I've been adding about 150 cards a day the past month and I've been doing basically what you're doing, only in somewhat larger blocks. Your post inspired me to try shortening the blocks even further (around 10-20 minutes a session), and it seems to work even better.

For those who are curious, I get about 750 expired cards a day, so if you add cards at such a pace it could definitely overwhelm you if you're not loaded with free time. It's not exactly fun, but I figure at this rate I'll be done going through the JLPT list I'm working through in just a few more weeks and from there I'll be able move on to the fun stuff.

Elphalpo Wrote:I've been adding about 150 cards a day the past month and I've been doing basically what you're doing, only in somewhat larger blocks. Your post inspired me to try shortening the blocks even further (around 10-20 minutes a session), and it seems to work even better.

For those who are curious, I get about 750 expired cards a day, so if you add cards at such a pace it could definitely overwhelm you if you're not loaded with free time. It's not exactly fun, but I figure at this rate I'll be done going through the JLPT list I'm working through in just a few more weeks and from there I'll be able move on to the fun stuff.

Care to elaborate on the what 'JLPT list' you are talking about?

cloudstrife543 Wrote:Care to elaborate on the what 'JLPT list' you are talking about?

It's just a list of vocab from JPLT levels 1-4 I got by doing a Google search. I think it had around 8000 words total. I've been going through it for the past two months or so looking up each word in the Yahoo! Japan dictionary and inputting example sentences into Anki.

Tobberoth Wrote:This is why Anki had timeboxing added. You're not supposed to sit down and do 300 reviews in a row, that's boring and ineffective. You're supposed to review for all you're worth for 10 minutes, then rest. Then take another 10 minutes. If you feel flipping between adding and reviewing is a good idea, do that (remember though, you will have over 1000 reviews a day in a while). Personally, I think it's enough to just add what I want each day, then timebox the reviews. No matter how good your techniques are, you aren't going to have enough time to add 200 sentences each day in the long run anyway.

[My bolding added]- that's the reason the old method is less efficient. Resting instead of changing focus causes you to lose time.

I must respectfully disagree with your final statement though. I do in fact have time to add 200 sentences each day and keep up with the reviews. And a large part of the reason why is the new way I've been SRS'ing. But this thread wasn't really about how much I've added, or how much I can add. It was about rethinking the way you use your SRS to be more efficient.

Also I do timebox btw (read my reply to Elphalpo below).

Elphalpo Wrote:[...] shortening the blocks even further (around 10-20 minutes a session), and it seems to work even better. [...]

This is something I forgot to mention in my first post, but I have Anki set to let me review for a maximum of 2 minutes or 10 cards (whichever comes first). In 2 minutes I typically get through around 10 cards, so I need to repeat this 3 times to get through my 30 card block.

I've set it to 2 minutes because its more effective to "sprint" multiple times than to do a marathon.

blackmacros Wrote:I've set it to 2 minutes because its more effective to "sprint" multiple times than to do a marathon.

Yeah, I might try shortening the blocks even more, and I'll probably start using that Anki feature as well. I was rotating in blocks of 30 minutes to an hour, so to me even 10-20 minutes is pretty short.

The problem with reducing the time of your studying blocks too much is that it takes some time to mentally adjust to a new task, so it seems like at seem point you'll end up wasting more time than you'll save. But I don't think there's really any way to determine what that point is other than by experimentation, and I'm sure it varies from person to person.

Anyway, thanks for the inspiration! Lately I've been stuck at learning 100 words a day, but maybe I can bump that number up using your methods. It seems to help so far, and I'll probably check back in a few to let y'all know the results.

Elphalpo Wrote:Lately I've been stuck at learning 100 words a day, but maybe I can bump that number up using your methods.

If 100 new words a day is "stuck", I'm moving backwards. That's 3000 words a month!

captal Wrote:If 100 new words a day is "stuck", I'm moving backwards. That's 3000 words a month!

Hehe. Well, it might sound like a lot, but I'm a non-working college student who has the summer off, so I have plenty of free time. At this point I probably actively study about 8 hours a day, so considering that I'm not sure 100 words a day is anything to brag about. I'm sure the rest of you could do it if you didn't have pesky things like jobs, families, responsibilities and whatnot.

Elphalpo Wrote:

captal Wrote:If 100 new words a day is "stuck", I'm moving backwards. That's 3000 words a month!

Hehe. Well, it might sound like a lot, but I'm a non-working college student who has the summer off, so I have plenty of free time. At this point I probably actively study about 8 hours a day, so considering that I'm not sure 100 words a day is anything to brag about. I'm sure the rest of you could do it if you didn't have pesky things like jobs, families, responsibilities and whatnot.

