@Bruno Silva you are in a good level, I'm a native spanish speaker and its normal for me to not understand a few words per page in a novel when reading in spanish
@Bruno Silva If you actually were on a level where you understand everything but 2 words per page of a given light novel on average, you wouldn't have to ask that question.
this is basically me and video games for half my life. I would play all these mmo's and mobile games, do all these daily quest shit for each game like some mechanical routine job for than 8 hours a day and felt that I needed to do it or I would fall behind in terms of progress vs other people playing the game. eventually you start to realize that wow, why am I torturing myself like this, I could just drop the game if I don't enjoy it anymore and it actually is just that simple. You may feel like damn you put so much time into it that you think you might as well should just commit to it, but that is literally just you fooling yourself, once you realize that is all it is then you can break out of the loop. You should always do things you enjoy, that is the reason why we live life. We only have one, so why not make the best out of it right. After that is all said and done, I do still play games, just a rarely, usually rpg's where you just enjoy the story and then you uninstall and move on,I do the occasional shooter games with friends like apex legends for like an hour or 2 every now and then. but yeah, I am not slaving myself over anything anymore, I just spend my time either being productive and trying to improve myself or I spend it on actually enjoying something, life just gets so much lighter once you just let go of all that heavy baggage. I do wish I could get all that time back, but I am pretty content with how I live now. Hopefully others that are stuck in these type of loops/holes can take something off of this.
Thats literally the same problem I had, which I somehow managed to escape of, but I still need sometimes these kinda reminders like yours so I would not fall for it again. So I just want to say thank you!
once i realized that with video games i noticed the same thing with social media and news. its as if like you dont check it youre going to miss out on things. but in reality 99.99% you see is actually totally useless. i definitly try to regulate my media consumption with add ons and such but its hard when youre always in an environment where you can basically check reddit or whatever. all it takes is a browser and internet.
I am so glad I've found you channel 3 weeks ago, Matt. At that time I thought about quitting japanese after on year of traditional and phonetic studies. Then I saw you, your 3 hour vid and all the other Anki-related things and it was like an epiphany for me, because the whole process using Anki and Tobira was not really fun. I even stopped watching anime for the whole year, killing the best study-method for a nerd like me. Instead I played games in japanese without learning the important words in there. Then I somehow made a shift to learning for the jlpt, because I thought with N2 you probably can understand the most important things... exactly at that point (learning only for n3 and n2, making nonsense flashcards ala "fluent-forever" (just a word with an image) I found your interview about having jlpt n1 but still not being fluent. This opened my eyes. Studying has to be fun and relevant for everyday life, not just doing anki-reps all day long like I am used to it. This video about srs in general opens my eyes again. Hopefully I will be as wise as you when I reach the point of basically understand the things that matter most to me. TLDR: Thank you for your videos, Matt. I am sure these will enlighten thousands of language-learners. Thank you, you made me continue my study and see this whole thing from another perspective. Best regards from a german guy, please keep making these high-quality videos!
Hope someday you will read this. But from the bottom of my heart, I'm truly greatful for what you did in this video. I'm an intermediate English learner, maybe almost get to the point of becoming fluent. And you're absolutely right. I myself too, always have this burning desire to be done with this fucking tedious vocab learning, so that I can be free. And the price is too steep... Thanks for enlightening me. Only now do i realize I have so many more important things to do than just sitting in front of a computer and reviewing cards. Thank you!
I think your idea for an add-on to remove cards when the interval gets past a certain limit is great, the only thing I would say is that it might be best to suspend the cards rather than full-on deleting them - not because I don't think it's a good idea, but because I know that *I* wouldn't want to use an add-on that deleted my cards as it would make me think that the add-on was deleting my work, even if it seemed like a good tool to have. That's really just another part of that psychology though, I guess. I'm fine with deleting my own cards if they're not useful, but *I* want to be the one to do that.
I remember having the same feeling when I got fluent in French, so I just deleted all my decks and started a new one where I'd only put words or phrases that I kept for a very short time (deleted them after a couple of months). I do the same thing in English though I hardly ever review these decks (they aren't that big, like 200 words/expressions at most) The key is to have a very limited deck with only the newest words you encounter in the language, which you get rid of anyway. If it gets too big or you have too many reps, just delete it and start over with fewer words.
Andrew There'd be no point in an A level English student revising things like basic grammar and the word "apple" and I think SRS is similar, if not identical, in that concept.
I've deleted and restarted my deck a bunch of times, sometimes I'll move the newer cards to my new deck before I restart. I didn't realise that I was the only one that does this. My current deck has 500 cards, maybe I need to restart again lol.
This video is really something. Your jaw would drop if you could see all the decks in my account. Ten different languages, all through the fifth level Pimsleurs (which are not very advanced, admittedly), then branching into Living Language and Pod101. After that, advanced youtube-sourced decks. I've gone through phases of anxiety, cutting back and shutting down all the decks, only to come back the next day to slowly open them up all again. And then you keep telling yourself, "No, I'm not advanced enough yet to let go and immerse in the language." It's therapeutic to know others are dealing successfully with the anki-xiety. Thank you.
