overture2112 Wrote:I've considered doing this but I don't seem to know enough readings, so learning new words can be a strugle the first few times I see a new reading (which is often). Mind if I ask how many words you know (very roughly) and how many tries it takes before something sticks (again, just a rough average)?

I know about 3000 words, but I only really got serious about vocab learning about 3 months, in which time I've about doubled my vocabulary. The number of times to stick depends on a lot of stuff, but is usually around 2-3 times or so. I've had 2 words that have taken me about 10 fails before I got it right. When that happens there is usually something going on, like a similar word in meaning or structure that I learned recently.

(Wow, there is a section in the core 2000 where there are about 6 or 7 words that mean "construction" in various forms and I had the most horrible time with them. I really should have just suspended most of them and learned them one at at time, but I didn't, ha.)

As far as readings go, what I do is introduce all listening and production cards, and then as I go through, if a word contains only kanji that I already know I mark it, and unsuspend them. I do not worry about whether it is a reading that I know, because when learning kanji I only learn the most common readings, and plan on learning the less common readings on a word by word basis. I don't really know if that is effective or not, but its what I came up with.

A little feedback

I have been experimenting with this alarm thing for a couple of weeks now.
My thoughts on what this alarm is best used for:

*if you're feeling you're going slow, it's very good for setting a maximum time limit per card.

*The next thing after this-> I started becoming used to this fast speed, and my reps got maybe 1.5 x faster than the initial alarm...
So switch the alarm off, and do everything as previously, but without the annoying alarm.

* next->When reps are becoming slow again, set the alarm again.

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What I have found use in this alarm is training yourself to do reps faster than before.
...and when you get used to it-> cut it off. It will slow down... and it all becomes quite chaotic anyway with those changing times per card.

To sum it up:

It's partly similar to RTK, which is a temporary tool that trains you to distinguish kanji and remember meanings. And then you forget all the english meanings and replace them with Japanese ones.

-> The alarm trains you to not waste time excessively, and then you get rid of the temporary alarm tool, because it starts to slow you down.

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For a little abstract summary for how my average max speed of reps changed during the last 3 months
Perhaps not very exact...not sure!



The reps initially with writing everything down:
~about 1,5 reps per minute

without writing down:
~about 3 reps per minute

My reps with the alarm:
~about 6 reps per minute

After getting rid of the alarm, after using it for a while (without new cards, only reviews):
~ 7.5 reps per minute.

For me I split it into different tasks. do my vocab deck first, all the way if I feel up to it and if not, just take a break and come back. I've been managing to add 100 per day(30 production deck,10 sentence cards and 60 vocab cards). Thanks to timeboxing, I do it all under 1 hr and 30mins. If I'm fast, under 1hr

Do you learn the news cards during, after or before the reviews?

500 reps to get through tomorrow, after slacking off the last few days... looks like I won't be attending my 8am biol lecture, or I will but I will just do anki instead of listening

CarolinaCG Wrote:Do you learn the news cards during, after or before the reviews?

After.

what are reps? *hides* rather new in anki and add only new cards on weekends (at least 100).

Correct me if I'm wrong everybody,
but reps is the abreviation of repetitions -- an alternative term for reviews.
It comes from workout practice I think.

451 reps (new cards) x 7 days.
100-200 on other decks x 7
50 subs2srs music x 7
50 N2-N5 JLPT cards x 7.

That's this week's workload. It takes about 1 hour for the 451 reps, 30 minutes for the grammar, subs2srs 15-30 minutes, and the other decks take about -15 minutes. Total time about 2 hours for 850 reps tops.

Slightly off-topic: Having native speaker audio for your cards makes things insanely fast. I can read kana in my sleep, but usually I look from kana to kanji (as I have both on the front of my card); this takes time! Having audio I can just look to the Kanji. (Right now I have 200 with audio in my 451 and the rest have broken audio links, so don't work. The difference is noticeable to say the least!!!)

BTW, why not ask you Lang-8 contributors to read your list out for you (my friend from sharedtalk.com helps me out)? Probably 90% won't, but 10% of 100-200 friends is no problem. (It's probably best to get someone to email you via the site and then send a link to you later, rather than get 10 different people.) You can exchange some other service like proofreading diaries in great detail and sending a report or reading things for them or checking their pronunciation in English or just exchange an hour or so of extra English talk time, the options are endless. (You should always payback two times as much, as this encourages them to help you again, right!)

EratiK Wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong everybody,
but reps is the abreviation of repetitions -- an alternative term for reviews.
It comes from workout practice I think.

yea

The key of total PWNAGE and success:


1) Use the most effective method possible

2) Use this method as fast as possible.

3) Make it so that you use this method as frequently as possible.


Now how you do it is up to you...

Wtf I just accidentally did 34 reps in 120 seconds and I didn't even have a goal of accomplishing this or anything.

It seems that me exercising lately and being alert and wide awake works wonders.

jettyke Wrote:The key of total PWNAGE and success:


1) Use the most effective method possible

2) Use this method as fast as possible.

3) Make it so that you use this method as frequently as possible.


Now how you do it is up to you...

Good tips.

Cranks Wrote:451 reps (new cards) x 7 days.
100-200 on other decks x 7
50 subs2srs music x 7
50 N2-N5 JLPT cards x 7.

That's this week's workload. It takes about 1 hour for the 451 reps, 30 minutes for the grammar, subs2srs 15-30 minutes, and the other decks take about -15 minutes. Total time about 2 hours for 850 reps tops.

