yudantaiteki Wrote:

Matthew Wrote:Can someone please point me to an example of a person who learned the ~2500 kanji and ~15,000 vocabulary words required to be fluent "naturally"?

There are plenty of people, as I said, who have become "fluent" without making extensive use of flash cards or SRS. 2500 kanji is a pretty high number that sets the bar for proficiency higher than most native speakers, and I'm not sure many people can reach that point without a lot of intense studying, but you can learn quite a lot through reading without using flash cards to review.

2500 is still less than a typical native speaker. There is the ~200 to be added to joyo kanji in a few months that they all already know, another 200-300 commonly used in names, and probably most people know at least a few hundred more that don't fall in either of those categories. The average for native is probably at least 3,000 -- it's pretty doubtful that Japanese would have problems reading even RtK3 kanji.

IceCream Wrote:ok... i made a big post before in the other thread, but ended up deleting it because i hadn't really finished thinking on it yet, and didn't really answer what mafried was talking about properly. But now i have. So, here goes:

* There are definately certain situations and people that i think srs wouldn't be better for. If you really hate computers, you might be one of them. If you're already fluent or near fluent, you're another.

* i think some people are getting sick of srs because of the method they're using, then blaming it on the program. The program is a program. Its YOUR tool. It doesn't own you. Whatever you want to do with it, you can do! Don't want to review cards past 2 days? Delete them then. Reviewing too often? Change the intervals, or change to mnemosyne, which lets you choose which rate of memory retention you want.

* Finding it boring? Don't enter boring stuff into it! Nobody's forcing you to enter every single thing you come across or download textbooks. Get bored of a card? Delete it, change it's model, do what you want to do with it. I LOVE reviewing my sentence deck. Because, i don't enter sentences in it just because i don't know a word, or when i do, it gets deleted within a week or so when im bored with it. They're all sentences i want to know.

There's 2 things to discuss here:
1. Quantitive problems
2. Qualitative problems

1. Quantitative:
this kind of bores me, so i'l make it short.
* if you want to shove a load of information into your head, and keeping it there, anki's the best way i know of doing it. In the last 14 days, i've entered over 3.5k vocab words. The system works.
* if you go on the mnemosyne website, you'll find the memory curves for srs vs. reading. long term memory retention for reading is something like 25%, i can't remember perfectly. Anyway, someone else can talk about the maths.

2. Qualitative
ok, so now we can get to the interesting bit. What qualitative features can put anki better than just reading?

Lets look at the argument that the things you end up entering in anki are not the things you need, and if you did need them, you'd come across them in reading anyway.

1. Applied to vocabulary:
To some extent, i agree. There are a few things in the world im just not interested in. Business happens to be one of them. I couldn't care less what the word for corporation tax or importing or closing or reconcilliation are in japanese. If i have an off day and enter them by accident into my sentence deck, i'm probably going to delete them within a few days. It's not like i'm putting a block on my learning them, you know, if they happen to sink in thats fine. But i'm not going out of my way to learn it.
Because, there are about a billion things in the world that i AM interested in. The world's a pretty interesting place really. And, with so many interesting things, its inevitable that quite a long time is gonna elapse before i get round to reading or hearing about some of them again, even in english, which i can speed read. 5000 words just doesn't cut it really.
So, i think the argument that they're not important is a little bit illogical. Its how important the concepts are to you in a qualitative way that should determine whether you want to remember, and not how often you come across them.

2. Applied to sentences:
The exact same thing. Why are you entering boring sentences to begin with? There is no "should" learn them. If they are qualitatively nice, and you want to remember them, enter them. Once they start being boring delete them.

From a personal perspective, i know that the sentences i've entered are the ones i feel closest to. By spending the time picking them, entering them in the srs, and reviewing them for a few months, they have become more my own. I can use parts of these sentences now, change things up, etc. These are the phrases that echo round my head when im walking somewhere, or doing something else non-mental. I can say them too. Don't let anyone tell you what you input isn't important.