Oh man I have been using Anki for almost 3 years and I understand that feeling, "I can't sleep at my friend house because I need to review hundreds of flashcards" actually I learned a lot of words, so I just kept going, probably I have spent more than 200 hours making my flashcards... So far I have used anki, in fact I yesterday studied my flashcards and I have more than 1000 pending cards, but you have opened my eyes bro, I study chinese, I know a lot of vocab but I need to work in my listening skill, how ever most of the days I spend a lot of time on anki, but for my today is the end of the game too... THANK YOU, now I am going to read and listen to chinese for 2 hours every day instead use Anki Right now, I'm not be able to delete my anki decks, if I think about it I feel a kind of panic but I will try it, Thanks
It's obvious you've thought very deeply about this, and I enjoyed hearing your opinions. You helped solidify a lot of misgivings I've had about SRS lately but couldn't articulate. Thank you!
Johnny Utah I am still a newb learning Spanish. I ran out and bought pre-made Flashcards, bought many SRS type apps, and also wrote hundreds and hundreds of handwritten Flashcards from things I was reading and etc. perhaps I was using it wrong, but i immediately started to hate all of it. I dreaded the reminders and notifications to continue my streaks and etc. I forced myself to do it for a while, but I just didn’t really like it. I felt that if I didn’t do the that I would never learn the language. I would see many language learners talking about it and saying it is the gold standard, but I just couldn’t swallow it because I just didn’t like really doing it. I thought it was because I was old school and being old school made me not like cresting them on my laptop and/or smartphone. I almost gave up on learning Spanish because I just didn’t want to incorporate this way of learning that seemed to be so valuable to others. I have an obsessive personality and I could see myself running away with something like this and just fizzling out much sooner than later, because it seems like slogging (that’s how I feel about work). I didn’t want my enthusiasm for learning Spanish be dampened because I just couldn’t buy into the SRS method, even though I believed it would work. It just seemed like too much work and time consuming. I tried the Gold List Method. Same thing...utter boredom. I decided to approach Spanish with your ideas of comprehensible input of reading and massive listening daily. This feels much better and natural for me. Now I don’t think learning a language in my 40’s as impossible. It’s not my first introduction to a foreign language. I learned to read and understand written French for five years in school. This is the first language that I am truly learning to speak. Thanks for your videos and a dose of reality!
@@GypsyCurls You really nailed it. IMO flash cards get really boring and tedious after a while. And I hate how I can't take a day off without feeling like I'm messing up the schedule and have to play catch-up. An "inefficient" method you enjoy and will stick with wins every time. Best of luck with your Spanish!
I’m late here but I studied Japanese off and on for a long time and last year decided I’d commit to something, so I started wanikani. It felt like an easy way to get into SRS, the idea of making my own flash cards just felt like to easy of an out for me to do less. I know Matt’s pushed anki but I just wanted some rails so I could just get memorizing and not worry about it. I’m 10 months in and there are definitely parts of this I agree with this. Doing SRS requires dedication every day, and missing a day and playing catch up is not ideal. Really, SRS seems to be hyper focused on cramming as much as quickly as possible. It is a wonderful tool to get an initial hook, a quick translation, a reading, some impression so it can stick. I think it’s a wonderful tool to cram the top 5-10 thousand words of a language so you don’t have to read from a dictionary. But I really don’t know that I want to keep with it after that, I feel that immersion in text and audio is the way to go. I may “learn” fewer words, but I learn natural usage, and it doesn’t have to be as much mental work. If I can spend two hours a day reading a book, that’s going to be more fulfilling to me than flash cards for two hours. Overall I think it’s been a wonderful tool and my Japanese comprehension has skyrocketed, but I’m feeling burnt out from how much work it is. It’s a great hook in but if I’m not using the material in practice then it’s not critical for me to be fretting over.
Matt, I feel your pain and fear on your quote of, "if I let go of the SRS I would forget everything that I knew." This I would feel myself also, a few months back. But talking to an older and wiser guy, who learned Japanese in another way, I told him about this fear, and he said that it would not happened. He encouraged me to take a break, and go do a different activity in the language that I understand, I tried it, and guess what, the brain comes back with mad skills and is able to process things much quicker and able to remember things much better. I do this for about an hour or two, or maybe a day, and it really helps me. I remember Kats posted once about taking a break, by listening to another language that is completely different and white noise to you. That is one way, but what ever it may be, the process has to fit the person like how Kats said.
Probably going off on a tangent but I'm so glad someone brought up how weird antimoon sounds. It can be a little discouraging knowing that the guys there spent so long at learning English and clearly use a method that works and yet it still just reads plain *weird*. Particularly with the amount of idioms it just feels more like showing off than actually clarifying what they're trying to say. It's like a language uncanny valley almost.
I think this is a really important video for anyone learning to use Anki. I've been using it for a while for Japanese and have been considering using it for my college studies. I think I could've easily fallen into this mindset and addiction - like you say in the video, it seems so easy, you just put things in here and it makes you remember them. I never thought about it in the way you suggest, as a temporary thing and I think that's a really important point to avoid that kind of addiction you had.
I think you just cleared up a lot of my issues with Anki and worries about putting too much time into it or prioritizing it over immersion of books, etc.. It's a tool to help your immersion, and not to be overdone or used as a secondary memory bank.
