yay! =)

blackmacros Wrote:

Shingo Wrote:Blackmacros: What are you going to do when university/college starts again and you have hundreds of reviews each day, surely you will have to cut down what you actively study?

I've already started Uni again. I only have 15 contact hours a week. Keeping up with reviews, as sup3rbon suggests, is really not all that difficult. I have around 500 reviews each day.

Interesting this thread was resurrected - because contrary to the above post, we now know that blackmacros couldn't keep up with his massive review load, and he gave up studying Japanese altogether.

Lesson from this - slow down people!!

Yeh doing RtK or KO2001 in weeks may seem an impressive feat, but it's what comes after that counts..can you keep up with the high pace you have set yourself?

aphasiac Wrote:Interesting this thread was resurrected - because contrary to the posts at the top of this page, it soon became clear that blackmacros couldn't keep up with his massive review load, and he gave up Japanese altogether.

Lesson from this - slow down people!!

Yeh doing RtK or KO2001 in weeks may seem an impressive feat, but it's what comes after that counts..can you keep up with the high pace you have set yourself?

Where does it say this happened?

aphasiac Wrote:Interesting this thread was resurrected - because contrary to the posts at the top of this page, it soon became clear that blackmacros couldn't keep up with his massive review load, and he gave up Japanese altogether.

Lesson from this - slow down people!!

Yeh doing RtK or KO2001 in weeks may seem an impressive feat, but it's what comes after that counts..can you keep up with the high pace you have set yourself?

This I have to agree on. I nearly died when I did so much reps(not literally of course but it will took so long). Cut back/take it slow people! Don't add much daily and you won't too much reviews to do.

KMDES Wrote:Where does it say this happened?

If I recall correctly, Blackmacros was going to take JLPT1 in Dec 2009, then vanished from the forum. Then he came back for about a month last summer, saying he hadn't taken it and had given up studying, as it was too much work.

When I joined forum was full of power-learners trying to learn x cards in shortest amount of time possible, it was utterly ridiculous; oh the fun of threads like this:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=3173

Yeah, of course pretty much all power learning involves mostly declaritve memory which unfortunatly doesn't help much with sentences as sentences usually built using a formula in a person's head that they feel is right. You learn sentence structure more from doing and correctly than from memorizing.

And I can see how it'd be too much work using Anki. Anki just plows you with reviews. I quit using Anki for a long time because every day I'd have 800+ reviews (just wth RTK1), if I pressed 4 and it said '1.8 months' then sure enough I would see that card again in 2-3 days. If I were adding 200 cards a day I imagine days with 5000+ reviews per day the way Anki works. These days I have to control when Anki gives me my reviews lest I want to spend all day reviewing cards like 'sun' or 'one' which I have seen a bajillion times and gave it 'easy' a bajillion times on top of that.

There is probably ways you could power learn if given the freedom of time to do it, but JPLT 1 in 3 months sounds like something someone would go insane doing from scratch.

^You'd give it a rating of 1.8 months but it still shows up in the next few days? Don't really get it, but then you edited the interval settings you say?

@KMDES　
Why not just suspend the easier cards?

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:^You'd give it a rating of 1.8 months but it still shows up in the next few days? Don't really get it, but then you edited the interval settings you say?

I tried setting the intervals higher hoping that they would cause the intervals to be longer, instead usually getting no chage or some cases, making the cards more frequent. One time I set the interval at double and Anki decided to start setting the cards at 30 seconds for hard and 8 minutes for easy. To this day I have not found a setting that makes Anki work properly on any deck.

As for suspending, there's no way for me to remember when to unsuspend it when it comes time to actually review the card 2 weeks or more later. That's supposed to be Anki's job.

If they are really easy cards then I think you can just delete them.

If you read and immerse yourself anyway, you will remember them anyway and so there is no reason to keep them in anki imo

jettyke Wrote:If they are really easy cards then I think you can just delete them.

If you read and immerse yourself anyway, you will remember them anyway and so there is no reason to keep them in anki imo

I have a friend who says add them anyway, because you'll get a high interval quickly. Thinking about it, if I have a 86.4% young card retention rate, MOST cards are easy (i.e. requiring few fails). I've also read a post by a polyglot on how-to-learn-any-language that say SRS is only useful for those words that are uncommon enough you don't see them everyday(I guess through immersion?), but it's still expected that everyone knows them.

Are there any sources on SRS that talk about adding content that's "too" easy (maybe not just language material)? I would be interested .

Also, I did kore (core 6000) adding 100 a day for a 44 day period and almost burned out with my reps peaking at 840ish. It's definitely do-able, but I would only do it in short bursts (44 days might have been too long -_-).

-Jesse

jesse Wrote:It's definitely do-able, but I would only do it in short bursts (44 days might have been too long -_-).