I also think that the qualitative features of the sentences change over time. The sound on my cards takes quite a long time to sink in. Something that seemed unbeleivably fast a few months ago, well, now i can hear what's being said. You can't review that on a piece of paper. By repeating audio, you listen to how its said, the tone and pitch, and the context comes back on each review. On each review, i find my understanding is a little deeper. This is something you can't get from watching a program in real time, or even putting an audio rip on your ipod on repeat. You don't get to analyse a short snap of something, because time just keeps on rollin.

By consciously reviewing the sentences, i get to see patterns emerge a lot easier when im watching real stuff. It's kind of like, you don't hear it till you hear it. And once you've srs'ed it, you can pick up the same grammar patterns, ways of speaking, etc, in other people's speech.

I'm lucky at the moment... i have all the time in the world, so i get to see both the srs and the natural input way in action. It's true, you do pick up words and phrases from natural input too, of course. But, in terms of being consciously aware of what your input is, being able to break it down and analyse it, and let it sink in gradually without forgetting, the way the srs lets me, are things i wouldn't give up without a reallllllly good reason. With srsing, i know i recognise far more patterns and words than i do when im just reading a lot or watching a lot.

Finally, in order to be able to make a language your own, a big variety of stuff is important. But consciously thinking about it and considering the way YOU want to express things is even more important. Basically, to be interesting, or funny, in any language, you do have to think about it. It doesn't just happen, for most people. By picking your sentences for your srs, you get to do this. So, treat it carefully!

Of course, if you are careful, and great, you can consciously think about things without the help of an srs. If i had different circumstances, i might change my opinion. But i definately agree with woodwojr here, a good tool is a good tool. Don't try to use a teaspoon like a hammer, and don't get scared of how powerful your powerdrill is.

Interesting. Thank you very much for your thoughtful post

The boredom that I have doesn't have to much to do with the specific sentences; I generally only have/keep sentences that I like, and I'm all over the deletion thing. It's the overall boredom of the process of SRSing everyday.

Matthew Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:

Matthew Wrote:Can someone please point me to an example of a person who learned the ~2500 kanji and ~15,000 vocabulary words required to be fluent "naturally"?

There are plenty of people, as I said, who have become "fluent" without making extensive use of flash cards or SRS. 2500 kanji is a pretty high number that sets the bar for proficiency higher than most native speakers, and I'm not sure many people can reach that point without a lot of intense studying, but you can learn quite a lot through reading without using flash cards to review.

2500 is still less than a typical native speaker. There is the ~200 to be added to joyo kanji in a few months that they all already know, another 200-300 commonly used in names, and probably most people know at least a few hundred more that don't fall in either of those categories. The average for native is probably at least 3,000 -- it's pretty doubtful that Japanese would have problems reading even RtK3 kanji.

Why do you think the "typical" Japanese person would know 3000 characters? (It depends on what you mean by "know", of course.)

Native speakers don't need to know as many kanji because they can pick up on the meaning of words (and even the exact word) from context even if they aren't sure about the kanji itself. Native speakers generally don't study kanji after high school, and like the US many Japanese don't read all that often. If you're talking about seeing a character out of context and giving a reading and meaning, I think it would be extraordinary if a typical native speaker even knew 1500 characters, much less 3000. They may have a better command than this in an actual reading passage, but maybe not. Jim Breen once posted that "[Japanese] Educationalists I have discussed this with have suggested that the 'average Japanese' probably has working knowledge of well less than 1000 kanji." However, it's hard to get any clear evidence on this because Japan, like most developed countries, does not do literacy studies.

One thing you have to remember is that a group of people like the posters on this board is a pretty select group. We tend to be a little more interested (obsessed?) with kanji than the average Japanese person. For the typical Japanese person, as long as they can live their daily life, they probably aren't too concerned with the exact number of kanji they know -- due to many years of experience they've probably developed a skill for dealing with characters they don't know by reading around them, and most native speakers aren't really going to be on the lookout for kanji they don't know so they can study them later.