Thank you for this video, Matt. I have hoarding tendencies in several areas of my life and didn't realize that SRS (even for non language learning purposes) could become a problem like that, and that it partially already has. I could feel it turning into a compulsion and a feeling that if I didn't have it in the SRS I wouldn't remember it, but I didn't really GET how pathological it could become until your video. You share a lot of very valuable insights. I'm gonna be more selective with what I put into Anki, and am going to use your addon. Thanks again and I wish you the best
This brought some good insight. It's kinda like what you said. With your native language, you don't constantly review words like "book" or "gloom" because you use or see it so regularly that it doesn't even need to be remembered because you see it on such a regular basis that it like an SRS naturally. The SRS is mainly only good for learning the basics, not abstract concepts. That's how I believe it. Thanks for the video Matt! 👍 Also, looking forward and dreading that add-on when you two make it xd
Beautiful video. Once I reach around 3,000 cards for a language, I stop creating new cards, but I continue doing my daily reps. This way, Anki naturally "kills" my cards for me once they get too easy (by making the interval longer and longer, like 16 years). If a card comes up once per 16 years, well, it's not a huge study burden for me, so it doesn't really bother me that it stays in my deck. Once my card deck reaches around 3,000 cards, I feel like Anki has served its main purpose of laying and guarding the foundation of that language for me. At that point, I might only add 1-3 new cards per month when I really need a "bazooka" to remember something. The above strategies effectively naturally reduce the study burden of a language deck over time so that I don't develop an unhealthy, abusive relationship with my Anki decks. At the point of 2,000-3,000 cards, I'm typically transitioning onto consuming content, so the Anki deck becomes less relevant, but it still ensures that no matter what I keep my base level with that language. This is especially important when one is studying multiple languages. Sometimes, one can go periods of studying one language more intensely at the expense of another one of your languages. In these periods, maintaining some minimal ongoing Anki activity can ensure that no matter what, one guards a certain level/knowledge. Sure, if you're just learning and studying one language and committing to that one language, then there will come a time when it's totally ok to throw away the Anki deck. But, if you're maintaining 3 separate foreign languages simultaneously, well, Anki can still serve an important role there. Also, I usually don't put just straight vocabulary words into my Anki card deck (except in the very beginning of studying a language). Usually, I am inputting whole sentences to translate, where each sentence illustrates some grammatical feature that I just learned. Or, if it's a tough vocabulary word, I'll input a sentence from context.reverso.net (sentences translated from film/TV subtitles). That way, I'm seeing the word in context. Thanks for sharing your journey. It's always wonderful to hear your very thoughtful and reasoned perspective. Keep up the good work!
this accords with my experience sooooo much. Thank you for concretising and ratifying these intuitions I have already been feeling and for giving me some more realisations too!!
Anki will never be the end in my journey, once I get enough kanji to start consuming content somewhat comfortably (1k-ish) I’m gonna jump into Japanese on my own. I learned English as a second language (native Chinese speaker though anything other than speaking it is beyond me) and learned so much more from TV shows, video games, and just using the language daily in reading, talking with classmates etc. anki will become a supplement to my Japanese journey and eventually I hope I’ll be able to drop it all together. I’ll look up kanji that I don’t understand and learn that way, that’s what I did with English and I’d like to say I’m pretty fluent in it now. Beating myself up over not knowing a language doesn’t really make sense to me since I still look up words in English that I don’t understand when I come across them. So why should I treat Japanese any differently
You mention here that "you only really have 5-6 hours of true mental productivity a day" which I almost agree with. Recently there's a guy studying language 12 hours a day and he streams it here on RU-vid. You should chat with him and see what he's doing and if it's actually successful.
I really love listening to your videos. I think it's because most videos on the internet are paced very slow so that everyone understands and of course so that the RU-vid algorithm recommends them because of watchtime. I actually got into the flow when watching your video, You didn't say any obvious facts or dragged it out like others do but instead you just went straight to the point. You're videos are really good.. I wished school could be like this.
I consider my relationship with anki unhealthy one. My target language is English and I'm at the level when I can watch your videos and understand 85-90% percent of what you're saying. As your subscriber, I looked up to you and downloaded the app but failed to make a habit of creating SRS cards regularly. I still have Anki on my phone but seldom using it I feel blame for not memorising fancy expressions from books. Needless to say I often avoid reading because of anxiety that I experience not looking up the meaning of all new words. Anyhow thanks to the video I can re-еvaluate my language goals. Thank you for your content! Respect from Russia 🇷🇺
@G Mrazín Thank you for your response, I highly appreciate it! Things you said actually make sense to me. I think I'll delete the the old flashcards to start from scratch revising 1-3 words a day to reduce the pressure haha. I missed the video where mr. Matt said about looking/not looking up new words in dictionary, could you please tell me how can I find it?
Thank you Mat!! I have almost 15k cards on my Anki of English, and to be honest, I simply can't do it anymore. Most of my time is just repping the cards instead of reading and when it comes to think of it now, that's completely nonsense. I'm not deleting my account, I have the control to just simply don't do it anymore. Furthermore, I use Anki to practice my writing, not because of the algorithm itself but 'cause of the TTS. I use the Microsoft azure's TTS and that's sounds a really native speaker, so I use that to practice my writing and my speaking (correcting my mistakes at spelling some words)
So glad I stumbled onto this video. I am thankful for eternity! I think I am approaching your point in my language acquisition journey. You saved me countless hours!!! I have seen a couple of your other videos but this should be on your yt channel main page!