-Jesse

That's what I do, I take about 3 days in a row and learn about 500-800 new words and review them and then learn the next potion weeks later.

But I take my time...it is already taking much longer for me as compared to your 44 days.

I did 100 cards a day for a bit. It really didn't work for me. There was a reasonable level of retention, but the reviews were too much after awhile.

I think Khatz talks about managing reviews and I know Ta12121 (as well as a few others I see) has said it also. The goal really is to control your adding. This was something that I learned the hard way and probably most people with a large amount of experience with SRS also come to realize. Basically, the spacing will handle itself and your reviews will become much, much smaller if given time to do so, but if you keep adding at a rate that increases your reviews beyond what you can handle then you're in for a world of hurt.

# This is addressed to the newbie community that might read this in the future. Most of us here have been around the bush a few times and have our own personal methods, so my points are pointless for those in the know.

Wow I'm glad I found this thread. I did 250 new cards from 'Kanji in Context' yesterday and 150 today. I don't know how KiC compares to other books and decks, but my body is ready to explode. I'd say on average each sentence contains 2-3 new words for me, so perhaps 800 new words in 2 days...I foresee many failed cards in my future. Not only that, Anki reviews pretty much sucked up my whole weekend (it was nice weather outside too...).

Although it's probably been said before in the thread, like others before me I'm trying to cram as much into my brain before the JLPT test; I will take N1 in July. It's a crazy conundrum to be in; I've paid for the test and bought study materials, so I feel if I don't study hard I'll have wasted time and money. But overdoing it is also an easy way lose motivation.

2 months, eh? Cut off the fat, my friend, and eat your meat lean. Find your core cards that you know again and build up slowly. Focus what's left down to what's important and learn that first then rip in the remains if you have time. Better to know your cards well than not at all. (Also, cut out the preparation time, if you can. The more prep, the less work done.)

Cranks Wrote:I did 100 cards a day for a bit. It really didn't work for me. There was a reasonable level of retention, but the reviews were too much after awhile.

I think Khatz talks about managing reviews and I know Ta12121 (as well as a few others I see) has said it also. The goal really is to control your adding. This was something that I learned the hard way and probably most people with a large amount of experience with SRS also come to realize. Basically, the spacing will handle itself and your reviews will become much, much smaller if given time to do so, but if you keep adding at a rate that increases your reviews beyond what you can handle then you're in for a world of hurt.

# This is addressed to the newbie community that might read this in the future. Most of us here have been around the bush a few times and have our own personal methods, so my points are pointless for those in the know.

If I could have gone back to give myself some advice about how to study this is what I would have written. This entire post is spot on. SRS is not some sort of game where your score is dictated by how many new cards you can add every day. It's a way to efficiently learn new material.

Here's my regimen that I do.

I review ~200 flashcards a day. On days where there are only like ~170 then I add another whole lesson from KiC into Anki, and then those new cards are mixed in with the old ones as I review. According to my graphs in Anki I pretty much only SRS for like an hour every day. I've managed to finish 50 lessons from KiC in like 10 weeks. So like 5 new lessons every week without even pushing myself very hard.

It's just so easy, and if I get sick and can't review for a day then it's alright. Things don't skyrocket. I just make sure to do my ~200 every day, and things get back under control after 1-2 days.

SRS is not for cramming. It's for long term retention, and using it to cram in x months or x number of days just won't ever work. I know it doesn't work because I did it for like 2 months back when I was trying to bootstrap myself out of beginner level, and then things just exploded. I did get better at Japanese by doing it, but what would have been a lot better for my long term language development would have been moderation. For all the trouble it was to study like that the results just weren't worth it.

Sorry to bring this thread back from the dead but it's gotten me thinking about how I changed my srs pace so much during these 2 years. I started out wanting to be a hare and eventually discovered being a slug was the way to go. I don't mean do no srs work at all but rather maintaining it for the long-run. I noticed that if one simply maintains a certain quota(amount) of additions and review time. You could drastically increase your learning in a few months and reduce how much you study by a huge percentage.

We all want to learn a lot a day(like adding 100 new cards per day) but the fact of the matter is, it's not about adding a lot but a steady amount.

My current amount of srs cards per day is as follows.
My sentence deck I add an average of 50 per day(it may seem like a big number but let me break it down into categories). 1 category is sentences(add 20 cards there) and the next is production(add 20 there) and add 10 monolingual/MCD type cards.

My vocabulary deck is the same, I add 50 new cards. 10 per category (I have 2 name category, 1 vocab category, 1 idiom category, 1 kana words category).

I used to go nuts and add at times, 200+ cards per day and average a review of over 1500+. The maximum amount of cards I've ever done daily was about 4000-5000. I know, this is insane. That's why I cut back on my srs amounts and only review an average of 45mins to 1:30hr per day

P.S. does anyone know of a motivation thread on this forum? I remember people listing it but I can't find it.

