Hi all,
I recently made the switch from the review system on this site to Anki. However, I was 450+ cards into RtK before I made the switch, so I had 450+ cards to review. But I'm down to about the last 100 or so, and I'm having a blast reviewing them all. Sure, it's taken me a couple of days, but it's really not so bad.
However, I've noticed a lot of people dislike reviewing millions upon millions of cards because it is a lot of work, especially if those cards are sentences and not Kanji (I think this was one of the reasons Kanji Hanzi Hub disliked Anki).
So, I created this thread so that people who love reviewing tons of cards can express their love for review while people who hate reviewing can take a break from reviewing and rant on for a bit. I'm doing this in hopes of hearing about the experiences of other people who are further down the 'Learning Japanese' road than I am so I can see what I'm in for.
lanval
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2008-11-29
Posts: 162
Hi,
I just decided to switch too, however I thought I'd split it after chap.16, and use both site +SRS. Unlike you, Im too lazy to review old ones, besides, that would put me behind in schedule. Would take more time to have them in long term memory if I started again, so I rather use this site for old kanjis. Too bad I didnt think of that sooner.^^
I guess what I dont like about reviewing is how its frustrating when you dont know new ones at all. But its fun when you have high rates. Its like: Im not stupid after all!^^
zodiac wrote:
If you have 10,000 cards and 1,000,000 total reviews, each card would be reviewed an average of 100 times...
But, if you have 10,000 cards and 1,000,000,000,000 total reviews, each card would be reviewed an average of 100,000,000 times. Talk about millions upon millions 
.
Theperson45
New member
From: Ireland
Registered: 2009-01-02
Posts: 2
The way the reviews go for me is, I get up early and do them all in one go each day. I use Anki. There are about 100-150 kanji to review each morning, it takes about an hour and a half to do. To soften the task, if I have time the previous night, I'll do some reviewing of the not-so-new ones that were already waiting in line to be reviewed the next morning, but the newest ones always wait until the following day.
I don't "fear" the reviews, because I enjoy writing the kanji onto paper with a pencil while I'm reviewing. That in particular is fun. At first I was just doing it in my head, and that made it kind of boring and stressful, plus it didn't give me practice in handwriting. I fear having to get up early though, but I know it's good because it means the reviews always get done to completion every day, so I don't have to worry all day about when todo the reviewing, and there's no possibility me missing out on them.
Ben_Nielson
Member
From: Japan
Registered: 2008-12-19
Posts: 164
I keep three separate decks - a Kanji deck, a reading comprehension deck, and a listening comprehension deck.
I keep them separate because I do them at different times of the day. Sometimes, I have space to be writing Kanji - which is when I work on that deck. Sometimes I can put on some earphones or have speakers, so listening comprehension. All other times, I just plow through my reading comprehension deck.
Anyways - with Anki, you can combine all your decks and then just "suspend" certain tags when you don't want to deal with them. So if you don't want to do Kanji until Friday, just leave it suspended. Then unsuspend it (and probably set the Kanji tag to High Priority so they'll all get reviewed at the same time instead of interspersed throughout your other cards).
Then again, I think it's easier just to have three shortcuts on my desktop - one for each deck, depending on what/how I want to study at that time.
Murjab
Member
From: Kentucky, USA
Registered: 2007-08-20
Posts: 22
I kinda like reviews... This is something that I'm realizing now... I didn't appreciate reviews enough before. The thing about a review is that by its nature, you're reviewing something you've already learned. It's less work than learning a new kanji, but you still get a sense that you're studying and doing something worthwhile. After all, reviews are important! Now that I have finished RTK1, I like the review stage (it wasn't always so fun, though!). Generally these days I get around 60-70 reviews, sometimes more, but then again, I only finished RTK1 recently. I see more and more cards going into that last stack. It's great! Then of course I miss a few, and they run back to the beginning. But it's usually not so bad. I go over the forgotten ones once or twice, and then they start back on their path through the boxes. Just like 90% is a nice goal to shoot for in review, I'd kind of like to see 90% of the kanji in that last RevTK box. It's a fun challenge! (But eventually I'll start RTK3 and have missed cards all over the place.)
Of course, the goal is to keep challenging yourself. I've not stopped learning, and have various SRS decks of sentences and kanji+Japanese keywords to keep me busy. But after all that work, review time is kind of refreshing.
@Ben + Tobberoth <-- Thanks for the advice, I will probably keep them separate. I tried putting kana into my kanji deck when I first started (I knew the kana to read, but my katakana writing was a bit dodgy) and I quickly stopped that because I just got a bit annoyed when a kana came up in the middle of kanji reviews as it ruined my rhythm; so I suppose I it might get on my nerves to have both kanji and sentences in one place.
By the way, could you tell me (or point me to an appropriate post) where is a good place to get beginner sentences from? I went to the bookshop today, where they had thousands of books, but I couldn't find anything that looked like it was worth buying (except for the grammar dictionary, but I was a bit worried that the vocabulary would be really limited because the whole point was to describe grammar, not variety of words). Obviously the problem isn't finding sentences, it is finding useful ones with reliable translations. I suppose I can do my own translations, but it seems like it would be slower, but then I suppose I would learn more...
Sorry for hijacking the thread; no I don't fear the reviews, except if I've been on the beers for a few days and then an absolute mountain has piled up. It used to be much worse than it is now; when I started I didn't fully understand the SRS thing so I clicked hard on every new card, whether I found it hard or not. After a while the reviews became ridiculous, and I thought it probably wasn't particularly beneficial to adopt this approach. As such I started hitting good irrespective of if the card was new or not if I got the answer, and reserved hard for cards that I got right, but were hard. Now the reviews are manageable, and if they go well I really enjoy them.
