Pre-Made SRS Cards = Fail (For me)
January 30, 2011 8 Comments
I’m always tweaking my learning methods to see what works best for me.
Here’s a recent tweak that didn’t work…
I love me some SRS’ing, and I’ve been hand-picking sentences for my main deck for a couple years now. I’m usually in some sort of “phase” with my SRS habits, but a few months ago I thought…
Who came up with this gem? (Not me!)
“Gee, I would really like some audio and pictures with my sentences. But that’s a lot of work on my own… I think I’ll add a pre-made deck to my sentence deck! Yeah, yeah, good idea, Liz!”
Even though I’d read recommendations from numerous other learners not to use generic sentences, I couldn’t resist the urge to try them out. After all, it’s always best to take the advice of others with a grain of salt, and I’m on an adventure here, people, I’ve got to try things for myself! I downloaded a couple shared Japanese Core 2000 decks, neutered them of their single-word cards, and integrated them with my sentence deck.
“Yay listening and pretty pictures!” For the first week or so I was all about my new cards. I enjoyed having the audio and photos with every sentence. I loved the ability to replay audio over and over and definitely noticed an improvement in my listening comprehension.
After a few weeks, the novelty wore off and I was slacking on my reps. And I slacked more and more. It took me a disturbingly long time to realize…
The pre-made sentences were “I’d-rather-wash-dishes”-boring to me. (And I flipping hate washing dishes.)
I probably didn’t like 98% of them. And some of the sentences were just…ridiculous, and not in a funny haha way. (See example.) I could feel my SRS’ing mojo being depleted. For some reason, I thought I should continue this unnecessary self-torture until I’d finished the first reps for all for all of them.
As soon as I finished, the new picked-by-me cards started showing up for reviews. What a difference! It was like I snapped out of a coma. I loved SRS’ing again. I felt like I was making progress. I decided that for me:
Hand-picked cards…
- are more effective. I learn them more easily and quickly. My recall is way better.
- are more fun. And fun = motivation to SRS . Win!
This is more like it. From the Wiki article on Chuck Norris (日本語で)
As long as it works for you, work it!
So, pre-made cards aren’t my thing. Maybe they aren’t yours either. Or maybe you do get giddy over the thought of learning things like, “There are 8 clocks in that house.” Whatever works, I hope you go for it!
As for picking SRS sentences, I know what’s worked best for me so far. Maybe it’ll work for you, or help you figure out a way that works for you!
Yea, I also did it. Downloaded one lesson of core 2000 and tried to review them.
1) Boring
2) Sometimes I had doubts (like English ambiguity. etc)
3) Boring
4) Yes, it seemed like torture
5) Did I mention boring?
6) Sometimes the sentence seemed like, “there is something that I will see only here”
7) Don’t they seem sometime a little, robotic?
I think maybe I will give it another shot, with a deck “audio-only”->answer for when I go for a run(AnkiDroid) and delete/suspend alot of stuff. Who knows?
They felt robotic at times for me, too, but I wasn’t sure if it was the cards or my lack of Japanese knowledge.
Hmm, maybe the sentences will be more fun if you’re running…let us know!
Great points. Self-made cards make the difference.
I agree with this. Although, some pre-mined sentences/vocab is very useful for beginners. Later on, it will does get less useful and useful, unless you find it interesting. That’s why, outside of grammar srsing. I only srs from native sources. So I collect vocab/sentences from news,shows,scripts,songs,games,etc. It will builds up my kanji knowledge and my vocab. Eventually, the number of things we don’t know, will go down to a very small amount.
Also, after a while. You have to find what works for you. I finally found what works for me. 3 decks. Each testing for different things. 1 is my sentence deck which is for context. My other one is vocab, just for word collecting and lastly my production deck. Going from kana to kanji.
Ah, interesting! Are your vocab deck cards words alone or in sentences? I tend to try and find a bunch of sentences with the same new word in all of them and add them at the same time so they show up together-ish in the first reviews. (I have a harder time doing word-alone.)
Some are alone while others have a few kanji in them for context. There isn’t sentences in my vocab deck, it’s more for getting associating with words I see from context. I strictly add from context now. Works better for the future, as eventually I’ll be able to recognize/read most of what I come by. Yea for 1 word, it can have so much readings.
But it’s best to test them separately then all together. (Especially for names). I’ve been using my vocab deck for 1 year now, I must say it’s worth it. I have 20,000+ cards (no duplicates, I deleted all the duplicates in all my decks). I add 100 per day, thanks to rikaichan. I easily press 1 button and it saves it to the clipboard and then, once I have a bunch of words saved up. I just save it, then open it in wordpad and import it into my anki deck. (Has 3 fields, 1 is the kanji, 1 is reading and 1 is meanings). So far, I’ve been able to review all my cards fast/efficiently.).
I’m easily maintaining adding 100 per day for my vocab deck. Now I’m just finding ways of speeding up adding sentence cards.
Chuck Norris jokes in Japanese