This song right here motivates me big time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkPF5UiDi4g

ta12121 Wrote:Sorry to bring this thread back from the dead but it's gotten me thinking about how I changed my srs pace so much during these 2 years. I started out wanting to be a hare and eventually discovered being a slug was the way to go. I don't mean do no srs work at all but rather maintaining it for the long-run. I noticed that if one simply maintains a certain quota(amount) of additions and review time. You could drastically increase your learning in a few months and reduce how much you study by a huge percentage.

We all want to learn a lot a day(like adding 100 new cards per day) but the fact of the matter is, it's not about adding a lot but a steady amount.

You are so right! It is easy to add mass amounts of cards. I only do it with KO2001. For everything else I pick and choose the material that goes into the SRS for maintaining. Whenever I read a website or a .pdf in my browser, I mark the unknown words with Wired-Markeror my pdf-reader. For my books or other content, I keep a word list and mark the pages with post-it notes. Every weekend I re-read all the material that came together during the week. If I can remember everything, the website will be marked all green, and goes into my repository. In case I forgot how to read a word, or I can't understand a sentence, both go into the SRS for later review. And a week later, I will again read whatever it was, and see if I can read and understand it in full.

What is also important is that I only mark words, not full sentences, even if I can read and understand them. With only the words highlighted, I notice sentence patterns, and get a good idea of how particles are used.

When I review, I do it in timeboxing sessions, with a 1 minute limit. This way I get my reviews done in no time. And my recognition and reading speed has improved. So reviewing full sentences as well as vocabulary cards takes mere seconds. Recognition and reading the sentence out loud only right now. 540 cards in 1h 20m is no more problem at all. I wish I could say that for adding, but that is a different story.

I can conclude that by doing all this, both my SRS workflow, as well as efficiency has increased. And I also have more time to spend outside the SRS.

Nagareboshi Wrote:When I review, I do it in timeboxing sessions, with a 1 minute limit.

How does that work out? Do you rush for 1 minute, take a short break and then rush again? I'd be afraid to browse the whole net each break?

shaggadelyc Wrote:

Nagareboshi Wrote:When I review, I do it in timeboxing sessions, with a 1 minute limit.

How does that work out? Do you rush for 1 minute, take a short break and then rush again? I'd be afraid to browse the whole net each break?

I don't rush anything even though this very low time limit suggest it. I simply became used to the speed that is needed to review a certain amount of cards within that limit. My recognition improved, and by having a low time limit, I also had to start to think and retrieve the information faster. Also my speaking and reading speed has increased.

Before I started this, I had a time limit of 10 minutes. I had all the time in the world to think about the answers and I was generally very slow. Then I started to decrease the number of minutes little by little in each timebox session. 10, 9, 8, ... 2, 1 and started to increase it after reaching 1. Then I fixed the number to 2 and did consecutive sessions to get most of the cards out of the way, before I started adding new cards.

Then I noticed how much more I got done in only two minutes. 35 cards were hardly a problem in the later stages with this time limit. Then I reduced it to one minute about 2 weeks ago. And was able to improve once more after getting used to this limit. I will even go further in my next step, and lower the number to 50 seconds and then 45 seconds.

I also take breaks between my review sessions. But the first 200 to 280 cards I review in consecutive sessions, with maybe some little breaks in between, and I get them done in ~35 minutes at max. While I am adding, I also do reviews, and when I call it a day, I spread out the rest of my reviews. I also have set my Anki to review when cards are due. So I almost always have 36 to 40 cards for review after 2 hours once the big chunk is out of the way.

It works great for me, and even though I am adding 150 to 200 cards per day, I never get overwhelmed by the numbers of reviews.

ta12121 Wrote:P.S. does anyone know of a motivation thread on this forum? I remember people listing it but I can't find it.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7542

The better you get at using the srs, the less time it takes to do it. It leaves a lot more time for immersion and more learning. What I love about the SRS is, if you used right, you will remember most of the vocab words and understand kanji well(long-term wise).

I also believe you need some sort of drive(motivation) or anything that pumps you up and gets you running. It really is necessary (otherwise bordem or demotivation comes in)

jettyke Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:P.S. does anyone know of a motivation thread on this forum? I remember people listing it but I can't find it.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7542

Thanks for the link.

I think this post is really useful for those of us on a burst for a short period of time.

Hey guys.
I have a question regarding doing reviews ofc.
Do you listen to the audio of the sentence of every card you do reviews of in Core? I've always been listening  to them and that habit might have been what was tremendously slowing me down. I just came to conclusion that it may be the most productive to listen to it/ read the sentence while in learning phase or card has been failed, while I have 200 cards to review it might be wasting time.