Hi 5 for jobless college students! *hi 5*

Let us know how you go using this new method.

I'm an English "teacher" in Japan so I have plenty of downtime, just not enough willpower

I'm doing an informal version of this strategy. I add new cards when I've finished with the cards that were due, but I want to study more. Because I review small batches throughout the day, I get about 20 cards an hour becoming due. So it's not difficult to make it through the morning due cards, add some new stuff, do the afternoon due cards, and then add more new stuff. I'm adding about 90-120 cards a day this way, and am typically making it through 2 or 3 Kanji in Context lessons per day.

Yeah I've been doing 3-minute sprints for a while now, and I've noticed the difference. Almost twice the productivity. But I have noticed that by the 3rd, 4th, or 5th sprint in a row you start to lose those gains. Makes sense to switch gears at that point.

mafried Wrote:Yeah I've been doing 3-minute sprints for a while now, and I've noticed the difference. Almost twice the productivity. But I have noticed that by the 3rd, 4th, or 5th sprint in a row you start to lose those gains. Makes sense to switch gears at that point.

Yep. Thats the other problem with the 'old method'. Even if you make use of timeboxing, after a while, all of the reviews still start to meld together. All of a sudden you're not doing 3 minute sprints anymore; you're sitting down and doing all your reviews. Thats when you start slowing down and have to take a break or- switch gears and start adding cards.

blackmacros Wrote:New Method:
9:30- Wake, review my first 30 cards. Add 15 sentences. Continue repeating this pattern.
12:00- By 12:00 I have finished all reviews as well as added my first 20 kanji
12:00-onwards: Since all old due cards are done, I start reviewing my newly added cards. Then I add 15 more sentences. Then I review 30 of my new cards. And so on.
6:00- By 6:00 I've added 60 kanji. Not only that, but all of my reviews are done and I've reviewed all of the new kanji already.

Summary: 60 new kanji. Reviews are easier.

Maybe I'm repeating myself and I may sound harsh, but this all seems a very silly way to spend one's "free time" in the sentence phase. In my opinion the SRS should occupy no more than 10% of your time, and genuine Japanese input the rest of the time. Doing reviews/adding sentences from 9:30am to 6pm is like spending the whole summer preparing your bags and then not having time for the actual vacation.
That said, if this is so much fun for you to be better than reading a book/manga or watching a movie/drama/anime, then I guess you should probably be doing it...

nac_est Wrote:

blackmacros Wrote:New Method:
9:30- Wake, review my first 30 cards. Add 15 sentences. Continue repeating this pattern.
12:00- By 12:00 I have finished all reviews as well as added my first 20 kanji
12:00-onwards: Since all old due cards are done, I start reviewing my newly added cards. Then I add 15 more sentences. Then I review 30 of my new cards. And so on.
6:00- By 6:00 I've added 60 kanji. Not only that, but all of my reviews are done and I've reviewed all of the new kanji already.

Summary: 60 new kanji. Reviews are easier.

Maybe I'm repeating myself and I may sound harsh, but this all seems a very silly way to spend one's "free time" in the sentence phase. In my opinion the SRS should occupy no more than 10% of your time, and genuine Japanese input the rest of the time. Doing reviews/adding sentences from 9:30am to 6pm is like spending the whole summer preparing your bags and then not having time for the actual vacation.
That said, if this is so much fun for you to be better than reading a book/manga or watching a movie/drama/anime, then I guess you should probably be doing it...

Depends- do you use a dictionary to look up unfamiliar words? Do you add dictionary sentences to your SRS so that you remember those words? Then you're doing the exact same thing I am, except slower (because I don't have to look up anything. KO2001 presents it all for me).

It might seem silly to you, but for me its a logical tradeoff. In 10 days from now I'll have finished KO2001. It will have taken me 3.5 months to do RtK, Tae Kim and KO2001. 3.5 months to learn how to write 2000 kanji, understand fundamental japanese grammar and learn ~3300 vocabulary words and learn readings for most of the Joyo kanji. Reading real stuff is more interesting, definitely. But its not as efficient. I could have started with the real stuff, sure, but I wouldn't have made anywhere near as much progress. Since I knew I could accomplish all of this extremely quickly, I decided I would be better off getting solid foundation first before jumping into the interesting stuff. I mean, its only 3 months of my life right? Its not as if I'm massively delaying my entry into "real Japanese".

