Hi guys/gals,

I'm doing the 8555 grammar sentences list on Anki, and as recommended I don't miss a day. I've been doing them for about a month now. The thing is, my list of items for reviews just seems to be getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. At the moment, its manageable, but if it carries on growing it might become unmanageable ( /cry )

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I might turn the tide and get these lists down, or should it sort itself out naturally?
I'm currently set to 15 minute intervals, with 20 new sentences per day. I'm currently hitting 120 sentences per day now (20 new, 100 reviews), and given all the other things I have to do (like full time work, rtk reviews, and, well, everything else, I can see this becoming a problem pretty soon)

Apologies if this question has already been asked 500000 times already.

Thanks for your help :-)

Square

May I recommend not doing all the 8555 sentences, but instead just using the deck as a)a searchable database for grammar points you encounter and/or b)doing one or two example sentences per grammar point you study in the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar books? (Edit: That's assuming you meant you were trying to do all 8555.)

Also, depends on how you're doing the sentences. For those, I would only grade whether I got the relevant grammatical construction correct.

Lastly, you needn't add new sentences every day, it's mainly doing your reps each day that's important. You could focus on new materials outside the SRS on off days, or somesuch, Edit: or perhaps simply add other types of cards (I do this latter, well both, but it's complicated to explain)...

Other options are to timebox new cards, per blackmacros' thread (something about pace/workflow, I forget), though personally I never timebox new/restudied cards, I prefer to take as long as I need for that process.

long story short, don't add sentences every day.
The "don't skip a day" is for your reviews. Adding new cards is totally up to you.

"Don't add new cards everyday"..... duh, why didn't I think of that?!?
Yeah, I mark these cards on the grammar component, not whether I recognise all the vocab ... id be up to 500 if I included all the vocab too

That's really helpful advice.

Thank you!

Decide on a target number of reviews you want to do per day. Each day add as many cards as the excess of this number over the number of cards that the Due charts says are due tomorrow. If the number of cards due tomorrow exceeds your daily target, then don't add any cards today. I usually decide how many cards to add when I've done all my reviews for the day (which I always do in the evening), since only then will I know exactly what tomorrow's due load will be. Also, when I do my reviews, after I finish those cards that are due, I continue (by hitting the "Review Early" button) until the Due chart shows zero for today. In this way I have the most accurate estimate of tomorrow's due load. (Yes, this causes me review a handful of cards a few hours ahead of schedule. This is only a problem with those cards that had a due interval of a few hours to begin with. For those, I always grade them "Again", so they will still be due tomorrow.)

With this technique I've managed to keep my daily review load pretty constant and predictable.

Also, very important: when grading, use the "Hard" grade sparingly! And don't hesitate to use the "Easy" occasionally. Your goal is to "bat" cards as far into the future as is possible, to spread out your review load.

squarezebra Wrote:At the moment, its manageable, but if it carries on growing it might become unmanageable ( /cry )...

I'm currently hitting 120 sentences per day now (20 new, 100 reviews)

Its not "unmanageable", you just have to be well organized and push your comfort zone a little bit further as you make progress.

Also 120 is not a lot, if I drop below 300 its a sign for me I'm slacking off and I have all the problems you mentioned.

Wow, theres some really good ideas there.
I think I would like to slowly make my way through this entire deck of sentences; so far the outcome on my actual reading ability has been very positive. However, maybe it would have been a better idea to have started Tae Kim's deck first.
gfb345 your idea seems to be the best of both worlds for me actually. I think 70 - 80 sentences is a day is about optimum for me, and setting that limit will mean I can put my other time into doing other things like jdramas etc. I think the bulk of my accumulating reviews at the moment are sentences from the Advanced book, but I have only read the B and I so far, so its bound to be harder. The Basic sentences are pretty much mark "easy" all the way.

Great stuff

Thanks!

thurd Wrote:

squarezebra Wrote:At the moment, its manageable, but if it carries on growing it might become unmanageable ( /cry )...

I'm currently hitting 120 sentences per day now (20 new, 100 reviews)

Its not "unmanageable", you just have to be well organized and push your comfort zone a little bit further as you make progress.

Also 120 is not a lot, if I drop below 300 its a sign for me I'm slacking off and I have all the problems you mentioned.

Sleep less and work more? Abandon all hopes of having some fun time for a while?
Short term pain, long term gain I guess. I think I can always do more, but I don't want this particular deck to become my priority just yet.

squarezebra Wrote:Wow, theres some really good ideas there.
I think I would like to slowly make my way through this entire deck of sentences; so far the outcome on my actual reading ability has been very positive. However, maybe it would have been a better idea to have started Tae Kim's deck first.
gfb345 your idea seems to be the best of both worlds for me actually. I think 70 - 80 sentences is a day is about optimum for me, and setting that limit will mean I can put my other time into doing other things like jdramas etc. I think the bulk of my accumulating reviews at the moment are sentences from the Advanced book, but I have only read the B and I so far, so its bound to be harder. The Basic sentences are pretty much mark "easy" all the way.

Great stuff

Thanks!

The better you get the more you'll be able to handle. 70-80 reviews a day might seem like your optimal limit now but in 5-6 months I'm willing to bet you'll look back and laugh at that.

