I noticed you said you take 2 hours to do 100 reviews. This just seems like a waste of time to me. I can do 180-290 reviews a day in about 30 minutes or less. If I can't remember a card in 4-5 sec, I mark it as hard and just move on.

I used to spend about that much time reviewing and getting less done, and becoming unmotivated all at once on my last attempt at learning Japanese. I had made it to Core, around the 300 word mark and stopped. At that time I spent more time and energy trying to remember the vocab for reviews instead of doing more reading. It's quite the reverse now, but I'm at about the same point in Core and getting burnt out on it, I feel. I've spent the last 3 months doing more than I ever did in the 3 years I spent studying Japanese the first time.

I read at least a page a day in Japanese and try to hit at least 100 reviews in 10 mins every morning. I ordered game guides, some game magizines, play Pokemon and a few other games in Japanese(placing a higher focus on reading books than playing games this time) and listen to Youtube Japanese channels like Tokyo MX and TV Tokyo. It was a great motivator till this past week when I started to get burned out. I guess it means it's time to change some things.

So I dunno what to tell you. I'm pretty sure you need to change your view on reviewing cards though, that just seems like a huge waste of time and energy that could be spent doing things in Japanese instead.

When I was going through Core6k, I had a lot of trouble with some words as well. I had no trouble remembering a lot of words, but some of them just seemed like they were destined to become leeches.
I eventually decided to just go for the low-hanging fruit during my first pass through (in order to easily maintain a high number of new cards) and suspend hard ones, and then once I finished, go back through and do those hard ones at a slower pace.

Basically one of the first things I looked at is "do I fully understand this word"? A lot of the words seemed to have a rather ambiguous meaning even with the example sentence. It would be pointless to memorize if I didn't really understand it, so I just suspended these.
Next I would decide if a word is a synonym for something I already know. If this new synonym seemed easy I would go ahead and learn it, but otherwise I would just suspend based on the fact that I can still express myself fine since I know another word with a similar meaning.
Finally, I would just suspend anything that seemed like it would give me a lot of trouble.

I ended up suspending about 1000 cards from core6k on my first run through.
Then on the 2nd pass through, I can learn at a slower pace, and make sure to look at plenty of example sentences, and maybe come up with some mnemonics.

As I only have word lists to rely on, I purged the Core 6k list since I find a lot of them redundant.

Might as well remove the counters and verbs should I get the hang of them.

ragdim wrote:

This just seems like it's shifting around the time spent on failed cards, and not actually eliminating the problem (lack of sustainability due to time/frustration). This would in all likelihood help me commit those failed cards to memory, but the problem is making the process sustainable enough for me to endure it (either via more fun or less time/frustration, the former leading to the latter possibly).

Once you've really learned the words, you can speed through them. It should only take you a second or two two process a card you truly "know". So yes, you do more study up front, but you save more time in the long run because you're consciously studying the card and working to commit it to memory.

I've tried using Anki by just speeding through a bunch of new cards, and it's agonizing. The reviews pile up, and you start failing so many cards that you wonder if it's worth it.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Let me preface this large post by saying this is all theory by a newbie and is subject to being updated. I probably seem like I'm stating facts in some parts, but it is all just theory. There are a lot of steps listed here, and it may seem like extra work, but hopefully the steps outnumber the time it takes to execute them. I'll remove this message after I've used these methods for a bit and come to a conclusion.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

After much deliberation, I've realized that something about my learning technique isn't quite kosher -- whether it be that my current learning style is different from the technique being used, or that the technique is being faultily applied, I'm not 100% sure.

What has ended up happening is that I'm paying the price for this misallocation in my SRS. For those that are interested or are having vocab issues of their own, here is how I've decided to adjust my studies to fix this issue (I've had false starts with vocab in the past, so I'm cautiously optimistic):
=================================================================

Reviews How?
1. set anki to show failed cards after all other reviews/new cards.
2. use plugins to limit time per card down to 3-6 seconds.
3. review old/new cards and then add failed cards to cram deck once the failed cards are reached. Review cram deck on phone whenever there's dead time (if not, it doesn't matter).
4. take a minute at the end of the day to bury any remaining failed cards so they don't halt new cards the next day (thanks for the suggestion Daichi).

Reviews Why?
At it's core, SRS can perform 3 roles: (1) creating memories (using core2k6k & nothing else), (2) building up memories (seeing a sentence somewhere and srsing it, but then repeatedly failing the card until it sticks), and (3) retaining memories that you already built (I still know the vast majority of the kanji I learned 5 months ago).