I think we always have to be wary of focusing upon one single method as the Right way for everybody. Beginners at swimming will spend a lot of time just learning to float, playing around in the water, using things like kickboards for support so they can focus on just one thing at a time. Kids who have mastered that can start learning the different kinds of strokes, how to coordinate kicking and breathing and moving their arms when doing front stroke or back stroke or the butterfly. Then you can put in hours building muscle and stamina, and muscle memory, and focusing on little ergonomic improvements and techniques to make movements more efficient.

We would never say that everyone who is learning how to swim should be doing the exact same things. We wouldn't say that everyone who is learning how to play the piano should be doing the exact same things. (Beginners have to spend a lot of time on note recognition and coordinating left hand and right hand.) So I think we need to recognize that, whatever process works best for you, it's not necessarily going to work best for somebody else. And it's not necessarily going to work best for you next year and the year after that.

I like SRS as a way of patching some of the holes in my knowledge, because there really are some things that I need to know but don't naturally see QUITE enough to absorb them just from reading. And I'm starting to get a kick out of seeing some of my SRS words pop up when I'm reading for pleasure! But that's just me. I think the time I spent doing nothing but reading was also very important for me, and the time I spent reading textbooks was very important for me, and the time I spent endlessly copying out kanji in high school... was very relaxing but not necessarily educational. Oh well.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

Matthew Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:There are plenty of people, as I said, who have become "fluent" without making extensive use of flash cards or SRS. 2500 kanji is a pretty high number that sets the bar for proficiency higher than most native speakers, and I'm not sure many people can reach that point without a lot of intense studying, but you can learn quite a lot through reading without using flash cards to review.

2500 is still less than a typical native speaker. There is the ~200 to be added to joyo kanji in a few months that they all already know, another 200-300 commonly used in names, and probably most people know at least a few hundred more that don't fall in either of those categories. The average for native is probably at least 3,000 -- it's pretty doubtful that Japanese would have problems reading even RtK3 kanji.

Why do you think the "typical" Japanese person would know 3000 characters? (It depends on what you mean by "know", of course.)

Native speakers don't need to know as many kanji because they can pick up on the meaning of words (and even the exact word) from context even if they aren't sure about the kanji itself. Native speakers generally don't study kanji after high school, and like the US many Japanese don't read all that often. If you're talking about seeing a character out of context and giving a reading and meaning, I think it would be extraordinary if a typical native speaker even knew 1500 characters, much less 3000. They may have a better command than this in an actual reading passage, but maybe not. Jim Breen once posted that "[Japanese] Educationalists I have discussed this with have suggested that the 'average Japanese' probably has working knowledge of well less than 1000 kanji." However, it's hard to get any clear evidence on this because Japan, like most developed countries, does not do literacy studies.

One thing you have to remember is that a group of people like the posters on this board is a pretty select group. We tend to be a little more interested (obsessed?) with kanji than the average Japanese person. For the typical Japanese person, as long as they can live their daily life, they probably aren't too concerned with the exact number of kanji they know -- due to many years of experience they've probably developed a skill for dealing with characters they don't know by reading around them, and most native speakers aren't really going to be on the lookout for kanji they don't know so they can study them later.

Any time I have ever tried to quiz Japanese people on some kanji, or shown them something that foreigners might consider "difficult", they have blown through it like it was nothing, and found it completely unthinkable that any Japanese would have any difficulty with such easy material, even if they had been out of Japan for years and didn't use Japanese every day. This is even with rare kanji outside of even the new joyo or obscure name characters. The idea that any native speaker would only know 1000 kanji is beyond absurd.

I think the root of this erroneous way of thinking is likely just Westerners' tendency to overestimate their own Japanese ability, eg "My Japanese is REAL GOOD, so if something seems hard to me, the only possible conclusion is that is too obscure, even for Japanese people." I think that anyone who spends enough time on the road to learning Japanese will eventually realize even level 1 of the JLPT is still just pretty basic stuff.