EDIT: Btw, don't necessarily assume that just because I'm doing this I'm not watching movies/drama/anime or reading stuff. I am. I'm working my way through Pokemon at the moment, and I recently finished reading along with the Harry Potter (Japanese) audiobook. They're just not my focus right now.

what do you guys intend to do once you complete KO2001 (all 2001 kanji i assume not just the 1st 2 books) and grammar? that's what i am trying to figure out... (even if i still got the rest of this year until i finish out the 常用漢字) KO2001 only covers so many words in the big scope of things, but i think it's biggest advantage would be how familiar you are with the kanji once you complete it... i wonder if SRSing words from a kanji dictionary like the Kodansha one http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4770028...d_i=507846 would be useful? any advice here would be great...

IceCream Wrote:Maybe everyone already does this, but I find this method so incredibly useful in cutting down reviews:

After reading a post by Nukemarine, I downloaded all of the SmartFM sentences into an Anki deck (half reading and half listening cards, e.g. step 1 listening, step 2 reading, etc) [thanks NukeMarine ]

Whenever I hear a new word in something I'm watching, and want to SRS it, I go to my Anki Dictionary deck and search the word or Kanji.

Of the sentences that come up, I tag all the sentences for which I know every word except the new one. If I'm feeling energetic, I then choose one more sentence that has the new word, and one other word I don't know in it - and search the other word, and add all sentences that I know all the words in except that new one.

By doing this, I'm not only getting through all the IKnow vocabulary, at a good pace, it cuts down the reviewing time so massively, since by the time you've read 3 or 4 cards with the same word in different contexts, you know it pretty well. It also lets you see the words with different conjugations, which is helpful to grammar. This method allows you to add far more cards than you would be able to if you had to learn the new vocbulary though 1 card only. The cards end up spread out, so it's not like you end up seeing them in chunks. I also find this helps to not simply memorise the sentence, or remember the word through the position in the sentence.

When I start to get low on sentences in my dictionary deck, I will be able to see which ones I still need to add, rather than having to take time searching for them online. And I'm not restricted to someone else's order, but get to pick my own way through without sentences ever becoming too difficult.

A dictionary deck doesn't have to just be from SmartFm, but can add sentences from all kinds of different sources - subs2SRS, whatever. But once you have one together, the time it takes to search and mark sentences, then import them to your normal deck is also A LOT lower than doing the same thing through IKnow or wherever else online.

I wouldn't say it cuts down review time, though I agree that it can be helpful. Think about it: 4 sentences for just 1 new word = 4 times the amount of reviews compared to one card for each word. Personally I find that having words on several cards help out, but I don't actively add them. Words pop up all the time, important words will become commonplace regardless. That way, I don't get several cards teaching me essentially the same thing, but I do get extra exposure on the important words.

Hashiriya Wrote:what do you guys intend to do once you complete KO2001 (all 2001 kanji i assume not just the 1st 2 books) and grammar? that's what i am trying to figure out... (even if i still got the rest of this year until i finish out the 常用漢字) KO2001 only covers so many words in the big scope of things, but i think it's biggest advantage would be how familiar you are with the kanji once you complete it... i wonder if SRSing words from a kanji dictionary like the Kodansha one http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4770028...d_i=507846 would be useful? any advice here would be great...

Once you're done with KO2001, you should be able to mine from anything, most people on this forum who has completed KO2001 claim they can read formal documents etc.

So if there are 2 or 3 new words in a KO2001 sentence, you unsuspend other cards with one of those words as a new vocab only? I don't think I've reached that level yet. So far almost every card has more than 1 new word =/

Nii87 Wrote:So if there are 2 or 3 new words in a KO2001 sentence, you unsuspend other cards with one of those words as a new vocab only? I don't think I've reached that level yet. So far almost every card has more than 1 new word =/

I'm at kanji 600 now and sentences often have at least 2 (sometimes 3, rarely 4) new words. But what I've found is that my brain has adapted and become a *lot* better at remembering readings and meanings. I used to add extra sentences for words I found difficult, but I never have to do that anymore.

How did you review the cards? Did you make sure you understood everything in that sentence to pass it? Or just the whole Kanji compound of the kanji that was being tested? Or just the onyomi of that kanji in that compound?

I realise this has been asked before, but I'm still curious about how people do things.

Nii87 Wrote:How did you review the cards? Did you make sure you understood everything in that sentence to pass it? Or just the whole Kanji compound of the kanji that was being tested? Or just the onyomi of that kanji in that compound?

I realise this has been asked before, but I'm still curious about how people do things.

Initially (first 150 kanji) I split each sentence into multiple cards. Each card had a different kanji compound highlighted. I tested only on whether I knew the meaning and reading of that compound. I did this because I found it really hard to remember all the new words and readings popping up.

After 150 kanji or so I found that I didn't need to do this anymore. So I changed to my current method of reviewing. I colour any compounds that are new to me, or are the ones actively being studied in that section of KO. If I am at all unsure of the reading or meanings of these compounds its insta-fail. If I screw up somewhere else in the sentence, I mark it as hard (or sometimes fail it). I don't test so much on understanding the meaning of the sentence because I've generally found that I understand 99% of the sentences pretty easily once I've learned the vocabulary. So I rarely fail on that point.

