I've been wondering what people believe the optimal way to use an SRS is in regards to what you review first.

I've read the forums quite a bit, and I see that most people tend to favor doing all your reviews before you do any new cards. I'm working through core 2k, and I'm noticing a problem with this strategy.

It seems to me that if you do all new cards at the end then when I learn a new vocab word I immediately get a sentence using that word after learning the word, and of course I'm going to get it right because I just learned the word 2 seconds ago.

It seems like it facilitates easy reviews the first time, but doesn't really test if you remember the word at all.

The other thing that's been bothering me is I often feel like I'm trying to cram to many new things into my head at once if my last 60 cards are all new cards. I have 3 cards per vocab so that's 20 new vocab at the end of the review session.

I was thinking of doing a mix of old and new cards at the same time. That way I don't try to cram all the new material in at the same time, and I have to remember a word for a bit longer before a sentence with the word actually pops up. Giving me a chance to test if I actually remembered it.

I want to know what others think of this though, and what your preferred method of reviewing is.

So far, I always study them mixed. Though I might change this approach. I will wait for more replies to see more opinions on this.

I learn new cards after all other reviews. Usually, when I'm studying new items it's in a large group of new words. So, when I first learn an item, I have it set to be seen again in 10 to 15 minutes (I either mark it initially wrong, or change the initial interval). I'm usually still reviewing as these learned words appear. This worked rather well for me with vocabulary.

I mostly just use "mixed" which seems to be the default in Anki. The exception is if there's a bit of a buildup of old cards and I don't think I'll get through them all in one session. In that case I don't want to be adding any more new cards to the pile, so I switch to "old ones first"...

(Actually I fell off the Anki wagon a couple of months ago and so I have ~2500 expired cards lurking waiting for me...)

I pick 20 per day and "reschedule" in the browser for 0.35-0.75 days. I learn them on paper and through producing with them on Lang-8 with the help of Yahoo.dic. I see them again the next day on Anki and never do new cards. I could never do more than 60 cards a day as my production skills aren't strong enough yet, but it doesn't matter as at 20 a day I can plug 6000+ a year (which is +6000 sentences made and -6000 corrections).

I've only been doing this for 2 weeks, but it really keeps me honest - no worries about over doing it/under doing it, just do it!

In the AJATT series "smoother SRSing" the default state is to not add, the "catch up" state is deleting cards, and the "progress" state is adding cards. So basically you should be careful about adding.

I think reviewing a card for the first time can be considered a form of adding. I always review new cards last (same as Nukemarine).