Hi all,

So much of this site is expounding the benefits of srs and I can see why that is however recently I feel I have lost sight of some of the basic tenents of what srs is meant to do. I think it happened when I read people were knocking out hundreds upon hundreds of reviews a day and here I was struggling to get 30.

I began to learn new words/sentences solely through srs and wasnt using it as a tool to review what I already should have known. Anyways, needless to say things weren't sticking like they should have and it just left me frustrated and exhausted.

Looking back, I guess I thought the pen and paper method was slowing me down too much. How much time do you spend learning a new word or fact before adding it to your srs to retain it?

I'm wondering how many other people have ran into this problem and what you've done to overcome it.

-Sleepless in Tokyo.

Quote:Looking back, I guess I thought the pen and paper method was slowing me down too much. How much time do you spend learning a new word or fact before adding it to your srs to retain it?

That really depends on the learner, honestly. These days, I'm pretty liberal with what I throw into my SRS - as long as I've come across a word and looked up its meaning, I consider that mutha "learned." I'll usually have forgotten it by the time I first review it in my SRS (usually the next day), but it's nowhere near as frustrating to memorize as words I've never seen before. I'll definitely struggle to get through 30 in that case.

I also find Smart.fm's built in study tool pretty handy in "baking" words before exporting them to Anki. I think the repeated exposure/drilling of a freshly learned word helps tremendously before putting it into the SRS.

For me, I've "learned" the material after I've figured out the meaning. This is simply understanding the context or the literal translation or whatever. After that any time I see it again I am "remembering" it. We could debate what learning and what remembering are but for the sake of simplicity I say if you understand why something means something then you have "learned" it and you can then put it in your SRS.

I ran into the same problem as you. I felt like I was SRSing for the sake of it, and not enjoying the language I was studying. In an effort to wrangle in this bad behaviour, I have limited the number of new words I learn a day to 25, and either continue adding words until I feel like quitting, or move onto something *gasp* enjoyable, such as some form of media.

By doing this, not only do I continue adding words to my deck (so I feel like I'm making progress in some way), but I have also limited the amount of time that I spend solely reviewing, while upping the amount of time I spend just enjoying ... stuff.

I'd add that I have reviews that average around 300 cards a day, and this is not a sweat in the least. You start to build up your ability and you will be able to do larger number of reviews per day.

Finally, a phenomenon I've noticed lately is something I'd like to call "deck collapse", where I have been hitting "good" so consistently that my reviews start to DRAMATICALLY drop down. When I was plowing through Core6000, I was hitting 600,700 or even 800+ review days ... and those excessive review days have almost completely disappeared. It's a strange (but good!) feeling. "Where'd all those reviews go???" I wonder...

I'm currently trying out different methods, as a matter of fact.

Method 1: random, huge pile
Anytime I come upon a word I don't know, generally online, I'll save it with Rikaichan into my little save file, and then import it into Anki at the end of the day. Generally get a large amount of words, with little context and little understanding, but it gets it into my head, so perhaps I'll see it when it comes up again.

Method 2: studying.
This is how I'm doing 完全マスター for vocab 1+2. Write down the words in a list. Look them up in Kenkyuusha. Take a few sentences that I understand that signify different ways to use it. Study them, do the workpages the next day.
Usually I feel like I learn these words pretty well, but it takes a long time to get them in, and I don't get so many words.

I'm not quite sure which one works "better" yet. They are separate decks, so we'll see what happens in the future. I'll probably mix things up again too

Right now I'm trying out something new and feel I've had good results so far.
Some time ago I posted a thread here about SRSing and someone criticized me by saying I was adding cards before "learning" them, I then went on to ask "WTF is learning then" and they pretty much told me "initial memorization."

Taking that to heart I have created two vocab decks.
My first deck is general review, its about 700 cards strong right now.
My second deck though is using the "Learn mode" interval settings and usually contains 20-40 new words I want to learn.
Because I have my cellphone on me all the time, I just review the learning deck through out the day. If the cards aren't too hard/I'm having a good day, I can usually learn all the cards in that. I'll then import the deck into my general deck and clear them from the learning deck. I'll then add new material to the learning deck.
Sometimes I'll partially export the cards I know I have down, from the learning deck, and then import those; leaving the cards I still struggle with.

My prior problem was I would add new cards to the general deck but could never learn them, or it would take me 20-30 reps before I learned the card. I felt like those cards were clogging up the time I needed to be reviewing the cards I needed to review/refresh.