Good video, very thought provoking! After getting more than 10k Chinese cards and 2k Japanese cards under my belt, I have to say this completely lines up with my personal experiences. I used to use memrise and other SRS things to study Japanese, then I dropped those. Then, after a very long break, I just revised 2k of N2 cards again. I didn't remember a lot of them. But the point in case is that I can still talk and read Japanese at the same level that I used to without doing any Japanese SRS for over a year. I have already suspended my HSK1,2,3,4 decks, now with this add on I will get rid of even more stuff. Just one small caveat to keep in mind: If your goal is not to become just fluent, but become UNNATURALLY proficient, which basically means you're taking the highest level of language test in that language, then regular exposure simply won't do the job. I'm not a native speaker of English, but I can consume any type of material in English and do anything I want to do in this language. However, if I want to take the C2 language test, or get a super-duper high score on IELTS, then I pretty much have to go out of my way to learn idioms and words that I've never come across through using English daily.
Man i think for boots on the ground, no bullshit language learning advice, this channel is by far the best. I don't learn Japanese but these exact concepts come up I would think in any language and I was finding I was falling into those same pathological and irrational thoughts that you described in the video. Thanks for spreading this wisdom!
While I don't think Khatz knew, while he was working on his blog, about the inner-workings of Anki, such as the hard button causing more reviews down the line, he did state that the SRS should have sentences that connect with you on an emotional level and the repping should be fun. If repping isn't fun, he suggested to keep deleting until sentences came up that were fun. He was big on deleting first and adding later. It can be difficult to just let sentences go that you spent so much time working on but down the line, it makes for fewer reviews and a more overall enjoyable experience when repping. A sentence should make you laugh, cry, smile, etc. The emotional attachment to it makes it stick better anyway. For the words you let go, you will see them again and usually in better contexts. Khatz knew the dangers of the SRS.
He did. After AJATT'ing for a few months, there were times where I didn't feel very motivated. Then I remember Khatz's writings about motivation and how important fun is, and how you should prioritize fun over everything else sometimes... That's what makes me keep going. Sometimes, I forget this and I mine certain sentences because I think I "should" mine them, instead of picking sentences I like. As a result, my learning suffers, and I have to keep pressing "Again" over and over again, because I can't remember the readings of the words. Instead, when I mine sentences that I find interesting, the repping is easy. They're easy to remember. Maybe Matt made a mistake when he decided to give the advice of mining all of Tae Kim's Grammar guide before starting to mine sentences on the wild... What if the learner finds most of the sentences boring as hell? They're not connected to anything. But I still see the positives of doing that, so I'm not sure.
You've gone through what only a few go through - loss of life in pursuit of perfectionism. Sincerely congrats on reaching the other-side its hard emerge where you have!! What I've experienced generally is that a skill (Japanese/Programming/Cooking) is that there's a threshold you need to reach so that the skill becomes "self" accelerating. Then you really begin building that skill exponentially using the skill more in various contexts, ultimately reaching that "mastery" you seek. Then comes the point where your brain shows it muscle and starts making joins and you get those "eureka" moments - where you learn more subconsciously. I know my Japanese is not there yet, sounds like you passed the point a few years ago - so enjoy yourself, enjoy your Japanese-self.
Very interesting video. I don't think I'm going to follow this same route quite yet, but then, I have only been actively doing Anki for a few months. Honestly I'm a bit skeptical, because once a card hits the 1-year interval, it's already not going to be that big a burden on your time from then on. I would probably rather just cut my number of new cards in half, or go down to a third or a quarter or whatever, if it gets to be that overwhelming and draining. That way, even if you miss one or two days, you'll be able to catch up easily without it becoming such a burden. But I can also appreciate that if you consider it to be an addiction, you might think you won't be able to keep that up. I hope I won't reach that stage. I was actually just looking for a video on the newer SuperMemo algorithms as compared to the Anki algorithm, which from what I understand is based on a much earlier version of SuperMemo. Apparently the newer versions are much better? I'll go look for that video, now.
I'm fluent in english and I think I only used anki for less than two or three months. At the beginning I thought that i wouldn't remember the new words, but actually i did. That's because I kept immersing myself in the language. Today I can watch or read any content and understand it. So keep immersing yourself in your target language, it will perform better than SRS.
I've never felt addicted to the SRS as you describe it. I usually use Anki and Memrise as a way to cram some sentences and words into my memory. I always use pre-created desks and I never add new words from any texts I read into Anki. At best I write them down on a sheet of paper, although I usually just look up the translation and forget about it. Turned out to be quite effective for me. These days I'm trying out something new though. Since traditional cramming gets boring very quickly, now I just ''crumb it on my head and hope my brain will remember it automatically''. What I call crumbing in my case is putting the amount of daily new words\phrases in Anki on 50 instead of 20 and the max amount of repetitions on 10 instead of 100 to ensure that the older words and phrases are shown less while the new words are shown more. The progress seems slower now, but for some reason, I feel this might actually be more beneficial in the long run than the traditional seeing eviewing many times approach since I don't spend as much time reviewing. I do it this way for my Chinese, Greek, Polish, and Swedish. For my Arabic, though, I'll most likely stick to the more traditional ''cram-my'' approach since I see almost no progress in this language for me, except for maybe improving my pronunciation, but since I cannot create any real phrases yet, the progress feels too slow.
I've only recently started using Anki for maths and physics, and I've felt myself slip into that trap of wanting to put every little detail even if I already know it well in there, even if in years most of it won't matter that much anymore to me because the important stuff will have stuck anyway. But it has helped me so far though I feel. Thanks for sharing this, it'll help me stay on the right track. Keep it useful and use it judiciously, because it's a powerful tool and it can hurt you as much as help you.
Thanks for sharing this. I’ve wanted to use Anki, but I feel like I’d also end up hoarding cards and feeling guilty for lapsing reviews. Your video helps me strategize using Anki for building basic fluency, which is an achievable goal that’s far less intimidating.
