I’m brand new to SRS as a study mechanic and am still feeling it out.
When I encounter a character or vocab that I can’t quickly recall, how long should I give myself to remember? If I do eventually remember, but it takes more than, say, a minute, should I mark it incorrect anyway?
On the one hand, the end goal is immediate recognition, so taking two solid minutes to remember a word feels like it’s not really something I ‘know’. On the other hand, struggling to remember something seems to get it deeper into the memory banks. I’m not sure what the SRS pros would say to do here.
I feel like I lean more towards this approach. Part of the reason is a quantity approach. There’s a couple thousand kanji to learn and the goal is to know them on sight. The longer it takes to recognize each one, the slower your reading will be. Sometimes you’re going to mix up similar ones or misread one but the recognition itself should be fast. If it takes more than thirty seconds to see and type the answer you might not know it. This lets you get through a couple dozen flashcards in a few minutes because each one should be quick. Caveat is that you shouldn’t rush too much because that may stress you or something and you want to avoid burnout. Typing the reading and meaning may take longer than thinking of it if you know one immediately.
There’s something to be said for this and frequently you will get a tip of your tongue kind of thing where you almost know it. Was this one かん or こん？ in that case think about it for a few seconds but still try to make your guess sooner than a minute.
Your end goal is to be able to read and or speak more fluently and srs is the tool that you’ll eventually abandon on the way there. Don’t worry about being a pro user of the most efficient srs method, just keep showing up a little every day.
The current SRS goes 4 hours → 8 hours → 1 day → 2 days → 1 week → 2 weeks → 1 month → 4 months and then is considered burned. I would say that if you’re struggling to remember the word at the 2 week mark, you’ll probably fully forget it when the 1 month mark hits, which will push it down the SRS ladder.
For me, personally, my annoyance at getting an answer wrong after so long actually helps with committing it to memory.
However, if you end up going 4 months without seeing the word and still just barely remember it after a minute or two, it may not be a bad idea to intentionally push the word back down the SRS ladder instead of burning it. Otherwise, let the SRS do it’s thing. If you’re struggling to remember something after not having seen it for a week or two, that internal struggle could help commit it to memory for the next time you see it.
If I don’t know it in 5 seconds I am taking the L and typing in gibberish. I have hundreds of items in my queue I can’t wait 2 minutes to recall it correctly once when it might take a collective 30 seconds over multiple days to get it to a higher level with better confidence.
There are some exceptions, but I generally use a scaling system. Newer items have extra time and lower rank stuff has extra time. Older items that are back in a lower rank (leeches and stuff that just needs a bit more practice) get something in the middle. As stuff moves from guru up I expect to be able to know it faster. I’ve had some guru things where I was like “I know this.. anytime now..” for like a minute before remembering, lol. On enlightened, If I can’t get something within 5 seconds it fails as it isn’t ready to be burned.
I don’t worry about taking “too long” to remember. Sometimes it does take a while, going through some odd mental process, remembering the mnemonic or where I had contact with the word, or whatever. If it takes a while, so be it, that struggle will make it easier next time!
Other times, I immediately realize that I simply have no idea, and quickly enter some “nonsense” to move on. Interestingly, in about 10% of those cases, the nonsense turns out to be right.