If I'm getting word from lists then I just throw them in anki. some just stick so I don't need to learn them properly. If I keep failing a card then I'll search out some example sentences and add them too. If I keep failing after that I give up, if it's that important it will come up somewhere soon anyway.

If I get words from movies or books then I add the sentence the word came from. They usually stick straight away.

I add straight away and test no less than a few minutes later. If I remember it, I'll rate it as hard so the next will be in 8 hours (effectively the next day), if I don't, I'll just click soon, wait a few minutes and repeat the process.

dizmox Wrote:I add straight away and test no less than a few minutes later. If I remember it, I'll rate it as hard so the next will be in 8 hours (effectively the next day), if I don't, I'll just click soon, wait a few minutes and repeat the process.

Basically the same for me. Works fairly well over the long term.

Though personally I don't like to "fail" cards unless they are due in 7+ days. In that time I'll see the card about 4-5 times before finally deciding to reset it through the fail button or not.

@vix86

I love your method. Inspired by your post, I'm changing my way. My vocabulary deck is mostly suspended cards from the Kore2k6k ordered spreadsheet, which I un-suspend cards from as I come across them, or create the cards it doesn't have, and learn them by reviewing them using different settings depending on what my day/reviews are like.

What I'm going to do is separate all cards with zero reps into a different deck and start my reviews from there, learn them on the ipod throughout the day, and then import them into my regular deck.

Thanks for the idea, I think it will work great!

@vix What exactly is "learn mode"? Does that option exist in anki or did you make it up?

@dusmar84
"Learn" mode is a plugin that you can download. I've found it pretty good for initial learning, but I've never done it the way vix has.

@vix86
So, when you import the Learn deck into your real deck, does it save the scheduling information? ie. You have a few cards that got really good, and won't be tested for a few days, and then there's some that are due tomrorow?
And what about the algorithm? If you import the learn deck into the real deck, are the 'learn' cards still going to have the 'learn' algorithm (ie. you fail it, it shows up literally 2 seconds later)

If you import the cards into another deck they will start working with the algorithm of the new deck. I really like the sound of your 2 deck system vix86. The two-deck idea for short and long term memorization is worth a try.

how do u go about importing individual cards into a another deck?

Tag the cards from deck A you want - File->Export (you can check the box to keep scheduling info if you want) then open Deck B File->Import. I tag my "learning cards" and the export deck ^^^ then delete this deck after import. I'm not sure about the "learning mode" - every time I've tried it it gives me the wrong cards, and the algorithm is in theory good, but in practice not doable for me. I'm using vix86 method to have a separate deck just for learning the cards via ipod throughout my day. then in the evening importing those cards into my main deck. I've only done it one day, but so far I love it. It's a little bit of work to Import->Export twice, but worth it to me.

One other step I noticed: Tools->Advanced->Check media database->Delete Refs.
I think when you export the tagged cards, it copies the entire media file, which in my case is 6000+ cards for 30-40 I'm learning, which I think might make it a pain to load on the new ipod. So I do this step before syncing my ipod for the day. The other little hitch I had yesterday was forgetting to put the url media into my new learning deck. The other little step is to delete a the media files in your drop box that were created during the export.

My bad, I should have clarified:
The "Learn deck" uses the interval settings that come out of the "Learn mode" plugin that you can download from the Shared Plugins menu. I basically just copied the settings out of that and made a new deck with those settings. (Deck Props > Advanced section)

@Asriel: I'm not sure on the scheduling thing, but if its a real worry then you can export the entire deck and not export scheduling info, then reimport into your main deck. Honestly though, the "Learn mode" algorithm is so fast that you should see the cards again in about a day if you did a ton of reps on them and hit "4" a lot.

@TaylorSan: Glad it was useful suggestion. I also check my databases when I import now because once after I changed a field slightly in my model between my Learn and my General, I started having issues with importing. They'd import correctly but if I ran "Check Database" it would basically delete all the cards I just imported due to a conflict in fields. I realized the issue when AnkiOnline started throwing out errors on some of my cards. Make sure you take that WARNING in the "Check Database" that pops up seriously though, if your deck isn't backed up you will lose everything it deletes.

Good point - that happened to me and I about lost my mind until resolve pointed out the backups to me. Maybe I need the plugin or something, but every time I tried learn mode and assigned tags for the ones I wanted, it just gave me 7 cards that were not the ones I tagged.