That being said do NOT overload yourself. Overload leads to either ignoring reviews, or cheating on your answers.

This is from a post I made in another thread discussing somewhat similar problematics. It wasn't about a grammar deck but I think some tips apply regardless.

Seizar Wrote:About midway through core6k I tried messing around with various settings to see if I could speed up my reviews, since I often found myself hacking away at a pile of 400-700 reviews due a day, which usually left me with no energy for doing anything else in japanese. A couple of things I found especially effective:
- disabling "show due count and progress during review" and "show next time before next answer" from the settings menu; turns out that checking how many cards are left and when I would see that particular card next was taking away a lot of time and concentration in the long run. It also made me trust the srs algorithm more, which resulted in less strict card evaluation (it is a good thing, or at least it was for me).

But this is actually a minor thing, what really made the difference for me was hitting the "easy" button more, and suspending card with were too easy or with too much repetition. I think a 8555 cards grammar deck is bound to have a lot of repetition too, tbh.
What gfb345 suggested is something I always wanted to try, but could never decide on a set number of cards that would be optimal for me: on a particular day I can breeze through 700 cards no problem, and the next week it would take me literally all day to review 50 cards of the same deck.
I'm also not sure what's up with anki when using the "review early" mode, it seems the the intervals get messed up somehow? Especially noticeable with cards I studied the day before, it would keep scheduling them 8-12h in the future if I kept rating them hard. I'm not sure if something like this applies to cards with greater intervals too, but I ended up using the bury function for recently added cards when I encounter them in review early mode, and all was good.

Thanks Activeaero, you're probably correct. I probably will look back and laugh...
Recalling how long it used to take me to review my RTK decks ... I have become much faster.

Progress

Wow Seizar, 700 cards a day is like a full time job! How long does that actually take you?
How do you concentrate for that long? I think my concentration starts fading after 30 minutes on any one single job

Add a constant amount of cards each day and review each day. Figure out how many cards you can handle on a day but don't stray away from the add+review each day pattern.
If you keep to the pattern, you will soon get a steady amount of reviews each day. This takes a few days at first due to the spacing system, but taking into account your fail/success rate stays roughly the same your number of reviews should stay roughly the same as well.
One thing that drives me insane are decks which usually aren't too much work suddenly have loads of cards to review. This always comes because I slacked a few days on that deck

@squarezebra
At that time I had all the day to dedicate to Japanese, which made it possible (college student with no classes to attend, heh). Also I was racing with a friend for who would finish the deck first, and a little bit of competition can do wonder for motivation, especially if you share results on a day-to-day basis.
According to anki the time spent reviewing was between 1.5 and 2 hours, but anki only count the time effectively spent reviewing, adding breaks and whatnot it would probably be 3-4hours.
Also keep in mind that sentence for vocab learning are generally easier than grammar sentences, core6k sentences are particularly easy in that and audio for every sentence helps a lot with retention. I kept a grammar deck for some time in the past and it was a pain for me to review it, I could barely do 60 sentences a day before feeling exhausted, and it was very basic stuff.

Again, a card is not a card is not a card. Guys saying they're doing 300+ cards a day are likely doing just fast recognition cards such as Kanji or Vocabulary (without sentences). Way different than a guy who may be doing sentence cards where he vocally sounds out the sentence, and may even write or type some or all of it out.

As for studying/reviewing: I'm of the thought that you have a set amount of time per day (this can change day by day). You do all reviews first, then use the remaining time to study/add new cards. It's self regulating that way as if you get lots to review you have less time to add new stuff. Likewise, you go through reviews fast you have more time to add stuff. As time goes on and your comfort with material/methods increases, you'll find you can review faster in addition to add more new material in a set amount of time.

To say "I'm going to always review 100 sentences add 20 new sentences" is a formula for getting a large backlog. Either life gets in the way, or you add material but keep getting more and more reviews due to missing more cards on average. It may work for some people though, so don't stop it if it's working.

You'll find that at some point, you can really just delete, or at least suspend a card permanently. I'm getting rid of most of the example sentences from the 8555 deck for　について because I've been asked so many times what my thesis is about that I really don't think I will forget how to use this particular expression in this context, ever.

I mean, if you could never delete a card and your vocabulary keeps growing, wouldn't you end up with tens (or hundreds) of thousands of cards? As has been said elsewhere in this forum, after some time you will rely less on SRSing and more and more on reading and listening to acquire new words and usages.

So I'd slow down in adding new facts, and perhaps think about timeboxing?

Irixmark Wrote:You'll find that at some point, you can really just delete, or at least suspend a card permanently. I'm getting rid of most of the example sentences from the 8555 deck for　について because I've been asked so many times what my thesis is about that I really don't think I will forget how to use this particular expression in this context, ever.

I mean, if you could never delete a card and your vocabulary keeps growing, wouldn't you end up with tens (or hundreds) of thousands of cards? As has been said elsewhere in this forum, after some time you will rely less on SRSing and more and more on reading and listening to acquire new words and usages.

So I'd slow down in adding new facts, and perhaps think about timeboxing?

This is exactly what I do, timebox. I'm founding that If I just read more/immersion more I can learn times 5 than with just using the srs now. But I will still srs, as this will allow the chances of not remembering stuff to be very little