Slightly off-topic: Having native speaker audio for your cards makes things insanely fast. I can read kana in my sleep, but usually I look from kana to kanji (as I have both on the front of my card); this takes time! Having audio I can just look to the Kanji. (Right now I have 200 with audio in my 451 and the rest have broken audio links, so don't work. The difference is noticeable to say the least!!!)

BTW, why not ask you Lang-8 contributors to read your list out for you (my friend from sharedtalk.com helps me out)? Probably 90% won't, but 10% of 100-200 friends is no problem. (It's probably best to get someone to email you via the site and then send a link to you later, rather than get 10 different people.) You can exchange some other service like proofreading diaries in great detail and sending a report or reading things for them or checking their pronunciation in English or just exchange an hour or so of extra English talk time, the options are endless. (You should always payback two times as much, as this encourages them to help you again, right!)

Update: Stopped doing these sort of cards now and am doing purely video and music cards. Now doing new cards every so often and doing reviews 1 hour a day. It's working really well. About 100 cards per day in that time (audio cards just take longer).

Watch: "Performance spikes, then crashes"
http://www.brainrules.net/stress?scene=

This says that the brain performs at it's best between mild and moderate stress.
If there is no stress or severe stress, the brain performs worse.

In this sense the timer could actually be a very good thing, because it causes a mild stress (You're challenged to learn faster). It could be especially good with things that you don't like to do and are slow at doing.

I've been lazy with reading Biology student's book, so I've set the timer to beep every minute. This has caused me to at least be more alert and not doze off so frequently( which happens ALL THE TIME ). I'm trying to go through half of a page in a minute. Hope that it works out.

Set a usb controller with joytokey and play anki like a videogame.

Haha Arnaldo, that's exactly what I did. I'll have to second this - works like a charm and much more comfortable. The cord on the controller is pretty lengthy, so I can do reps standing up (I usually walk around a bit to keep the blood going), or far away from the PC screen. I find I do them faster as well.

Cranks Wrote:My god mode is:

#Rep up my new words in cram mode for 1 week prior to adding. (or anything marked)

Your method sounds effective, but I didn't understand the part about Cram mode.

Can I ask how you are doing this? Do you add the cards to a separate deck first and then cram that?

None of the three Cram mode options results in showing the most recently added cards, unless I add a Tag.

If you could elaborate a bit, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

My RTK deck is pretty snail's pace, so I might try some things here like the timer, although I'm not sure I like the idea of the jump in failure rate it's going to produce...

My subs2srs deck is superfast though. Having the audio in the question is pretty much easy-mode, but I'm picking up words far faster than I was with individual word decks or cloze-deletion decks.

jettyke Wrote:What do you think of this?
http://www.speedbagforum.com/timer.html

You can set an interval and It will go on forever.

For example you can set it so that it rings a bell every 10 seconds, and if you don't anwser the card in those 10 seconds, you push failed.
I means that theoretically you could do 300 reps in 50 minutes this way.
And you could adjust the speed according to your comfort.

Perhaps it will motivate to do reps faster?

I'm a bit late to the party, but I want to quote on how effective this is for me.

Essentially I'm always working at my computer, and I've been using my computer for mostly recreational activities (games, browsing, chatting, etc) since I was 12. As you can imagine I have serious procrastination and distraction issues when it comes to doing reps. Reviews usually take me FOREVER (average time for card on my kanji deck this month is 30 seconds solely because of getting distracted.... and it's freaking kanji recognition).

Using a 10 second repeating interval alarm has done wonders for me. 63 reps studied in 10 minutes so far on my vocab deck.

Edit: 167 cards studied in 20 minutes now. Used 6 second interval for my kanji deck. This is amazing for me.

I tend to do anki in 5 minute chunks throughout the mroning. I combine my reps like this:

5 min -- revtk kanji
5 min -- anki rep (own made deck, mine 25 new cards every day. A genki chapter tends to produce 50 cards. Soon done with Genki though...
5 min -- break
repeat

Pomodoro, or timeboxing.
Be aware of the moment. Use every second wisely.

thurd Wrote:* Install Windows 7
* "Snap" a Japanese movie/anime/drama to left part of your desktop
* "Snap" Anki to right part of your desktop
* Use keyboard shortcuts to operate Anki
* Enjoy your show+immersion while doing reps in a good pace

Not the fastest way to do reps but I find it fun & it doesn't wear me out like other attempts.

Oh, how do you do that, that sounds handy? Windows 7 is my operating system, but I don't actually understand it very well...

I timebox, basically. Ten minutes reps, go check if there's been any replies to threads on the forums I use (taking no more than 5 minutes), another ten minutes reps, go watch an episode of an anime, repeat. I also listen to (Japanese) music while doing my reps, couldn't concentrate without it. The buzzer thing would drive me nuts, I'm impressed by those getting good use out of it. : ) Guess different things work for different people.

While working with decks like Core, especially with new words, when I dont how to say the word in japanese, trying to recall how to write it after only listening to the answer, gave me a huge boost to my vocabulary learning speed. If I dont know how to say it, I at least try to recall how to write it after hearing it.

There is a very good alternative to Audible Timer plugin, called Auto Answer. Instead of giving a sound, it automatically presses the answer button after the ammount of time you set. Sounds while trying to remember the answer can be quite distracting, so I found this plugin very useful.