I’m sorry for making it seem like I was attacking your method, I know everyone learns differently; however, the whole purpose of the SRS is to learn it the first time and then use spaced repetition to put it into your long term memory better, and allow for easier recall. When you bombard your brain with a ton of information all at once it causes you to not learn the information the first time, and makes you have to restudy it like you are doing. So yes what you are doing is working, but you are being forced to restudy it all over again; therefore, you are wasting time and being inefficient. Basically I’m saying you would be better off learning it the first time and getting it into your long term memory faster by only studying it the first time (in the lesson) for a longer period of time, instead of going over 80+ vocab all at once for a shorter period of time on each one.
Listen, I’m no expert, but what I do know is if you tell your brain “it’s fine, I can relearn this/study this again later”, it causes your brain to rely on this. Due to this, you begin to rely on your studying the 2nd, 3rd 4th, etc time to eventually learn it, rather than forcing your brain to learn it the first time and then fetch it from your memory later on in the reviews. When you have this way of studying you eventually learn it, but it is not a great way to learn with an SRS method of learning because you’re basically defeating the point of SRS.
I’m still new, but here’s what I’ve decided for myself for the time being.
20 new lessons a day maximum. this would mean about 400 days worth of 20 lessons each to finish everything, although I assume I will need longer. I want to stay focused and get through it, but it’s a long term grind to me rather than a sprint.
no reordering - just do everything in the order wanikani gives it to me
If apprentice count is over 100, don’t do lessons
Reviews at least once a day, no exceptions.
In general, prioritise avoiding burnout over finishing fast. Better to work a bit slower than to quit.
Yes, but the goal is to learn Japanese as efficiently as possible. SRS is only one tool to accomplish that. It doesn’t take place in a vacuum, I also “break” the SRS every time I study grammar or reading.
I don’t think its a problem to give an item a little extra help if its bouncing between apprentice and guru.
Yes, but what I’m saying is there is a reason why it is bouncing between apprentice and guru - because you’re cramming too much at once. We are able to learn something so much more efficiently when we don’t have to keep looking up the answer. When our brain is forced to recall something it is able to learn that this is something we actually need to know. However, when we go and look for the answer (in this case, going back and restudying it and essentially relearning it) our brain doesn’t find it that important to know the answer. When we restudy it (going and looking over the answer instead of coming up with it on our own) our brain finds this is how we will be able to find the answer and decides not to store the information in long term. Yeah, eventually after you keep restudying it over and over it’s going to go into long term, but that isn’t very efficient is it?
Anyways, it’s as you said it seems to be working for you. Even though I don’t agree with that method you seem to be progressing how you want to. I just wanted to provide some feedback as someone viewing your situation from the outside and provide vague information on how our brains work. Good luck with reaching level 60 and reaching your goals in learning Japanese. I’m curious to see how things come along as time goes on.
Just to add my few cents in here, I do all the lessons for radicals and kanji when they pop up, and then 10-20 lessons a day after that (depending on how busy I know I’m going to be in the next few days) to eat away at the vocab from the current and last levels, which helps me learn and remember the kanji. I don’t use the reorder script, but I do tend to do them on the Tsurukame app, which basically has the script built-in (you can mess with the settings) so that sorta counts. It’s worked for me so far, although I am pushing myself to be a bit speedy as I’m trying to do the Dec. 2020 JLPT Race here in the forums. Just find what amount of lessons keeps you moving and learning but not swamped, that won’t help with remembering them further down the line. Good luck and hang in there!
I agree with this. Before I joined wanikani my self studies were slow and only small information I would bring to myself. Having repeated lessons with lots to review helps apply real world reading pressure as you stated above. I’m still new to wanikani but I will continue with the method of doing all lessons at once along with all reviews as they come. Repetition after all is the name of the game.