Short Answer: Don't review from green boxes, long answer follows:

It's very counter-productive, your reviewing stuff that's stored in short term memory, the entire goal of the Leitner system is to slowly but gradually move information from short-term memory to long-term memory.

You're only cheating yourself, only review from failed or expired boxes.

Last edited by meolox (2008 March 30, 7:08 pm)

unzum wrote:

I've been having trouble remembering cards after learning them in the study area and by the time they've expired I've already forgotten the story.

After you have created a story, wait at least until the next day before you click on the blue stack.  If you can`t remember the kanji after one day, you know you need to work on the story more. 
When I fail a kanji, I also wait at least one day and do a mini quiz before I hit "learned" on the study page.  Does that make sense?
Then you shouldn`t have as much trouble remembering them before they expire.  (But as meolox said, don`t test the green cards)

@laner36
I've seen the threads about reviewing the failed cards as a stack, but that only seems useful for weeding out failed kanji that you aren't really failing at the moment.  (i.e. you failed them during a prior review, but for whatever reason you can recall them right now.)

I've been letting the failed stack pile up as I push through the rest of the book.  I do a decent amount of reading on the side, and I occasionally run into characters that are in the failed stack.  This tends to give me enough of an incentive to get them out of the failed stack.  Usually I get one or two this way every few days.  I could write myself a note to go back at look at them in 24 hours, but it really seems like something that the SRS should be handling automatically for me.

Yeah, try to keep the failed stack to a minimum, and weed it out every day. I keep mine under 20 or so now.

I have a strict policy on letting things out of the failed stack-- I only release it after I can recall it from keyword->kanji successfully. So on any given day, I go through my failed stack of yesterday's stuff, see which keywords I can get the kanji from, mark those learned, then go back and study anything I can't pass that day. I've had some words sit in that pile for a couple of days-- 4 at the most-- but I'll fail anything I don't get right, and if I fail it, I study it, then don't touch it for a day. Then I do the day's reviews, and only after that do I add any new stuff.

I'm also tracking things that show up in the fail pile a lot. There are some kanji that just don't seem to stick. I've tried all sorts of things to remember them, so I'm just going to fall back on brute force repetition for those few.

Before, I very strongly felt that failed cards should go to the blue stack before going to the first stack.  But nowadays I don`t think it is a big deal.  Perhaps because I figured Fabrice wouldn`t change his mind about it (so I tried to implement it into my own method).  Or maybe I understand better now why Fabrice doesn`t do it.
Anyways scout, Your method of adding cards sounds very different from mine so I don`t really know what to tell you.  But I would never go through 200 failed cards--as you say, that would be a waste of time. 
Let me try to explain better how I do it (or did it) and hope that it helps somehow...

[Continue reading for a (boring) description of my failed stack method...]

For me, a majority of cards that end up in the failed stack don`t need their story "reformulated".  Kanji are failed for many reasons (eg. being tired, missing a stroke, or the story being on the tip of the tongue) but it doesn`t necessarily mean that the story needs to be changed. 
I try to look at the kanji right after it is failed and I know if I need to change the story (because I have missed this kanji 5 times, etc) or if I can just quiz it the next day  and get it back in the system. 
When I had a huge pile of failed cards, I would add new cards until I had my failed stack to under about 20.  (Also I never used the link synewave gave, I would go through them the way I tried to explain above, clicking learned on the kanji I remembered perfectly the day after I failed them the first time).  I would stop after there were 10 that I could not remember after 1 day.  These 10 i would look at again and at _that_ point reformulate their stories if needs be.  Then the next day I would usually be able to get through these 10 and "weed out" a few more until I again had 10 that I couldn`t remember from the day before.
So if I had 200 in my failed stack, I would push "learned" on maybe 30 kanji before I had 10 in the study page that I couldn`t remember.  than the next day (**before reviewing expired cards**) I would go through the 9 or so from the day before and maybe 30 more before having 10 on my study page.  That day I would fail some more from the expired cards but my failed stack would be down to about 140 or so.  I would continue in this fashion until my failed cards were down to 20-30 before I would start adding more cards (as new cards are generally failed more often).

EDIT: In other words, the only reason I would go through all 200 failed cards in one day is if I hit "learned" on 190 or more of them (or "weeded them out").

Last edited by laner36 (2008 March 30, 10:07 pm)

Scout--have you thought about just reviewing 20-30 from your failed stack each day? That way you could knock the whole thing out a couple of weeks. Just go down the list of failed kanji (don't go into review mode-- just look at the long list you get when you hit "View All"), and just focus on 20-30 of those a day. Since the default list goes from low kanji number to high numbers, the ones near the top should be ones you have a better shot of remembering. Even if you can't clear 20-30 a day, you should be in a better position to clear them the next day. I've had as many as 80-90 in my fail pile at one time, and I managed to plow through it.

Once you have it cleared, it's a LOT easier to keep clear, and that way you don't ignore ones you have trouble with. Because you're going to reach a point where your failed pile has 250+ in it, and you'll be stuck there until you clear it. Then you'll have to get them through all those reviews, and that can become a big drag on your momentum. (And the last thing you want is that.)

I wouldn't worry so much about reworking stories-- sometimes nothing will stick no matter what you do. You just have to keep seeing it until your brain figures out that it's important to remember it. I'd only rework a story if I have a low pass/fail ratio, or just an inordinate number of fails.