During my recent Japan trip, I was spending my time having fun, and didn't do any studying. In particular, my daily Japanese reviews on my SRS, Mnemosyne, went neglected.
In case you don't know about it, SRS stands for "Spaced Repetition System". An SRS program is a flashcard program for the computer, where you make your own flashcards and review them. The cool thing is, when you review a card, you get to rate how well you know it. Then the program uses advanced algorithms to figure out what cards to show you. It solves the old flashcard dilemma: if you know a card really well, you don't want to waste time over-reviewing it, but if you throw it away entirely, you'll eventually forget it. I use Mnemosyne, which is free, but there are tons of other SRS programs available.
I've been studying Japanese for awhile, and my deck now has almost 9000 cards in it. Then I went and spent a month in Japan, and didn't review the cards at all, so when I got back, there were over 4000 cards scheduled to review. Ouch!!
This isn't the first time I've neglected my deck. Last time, I just got busy with other stuff, and ended up taking a month-long hiatus from the deck. Back then, the deck only had about 3000 cards, and when I finally returned from my wandering ways, there were about 2000 scheduled reviews. At the time, I thought that was a lot...
When this happens, there are two things you can do. You can brute-force your way, grit your teeth, and just blast through all the reviews. With the 2000 cards before, this is what I did, and it took about 4 days of 500 cards a day.
This time, I'm going about it a different way. I've decided I'll review 100 cards a day. Yes, just 100 cards a day. At this rate, it'd take about 40 days to clear all the scheduled reviews, even if we assumed no new ones were being added. It'll actually take closer to 60, because more cards come up for scheduled review every day. But I don't really mind.
You see, after spending a month in Japan, I feel like I've made a big transition in my Japanese. I'm no longer using the deck to learn Japanese as much as to preserve Japanese and ward off the deathly grasp of forgetfulness.
My viewpoint of the language has changed. While I'm still a long, long way from fluency, I now see myself as knowing the language. In a way, that's subjective. But I feel now more like a Japanese infant picking up the language naturally, than a westerner struggling with the bass-ackwards grammar and crazy alien vocabulary. The grammar now makes intuitive sense, almost more sense than English if that's possible (Japanese is more "logical" somehow), and when I see "new" vocabulary now, it very often has a familiar ring to it.
What I was starting to notice just prior to my Japan trip, was that I was getting caught up in the SRS and it was becoming an end in itself. The jarring awakening came when I caught myself putting off doing fun things in Japanese because my deck was too full of brand new cards and I needed to clear room before I could "sentence mine" new things. I'll say that again: I was putting off using Japanese so I could study Japanese. Put in such clear words, that's ridiculous! But it's an easy trap to fall into...
A fixed number of cards per day, in my case 100 cards, is a good way to inject sanity back into the program when it gets out of hand. It's a good exercise in self-discipline: some days I'm busy and can barely find room to do my 100 cards. Other days (much more rare), I find myself enjoying the review so much, listening to good music as I do it, it's hard to tear myself away after 100 cards. But I made the decision to do 100 cards a day and I'm gonna stick to it.
Should I have made such a limit in the beginning? It's hard to say. I think when I was first learning the language, there was a big benefit to going balls-to-the-wall. I made huge progress very quickly, at the expense of a lot of invested time and energy. It was well worth it, especially since I learned a lot about language acquisition in general.
One thing is, when I was first starting out, I had too little Japanese to get much benefit from just listening to the language without any other structure. Watching raw, un-subtitled TV shows for example, I could understand almost nothing. If I'd gone to Japan back then, I would've been lost. I could have still learned the (spoken) language that way, but it would take a looong time! Not to mention the crazy-ass written language...
Now that I have a lot more confidence and ability in Japanese, I do most my learning naturally just by talking to Japanese people, watching Japanese TV, listening to Japanese music, etc. It's a little like walking a path in the dark, because when I was in the heavy SRS phase, I pretty much had lists of everything I knew, right there in the card deck. Now, my subconscious is doing the learning, and I'm not even consciously aware of how much I know! Anyway, I've kind of "outgrown" the SRS as a learning tool, but it's still extremely useful as a maintenance tool so I don't forget Japanese (especially obscure stuff like economics/technical vocabulary...)
MECHANICS
Here's the cool thing about SRS programs. If you pick any positive number of cards-per-day and faithfully do that many reviews per day, no matter how many cards were scheduled to begin with, eventually you'll clear out all the scheduled reviews. Even though new cards come up for review on a day-to-day basis. Even if you just review 10 cards a day... or even, just one single card a day... you'll eventually clear the scheduled review pile. (Well, if you do the 1-card-a-day route, it might take longer than a human lifetime, but if you lived forever and kept a good memory, eventually you'd clear the pile) I'll explain why this works.
As you learn a card better, you rate it better. And when a card is rated better, the program gives it more "rest time" between scheduled reviews. That's why it's called "spaced repetition", as you learn any given card, it gets more and more spaced out. Sometimes you forget a card, and rate it accordingly, and that shrinks its "rest time", but you'll only forget the same card so many times before it gets stamped on your long term memory.