TaylorSan Wrote:Good point - that happened to me and I about lost my mind until resolve pointed out the backups to me. Maybe I need the plugin or something, but every time I tried learn mode and assigned tags for the ones I wanted, it just gave me 7 cards that were not the ones I tagged.

You don't need the plugin, I'm saying I got the settings from the plugin. Actually I'll just post the settings for the Learn deck here. Just make a new deck and change the settings to these below.

Put these in the Deck Properties > Advanced settings for your "Learn Deck"
Again (Young): 0.0166666666667 mins
Again (Mature): 0.0166666666667 mins
Failure Multiplier: 0.0
Initial Hard Interval: Min= 5.787037e-05 Max=0.000115740741 days
Initial Good Interval: Min=0.000115740741 Max=0.000173611111 days
Initial Easy Interval: Min= 0.000173611111 Max=0.000231481481 days
Show failed cards early: Yes
Max Failed Cards: 20
New day at: 4.0
Suspend Leeches: No
Leech Failure Threshold: 10

My method's probably fairly clunky compared to most people's, but right now it's working for me.

When I first encounter a new Kanji or piece of vocab, I'll spend a few minutes looking it over, trying to think of a good mnemonic, repeating it to myself/writing it down a few times to get the physical feel of the information. What does it feel like moving my hand/mouth in that way? Do I find it hard to write/pronounce?
I spend a few minutes trying to get everything to look/sound correct, and then I test myself on paper about five minutes later. Then I test myself again a few hours later.

If I can remember it consistently for a day or so, then I stick it in my deck. I don't want to screw up my stats based on things I just don't know yet. So I use paper for getting the info into my head, and then I use Anki for keeping it there.

vix86 Wrote:Right now I'm trying out something new and feel I've had good results so far.
Some time ago I posted a thread here about SRSing and someone criticized me by saying I was adding cards before "learning" them, I then went on to ask "WTF is learning then" and they pretty much told me "initial memorization."

Taking that to heart I have created two vocab decks.
My first deck is general review, its about 700 cards strong right now.
My second deck though is using the "Learn mode" interval settings and usually contains 20-40 new words I want to learn.
Because I have my cellphone on me all the time, I just review the learning deck through out the day. If the cards aren't too hard/I'm having a good day, I can usually learn all the cards in that. I'll then import the deck into my general deck and clear them from the learning deck. I'll then add new material to the learning deck.
Sometimes I'll partially export the cards I know I have down, from the learning deck, and then import those; leaving the cards I still struggle with.

My prior problem was I would add new cards to the general deck but could never learn them, or it would take me 20-30 reps before I learned the card. I felt like those cards were clogging up the time I needed to be reviewing the cards I needed to review/refresh.

I know this thread is long dead, but I want to add something for future learners.

I am using a very similar method and getting some quite good results from it and I think it's worth sharing.

The method:

Basically, I have my IPhone that deals with all my spacing needs and a piece of paper which I fold into columns. I split the columns into twos and on the bottom column I write whatever words that I pass from Anki that I feel I need more work on (usually everything I don't recognize right away or didn't get a 'I can't believe I forgot that' moment from). I then write the translation given from my deck and anything I need to work on (i.e., Kanji reading, extra word/s for context). I then fold the paper up so I have one long strip with Kanji on one side and meaning on the opposite and review them until I can name everything with ease.

see image: http://yfrog.com/mj2x50j for clarification.

What this does is it helps me to force in the words I don't know, so when I come to my SRS they are buried in my brain firmly (I've managed to improve my correct percentage from 50% to 60-70% over 300 reviews - I only do 300 per day max, so I do other things too!). I also need to improve my writing, so this is really helping me a lot!

I hope that helps someone. Sorry about the low quality picture.

Just to add to that. Looking at my stats and doing some guessing. My daily learning at card 171 correct looks like:

A rank (known): 22 cards (instant recognition)
B rank (semi-known: passed without recording) 64 (1-2 seconds to recognize)
C rank (Needs review: recorded): 64 (got it after 1-5 reviews or just seemed weak)
D rank (probably passed, but not known well enough): 19
E rank (cards that I couldn't be bothered with - tree/rare fish name, etc.): 2 (TB deleted)

I think I was at 54% correct because I was exhausted at the time.

I hope that helps you see how it would work in practice