The end game... quitting the SRS

I find it so inspiring to read your posts here. When I first started on WK, I was amazed at how it made it simple to learn kanji. Follow the system and focus. And then as I used it more I learned more about myself and what my goals are for Japanese, I also learned when SRS can help me learn a word and when it is better to just fix my mistakes and know that I will learn the word when I encounter it in the wild.

(So many of my leeches just stop being leeches if I read/hear them in the wild even once. So now I don’t worry so much about them and just overrule errors if I notice that a leech have turned into that state.)

I have a feeling right now, with my Japanese classes and such that I will probably finish WK and I will do a lot of or all of BunPro, and then I will drop SRS for Japanese and just read and look words/grammar up when I need to.

It helps that I have the experience from learning English to fluency. Basically school taught me English until I was able read most any book by myself, and only look up words when I really didn’t understand a sentence without it. (Obviously not counting classical literature and such since that is a very different kind of English.) I was about 14-15 when I suddenly decided to involve myself in my own English learning and I switched my reading entirely to English at that point (I read a lot, and still do). And I could just switch mostly painlessly (although taking a big dictionary to bed wasn’t so comfy. :stuck_out_tongue:)

From then on I just read. I had all the grammar I needed, I knew a good amount of vocabulary. For Japanese, with WK, Japanese classes, and reading, I think I can pick up enough to just drop SRS when I finish WK/BP (maybe I won’t even feel like I need to hit 60 or finish all grammar on BP, who knows). :smiley:

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Sure thing, it’s basically the one in the link about picking words from watching. The link leads to the post I did with the whole routine, but the program itself is Voracious.

I guess you could do the same using Yomichan and some of the add-ons made for Netflix, Subadub is one of those. There’s another one called LLN, which I haven’t used, but I believe it was made among the same lines.

Big thing for me with Voracious was the fact that you could get the cards to have the audio and image from the scene the word came from, but mainly the fact that it works over video files instead of Netflix alone made the whole difference.

Netflix is a nice start to get shows with due japanese subs. In my case I would watch mainly movies and jdrama so that lead me to other shadier resources later on.

@melon4dinner I totally agree with that. I hope it doesn’t feel like I’m trashing SRS and its use. I have actually spend (and not wasted) countless hours in understanding how SRS works and made all the adjustments I could to make it a better tool for me. I really think it paid off to learn about SRS (and not just using it). Creating personal and relatable material was one of the points that made it possible for me to show up every day for reviewing.

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Hi there, I just had a look at the Voracious page, and I’m a bit thick, hence the questions!

Where do the subtitles come from? Are any old plain text soft subtitles OK, so you can use it for any show that has the appropriate subs available?

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The anwsers to those question can be found in the Voracious related post :+1:

You need the video and the subs properly synced in order to work. The procedence of that material can be Netflix (which with the right software you can extract both subs and video files) or some other source.

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I hope I can get to the point where I don’t need SRS anymore. It is really time consuming and what I really want to do is learn Japanese IN Japanese. I can’t really do much grammar study because of how much flash cards I flip through on a daily. I don’t hate it but when I complete a deck, its a really big relief. Right now, I have about 6,000 more cards before I finish 10,000 which I’m really looking forward to. Though I have mountain more to do, it only fills me with determination because I know how much of a difference it will make once I finish! So yes, quitting SRS is truly the end game.

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Anki seems a lot more complicated than it really is. All you are really doing when making an anki card is filling out a form. It is no harder than ordering something from amazon. No coding skills required. If you find a deck you think look nice, you can use that deck’s template to make your own cards.

There are a lot of parameters you can tweak and a lot of other cool shit you can do if you can code. But if you don’t want to, you don’t have to touch that stuff.

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Thanks a lot for your detailed answer :pray:

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But it’s the tweaked decks which seem to be the most beneficial. Tiny cards by Duolingo offers the ability to make simple flashcards and the interface is much more user-friendly.
I also found it frustrating trying to find pre-made anki decks as from my experience I could never see previews of anything but again that could just me doing something wrong. The fact of the matter is I have limited amount of time to spend on Japanese each week and at last the minute I can’t condone spending so much time making things to study. I’ve fallen into that trap before and it just leads to me only ever working on learning material and never actually using it. I admit that the fault lies entirely with me here but I’m just being realistic.

P.S. sorry if this isn’t particularly legible or coherent. It’s been busy at work the past few days :sweat_smile:

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Only if you’re employed :stuck_out_tongue:

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Getting your native language out of the picture as soon as possible is a great goal and why I kind of like the Minna no Nihongo books. (Though I really don’t like textbooks as a whole. These are good, but a bit dry.) I like the core book being all in Japanese even at N5 and you need to turn to a supplement to get any native language explanation.

