The 1,000+ Expired Cards Club

Harrow Member

From: Eugene OR USA Registered: 2008-08-26 Posts: 122

Down to 466 and way past bedtime. More tomorrow.

Hyreia Member

From: Missouri Registered: 2007-12-27 Posts: 12

Well, my internet was down for three days, and without any way to get to it, it piled up to many, many hundred. And since I was already near like 1800... I decided to just continue on until I got to 2042 with no reviews (I did, and some of the early ones in the 1700s and 1800s don't click very well). I'm going to restart my kanji reviews with anki. In the mean time, I immediately started doing sentences from Kanji Core. I have a listening deck (I just take thirty sentences at a time from the series and put them into a deck. Nothing on the front but the sound file, the transcript on the back. If it takes me more than one listen I mark it 'Hard'. My listening has always been bad.) ANYWAY, getting off topic... I also have a deck to take new words (composed of Kanji RTK taught me) and an example sentence with the new word bolded. I've been using that Yahoo Japanese dictionary for extra words and sentences, and have been stealing some sentences from an old favorite manga of mine. So, I joined the club but I'll be okay. I wanted to get to the fun part, and now I'm there! : )

yukamina Member

From: Canada Registered: 2006-01-09 Posts: 761

I have 1527 expired vocab cardsin Trinity right now After I added a ton of cards, I suddenly got sick of reviewing and studying isolated vocab(not for the first time). The cards are all in the last pile, at least. I'm wondering whether I should work my way through them, or just forget about SRSing vocab items.

JapanesePod101 Sponsor

DrWarrior12 New member

Registered: 2006-01-02 Posts: 6

Had 1400+ yesterday. Went through a couple hundred last night and over 725 today :0...down to 500!

mafried Member

Registered: 2006-06-24 Posts: 766

Yikes, getting there... one week into my Asia trip and I'm at 500 expired cards. I'm doing reviews when I can, but it's obviously not enough...

mafried Member

Registered: 2006-06-24 Posts: 766

Ughh... I'm back in the states and I've got 1000+ expired cards. God I hate doing SRS so much right now.

Zero motivation. zilch.

Last edited by mafried (2009 July 02, 12:32 pm)

Harrow Member

From: Eugene OR USA Registered: 2008-08-26 Posts: 122

mafried wrote:
Ughh... I'm back in the states and I've got 1000+ expired cards. God I hate doing SRS so much right now.

Zero motivation. zilch.

I totally relate to the zero motivation comment.

I'm at 978, sigh, after getting off track, clawing my way back below 500, and then losing motivation again.

However, I leave for Japan for a month of intensive language study in less than a month, so I HAVE to get my head back into this!! After all the hard work getting through RTK1, how can I let my hardwon kanji-meaning associations slip away?

I will now begin reviewing. If I just do 20 it will be 20 more than I have done for weeks...

Dustin_Calgary Member

From: Canada Registered: 2008-11-11 Posts: 428

I was at just under 3,000, so I decided to start again from scratch :p

I am just past 1200 in rtk right now, should be done within a week or two, and then start adding sentences from new sources all over again as well, I already killed my old data so it's too late but I think it's for the best ^^

mafried Member

Registered: 2006-06-24 Posts: 766

Just keep with it. I cleared out the whole backlog this morning and it was such a good feeling. Made me motivated to study again.

I found timeboxed sprints of about 3 minutes to be very effective. I had no motivation to work through 1,000 reviews. But I could work through 15-20 cards in a few minutes and not think too much about it.. and once I started making progress it became addictive.

Good luck, both of you.

izakaya27 Member

From: Ireland Registered: 2009-01-04 Posts: 10

I went 500 down at one stage too - went on holiday for 2 weeks, pile grew, motivation decreased, pile grew, and so on up to 500 to review.

For quite a while I left it that way because I didn't realise how easy it could be to get back to 0.

Tips for people trying to claw back:

* If you have a graph of kanji added over time (I find graphs great for motivation), add a second line which is (total kanji in system - kanji to review). Watching this line rise will provide good motivation.

* Review box 4 first.
- You've reviewed them 4 times already, so retention should be good.
- Once you've marked them as remembered, they won't be back for a long while.
- This will quickly bring down your "to review" number.

* Work backwards from box 4, and let failed kanji pile up in the first box (ignore them until the end).