So if you're not adding new cards, and just reviewing old cards, each card will gradually get more and more "rest time". That means each day, there are less and less cards added to the "review scheduled" pile. Eventually, the average number of "new scheduled reviews" per day will be smaller than your chosen number of reviewed-cards-per-day. And then, the review pile will begin shrinking, and eventually be taken care of.
ADDING NEW CARDS
Once you have fewer scheduled reviews than your chosen number-- for example, in my case, when I have less than 100 scheduled review cards-- you can finally start adding new cards again.
Here's how I think of it, now that I've advanced a ways in my Japanese. There's two types of vocabulary, active and passive. Passive vocabulary is the words you can understand when you hear/read them. Active vocabulary is the words you use in your own speech. Generally, passive vocabulary is much larger, even in a person's native tongue. The way I see it, Mnemosyne trains both active and passive vocabulary. Listening to Japanese for fun, that trains mostly passive vocabulary. It trains active vocabulary, but much slower than Mnemosyne. But Mnemosyne takes far more energy investment.
Now that I have some basics, I don't need to increase my active vocabulary as much as I need to increase my passive vocabulary. (When I went to Japan, I quickly had encounters where I knew how to ask a question, but understanding the answer was a much bigger struggle!) Therefore, it makes a lot more sense to concentrate on listening to Japanese for fun. And cut Mnemosyne back to a reduced level.
The great thing about learning languages, at least when you do it with passion, is you always keep learning, not just the language itself, but learning about language acquisition in general, and about how your own mind works.
Here are some other articles I wrote. Put them in an SRS program and memorize them.
Foreign Language Sentences With No English Translation
Learn The Idioms, Not Just The Word
Invisible Text in Mnemosyne Flashcards
Book Review: James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji"
In case you don't know about it, SRS stands for "Spaced Repetition System". An SRS program is a flashcard program for the computer, where you make your own flashcards and review them. The cool thing is, when you review a card, you get to rate how well you know it. Then the program uses advanced algorithms to figure out what cards to show you. It solves the old flashcard dilemma: if you know a card really well, you don't want to waste time over-reviewing it, but if you throw it away entirely, you'll eventually forget it. I use Mnemosyne, which is free, but there are tons of other SRS programs available.
I've been studying Japanese for awhile, and my deck now has almost 9000 cards in it. Then I went and spent a month in Japan, and didn't review the cards at all, so when I got back, there were over 4000 cards scheduled to review. Ouch!!
This isn't the first time I've neglected my deck. Last time, I just got busy with other stuff, and ended up taking a month-long hiatus from the deck. Back then, the deck only had about 3000 cards, and when I finally returned from my wandering ways, there were about 2000 scheduled reviews. At the time, I thought that was a lot...
When this happens, there are two things you can do. You can brute-force your way, grit your teeth, and just blast through all the reviews. With the 2000 cards before, this is what I did, and it took about 4 days of 500 cards a day.
This time, I'm going about it a different way. I've decided I'll review 100 cards a day. Yes, just 100 cards a day. At this rate, it'd take about 40 days to clear all the scheduled reviews, even if we assumed no new ones were being added. It'll actually take closer to 60, because more cards come up for scheduled review every day. But I don't really mind.
You see, after spending a month in Japan, I feel like I've made a big transition in my Japanese. I'm no longer using the deck to learn Japanese as much as to preserve Japanese and ward off the deathly grasp of forgetfulness.
My viewpoint of the language has changed. While I'm still a long, long way from fluency, I now see myself as knowing the language. In a way, that's subjective. But I feel now more like a Japanese infant picking up the language naturally, than a westerner struggling with the bass-ackwards grammar and crazy alien vocabulary. The grammar now makes intuitive sense, almost more sense than English if that's possible (Japanese is more "logical" somehow), and when I see "new" vocabulary now, it very often has a familiar ring to it.
What I was starting to notice just prior to my Japan trip, was that I was getting caught up in the SRS and it was becoming an end in itself. The jarring awakening came when I caught myself putting off doing fun things in Japanese because my deck was too full of brand new cards and I needed to clear room before I could "sentence mine" new things. I'll say that again: I was putting off using Japanese so I could study Japanese. Put in such clear words, that's ridiculous! But it's an easy trap to fall into...
A fixed number of cards per day, in my case 100 cards, is a good way to inject sanity back into the program when it gets out of hand. It's a good exercise in self-discipline: some days I'm busy and can barely find room to do my 100 cards. Other days (much more rare), I find myself enjoying the review so much, listening to good music as I do it, it's hard to tear myself away after 100 cards. But I made the decision to do 100 cards a day and I'm gonna stick to it.
Should I have made such a limit in the beginning? It's hard to say. I think when I was first learning the language, there was a big benefit to going balls-to-the-wall. I made huge progress very quickly, at the expense of a lot of invested time and energy. It was well worth it, especially since I learned a lot about language acquisition in general.