Matthew Wrote:The idea that any native speaker would only know 1000 kanji is beyond absurd.

Are you just talking about highly educated native speakers, or all native speakers? There's no reason to believe that Japan's education system is light years ahead of the US's. Highly educated native speakers probably know more than 1000, but I don't know why you think that the average schlub that doesn't read very often and hasn't studied kanji in decades would know huge amounts. Of course the average native speaker is probably not a good target for your own studies.

Contrary to your experiences, I've seen native Japanese working on a PhD (in Japanese studies) have trouble with kanji, even ones on the Jouyou list.

Quote:I think the root of this erroneous way of thinking is likely just Westerners' tendency to overestimate their own Japanese ability, eg "My Japanese is REAL GOOD, so if something seems hard to me, the only possible conclusion is that is too obscure, even for Japanese people." I think that anyone who spends enough time on the road to learning Japanese will eventually realize even level 1 of the JLPT is still just pretty basic stuff.

Rather it stems from the eventual realization that you don't actually need an excessive amount of kanji to do quite a lot with the language as long as your vocab and grammar is good.

Not if you know the right 1000 kanji. If the 1000 kanji you have a good knowledge of are the most common ones, and you have a native-speaker level understanding of grammar and vocab, you can understand a lot, even things that contain kanji you don't technically know.

But I probably shouldn't have brought that up because what Jim Breen was referring to was the average Japanese. Not the average college-educated Japanese or the average Japanese who reads a lot, but the average Japanese person -- this isn't particularly relevant to a foreigner wanting to study Japanese to read a lot of Japanese stuff. Plus I don't have access to his information first-hand so I can't really argue it well.

The main thing I wanted to emphasize is that you don't need to know anywhere near 2500 kanji to read Japanese well. (Although once again it's hard to say what it means to "know" a kanji...)

IceCream Wrote:The 3505 seen cards in this deck contain:
1003 total unique kanji.
Old Jouyou: 987 of 1945 (50.7%).
New Jouyou: 11 of 191 (5.8%).
Jinmeiyou (reg): 3 of 645 (0.5%).
Jinmeiyou (var): 0 of 145 (0.0%).
2 non-jouyou kanji.

Smartfm Core6k, going through in grade order.
Saying Japanese people have a reading vocab of only 1000 kanji is like assuming their reading vocab is somewhere around 3500 words multiplied by different variations. That's grade 4 level.

I wouldn't say so. My vocabulary is probably around 8000 words (based on a vocabulary estimator quiz I found somewhere; you're supposed to know 10,000 words to pass JLPT 1, so that can't be too far off) and yesterday, when I was paging through some Kanji Kentei practice books, I found that I could reliably identify the meanings and readings of kanji compounds up to level 5 (which covers up to grade 5 or 6 level kanji, I think?)
So I would say my reading vocabulary is about 1000 kanji.

But add to that kanji that I can't necessarily recognize in isolation, but can guess in the context of a compound, and I can add a lot of vocabulary. Or words that aren't usually written out in kanji, or that are often written with furigana even in books that aren't for children. 抽象-- if I see 抽　by itself, I don't know how to pronounce it, I have no idea what it means. But I know 抽象. I know 微妙 and 象徴 if I'm reading them, but I hardly had any idea that 微 and 徴 aren't the same kanji.

In English, too, I don't get stymied if I see "obstreperous" or "salubrious" when I'm reading, but if you ask me for a definition? No way.

