Long time lurker, first time poster. Japanese is not the language I'm studying, but I think this is the most appropriate subsection.

I've been using an SRS for less than a year now, and I definitely plan on continuing it for some time, as I still feel I benefit from it. However, I don't really... enjoy it? At least not to the same degree as the people I've seen online who reach numbers like 10,000 cards. I do feel satisfaction sometimes as I see my deck grow and pop through the reviews, but I feel that learning a language is a lifelong process, and I don't really want to spend that big a percentage of my life on flashcards. I am wondering if any SRS veterans have found that they are able to wean themselves off of the sentences/vocab and Heisig flashcards. I'm appreciative of the character-analysis abilities I've gotten from going through the Heisig book, but do I really have to go over corny mnemonics 5 years from now to maintain literacy? Is it possible to get to a point where I can learn by looking up words I don't understand without feeling compelled to put them in flashcard form?

Have people noticed language skills decrease after gradually eliminating SRS? Or can more "real world" output naturally take the place of the useful but ultimately synthetic Anki decks?

Whilst I'm not at the level to be able to speak from experience (except in my native English), I really think the SRS is about committing to long term memory. Once it's there, occasional exposure will reinforce words more often than the 5 year intervals your mature cards will be getting. Once you've got a high enough level in your target language to be able to comprehend pretty much all media, you can switch to just consuming media as your way of keeping your skills up. Maintain a certain level of production to keep your production skills up etc. It doesn't have to be SRS, but SRS is an efficient way of getting to the level at which you can make the change.

I've been wondering lately if the SRS can be seen as a sort of substitute or efficient alternative for formalised school-based education. Japanese kids learn Kanji and grammar etc, through repetition, during their school years i.e. there is usually a finite period when they are actively and systematically practising reading and writing Kanji on a daily basis (alongside huge ammounts of immersion). As far as I know this systematic practice lasts throughout their school life (about 15 years if you include Kindergarden), perhaps with a couple of extra years aquiring specialist vocabulary in college.

After they graduate from formal education, there may well be a decline in kanji production and recognition (I only have annecdotal evidence for this), but of course most adults remain functionally literate in the language due to the massive ammounts of exposure and immersion they receive from their environment.

Perhaps it really is possible to graduate from the daily toil of the SRS?


Disclaimer: I know very little about the Japanese education system. This post is merely idle speculation.

Well, for one thing, if you're doing SRS right, no matter how many cards you have, they should all eventually get to the point where they almost never show up (interval of years, etc)

Then again, think about what SRS is all about. The reason it works is because it gives you exposure (at the right time) to thing that you may or may not otherwise be exposed to. That's why, in my point of view, if you're getting enough exposure (which, if you're outside of the country, you're probably not) then you might not need SRS. If you read enough books, you'll get used to the language that is used. You get the exposure to the words from the books instead of the SRS.

So yeah, in my (completely unprofessional) opinion, there is a point where you won't necessarily need it.

As Asriel says, after a while SRS cards should get the point where they rarely show up. That said, I don't think I'll necessarily ever stop SRSing. There'll always be new things to learn and remember, and there'll forever be things that I'll need to review. So, yes, SRSing is a way of life for me and will be until I decide to stop learning.

What I am about to say might be controversial. Maybe it won't be.

I think that SRS will sort of be like the stories from Heisig; once you get enough exposer to carry you to native material then I don't see a need need for SRS, just like I don't need to recall a story to write '小さい' now. Reading does the same thing as an SRS. People say that an SRS does the whole memory thing better than reading but I disagree. I've never used SRS in English and I can read very very very advanced stuff. And the secret is that I continuously read. Sure I forget words like 'hegemony' or whatever but if I need to look up a word then I find a dictionary and do it. It takes 3 seconds to do that. The same is true in Japanese (although it takes a bit longer for me since this is my second language). I haven't stopped SRSing at this point and I don't think I will continue to add lots of cards as I do now in the next 5 years or so, but I can't say for certain. I know that I won't be "studying" the same way that I am now (I use textbooks and stuff like this now, but once I can read most books effortlessly then why srs?). If I come across a word I don't know I might add it to an SRS. Basically, once you get to the point where you can read a book without many problems then SRS should be "shed." I'm not saying stop reviewing completely, but don't use it as your main study tool. Use the actual language just like you use your native language. I know some people who have passed the JLPT level 1 and are still SRSing. But it's such a "waste" of time because they are at the point where they can enjoy the language without having to "study."


tl:dr.

SRS is a tool that you should use in the beginning, but once you get to the point where you can read books semi-effortlessly then SRS becomes secondary to the native text/speaking.

Way of life. Not exactly enjoyable. Bearable, mostly. Efficient? Think so. Not for everybody. Damn good tool に違いない。

bizarrojosh Wrote:I know some people who have passed the JLPT level 1 and are still SRSing. But it's such a "waste" of time because they are at the point where they can enjoy the language without having to "study."

Some of us actually do enjoy learning obscure words and kanji.

I've passed JLPT1 and still use SRS and add words at the rate of 50-100 per day when I bother to do it (right now they are just piling up in a .txt file waiting for import).

The majority of those words are either formal stuff only used in writing, proper nouns (names of plants, animals, insects, etc), old Japanese that isn't common anymore, or technical terms though.

You said JLPT1 as if it's a high benchmark or something though. JLPT1 is about a native 14 year old's level of vocabulary. They'd probably fail the kanji and maybe the grammar though.

bizarrojosh Wrote:once you get to the point where you can read books semi-effortlessly then SRS becomes secondary to the native text/speaking.

Well yes, but it's a long old slog to get there, and as Jarvik7 says JLPT1 isn't really a high enough barrier to count as that... (I am assuming you don't mean "effortlessly skipping over unrecognised words", which I can do quite well :-))

I actually use it to remember English vocabulary so this not exactly about remembering Kanji, but when I started using it, I could read most anything, from magazines and novels to some technical papers, and I still found it pretty useful. If you stop adding cards for a month or 2, it'll die down and you'll only get 30 or so cards a day which only takes 5 mins to finish, so it's not much of a burden anyway. It's kind of like going to the gym for me now. In fact, I do the reviews in the gym with my iPhone quite a bit.

Interesting to read everyone's thoughts. I've decided to live life without an SRS for a few weeks while spending the extra free time on more immersion (and a lot of character writing production). Going to see how it goes. I've always agreed with the overall central belief among the "Language Learning 2.0 Cabal" bunch of blogs/websites that classes can in many ways be surpassed by immersion and self study. I've just always had my doubts about replacing classes with an SRS master.