Definitely look at Nihongo no Mori’s videos. I’ve been using their N3 series for the upcoming JLPT. These videos are all exclusively in Japanese and they do a great job of defining words using the simplest possible Japanese. Depending on your level, they may be challenging, but for me personally, I’m at a level where native content is still MUCH too difficult, yet I can pretty much understand 90-95% of these videos.

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I would never urge anyone to use anki because all the cool kids are doing it :slight_smile:. “I don’t need it”, “I don’t have time for it” or even “I don’t like it” etc are all fine enough reasons not to use anki. But I think if “it’s too complicated” is the reason… then you might unnecessarily be missing out on something good, that’s all… Anki is unappealing. And maybe it is just a little bit complicated, but not much (unless you want it to be).

I have limited experience in looking for pre-made decks. I basically got the core 10k deck and then I was all set. But according to what little experience I have, I agree, good decks are hard to find. And anki’s own deck “app store” is really meager. I don’t know why that is. Maybe they won’t host decks containing copyrighted material. If so, then that’s very understandable, but then there goes all the subs2srs decks. Also, the core 10k is in some grey area, I’ve heard, so I don’t think they are hosting that one either.

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I’m a bit late, but: Congratulations on quitting SRS and feeling so good doing it! Being both a Japanese language beginner and an SRS beginner I can only dream of reaching that nirvana. :smiley:

Do you have a tutorial or links for the automated audio, automated japanese definition and frequency ordering sorting?

Thanks. Though I’m glad to spend less time on the computer doing SRS, I still feel far from Nirvana
:sweat_smile: .
I’m mostly trying to make a constant routine reading and watching these days. Watching is been easier to stick to; I hope I finish my novel by the end of the month at least. I guess like anything it requires constancy… no secret pathway to fluency opens when you quit the SRS either … :sob:

Anyway you can check the post about Voracious for the how on picking words to review, there you’ll find also the link to the frequency add-on for Anki. That list is made from books; I was using another one made from TV Shows and drama, which felt bit more related to where my vocab was coming from mostly, but specially in those first 5,000 words didn’t make much difference.

As for the definitions. There’s an add-on called WordQuery which I used to get automated J-J definitions. There’s another add-on that does J-E definitons mentioned in the Voracious thread too.

Then lastly I was using the MIA Japanese add-on to get native audio for the words. It was the quickest way I had to do it in batches, the addon does a shitload of other things related to pitch accent, which I never played with.

There you have it… I felt it was a super efficient way of reviewing and adding content, but then maybe I’m just partial to this because I did spend so many hours looking for that “perfect setup” during the last 2 years. Who knows, maybe just doing some super basic version of it and just sticking to reading and watching from the beginning was the really important thing. :sweat_smile:

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That does sound super efficient - thanks for sharing!

(My main problem with Anki is probably how customizable it is, and my “why do it at all if I don’t do it perfectly” attitude, haha. I want superb self-made cards, but spending lots of time making them is obviously not feasable. Learning from others is very helpful there.)

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i know this thread is about quitting SRS but do you have any tips for reducing the time to make anki cards? importing cards is easy but i’m still doing so much manually like highlighting certain parts of the definition/keyword. your cards are really pretty and something i aspire to make myself. :heart_eyes:

I don’t really regret anything regarding learning japanese, every step has added something.

That exactly is where my advice, if any, would point to.

My train of thoughts was like this

I spend so much time with Anki ----> I should have cards that feel engaging and are a “pleasure” to review and learn since I’m spending so much time in this activity

I think this should have been more in the lines of:

I should spend no more than X minutes in Anki (reviewing / creating cards) daily, so I spend time using the language reading or watching a show that I like and also serves as a constant review of all that I learn —> My Anki cards should be as automated as possible even if that means they look more bare bones.


Overall I would say try to use all the add-ons that have batch capabilities (definitions, frequency lists, audio) and forget about the rest. The curator mentality while doing SRS cards will make you shift the focus to the wrong place.

It’s the better advice I have at the moment… :man_shrugging:

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alright, thank you! i haven’t taken the time to check out many add-ons which i should. one last question; what version of anki would you recommend? am i missing out on anything essential because i’m on 2.1 and not 2.0? :thinking:

Not at all. All the add-ons I used where either updated or replaced with better ones in 2.1 :+1:

I really should automate my anki card creation one of these days. I still create them myself. But they are literally “english, hiragana, kanji” for the most part so at the speed I type I’m not so sure I could add cards much faster by looking them up and plugging them in with yomichan …

I did only very recently realize I can control ankidroid with swipe gestures and that was a game changer for me, haha.

I imagine I’ll continue to use anki as long as I live in America. I just don’t see myself getting enough exposure throughout the day to build/maintain as large a vocabulary/grammar database in my head as I want, otherwise.

If I ever lived in Japan … yeah I’d probably just go “well if it sticks it sticks” and hope all the studying paid off o_o.

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