For a specific example of what I mean, here's the first two sentences of today's featured article on Wikipedia JP, on turn signals:
方向指示器（ほうこうしじき）とは、自動車、オートバイ等に付ける保安部品で、右左折や進路変更の際に、その方向を周囲に示すための装置である。方向を灯火の点滅で示すことから、日本では通常、ウインカー（英語: winker“まばたきするもの”）と言うが、現在英語圏において winker と言うことは稀である。

If we imagine a hypothetical native speaker who only knows the 1006 kyouiku kanji, there are 4 kanji in these sentences they would not know -- 更, 滅, 圏, and 稀. (稀 is also not on the Jouyou list). However, a native speaker would definitely know the words 変更 and 点滅 orally, and given the context and knowledge of one kanji of the compound, they would figure out the word. Note that the native speaker might not even realize that they don't technically "know" the other kanji and thus wouldn't think to stick those on their SRS for later. 圏 would be a bit more problematic but even if you drop 圏 the meaning is still clear. 稀 would be hard to figure out, but the general purport of the sentence would still be clear -- in English, if you read "Although in Japanese they're called 'winkers', nowadays in the English-speaking world, such usage is..." you could tell that the missing word is going to be something like "no longer common" or "obsolete" or the like.

Of course it's better if you know all the kanji, and as a foreigner you can't count as much on that guessing, but it's a mistake to think that if there's a kanji you don't know in a passage, that will just be a big black hole.

Bringing this back to the main purpose of the topic, I think that if you don't like SRS or find it boring, it's not strictly necessary to use it if you are an advanced enough level to be reading native speaker materials. I think it's a mistake to get into a set mindset that you must have X kanji to read and that you're going to have to keep using SRS even if you don't like it until you reach that point.

Boys boys, no need to get feisty, you やんちゃ坊主。Everyone should use the method they themselves enjoy. We can sort out who's right after one of you achieves fluency

sethg Wrote:Boys boys, no need to get feisty, you やんちゃ坊主。Everyone should use the method they themselves enjoy. We can sort out who's right after one of you achieves fluency

What's fluency?

IceCream Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:

sethg Wrote:Boys boys, no need to get feisty, you やんちゃ坊主。Everyone should use the method they themselves enjoy. We can sort out who's right after one of you achieves fluency

What's fluency?

haha you beat me to it!

無理　臭い　普通　貧乏　冗談　味噌汁　奥さん　香水　取り替える　中途　彼　恋　相撲　寝る　奴　案内　一番

how does your hypothetic reader do on this list?

I just use JWPce to highlight which kanji aren't on the Kyouiku list; the hypothetical reader would do pretty bad on that out of context list -- only 無理, 一番, and 案内 are made up completely of Kyouiku kanji. In context I have a feeling he'd do a lot better since all of those are very common words.

(The 1000 most common newspaper kanji does a lot better with that list, in addition to the three listed before, this person would also know 奥さん,　香水,　取り替える,　中途,　彼, and 普通.)

It's not a matter of boredom, or study habits, or time constraints, or whatever. If that were the case I would never have said anything (here or in or the other thread). My beef isn't with SRS being boring, it's that it is just the wrong tool for the job. It's like trying to hit in a screw with a hammer... the idea is on the right track at least (and with enough force you can get the job done), but it really can be done more effectively in other ways.

For people at an advanced level, SRS is exactly the right tool. When studying vocabulary for the GRE, I used an SRS. When studying for classes during my final year at college, I used an SRS. In both cases I would certainly do so again. If, after having achieved basic, intermediate-advanced level fluency in Japanese I had an interest in keeping track of and remembering rare vocabulary, grammar, or idioms, (I don't, BTW, as it doesn't interest me, but if I did) I would use an SRS.

But for the journey from total newb to literate, intermediate-advanced speaker of Japanese (the average-native level that everyone seems to be debating about), I see no value in the use of an SRS over other readably accessible methods. My simple, low tech, and lower maintenance solution of a pencil and paper journal would work, for example, although many other options exist as well. My reasons are somewhat technical, and posted in the other thread, but to date no one's really addressed these issues directly and instead has focused on my own time limits, psychology, and personal study habits... which is entirely missing the point.

Oh well.

EDIT: SRS does have one place in learning Japanese, and that's RTK. This website at least got it right. But as I explain in the other thread, I advocate stopping reviews as soon as you finish RTK1.

mafried Wrote:For people like yudantaiteki, SRS is exactly the right tool.