One thing is, when I was first starting out, I had too little Japanese to get much benefit from just listening to the language without any other structure. Watching raw, un-subtitled TV shows for example, I could understand almost nothing. If I'd gone to Japan back then, I would've been lost. I could have still learned the (spoken) language that way, but it would take a looong time! Not to mention the crazy-ass written language...
Now that I have a lot more confidence and ability in Japanese, I do most my learning naturally just by talking to Japanese people, watching Japanese TV, listening to Japanese music, etc. It's a little like walking a path in the dark, because when I was in the heavy SRS phase, I pretty much had lists of everything I knew, right there in the card deck. Now, my subconscious is doing the learning, and I'm not even consciously aware of how much I know! Anyway, I've kind of "outgrown" the SRS as a learning tool, but it's still extremely useful as a maintenance tool so I don't forget Japanese (especially obscure stuff like economics/technical vocabulary...)
MECHANICS
Here's the cool thing about SRS programs. If you pick any positive number of cards-per-day and faithfully do that many reviews per day, no matter how many cards were scheduled to begin with, eventually you'll clear out all the scheduled reviews. Even though new cards come up for review on a day-to-day basis. Even if you just review 10 cards a day... or even, just one single card a day... you'll eventually clear the scheduled review pile. (Well, if you do the 1-card-a-day route, it might take longer than a human lifetime, but if you lived forever and kept a good memory, eventually you'd clear the pile) I'll explain why this works.
As you learn a card better, you rate it better. And when a card is rated better, the program gives it more "rest time" between scheduled reviews. That's why it's called "spaced repetition", as you learn any given card, it gets more and more spaced out. Sometimes you forget a card, and rate it accordingly, and that shrinks its "rest time", but you'll only forget the same card so many times before it gets stamped on your long term memory.
So if you're not adding new cards, and just reviewing old cards, each card will gradually get more and more "rest time". That means each day, there are less and less cards added to the "review scheduled" pile. Eventually, the average number of "new scheduled reviews" per day will be smaller than your chosen number of reviewed-cards-per-day. And then, the review pile will begin shrinking, and eventually be taken care of.
ADDING NEW CARDS
Once you have fewer scheduled reviews than your chosen number-- for example, in my case, when I have less than 100 scheduled review cards-- you can finally start adding new cards again.
Here's how I think of it, now that I've advanced a ways in my Japanese. There's two types of vocabulary, active and passive. Passive vocabulary is the words you can understand when you hear/read them. Active vocabulary is the words you use in your own speech. Generally, passive vocabulary is much larger, even in a person's native tongue. The way I see it, Mnemosyne trains both active and passive vocabulary. Listening to Japanese for fun, that trains mostly passive vocabulary. It trains active vocabulary, but much slower than Mnemosyne. But Mnemosyne takes far more energy investment.
Now that I have some basics, I don't need to increase my active vocabulary as much as I need to increase my passive vocabulary. (When I went to Japan, I quickly had encounters where I knew how to ask a question, but understanding the answer was a much bigger struggle!) Therefore, it makes a lot more sense to concentrate on listening to Japanese for fun. And cut Mnemosyne back to a reduced level.
The great thing about learning languages, at least when you do it with passion, is you always keep learning, not just the language itself, but learning about language acquisition in general, and about how your own mind works.
Here are some other articles I wrote. Put them in an SRS program and memorize them.
Foreign Language Sentences With No English Translation
Learn The Idioms, Not Just The Word
Invisible Text in Mnemosyne Flashcards
Book Review: James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji"
Posts
5 comments:
I've been trying to learn Japanese naturally too. The music technique really works. Lately I've been buying music off of HearJapan (www.hearjapan.com). They have translations for some of the songs which I've found incredibly helpful. You can also rely on sites like megchan's site but they are mostly fan translations.
There's lots of good music out there, even if you don't like Jpop. For a more mellow, laid back band, I really like Spitz. If you're into old video games like me, search youtube for a user named Hyadain2525. Best thing about music is it's ambient so you can listen to it while doing other stuff..
Great post, and glad that someone actually writes about this. I would advise against brute-forcing your way through 6000 expired words. Also, good to see that you realized that having fun with a language is important, not just repeating items in Mnemosyne... :)
I used to brute-force my way through neglected decks in the past, but now I do what you suggest: a given number each day. It takes longer until the deck feels normal again, but there is another advantage: if you revise say 100 words in a batch, they tend to expire at the same time in the future... so you'll have the same problem (lots of expired cards) on a smaller scale in the future. If you spread out the revisions over many days, as you suggest, this won't happen.
As a German speaker I'm struggling again and again with the overwhelming number of undone repetitions for English and Spanish. The idea with the splitting to an daily amount (and sticking to it)is certain a good one. But there is another, maybe more suitable for different personalities. I rather stick to a fix timeslot a day and don't bother with the number of repetitions I'm supposed to. The good thing: Even if I added too much new stuff and run out of handling the repetitions at the schedulled time, SSR will regulate the amount of new stuff I'm yet able to do after repetitions. And so I have a daily success story of invested time for learning without the demotivating effect of spendig to much focus to not manageable amount of 'I - had - had - ... cards'.
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