Adding sentences has been the best thing I’ve done in my studies so far!  Since I’ve started adding sentences, my accuracy has kept going up and up – from low 80’s to mid 90’s.  Of course I’m still adding vocabulary cards, so I’ve effectively doubled the amount of cards to study and I was predicting that would slow me down a lot.  However, I’m actually adding more than ever!

Originally, I was adding 5 new vocabulary cards per hour of study and my workload was steadily increasing.  Now I’m adding the same 5 vocab plus 5 sentences and 5 kanji in the same amount of time and my daily workload is decreasing!  It’s still early to tell, but I may be able to increase the pace even more.

The faster pace has everything to do with my increased accuracy.  Not only because I have less to relearn, but I don’t feel like I need to cram using filtered decks anymore.  I’ve made a conscious effort to quit cramming and fill any remaining time with learning more new cards.  Additionally, I’ve increased my interval modifier from 100 to 130 with the goal of decreasing reviews and making time for more new cards.  It’s still early, but my accuracy hasn’t gone down at all with the higher interval modifier, so I’m considering increasing it to 150.  I’ll probably keep increasing it every few weeks until my accuracy gets closer to 80%.  That may not make a lot of sense until you consider that it’s a tradeoff between accuracy and learning new material.  Supermemo’s theory page suggests peak efficiency is between 70-80%.  I don’t think I could handle 70% accuracy so it’s also a tradeoff between pride and efficiency.

What’s next:

• I tried learning radicals seperately, but something about it I didn’t like.  I’ll just learn them as I do rtk lite.
• I’ve started adding kanji again because core by itself was getting boring.  Sprinkling in a little kanji makes it more interesting.  I’ve calculated that if I add 1 kanji for every core card, I’ll finish rtk lite and core at around the same time.  If current trends hold, I’ll be done in 430 days…but I’m hoping to pick up the pace a little.
• I’m planning on doing more reading when I run out of anki reviews.  I downloaded wakaru and japanese reader for iOS to help me read on my phone.
• I’ve also started listening to japanese pod101 in the car.  I like listening to audiobooks in the car, so I probably won’t do this every day, but I’ll alternate every few weeks between jpod101 and other things.