(EDIT: This was an accidental misquote but I'll leave this post here)
Why is that? I've never used SRS in my life and I don't plan to. I did exactly what you talked about in the other thread -- I used to write down vocab and kanji I didn't know on a piece of paper but I never really studied it afterwards (maybe I glanced at the list). I still do this occasionally, but only rarely. I completely agree with what you said in the other thread, that once you reach a certain level you can maintain and improve your ability purely by reading, without having to study, and that there's not that much use in using the SRS for all kinds of rare stuff on the possibility that you might see it some day. I can read what I need to read for my daily life, and although I would like to pass kanken 2 some day just for fun, I don't really see any need to study kanji or vocab otherwise.

(But some people are just naturally interested in kanji and have more fun, I guess...whatever keeps you interested is what you should do, of course. Of course if you like using SRS and you like learning additional kanji and vocab then that's fine, but nobody should feel like they *have* to learn some fixed amount of kanji or vocab through SRS if they want to be able to read Japanese.)

My apologies, yudantaiteki. I both misremembered what someone else wrote earlier in the thread, and attributed it to you. I've corrected my post.

EDIT:

IceCream Wrote:hmm... guess im missed the point of what you were saying again... if possible, please can you rewrite it a bit, in some kind of point format?
sorry!

I can try... The primary reason SRS is inadequate for second language aquisition:

* Cards are always the same each time you see them... so you're only maintaining knowledge when you could be maintaining and increasing it at the same time.

* Facts which are necessary for basic literacy (and then some) you will encounter in daily/weekly active usage.

* Seeing these facts in context during your reading, listening, conversing, whatever defeats the purpose of the SRS. That's not the purpose for which it was designed, and in any case you'll probably remember those facts anyway next time you see them. They should be dropped from your SRS.

* Facts which you do not encounter in daily/weekly active usage... well, then why are you learning them in the first place? (rhetorical question)

* More to the point, you will develop the skill to determine the meaning of these words in from context. Do you know what 'chicanery' and 'enervate' mean? Probably not, but if you encountered them in context you'd probably guess correctly what they meant and move on (from not just the sentence, but the full context of whatever you are reading or talking about).

* Actively reviewing these, therefore, is a waste of time. Drop them from your SRS.

* That leaves... nothing in your SRS. Why? Because there's nothing worth using an SRS to remember on the path from basic literacy to intermediate/advanced fluency.

I backed this up with some points about statistics and such in my earlier posts, but I'd rather not copy that here again. I will answer one "But wait!" which I expect to receive:

Quote:But wait: We've all done that before and ended up forgetting a lot. The SRS is what allows us to remember.

My answer: the journal. Other solutions are possible, but for me I write down new things I learned (vocabulary, obscure grammar, etc.) in a paper journal. Each morning I review the last day or two, but no more than that. The day between the last time I saw it and the review is enough to fix it in my short- to medium-term memory. After than I never look at again because either A) I will see it again, in context, and remember it or figure it out, or B) I will never see it again, so what's the point?

mafried: how many hours per day do you operate in japanese?

About an hour a day.

Mafried brings up a lot of good points, ones that I basically myself live by, how many of us maintain an ENGLISH SRS? not many thought there are many words we don't know that we may happen upon.

Point is, I think an SRS is a great tool, for remembering certain facts, but once you HAVE BASIC LITERARY SKILLS the advantages of using one decrease quite a bit.

I use an SRS right now and love it, will use it for some time, but once I am at a certain level of japanese i will quit the srs cold turkey, drop it like a bad habit, other than when I am having trouble with certain new points.

you don't get better at english by just studying it, you get better by reading classic literature, novels by great authors etc. I have a good friend also studying Japanese, he reads a LOT of books and his english capabilities far exceed mine, but I get by no problem, so I don't bother studying anymore ^^ Same will go for japanese for me, less studying, more immersing and reading.

If you stop adding things to an SRS it quits itself.

I found it useful for kanji in testing my grasp on recognition and production of them. I found it useful for grammar in testing my grasp on the meaning of sentences. I found it useful in vocabulary in testing my grasp on the meaning and how to write words. I found it useful in dramas in testing my grasp on the spoken dialogue.