The problem is that SRS does 1 of these roles really well in all situations, and the other 2 with varying degrees of success. As I've found out, the proper place for SRS in my own personal vocab studies is role 3, with role 2 only sparingly (light exposure). Of course, there are some people on these boards that have used SRS in all 3 roles for vocab (just as I did for kanji) with success -- however, I have to wonder if it's not best just to guide all newbies in the safer direction and tell them to stick to using SRS for role 3 and immersion for the other 2 roles (just in the beginning).

In any case, the reason I decided to use SRS for role 2 at all is more for convenience than anything; instead of stopping to delete leeches and having to re-add that vocab at a later date, I'll simply take a laissez-faire approach to studying them. At the end of the day I'll bury them and then see them the next day, constantly getting light exposure to them from my SRS until the immersion can do it's thing. In this way, I can blaze through the cards I do know, and can rest assured that the combination of immersion, light exposure, and "dead time studying" can nail into memory any leeches that pop up. Before, I was skirting around the problem by trying to go slow/thorough, or trying to cycle through the cards really fast; both methods led to frustration and a lot of time spent SRSing, and one method didn't even lead to retention after all was said and done. The hope is that I've addressed this problem head on now.
=================================================================

New Cards How?
1. immerse by watching & reading (latter is more important, at least for me personally).
2. lookup unknown words, shadow them within context, and air-write kani/furigana.
3. use rikaisama's 'S' feature and extract however many vocab I feel like for the day (goal is minimum of 20) and add to anki.
3a. use sub2srs where applicable and offload the audio to phone for listening instead of music (thanks for the nudge gaia, and thanks for the guide nukemarine). I've heard whispers of the morphology plugin, so hopefully that's something that will help me automate the sub2srs part of things even more (not sure at this point).

New Cards Why?
I've come to think of this whole SRS/immersion ordeal like a puzzle: the immersion places the pieces down and snaps the connecting parts together while the SRS keeps the pieces in place (this is just fancy speak for my media will play roles 1 and 2 while my SRS focuses on 3). My hope is that I've replaced the stick (SRS) with the carrot (media). More or less my vocab problem boils down to the fact that I am essentially encountering vocabulary for the first time and expecting to have it nailed down the same day. I assume that the instances where people do see and acquire vocab the same day are either from SRS grinding or the person was already well adapted to acquiring new vocab in this fashion (could be any number of reasons why that is).

As I mentioned before, it could be that I study a year of vocab, but only have 6 months worth committed to memory and the other 6 in the priming stage since the SRS will no longer be used to pound leeches into memory. Again, I welcome anyone to comment on this as I'm really curious what your opinions are.

In the end, I feel it's most efficient to marry the SRS with my media instead of keeping them in separate areas (at least for me, but maybe not for someone who can endure the premade vocab decks or who has a memory more suited to that style of learning).
=================================================================

Auxiliary Strategies:
1. when reading, read page once casually.
1a. read through page again, looking up words and shadowing them in context.
1b. speed read the page.
2. all cards should be kept simple (just import words straight from rikaichan) with exception to sub2srs. Context isn't really as necessary here as having the variety is (any and all vocab is good so long as it's not a duplicate card); simple cards keep me from feeling like I'm being bogged down by their content, and sub2srs adds a some color to the mixture.
=================================================================

In closing, I'd really appreciate input from someone who has been down a similar road of difficulty with vocab and also lacked any reading input up 'till that point -- any and all input is welcome, though. Thanks.

Last edited by ragdim (2012 November 02, 9:13 pm)

This is an interesting discussion.. I'm around the same level as you I guess. I know what you mean about 100 cards taking 2 hours, I think this can definitely be sped up after some practice. I remember at first being afraid to open my RTK deck, as I just didn't want to deal with it (I still did though everyday), but now its just so easy, I can do it even when I'm half asleep. I think with core6k (I'm using the optimized version) it could be the same after some practice.

I've leeched so many new cards, probably 90% of them - the second day I see them isn't nearly as bad though. And some words stick much better than others. I have a LOT of trouble with the single character words that are extremely obscure.. but even those I just fail them until I get them right one time - hopefully it will stick later on down the line I think don't be afraid to hit the fail button, it speeds things up a lot.

I wouldn't drop core.. I don't have a problem with it to be honest. I'm about to use Sub2SRS alongside core and get more interesting sentences going.

I use Anki for learning from core, it's useful for hearing the sound files easily.

Wall of text, coming up. If you want, skip to the bottom.

I'm right where you're at as well and my personal experiences coincide with yours.
RTK was easy 25-40 cards at day for 2-3 months.
Tae Kim was boring but I was able to go at a slow pace and keep my reviews down. Usually aiming for 20 cards or at least one section/page. Another 2-3 months/
I finished Tae Kim maybe 2 weeks ago, and with both RTK and Tae Kim together. I can usually speed through them both in 20minutes. Easy, since new elements aren't consistently being added anymore.