Having to fight our self defeating and destructive tendencies is so so hard. So grueling. I have quit Mandarin many times before. Just to come back to it again. Because I like the language. I love it. I was enthralled by it. But the necessity to understand more and wanting to know more words than the ones I have right now has soured my learning process. And it is a constant battle against this "false sense of completion"
I really enjoyed hearing about your experience using the SRS for such a long time (not gonna lie, partly because I don't want to get to the same stage as you mentioned). It's fascinating how often our psychology turns a tool that is supposed to serve us into an obsession that seems to rule our lives. Also, I think your idea for an add-on that deletes or removes old cards after a year is a good one. It seems quite similar to the SRS methodology that WaniKani uses - where cards/items get 'burned' after a while. I quite like the way that it feels like a bit of a badge that you have earned. I used to use WaniKani very religiously and worried that I will forget 'burned' items, but this video has given me the perspective to see that it's much more natural to forget a word (that may or may not relate to my life, but I spent a lot of time trying to learn ) and 'remember it' if I ever happen to look over my 'burned' items, as I would an old notebook.
bro ive been doing this for programming, and guilting myself for not finishing my reviews. Most of the cards are pointless after reviewing them for years, but for some reason i still feel the urge to pick up the deck and relearn all these weird language quirks. What you say about using anki as a bootloader for your skill makes so much sense. it will get you up to speed SUPER FAST at the beginning stages, but at the highest levels, your ability in a skill is going to be passively maintained and increased by just DOING the skill for longer. We're not studying for a spelling Bee
I understand your point but I don't agree with the way you perceive your knowledge. Memory is not just based on repetition but about impact. To me, it seems like you give a value to each bit of your memory ; a value that decreases over time and that the information needs to be reviewed again for X times over Y period to go back to your previous value. I believe that quality > quantity in term of memorization. You could repeat a word 100 times a day, every day, for a year, and still you wouldn't remember that word if it has no impact on you. It's like I couldn't remember the word "to wash my face" in Korean (it has one word to describe this action). I was reviewing this flashcard everyday but I couldn't help but forget it. One day, me and my friend had to go somewhere and we couldn't miss the bus. My friend was late and she told me she was late because she was washing her face. In that story, we had to pay a taxi to arrive to our destination on time. Since then, I have never forgotten that word.
Sounds like you confused fluency with mastery/god level, or attempting it. I've seen Tv show clips where they ask people if they know a particular Kanji and nearly all of them failed, these are business men and woman, teenagers, All functioning members of Japanese society that learned their language from birth and even most of them aren't a god level, so aiming for god level isn't necessary. Or as Kaz would probably put it: You boiled that water so hard it evaporated, congrats. Hope I can get even a fraction of the way you have lol. Keep up the good work with these videos, really inspired me to finally give learning Japanese a go. The add-on sounds great
(might be late but whatever) That's what i'm often thinking. I'm french and of course my native language is french, and i'm not a master of french. And when i don't know a word in french, i never say to myself "fuck, that means i'm not a native speaker" But when you learn a new language, and you're getting fluent at it, if you encounter a word you don't know, you might always says "fuck my english/french/german/japanese is not that good". And i think it's a bad thing, because i know foregneir that knows words in french i didn't know and it's good, also if i happened to learn a french word to a foreigner i don't think it's because his french is bad, he just never met this word Language are complicated and everyone dies without knowing every words of their native language. I mean, just look at a car, all thoses pieces that have their own words to call it, or just your computer, i'm not a master in computer and there's several pieces inside my machine that have words that i don't know, and it's ok, because specifics terms don't need to be known by everyone, but only experts in this domain
@@Whillyy it's also important to note that knowing a lot of obscure words is basically useless if no one knows them. You'll sound real cool, but then you'll have to spend 10 minutes explaining to people the definition of the words you just used in that sentence. It's not just about you knowing the word, your audience also needs to know the word.
Duuude, I've been using Anki for years now and this video resonates so much with me. I am kind of a word-hoarder and maybe Anki is already taking a bit too much of my time (just like you, I spend above 2h every day reviewing card-decks for multiple languages [I'm a polyglot]). You have convinced me, I have already exported and removed from Anki the decks of languages I'm fluent at but I'm not currently actively studying. I'll keep using Anki for the languages I need to get to a C1 level and the languages I'm still not fluent in. These changes will already save me a lot of reviewing time every day, time I'll invest in actually reading and listening in each language. Anki has help me so much, I never thought I could become addicted to it; although I have had intimations of these very same issues you point out Thank you for your insight on this, you have changed my method significantly haha. It is true that you give good advice for advance language students.
hi, I have a question in regards to your language learning. did you wait until you were fairly comfortable understanding and being able to read most of the language before attempting to conversate or? because I just feel this uncertainty whenever I am holding a conversation that I do not know enough vocab yet to safely have a grasp on the conversation.
@@revsuki I personally like to start speaking from the beginning. If you lack vocab, you could gain it from talking with people, but I think that reading and listening are way more efficient ways of expanding you vocab. Also using Anki can speed up the whole process.
@@revsuki So what I do is first become conversational by speaking, listening and memorizing stuff and later on, when I'm already able to speak, I focus even more on passive skills.
Hi Matt, Thanks for this video. Although I am still beginning I suspected as much already. Immersion is the end game, and you only need to know what you will use. If you never see a word, why do you need to know it, or at least have it in the ready? Right? How many times in English do you have a lapse of memory and can’t remember a word, and it takes a few minutes sometimes for the recall to actually happen. I think that’s a good thing because that reinforces the word better than constant reminding. You have to pull it out of your own head when it seems lost.