However, when I'm just reading for fun, I'm not running to the dictionary. I'm not asking the person next to me what does "x" mean. I'm checking to see if what I think that word means is what it means. Yeah, SRS for things you'll read or hear on a daily, weekly or maybe even monthly basis may not be necessary. But there are still useful items you're going to run into on a rarer basis that's considered common knowledge for people of that language. Having those items come up and be tested on a structured basis can prove of use.

i think the success of the no-srs method depends heavily on
- your vocab size
- variety of language exposed to
- amount of daily exposure to the language

the bad news is i think that success in the method favors smaller vocab size and less variety of language exposed to. e.g., it'll work great for daily conversation.

but when you are picking up random books, papers, magazines, the amount of unique words you hit is immense, and with that increase in words comes a decrease in frequency. only a huge amount of exposure time will save you from forgetting. basically your life needs to be conducted in japanese.

this is why i use srs. my vocab is some 4-5k words, and i only study about .5 - 1hr a day (not all srs time even).

That doesn't match my experience... and I don't know what else to say.

how big is your vocab? what materials are you reading? 1 hr a day doesn't seem like enough but if it works for you, cool.

If you are experiencing the language on a daily basis, then outside of specialized terminology (like Mafried points out), an SRS may not be of geniune use. So long as you have the grasp, then the exposure will seep it in.

It's the grasping part that's the problem. I wrote about my experiences with just getting exposure (iPod on all the time) without the basic comprehension outside of one viewing not doing it for me. It's when I broke it down sentence by sentence on a few videos (via subs2srs) that not only was I getting comprehension on those audio, but also on the other audio I did not break down. The benefits carried over.

Mafried solved that problem for himself by writing the information down once in a log and looking at it now and again.

Two different solutions for a similar problem, hopefully with positive results for both.

Still, to downplay an SRS is like downplaying Manga or iPods or downloaded videos on the laptop or NHK news feeds or Harry Potter translations or Dubbed Southpark, or whatever. Each has their gifts and geas. What you give to one you can't give to another. What you get from one may not add to the other.

Boils down to: if it's working, keep at it. If it ain't working, drop it. Just pass the information along so we as a group can see if a pattern develops

Something you could call - "Open Source Language Learning"

Did anyone besides me notice that Mr. Igor practically just started this thread to argue? Dude, why are you asking people's opinions and then bashing them? Whether or not you want to use an SRS or not is up to you. But don't debate the factual evidence that it does help you remember what is in it, just the same as reviewing other ways does like you said you do. The thing is some people don't want to bother to try and "schedule" physical reviews as they are too busy or otherwise too distracted with other areas of interest perhaps even in the the said language itself. In other words we all agree that reviewing helps us too remember... so what the hell is this arguement about? You keep bringing up about the fact that you find SRS boring, great, don't do it. But don't assume everyone finds it boring, I personally enjoy successfully reading multitudes of sentences that contain a wide range of vocabulary each day and testing my ability in them, and then reading for enjoyment and speed on top of all that makes for an even more enjoyable experience for me. You don't enjoy SRSing, so just say that, no point arguing against it, rather you're only arguing against the idea of reviewing on a computer which a lot of people don't mind at all.

mafried Wrote:My answer: the journal. Other solutions are possible, but for me I write down new things I learned (vocabulary, obscure grammar, etc.) in a paper journal. Each morning I review the last day or two, but no more than that. The day between the last time I saw it and the review is enough to fix it in my short- to medium-term memory. After than I never look at again because either A) I will see it again, in context, and remember it or figure it out, or B) I will never see it again, so what's the point?

I tried doing that. I found that it wasn't enough for me. Maybe I had a tendency to let my eyes glide over the page and go, "Yeah, yeah, sure, I know that."

I actually thought, before I knew that SRS existed, "I wish there was some way that I could just see these automatically over a period of time."