

Now that I'm out of school, I'm only using SRS. It's the only really efficient way to get through all of the material on a test like the JLPT. There's just no way to cram 9000 vocab words.

i go to a tutor once a week and she gives me a topic to write about for 15-20 minutes and then we go over it and chat for an hour. Its way more enjoyable than when Im using an srs.

I view Srs as just another tool in the box for learning.

SRS is a central part of my studies, but I definitely don't rely on it always. I've found that SRS is the absolute most efficient tool to expand vocabulary and memorize kanji, but simple exposure (reading, listening) to real, non-learner material is what strengthens everything else - for me, anyway. I've actually barely added any new cards in the past two or three weeks, and I feel like my Japanese has made a lot of progress since simply because I've ramped up my exposure.

As an example of one of my methods of study sans SRS: I'm playing through some oldskool RPGs lately, and I keep a list in a txt file of common RPG vocabulary I come across (黒魔道士、幻獣、いん石・・・）. Rather than drilling these words in SRS sentences, I simply glance over at my list whenever I come upon these words and can't remember how to read them.
Quick and effective, though how well I'll retain all of these words several months from now remains to be seen. I know for certain that if I slapped all of these into SRS, I'd retain them without any trouble. On the other hand, man, does drilling SRS cards wear on me.

When all is said and done, SRS is simply one of many tools that expedite the process of acquiring a language, and certainly not something I rely on exclusively.
That having been said, I've been planning to make this my SRS catch up day, so I'd best get started...

You know I tried that SRS using that ANKI but gawd sometimes I'd just rather create good ol paper flashcards. It's such a painstakingly slow process creating those damn cards in ANKI, type the kanji in the box, type the hiragana reading, then the meanings (which sometimes can be quite long) not to mention switching from abc to hiragana to katakana, arck! I was using NDS's Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten and it has a really neat feature saving any word and turning it into a mini flashcard. Superfast and handy if you ask me.

Musashi Wrote:You know I tried that SRS using that ANKI but gawd sometimes I'd just rather create good ol paper flashcards. It's such a painstakingly slow process creating those damn cards in ANKI, type the kanji in the box, type the hiragana reading, then the meanings (which sometimes can be quite long) not to mention switching from abc to hiragana to katakana, arck! I was using NDS's Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten and it has a really neat feature saving any word and turning it into a mini flashcard. Superfast and handy if you ask me.

Anki automatically translates kanji into kana. All you have to do to enter a card in Anki is press "Add Fact", copypaste a japanese sentence into the Expression field and press "Add". A LOT faster than creating a paper flashcard. (Paper flashcards are pretty useless anyway, controlling the spacing manually is extremely time-consuming and prone to errors.)

Tobberoth Wrote:

Musashi Wrote:You know I tried that SRS using that ANKI but gawd sometimes I'd just rather create good ol paper flashcards. It's such a painstakingly slow process creating those damn cards in ANKI, type the kanji in the box, type the hiragana reading, then the meanings (which sometimes can be quite long) not to mention switching from abc to hiragana to katakana, arck! I was using NDS's Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten and it has a really neat feature saving any word and turning it into a mini flashcard. Superfast and handy if you ask me.

Anki automatically translates kanji into kana. All you have to do to enter a card in Anki is press "Add Fact", copypaste a japanese sentence into the Expression field and press "Add". A LOT faster than creating a paper flashcard. (Paper flashcards are pretty useless anyway, controlling the spacing manually is extremely time-consuming and prone to errors.)

Yea I read that on the site a while ago only to find that it's not supported on Mac, so still have do enter kana by hand...why!!!

It's supported perfectly fine on Mac, I use Anki on OS X all the time...

Tobberoth Wrote:It's supported perfectly fine on Mac, I use Anki on OS X all the time...

Yea I still have a powerpc based mac... no luck for me...

Musashi Wrote:then the meanings (which sometimes can be quite long)

If you're doing sentences, don't write the meaning along with the sentence. If you're doing single word flashcards(which I would never recommend unless you need to cram for a test), then maybe I could see doing meanings.

The thing about meanings in Japanese is that they're usually pretty easy to remember because of the kanji giving you clues. It's the readings that are the difficult thing to remember, and Anki does that for you.

I just recently switched from iFlash to Anki for my SRS studying because I was really really tired of cards piling up in the SRS after 3 days of heavy study. Anki's very granular control of timed repetition is awesome. I like that cards kind of trickle in throughout the day to be reviewed, and I can review for 5 minutes at a time a bunch of times a day rather than for hours on end like I used to. This actually means I can spend more time studying everyday without it ever feeling like studying, and the spacing of the repetition is much better so that it can spread out the repetition of the new cards across the day rather than have them all become due at once. The SRS algorithm is creepy. It's like this robot that you're really honest with that knows when you're about to forget something. I also love the fact that Anki can do graphs and kanji statistics for my deck.

It's basically a memorization robot. I keep imagining an infomercial for it about setting it and forgetting it because it takes so much pain out of long term studying.