This way, you make quick progress purely by doing reviews, and you don't spend time languishing in the study section while your "to review" number is massive.

Lastly, once your "to review" number has been severely beaten down, you are left with a fair-sized fail pile. Hopefully, the motivation from getting this far quickly will help you work through these, say, 10 at a time.

Hope that's of help to someone, certainly helped me get back in the swing of things.

mafried Member

Registered: 2006-06-24 Posts: 766

Off what izakaya27 said, I'd throw in that you should vary up your review strategy if you use Anki. I found that if I was burned out from reviewing cards in order due, it might be refreshing enough of a change to switch to smallest or largest interval, or random ordering.

Tobberoth Member

From: Sweden Registered: 2008-08-25 Posts: 3364

I only use Anki nowadays, probably over a thousand cards expired on this site.

Anyway, the best, most ultimate advice ever for getting done with reviews: Timeboxing. Just set a clock. "From now on, I will review as many cards as I can for 10 minutes". You will amaze yourself with how much can be done in 10 minutes. Then just do that a few times and a day and 1000 reviews went to 0 in no-time.

Mighty_Matt Member

From: Koga Registered: 2006-07-18 Posts: 197 Website

I've only just come back to this site after a year of not studying. I had completed RTK1 and had 1800-1900 in the fourth box, but now I have about 1700 expired cards

I was thinking about just ignoring them and starting up with my Anki deck, which has a few hundred sentences in it, but I've forgotten so many kanji that I'm going to work through my expired pile and re-study the failed ones (about 85% so far). Like was said above, I'm sure one I get into it again it'll come back quickly, then I can move back to Anki for my sentences.

liosama Member

From: sydney Registered: 2008-03-02 Posts: 896

Ah I've been clawing my way back from 750, now im at ~400ish

I was doing random reviews while playing starcraft, cs, chatting to friends, before i knew it 300 were down (though it took a week almost).

What's looking bad though is my size 200 fail pile

Mighty_Matt Member

From: Koga Registered: 2006-07-18 Posts: 197 Website

My fail pile is already 720, but I've got the expired cards down to almost 1300. I'm just racing through them instead of racking my brains for minutes per kanji. I'm going to take my time when I go through the failed stack

Jarvik7 Member

From: 名古屋 Registered: 2007-03-05 Posts: 3946

I just noticed that I have no cards that AREN'T expired on RevTK!

vosmiura Member

From: SF Bay Area Registered: 2006-08-24 Posts: 1085

I have none expired right now, but I have 1000+ I haven't unsuspended for over a year so technically, I'm "in da club" but I'm totally not stressed about it.

yukkuri_kame Member

From: Florida US Registered: 2008-05-30 Posts: 185

1190 expired... mostly in box 4

DarkAngelMoon Member

From: Canada Registered: 2010-08-31 Posts: 16

1100 expired but those are my previous core 2000 steps(that counts right) that i never went back to review. so i just merged the decks(never even knew i could do this till yesterday DOH) and I'm going through them again. lol this is soo not going to be fun ><

Fleskmos Member

From: Sweden Registered: 2011-07-03 Posts: 41

Had 1400 cards expired when I returned home heavily jet-lagged after two weeks away from my computer! Needless to say, it took me quite some time to finish that up. Luckily, most of it was vocabulary cards from various short books so I didn't have to wade through piles of sentences or reproduce kanji from my memory in my battered state:)

blackbrich Member

From: America Registered: 2010-06-06 Posts: 300

Had around 4000 week and a half ago. It got done.

eubankp Member

From: Charleston Registered: 2011-02-22 Posts: 30

lol, I'm slogging through reviews and just noticed this thread. I'm at 1013. I finished RTK and got down to 500 due, but it slowly climbed back up. Arrrgh! come on!

thurd Member

From: Poland Registered: 2009-04-07 Posts: 756

blackbrich wrote:
Had around 4000 week and a half ago. It got done.

How did you do that? I had around 3.8k and it took me months to catch up. Did around 200 every day and on the day I finished had sub 200 reviews. I wonder how long it will take in your case.

Splatted Member

From: England Registered: 2010-10-02 Posts: 776

Lol, you people are insane, especially blackbrich.

Index » General discussion

mafried wrote:

blackbrich wrote: