SRS discussion... more like my story in language learning but anyway...
So Iām gonna tell more of a story of my discovery of SRS with love at first sight followed by⦠well, let me start the story instead of giving you a plot summery.
Before WK, I donāt think Iād heard of SRS. Iād tried Duolingo briefly but found it lacking in the words it choose to teach me. (Maybe it makes sense to teach a kid the names of all the colors, but as an adult I donāt find those are the first words I need to know.
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About my journey to get fluent in English without SRS and with help from regular obligatory school, feel free to skip because it makes my post even longer. lol
Instead my experience with language learning came from learning English as my second language. In Sweden, back when I was at school (it might be different now!), we started learning a bit in grade 1-3, but it really kickstarted in grade 4 (10ish years old) and from there on it really built.
When I was about 14 years old, I realized my closest friends were so much better at English than I was. They played computer games in English (mainly that was why), and I didnāt enjoy not understanding things they did, so I decided enough was enough. Also I didnāt want to wait a year after the release of Harry Potter 5 for the Swedish translation. So I dived head first into reading all those (translated) fantasy books I loved in their original language (aka English).
Boy, was that a trip! This was before internet in your pocket (2003!), and I had a physical, paper Eng-Swe dictionary. And now imagine that a paper version have to be selective in its choices of word to include due to length, and now remember how many words are used in fantasy (even set in our modern world) that are not commonānot to mention made up words.
And wellā¦
I understood everything that happened in the book, but there were definitely words I was very confused by. Definitely a case of maybe not the best picked book, but school had given me a good enough base that I could understand words from context even if I couldnāt look them up.
I started calling myself fluent in English somewhere between 18 and 20 years old, because I no longer had to translate English in my head to Swedish to understand it, and I could communicate quick and easy, and I had no trouble with any books I choose to read.
So I never did SRS with English and Iāve considered myself fluent for almost a decade and a half.
Now, I tried to tackle Japanese several times without getting very far. A new writing system (well three, but anyway), plus grammar so very different from my own, and barely any natural exposureāthose things make it a lot harder to get into.
Then eventually I stumbled on WK, and I consider that a god send for my Japanese. I fell in love with SRS as I worked through the free levels. I couldnāt understand how this wasnāt used in school when it made it so easy to learn words. Just words and words and words, and in Japaneseās case kanji.
I was blind to its flaws. Mostly due to not enough experience (and I donāt mean review piles or how the work builds and builds).
Then about when I started I read this post: The end game⦠quitting the SRS. And I was all O_O O_O O_O
Why ever would I quit SRS? It was the best. Ah, the naivety was adorable.
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Then I continued. Started coming up in the teens of WK, and later into the twenties and I started to realize that there were words that would not stick via SRS for me. That learning words in isolation like this made it very hard to understand them. How some leeches were created due to similar kanji that wouldnāt happen at all if I read them in context because the meanings were so different that there would be no way Iād wonder if it meant A or Q.
In fact, my leech strategy is to mostly correctly my mistakes and let them move into burned, because I figure I will either understand them in context or eventually find such a good sentence that suddenly I just understand the word forever more. (Honestly that second case have happened a few times.) More SRS only leads to frustration and extra meaningless work.
And somewhere in figuring out that there were things SRS with isolated words couldnāt teach, the amount of work required that isnāt that fun, and the fact that I managed to learn English without SRS⦠Suddenly eventually quitting SRS made sense.
In fact, I realized that once I had a good basis in Japanese, consumption would take care of expanding my vocabulary and slowly but surely make my understanding clearer and clearer without any focused studying. I occasionally look up English words, either because Iāve never seen them before (tends to be scientific/field of study specific vocab that a layperson donāt tend to know) or sometimes I look up definitions to more clearly understand words I might have encountered many times but canāt clearly define. (These tend to be adjective like nouns, if that makes sense. Words like ćććŖć weak-looking fellow; pale-faced man; pasty-faced man; pallid manā (since I couldnāt come up with one in English).)
Anyway, I canāt tell you exactly when I will stop SRS, but I donāt see myself picking up any new SRS after WK. (Because I got my base vocabulary from 1 year in Japanese language school.) I will probably/maybe finish WK, and I might get back into Bunpro to get clearer on more grammar. And maybe I will pick up a bit of SRS after WK if I still feel like there are too many common words I donāt know.
The only way to know if now is the time to quit is probably to try it. What does it feel like not to do SRS for 3 months or 6 months? Weighting pros and cons could also be good, and with that I mean your own personal ones. How irritating is SRS? How much effort/energy/time does it take to add new words to SRS? How much do you get out of it? Can you clearly point to SRS things making YOUR GOAL WITH JAPANESE easier? (I donāt know why you are learning Japanese.)
SRS is a means to an end. If youāve gotten what you needed from it, then quit. If you are unsure if you are there yet, put things on vacation mode/equivalent and try it. Experiment, and donāt feel like whatever you choose to do is something you have to stick with. Maybe it only takes two weeks of no SRS to realize that: no actually, SRS is still right for me.
Or in a yearās time youāll look back at this and go: huh, I really didnāt need SRS anymore.
I look forward to the day I feel done with SRS for Japanese.
It is a wonderful tool and I will probably use it when/if I learn a fourth language in the future. And once again, I will aim to get to a strong base in the new language and then abandon formal study for expanding knowledge through reading/speaking/listening/writing (whichever combo of those I learned the language for in the beginning).
Sorry for being so verbose and still mostly repeating what others have said⦠![]()