Ive only just started Vocabulary, 20 cards a day, for the past 5 days. and my review time just went past 1.5 hours today.
I knew this wave was coming, I had trouble remember the readings whenever Tae Kim introduced new vocab. This is something I'm already mentally prepared to go through, I knew it wouldn't be easy.
My hope is that, once I see enough kanji readings within vocab, it will become easier. You know, like 大 is probably going to be 「おお」「だい」「たい」 or 不 will probably be 「ふ」 ect.

But all this talk of being in front of my SRS too much is a little worrying, haha. I did know it wasn't great, but its only way I know how and I figured a faster way might come to me along the way if I just keep going. After all, most of the advice I see around topics like this is "Find your own way that fits you". I find that easier said than done myself because being in school for most my life, I always took to default route and that always seemed to work out for me. That may be just an excuse, but I'm doing my best.
Either way, when I'm adding vocabulary, I'm not speeding through in 10 minutes, that's for sure.

Because you see,
I find myself in front of my computer SRSing away all day and it isn't until the end of the day that I open up a manga, or pull up a game and fetch out 20 sentence before I go, "I'm tired" and do something else for what little time I have before I sleep. Be it something in Japanese or not. I do listen to Japanese music as I SRS, and that's always something.
==========================================
To the main point.

I can see where you're going at when you say you don't exactly need to commit to memory the desired vocab that day and your "any kind of exposure, is good exposure" take. Where as, I don't need to memorize it today, but if I see it over a long period of time, Ill get eventually. This, in turn, resulting in me spending less time doing reps and more time doing things in Japanese.

I say this because, new cards are easier the second time around. I'd be willing to bet, if I saw something like..特定 once,twice or thrice a day, over the course of a week. I'd be able to pick it up a lot faster when I put it in my SRS.
I was reading through TWGOK, and I knew 地獄　and 駆け魂 before I even saw it in my SRS.
So, why not just see it a couple of times a day in my SRS every day over the course of a week? Then on that fated day, where it you go "I got it" will the sentence finally move over 1 day intervals.

But I wonder, if you go about it like this, will the cards pile up faster than you can eventually "know" them? I think you still have to be careful.

Last edited by CloverJoker (2012 November 21, 2:08 am)

You know you're on track when you'd rather be doing Japanese than visiting these forums every 5 seconds. I've been reading a lot this past month(exclusively games and manga for now), and have been sustainably SRSing 20 vocab cards a day.

I've kept some of the stuff I mentioned that I would try originally, and I threw some of it out. Before I outline the things I am using, I'd like to add a preface; though I think some of these methods could benefit pretty much anyone (and that's why I'm listing them), the take-home message should ultimately be to ***EXPERIMENT*** with your deck type/format (is it j to e, is it grammar+vocab, is it sentences?), ***READ*** stuff (don't wait until you're partially fluent to read, you might not ever make it otherwise), and of course ***IMMERSE*** (this was the easiest for me all along -- the main thing that changed is I'm more actively paying attention/catching words (don't drone out) looking words up on my phone while watching anime, and also listening to less music and more anime rips (music is harder to understand and easier to drone out on)). Without further ado, here's the stuff I switched up:

1) Reading manga and gaming. I have both English and Japanese scripts so that I can parallel read (it's important for enjoyment that I understand the plot. Also, despite the fact that English/Japanese translations aren't a 1 to 1 thing, it *does* help understanding if you know the jist of a sentence). I use rikaisama to lookup whatever words I don't know while gaming (since the game scripts I have are in my browser), and kanjitomo for words I don't know while reading manga. Manga is being used as a replacement for Japanese subtitles for anime (since Jap subtitles are hard to come by and the anime dialogue usually follows the manga anyway). I rip audio from the anime to listen to until I get bored of it, and then I rip audio from the next episode and read the corresponding manga. Here's some pics just to give an idea:
Parallel reading manga: http://tinypic.com/r/2a9r5vb/6
Kanjitomo (free OCR): http://tinypic.com/r/ipz4p1/6
Parallel reading game: http://tinypic.com/r/2r41yjm/6

2) Failed cards are set to show after all reviews/new cards have been done. I have 2 phases of study: a quick phase where I take only 6 seconds per card (I use an addon to force me to stay with it), and a slow phase where all the failed cards show up at the very end (I disable the addon and take as much time with these cards as I want). Let me further clarify the "slow phase"; these failed cards *only* show up at the end, which means they aren't showing up during my reviews/new cards. In other words, I do reviews and new cards without ever repeating a failed card; this is important because having failed cards pop up during the quick phase really breaks my momentum. At the very end, I have a nice pile of all the reviews/new cards I failed. I review this pile throughout the day as I feel like it on my phone, making sure that I at least get through all the failed-new cards (since leaving them overnight would prevent new cards from showing up the next day). It's nice because the new cards are always at the top of my failed pile, so they get done first.

