My last post was about tweeking my anki settings, but I’m not sure that I’ve outlined exactly how I use Anki to learn Japanese Vocabulary before so here’s a quick rundown:

Goals

As mentioned other places in this blog, my immediate goal is conversation and listening comprehension as soon as possible.  I’m interested in reading, but not nearly as much or as soon.

My current strategy is to learn and remember as much Japanese vocabulary as possible in the shortest amount of time.  To achieve that goal, I try to keep my accuracy around 90%.  If my accuracy falls too far below 90% I am spending too much time relearning the same material over and over.  However, once I get to 90% accuracy, the additional amount of time required for small improvements in accuracy begins to increase exponentially.  So I shoot for ~90%.

Decks

I’m using the core optimized deck and I’m only doing vocabulary.  Japanese kana on the front / english translation on the back.

I’ve decided to put kanji and grammer on hold for now and memorize as much vocabulary as possible as soon as possible.  This is phase 1.  Phase 2 will continue with vocabulary, but add sentences and listening comprehension cards.  I’m at about 1300 vocab in the  core deck and another 1000 from another deck.  There’s a fair amount of overlap, so let’s call it 1800 vocabulary.  When I get to around 1500-2000 in the core deck, I’ll probably start adding sentences again (I’ve already got ~410 sentences).  But of course I’ll keep adding new vocabulary.  When I added sentences before, I could fly through them rather quickly, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to continue with close to 5 new vocab per day for the foreseeable future.

Reviews

First thing every day, I finish all my reviews in my main Anki deck.  Finishing my reviews every day is the single most important thing and I make sure that happens 99% of the time.  I never think of adding new cards when I think I’ll be time constrained the following week.  Some days turn out to be pretty hectic so not finishing happens at times, but it puts me in a really bad mood, because I’m more likely to forget things I’ve learned recently and that’s the majority of the cards due each day.  On the rare occasions where I haven’t finished my reviews, I make sure to catch back up the following day.

After I finish my reviews, I either add a few new cards to the mix or move on to my filtered decks.

Filtered Decks

My main Anki filtered deck captures all of the cards that I answered wrong in the past 2 days(“rated:2:1 prop:reps<70”).  It also excludes all cards that I’ve seen more than 70 times because I don’t want to spend too much time on any single card.  I’m going for quantity for now so if they turn into leeches, I’ll come back to them later.  Steps are set to “1” so it’s either pass or fail.   I go through this deck 2-3 times every day until my accuracy is almost perfect.

I also have an Anki filtered deck which captures all of the new cards (“rated2:1 prop:reps<20”).  This is similar to the previous deck and captures some of the same cards, but it excludes the cards I’ve seen a bunch of times already There’s usually only a few cards in here, so it only takes a few minutes to go through.  Steps are set to “.25 1 10” so I have to answer it correctly 3 times before it’s retired.  However, if I feel I’ve got a decent grasp on a card I answer “easy”(#4) on a it to retire it early.  The first step being only 15 seconds means that even the most stubborn cards get into short term memory in the first pass or two, and the 10 minute step means that I should be able to answer correctly when I see it in the main filtered deck later in the day.  I usually go through this deck 2-3 times in the first half of the day until I can answer most of them correctly in the “2 day” deck.

There is another filtered deck that I don’t use very often.  This deck catches only the cards that I missed in the past day (“rated:1:1”).  I only use this deck if I’ve added too many difficult cards and my accuracy goes down too much(~<80%) in the main filtered deck.  Steps are set to “.25 1 10” so I have to answer it correctly 3 times before it’s retired.  However, I answer “easy” on a card to retire it early if I feel I’ve got a decent grasp on it.

Deck Options

The settings on my decks have been changed slightly as well.  I have my leeches set to suspend after 7 lapses because I don’t want to spend too much time learning a hard to learn word, when the same time could be spent learning 2 easier to remember words instead.  I’ll eventually come back to the leeches after I’ve learned the easier words.

I set my “new interval” to 15%.  This stops Anki from rescheduling cards that I know quite well back to an interval of 1 day.  Sometimes I miss a card that has an interval of several months and I don’t think it’s appropriate to set it back to square one.  Since the progression of intervals isn’t linear, a “new interval” of 15% probably cuts the actual number of reviews for the card by 50% depending on its “ease”.

And finally, I’ve been answering most cards with “hard”(#2) instead of “pass”(#3).  This has me seeing each card more often than if I pressed #3.  I’ve experimented with adjusting the interval modifier, but it didn’t seem to increase the frequency of the cards that I wanted, but also resulted the unwanted behavior of some cards having the same interval regardless of which button was pressed.  So I press #2 unless I either don’t know the answer, or know it so well that I don’t want to see it very often.

I also spend as long as I need to come up with an answer if I think I know the right one.  I feel like the process of trying hard to remember the correct answer makes it a lot more likely that I’ll remember the answer into the future.   So I act a lot like I’m taking a final exam and make sure to come up with the answer if I think I know it and make sure the answer is correct.  Although, If I feel that I really need to study a particular card, I’ll fail it even if I get the answer correct.

Schedule

I try to add my new cards as early in the day as possible.  Research has shown that we are better learners early in the day when we are well rested, and not as good later in the day.  Also, getting my first exposure early in the morning lets me reinforce them better throughout the day.  Unfortunately Anki won’t let me add new cards manually until I’ve done all of my reviews, but that gives me added inspiration to finish my reviews early.

I add new cards in batches of 5.  Most days I only add 5 because I only have about and hour per day and I can only keep up with my reviews if I only add 5 new cards.  But sometimes I add 10 or 15, but only 5 at a time.  If I add more than 5 at a time, I usually end up going over and over them before I can remember more than a few for more then a few seconds.  So I make sure to commit 5 to short term memory until I add 5 more.  After 10, I’ll probably go through my “new” deck or my “2 day” deck  depending on how many cards in those decks.  I’m shooting for decent(80~90%) retention while increasing the interval for each card (by mixing them with other cards).

After doing reviews and adding new cards, I go through my “2 day” deck and my “New” deck at progressively longer intervals.  As noted, the “new” deck is a subset of the “2 day” deck, so they overlap.  I’m trying to get 90% accuracy on both decks, and the new cards need to be seen more often, so that’s why there’s 2 decks.  If a few hours have passed and I haven’t seen the new cards, I’ll go through the “new” deck.  Whatever helps keeping my accuracy up.  But as the day progresses, I’ll need to study less to keep my accuracy at acceptable levels.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I only have about an hour per day to study.  So try to maximize that short time, while keeping my reviews to a manageable number.