You talk about having a mind virus or pathological tick, but it could also just be maturity. Young intelligent men like to be the best. It's natural. But that wears off with experience. There's more to life. Language is just a tool at the end of the day. You can stroke your shiny gold spanner to make you feel warm and fuzzy at night. But the steel one gets the job done exactly the same. I suspect you're dropping the ego (in the genuine Buddhist sense, I know you're a cool guy!) attached to SRS. Clearly you're on another level to you're students though as you said they should definitely not ditch anki haha
That's so interesting. I don't think I will have this problem since Japanese will be my third language, I learned English passively while just growing up in the internet age so I'm always fully aware that when you have basic fluency you are good to go, just watch and read a lot of content and you will get better and better. But since Matt was learning Japanese by consciously applying himself and using SRS and that was his second language he did not know when was the time to stop. Definitely good to know and to keep in mind for most people. Just get fluent and go enjoy, don't worry about anything. All will fall into place, even your output.
Just as you said, many of us are not native english speakers. Yet many of us start to learn how to use anki through your videos. I think this proves the fact that you don't need SRS to learn a language. You need immersion. The SRS is just a tool that you use until a certain point to speed up your language learning.
This is extremely relatable for me. I've had almost the same experience. I mostly agree with what you're saying but it's based on the assumption you're going to continue using the language in your every day life a lot forever. The thing is, I am not confident that I will be using or reading Japanese every day for the rest of my life since I probably wont live in Japan forever, but I still don't want to forget all the stuff I have learned. I was originally hoping that if I just kept doing Anki, even if I move back to my home country it would prevent me from forgetting what I learned as a small thing every day without adding new cards. Basically I thought, eventually I will reach a phase where I probably will just want to retain and not forget everything since apparently a lot of people do forget most of what they learned when they stop using the language much. My hope was that my anki review time would become short like 30 minutes or less and it would help me not forget even if I am not using Japanese much in my life. However, I guess I could just read for 30 minutes a day instead... maybe?
I kind of had a similar thought a few months ago, because my 'to SRS' list was just too fucking crazy. Like 2500+ words at any given moment because I felt like I had to take in any 'new' thing no matter how easy it is. Even obvious word compounds or onomatopoeia that I could get be seeing the verb attached to it. And then when I reached them in my SRS I'd just feel like it was kind of obvious what it meant, why the hell did I need this in here again? I was just getting too obsessed with numbers. Now I feel like I'm just doing 'Anki lite', but sometimes I just feel like...is it really the SRS thats helping me out here?. I've got a bit of that mind disease, but trying to be a little less of an Anki nazi kind of evens it out a bit for me lol Anki is now that small annoying kid that shouts out "HEY DO YOU KNOW THE HUMAN HEAD WEIGHS 8LBS?" every once in a while. Maybe I'll give him up....someday lol
very useful video. even tho i'm not at the level of quitting flash cards yet, you made me realize that i am not studying productively by learning useless words that i just found in the dictionary and added. i only use anki for about 10 minutes a day, but a lot more time on another srs system called renshuu and it makes it really easy to add a word to a schedule (it's name for deck) directly from the dictionary and i think i may have ended up in the same situation as you where i was spending lots and lots of time studying completely useless words, and it's to the point where i have hundreds of unlearnt cards in queue before the stuff i actually want to learn, and so i've decided that i am going to stop adding words, at least for a while, and study the ones i already have along with increased focus on the auto-generated jlpt-level schedules which include words that will hopefully be more useful, as i've probably added most of the words useful to me that are excluded from the jlpt lists in my other schedules already and whatever else would probably be a waste of time. also i should probably immerse more.
Nice now I agree with your approach more matt. tbh it took way longer than it should lol like i said before i never used an SRS but actually my school forced me to cram vocab just for exams which I think is the equivalent of you guys SRSing but once I reached basic fluency and started immersion I was completely fine without vocab books. Back then I didn't know what I was doing (I did immersion instead of cramming bc it was more fun) but I believe I made the right move Keep up the good work, my language learning guru
I really like the way you speak i know that sounds weird but you speak so composed and easily and you're able to make things intresting. You probably dont even use a script either.