3) Changing the actual format of my cards helped a lot. I had to experiment with 3 different deck setups and reread some of the stuff on AJATT (pertaining to sentences specifically) before coming to a conclusion (I ended up going back to Core 2k6k Optimized Vocab since it has audio for the cards and also since I'm more comfortable personally with something that has been designed and edited to a great degree by someone more knowledgeable than me). Anyways, these are the realizations about card format I came to:

(A) E to J cards is pure suckage. This is essentially what I did before... there was a Japanese sentence on the front, but I completely neglected it in favor of just glancing at the English keyword and trying to guess the corresponding vocab in Japanese. Here's a picture of my old method (google images ftw. Back side of the card is missing, but it would have everything that the front did + the closed kanji/its reading): http://tinypic.com/r/2ir8d3b/6
(B) just like khatz said, the reading of a sentence has a sort of flow to it which helps memorization. Flow is kind of a nebulous term, so a more concrete way of putting it would be *connections*. The research on the brain makes it clear that we learn by connecting things.
(C) cards with too many things going on slows me down. I found that the important thing to increasing retention was reading the Japanese sentence (something I never did before), so I removed anything that distracted me from that; pictures and English sentence. Here's pics of my new setup (note that these cards also have audio):
front: http://tinypic.com/r/2vwz979/6
backside: http://tinypic.com/r/o0ngg0/6
(D) trying to guess both the reading and the vocab-kanji was too much. I now just try to deem the reading/meaning of a single word.

This last segment will be about why I do what I do. Again, it's important to note that experimentation, reading, and *actively* immersing in stuff you love is (I feel) the guaranteed route to being successful in your Japanese, not *my* specific methods; they're just a nice example/stuff to try.

Keeping this real simple: the combo of reading *and* immersing is the best way for me. My opinion is that using just immersion is to put yourself on par with the tools a baby/toddler has, and they will win in every instance (meaning it's going to take a lot longer to become fluent). Using immersion+srs is a step up, but immersion lacks clarity/control over speed when it comes to picking up words, and SRS sucks at initially imprinting them. Reading is the best way to make initial contact with vocab (since you have complete control over speed, and there's no issue of clarity here), audio/video immersion adds more connections to that word via voice acting/pictures, and finally SRS makes sure you don't forget things and also acts as a light form of exposure in and of itself. Is this all scientifically proven? No. Is it a nice guideline/something to start with? I think so.

Anyways, that's all for now. People will obviously want to know how this worked out for me on a longer scale than just a month, so I'll post some bi-monthly updates. Toodaloo.

Last edited by ragdim (2012 December 03, 1:11 pm)

*Grabs drinks and snack*
Was interesting, thanks for discussing it. I'm in the same position you were of beginning to learn more vocab, and have been using similar methods. I had intended to just do Core, but looked at it and just felt my brain freeze over (didn't help that there were so many numbers early on, I can't handle numbers even in English). A lot was vocab I knew, I didn't understand many of the sentences, didn't like the card format, was pretty obviously just not going to get on well with it. So, I'm making picture cards, using the Core just as a frequency list, and also getting vocab from native media (mostly Tales of games for me). I've noticed my retention for native media cards is drastically better (even when you'd think the words would be trickier), even more so if I understood the whole sentence so was able to add it as a sentence card instead of vocab. Unfortunately, this rarely happens, though, the downside I've found with native media is that mostly I waste a huge amount of time just struggling with it, understanding nothing and finding no words that seem like they'd be good to add. It's encouraging that it seems like it will get easier.

Where do you usually look for game scripts, btw? I have the ones for a few Tales games (Abyss, Vesperia) in English but didn't know where to start to find them in Japanese.

ragdim wrote:

edit: also, I forgot to mention an important tidbit. Become really good at forming habits -- I recommend using a calendar of some sort and marking off the days that you do the habit.

Yep, I do this and it's definitely helped, I have a calender for Anki, tick off the day when I've finished my reps, and note down how many new cards added. At the end of the week, I total up the new cards just to help keep track, and if I did all my reps, I get a shiny gold star like a little kid might. Still working out a reward system with exchanging those - I've learned I respond well to bribery. XD