I'm gonna try this. I just can't cut it anymore, a block of reviews in the morning. It sets me back. You'll be my new hero.

You could try timeboxing while spreading new cards throughout your reviews. I think focusing on time is better than micromanaging cards, myself. I posted a couple types of timeboxing here: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=2421

Ah, upon further review, I see that there is some mention of timeboxing already. Very short sprints indeed. I think my brain would melt if I went from breezing through expired cards to adding new cards every couple of minutes. Like going from a sprint to a walk, or downshifting on the interstate. ;p

So, I've been trying out this method over the last two days and so far it has worked great. I've roughly doubled the amount of sentences I add (that is to say, I'm only at the end of my second day, we'll see how it turns out after a week or so). I'm still tweaking the ratio review/new cards to see what's most efficient, currently I review 20 old cards and then add the sentences for 2 or 3 kanji, then review another 20. By the time I'm through with the old ones the new ones I added first sat there for about an hour, enough to start reviewing those. After reviewing the first 20 or so new cards I take down the pace a bit to avoid seeing the other new cards too soon after learning them (watch a drama or read a manga, or sometimes, I have to admit, just an English website). Now that I add a lot more sentences (up from ~40 to ~80), I may have to adjust the ratio as reviews will become more numerous.

The thing I noticed with this method is that I don't necessarily work faster (maybe a slight increase in speed, but this is not what makes this method work for me), but that I just keep on going without burning out. Normally, after having reviewed 80 old cards or so, I wouldn't feel like adding new ones right away and procrastinate further SRSing. This way when I finished my reviews I would already have added the majority of the sentences I want to add that day, and later just keep reviewing small junk of due cards that accumulate over time and add some more sentences throughout the day.

Is this similar to your experience Blackmacros?

I'll post again later to keep you up on how this turns out to be for me in the long run (a week? ;p).

Hinode Wrote:The thing I noticed with this method is that I don't necessarily work faster (maybe a slight increase in speed, but this is not what makes this method work for me), but that I just keep on going without burning out. Normally, after having reviewed 80 old cards or so, I wouldn't feel like adding new ones right away and procrastinate further SRSing. This way when I finished my reviews I would already have added the majority of the sentences I want to add that day, and later just keep reviewing small junk of due cards that accumulate over time and add some more sentences throughout the day.

Is this similar to your experience Blackmacros?

I'll post again later to keep you up on how this turns out to be for me in the long run (a week? ;p).

Yep this is exactly how it worked for me! Glad to hear you've had some success with it!

IceCream Wrote:Blackmacros: Wow. 3 months. I really admire your dedication to study! i've had 2.5 months so far, all day every day, and haven't achieved anything like that!! How do you cram all that information into your brain, literally?? When i try that, seems like the new things im shoving in are shoving old stuff out the sides...

did you do RTK, Tae Kim, and KO2001 consecutively or at the same time, time boxing? With the KO2001 sentences, are you typing them out as an answer, or just reading outloud?

I've got tons of questions for you:
How much do you find you remember in other contexts? For instance, now you finished Tae Kim, do you ever still need to look up grammar points? If you watch a TV show or listen to the radio in Japanese, how much of it can you understand? Is the Kanji from RTK connected to the Kanji from KO2001 (so when you think the Japanese word you could write the Kanji now)?

Seriously, amazing!

I did RtK first. Then I did Tae Kim up to and including Conditionals. I then started KO2001 and am now at 650, and 9 days from finishing. After this I will finish the rest of Tae Kim (I've given myself between 2 and 3 days) for a total of 3.5 months total time.

I'm just doing recognition cards so far- no production. I read the sentence with kanji and try to recall the readings and meanings. Then the answer side of the card has all kana sentence, as well as the sentence audio which I shadow.

I haven't actually delved too deep into other contexts yet. My plan was to finish *all* of the textbook type stuff as quickly as possible and then diving into the fun stuff. I read Harry Potter in japanese, but that was at the start of KO2001. I am starting to understand fragments, and sometimes whole sentences, from Pokemon (which I have on the background every day).

Since I haven't done production (kana-->kanji) there isn't yet a strong link between Japanese and Kanji. I can often remember the word and its pronunciation but couldn't write the kanji. I'm not worried about this because I think its something that will happen with time (I can already go from kana-->kanji for very often used words, despite not doing production for example). I may start doing production sentences if this starts bothering me though.

EDIT: Once I've finished KO2001 I'll make another post or thread to describe in more detail what, and how, I've managed to get so much done.