I feel like I'm somehow catching your wavelength. I started learning the kanji and man my srs became deep 😖. So far I've "learned" (no readings quite yet) about 600+ kanji and I would easily spend 3-4 hrs reviewing, writing and adding new kanji to my Anki (I was doing 35 kanji a day. Btw THANK YOU for your deck😍 it's been so helpful!). But I also married with 2 kids. So once school let out I couldn't really put in those hours in anymore. If I couldn't do it in the morning I had to in the evening after spending time w/ my husband and that usually meant I'd be up till 3am to wake up at 6:30 and start the day again. Maybe when they finally start camp I can try but I realized I really wanted to use what I've learned. I also didn't want to spend all my time just going through the SRS. I wanted to practice speaking and writing and reading. Reading... the reason I wanted to learn kanji in the first place. And I came to a similar conclusion, is all this reviewing really worth it? My time is so limited. Like SUPER limited. Do I want to sacrifice so much of my time on this right now? Learning kanji that won't help me learn books I WANT to read? I'm still trying to find a good balance with studying(/reviewing). Right now I still do my reps. I realized that I learned enough kanji to "understand" a good 50-70% of comments on social media and I've realized I've been exposed to a lot of it in my Genki text. So it's been helpful. I look forward to not needing my Anki (btw I'm in college and finished my 1st yr of Japanese). So I'm slowly figuring things out. I like the idea of the "death point" for a card. A lot of vocab from studying my first semester have reached that level. I thought it would be funny to be reminded year from now lol. Matt you're so brave! Good luck to you and everyone! 💕
final fantasy Sure, 😁 he provides links in the description and shows you how to use the deck. Goodluck! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8wZZ6rkMDeE.html
This tracks perfectly. I know the feeling of getting better at language from my native language (English) from when I was a child/early teen lol. I would win poetry and short novel competitions and was better at writing and speaking than both my brothers just because I was a voracious reader. It gave the illusion that I was "gifted and talented" (brought a whole host of problems lolol). There was no "innate talent" or anything. I literally just liked reading. I knew words like "paragon" (shining example) and "notion" (idea) and I'd use those words, and others that I found in books, to output when writing my short stories for myself or for competitions. And it wouldn't be every new word I come across that I'd make an effort to remember, so as to use later on. Here's how my little 9 year-old self would decide which words were worth the effort to maintain: *1.* I liked the sound of the word (how I think it'd be pronounced), thus I'd note it down to use in my next story. *2.* The word was a synonym for the type of definition for which the "basic"-level of english didn't have many alternate vocabulary to pick from to make my writing less repetitive. An example is "notion", the only other word I knew for that (and always used when writing) was "idea". And I was reeeally getting bored of the word "idea". It didn't feel expressive enough, so when I found the word "notion" it was like the perfect vocab fell into my lap, especially for a certain type of sentence: "She had a stupid notion" sounds more harsh than "She had a stupid idea" - and I _loved_ making fun of my story characters lol. *3.* The word summed up a phrase in a single word. An example would be "nadir". This is a word I learnt much later, just as I was gradually stopping my reading and writing in my mid teens. I made a case to remember it and use it because it was shorter than the phrases "rock-bottom", "the very bottom" and "lowest point" so it was much more efficient in conveying such a point. As I got more used to using the internet, experienced depression (comes with a loss of enjoyment in hobbies, ie: reading) and got into secondary school where "Reading Time" didn't exist, my advanced English decreased. I'm still good at English (I'd have to be, it's my native language lol), but I found recently, upon picking up books again, that there were words I remembered till adulthood, like "notion", and others I didn't - "paragon". But the difference is that when I came across a word I used to know but now don't, there's a weird layer of fog around it that isn't the same as words you've completely never come across. The fog is the feeling/sense of familiarity. So you can still spot and recognise those words and pick them apart from vocab you've never encountered.
Maybe this is just me, but there is something really weird about actually seeing the speakers face that makes it more interesting (for me). I don't know why, but i've noticed this with podcats and gaming streams for example. There is something about it. For future reference. But great info Matt, thank you for all the videos :).
Maybe the problem was to start learning things just for the sake of learning them, and not because you're interested in the subject. Remembering stuff is not learning them, period. A person that said this a lot was the famous physicist Richard Feynman: "See that bird? It’s a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it’s called a halzenfugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird. You only know something about people; what they call the bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way." (Richard Feynman) It really rings a bell with your video about why WaniKani is bad and why RTK get it right, the difference about in-context and out-of-context. It's OK to use Anki to just remember all the Kanji, you are lot really learning the kanji, you're just remembering them (and that's the name of the book..). I bet if you study all the RTK, memorize 100%, and take a test 1-2 years after without consuming Japanese material in-between, you're going to forget a LOT of them. You must consume the material in order to really learn the meaning of the Kanji. RTK is there to make you ready to start to consume the Japanese, it's not making you lear at all what the Kanji really means. Well, I used as example Kanji, but you can use my argument for anything you are trying to "learn" using SRS. It's not learning, SRS is there to help you memorize things that, sadly, just need to be memorized since they don't have an internal logic (or they have, but it's really latent and obscure). That's one feature of studing Physics that I love (in contrast with chemistry for example), there's little to nothing you have to memorize, because almost everything you learn is built by logic using elementary knowledge or knowledge that you already have (about math and physics) that was too built uppon knowledge that was build with elementary ideas and logic. Don't need to go and memorize tables of numbers and other kind of stuff! You learn Physics, you don't memorize it.
From the post where Khatz talked about doing reps daily until they exceeded one's lifespan, I thought it was ridiculous to be so reliant on an application for so long. I see many others also feel similarly. This is ultimately why I couldn't start to SRS, I saw the dead end. It would take away so much time from immersion in order to make new cards, review older cards, endure the mental pain of answering cards incorrectly and having to work through a bunch of 'forgotten cards'. It didn't sit well with me. I agree with Professor Khaufman. I think it would be good to have a completely random function outside of the generic Anki SRS algorithm, where the user could open the app during daily downtime, such as during a 5-10 minute bus journey or a 3 minute wait in a queue during day-to-day life. In that way it would add to conventional learning and use of the language without the large time investment and mental drain.
Your approach is very different than mine, but I must say I buy your arguments, they convince me that what I'm doing is wrong in a way. You inspired me to trying new ways of learning ;)
Great reflections Matt. "Language is infinite but you are finite". Cool way of putting it. Saussure's - langue and parole.. I kindda prefer the way you said it tho.
I like the "1 year rule" for cards deletion. Do you have a similar rule for new cards too? Especially for intermediate or advance learners who started using Anki only recently, or who plan to start using it in the near future. Somethink like "add only words you think you will forget if you don't review them in 1 year".
Bad conclusions extrapolated from a wrong premise. Broski went full spaced repetition without understanding the purpose of it. Newsflash: it is not a magical 'memorization' tool; it's just a scheduler for your practice.
i am pretty much at native level in spoken english, never did any sort of flash card or glossary, just reading, watching movies and youtube, and travaling. But i cant spell for shit. SRS might be efficient for some peuple, but its never necessary. unless you have a spelling exam to pas.
Reading achieves the same goal, it's just less direct and way more enjoyable and self-sustaining. Keep with it sir, simply reading the written language imrpoves your spelling - and for the record, yours is already very good :)
When I started studying English, I read bilingual books. I didn't have to look up unknown words. I didn't try to memorize any words. I just kept reading. I memorized frequent words subconsciously without using flash cards.
My method is comics then write necessary translations on the side. Get a page full of words you don't know then have it as a little glossary for the page. Reread the comic until you've extracted everything you want out of it then move to another comic. That way you get the repetition and familiarity with words but in context of the book or comic
I used Anki heavily in 2010 when AJATTing. Helped me go from 6000 ish vocab to 10,000 ish. Once I moved to Japan I deleted it. Funny thing, 9 years later, after a few years out of Japan, I made an Anki deck again. Just 700 words or so. 10 reps a day-ish. But fun, interesting cards. Finding interesting words in the wild feels like a nice way of re-connecting with the language outside of work (I'm a J->E translator). So I actually recommend long term Anki use, but you should not use it to 'store' your language. It's ultimately a learning tool. So you have to be more brutal in deleting cards. Especially if you are holding on to the same deck from beginner level to advanced. Most of those easy cards need to be deleted.
I like your ability to build on your ideas. Real progress. Do you think you will ever get over your obsession (well actually idk if I would say obsessed) to sound exactly like a Japanese person as soon as possible? I'm just interested in what this method will look like years from now.
This question isn't directly related to the video, but I was wondering, once im finished with RTK, how do I start learning readings of kanji? Do I just pick up a novel in Japanese and look up words until it makes sense? It would probably take an hour to read one page doing that, right? I have two books that have short stories that include furigana, but I know most books don't have that. For some context I took 4 semesters of japanese so i know some simple kanji compounds and readings, but thats about it.
This really struck a cord with me as I cannot get myself to stay with any SRS system. But I have tons of graded readers and I've been moving to young adult level native media. (Spanish). Why not mix intensive and extensive reading? I can randomly read pages that I've read before (have a whole structured memory network of context with the words and phrases). I can go through many sentences in these books and graphic novels. I can go over and over words that I've translated, that I literally just write at the bottom of each page. This seems vastly more effective than SRS systems or things like glossika. and so on.
Anki is nice because its so versitile. Ive definitely used it a lot but right now I'm really liking kitsune. Reason being I was doing some wanikani reviewing and I just came to the realization. "Once I'm done with wanikani, I dont get to use their system anymore" and tbh ive become so addicted to their srs system, which is 9 stages with auto retirement and you can unretire or "unburn" something if you somehow forget it. So I did some research and found kitsune which was made by a wanikani user and is basically wanikani and anki combined. There are also user decks and a lot of versatility. But the best part is that you can id a book and the system will parse the vocabulary in the book with an online japanese dictionaries database and display all the vocabulary in the book and make a deck out of it. Then if you want you can weed out all the vocabulary you already know and study the vocabulary you don't so you can just read a book without having to look anything up. Makes reading a lot easier for someone who isnt near fluent. By the way youre so brave for deleting your account. Im ok with deleting vocabulary from my decks (although its tedious) but I could never imagine doing that.
As a non-native English speaker with C1 level (probably) I cannot imagine myself using anki for studying advanced english vocab. Maybe for a test at uni, yeah, but why waste all those hours revising cards when you can just... open a book? turn on a movie? read an article? imo anki is a genius tool, but only up until you reach the point of becoming confident ~B1 in a language, after that you can make your learning journey exciting instead of continuing to treat it like work
Good thing about the よく使う順2100漢字 book is that it (1) puts kanji in order of frequency and (2) provides only compound words/verbs that are frequently used. Problem is that if I'm not actively using a word that I've learned, I don't feel like I'm really going to remember it.
Problem is, no one really properly merged the concepts of "SRS" and "language learning" yet. It's not that SRS is bad, it's just that current implementations of SRS are bad for language learning because they're not designed specifically for it.
I don't care if I reach fluency more slowly by reading books. I actually like reading and can easily read for three hours and look up unfamiliar words as I go along while thirty minutes of flashcards every day feels like a punishment.
I agree it can be addictive and it can get out of hand. But I do think maybe 5 to 10 minutes a day max might be helpful. You have to be choosy about what you add. Don't have obscure stuff... Anki should have clusters. It may be a year between clusters, but when the card does come up, you get a few exposures over a couple days.
YES!!! This is me!! I have SRS PTSD except I kinda failed and gave up when it didn't work completely but then I felt like I failed so I would spend more and more time doing it
Anki really is addicting. I make decks and “collect stamps” for everyday maintenance and stuff I want to remember in my personal life even, it’s crazy but it’s so powerful. I’ve been on anki for yeaars and I’ve always thought I’d stop when I’m done needing to make cards. It’s still fun and there’s always stuff to learn
