I thought the title of the thread should be changed to “Why I Stopped using Anki”.…was this not the only SRS method originally mentioned and sort of alludes all SRS methods are equal? Otherwise, all points look completely valid but it took like a half a day of responses to clarify.
Personally, I don’t like Anki at all for my needs but I respect its flexibility. IMO, the 3rd party applications on WK take it to a new level for either tracking progressing or increasing the difficulty.
This, but also, a beginner has no real easy entry point. You can’t just listen to japanese TV and absorb it by osmosis (exposure method) yet - it’s all incomprehensible. The most common word in the language is still just a noise.
Sure, the most effective way to remember something is through repeated exposure and linking it to other things in your mind you already know. SRS isn’t supposed to be the most effective, it’s the most efficient (effectiveness for amount of time spent) way to quickly get a base of things to build on. Presumably once you had that, you would be able to switch to a more effective exposure method, or be able to get deeper in advanced J-J type study. Indeed, a lot of people say they’re pretty much weaning off WK by level 60 anyway except for the satisfaction of finishing (gamification) and habit.
On the other hand, some people find it fun for its own sake (I do). I guess that reinforces your initial point, if it’s not fun, stop. But I’d add, wait until you’ve built enough of a base by just crossing your fingers and doing it that other methods are starting to work.
I just wanted to thank you for dropping this video in here. I hadn’t seen Kaufman’s videos before and I quite like them at least from an inspirational point of view. I understand his focus is on vocabulary acquisition through reading and listening, but I haven’t yet heard how he gets started learning a new language.
Maybe because you’re in the 死 levels o:
This video seems to cover how he starts learning a new language from scratch!
I agree with this. Unless you live in a place where you can surround yourself by Japanese language to have a true immersion experience then starting off it’s easier to use SRS. Once you build that foundation you can move on to native materials. Trying to understand native materials too early on means you will spend a lot of time looking up words and grammar…more time than if you just used SRS to study. Once you know more then the less you will have to look up. At that point then SRS is less necessary.
Regardless what it comes down to is whatever works for you. I think it’s important that throughout your journey you are continuously tweaking how you are studying to make sure you are doing whatever is most effective for you. If SRS is becoming too time consuming for you and reading has been more effective for you then go for it.
You’ve gotta watch a lot of his old videos where he goes through that sort of thing. Kaufmann mainly uses LingQ - an online language learning tool that he founded - to learn languages. He points out that you need to expose yourself to real native content very early through lots of listening and although this is difficult and you won’t be able to understand a thing, with time it’ll all begin to come together.
His theory is that language acquisition boils down to three things: (1) your motivation, (2) the amount of time you spend with the language, and (3) your ability to notice what is going on in the language. I’ve personally benefitted from a number of his ideas and advice and love to get others into listening to Steve and hearing what he has to say.
I especially love this video as it breaks down this false idea that you can effectively communicate in and understand a language with only a few number of words - often pointed out as those high frequency 2000 words.
40k words 
Reading through the last few replies (haven’t checked out the actual videos yet), and seeing language like “weaning off WK,” I guess I still don’t get the idea that SRS and contextual exposure have to be mutually exclusive, except for the obvious time demands of each.
I would definitely prioritize native content–and again, if I have to cut one from a day at this point, I try not to make it that–but part of what I appreciate about my SRS apps is that they’re essentially no-sweat review to keep passive vocabulary items (or less frequently encountered kanji) in my back pocket.
Like, I’d probably even think about unburning some of WK once I hit 60 just because why not. It doesn’t have to be your main learning tool–just a useful complement. Again, this will come down to what your own language goals and time commitments look like, and I’d probably feel differently if I were learning something besides Japanese at the same time, but if you’re all in on just learning the one, I just wanted to caution against the tendency for threads like this to get into either/or territory. There doesn’t need to be an SRS vs. immersion 派 or anything.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone is arguing that SRS is bad. But that time constraints thing is real. I could have gone through WK more slowly and had more time, but I preferred to concentrate it to get through it sooner so that I’d be able to read more things when I finished. The downside was that because I concentrated on WK so much, there wasn’t much time left for reading. Priorities!
Anyway, I’m reading a lot more now that I’m not worried about meeting a daily/weekly quotient of reviews and lessons. And I’m pretty burned out in general when it comes to SRS. But my appetite for reading and listening is alive and well. In fact I feel quite hungry for it now.
But you’re right. I may decide to go back to a form of SRS in the future if it looks useful.
On the topic of language acquisition, I was going down the YouTube rabbit hole, and came across this interesting video:
It’s almost an hour long, so be forewarned, but it is persuasive. In it Dr. Jeff Brown not only explains how he learned Arabic to the point of fluency in a year, he actually documents it with video that shows his methods and progress along the way.
His method is completely different from Steve Kaufman’s method, and while I can’t compare the effectiveness of these methods, Brown’s method is attractive to me in that he methodically attempts to learn the language as a small child would. He does this through one-on-one sessions with native speakers using many of Stephen Krashen’s guidelines: no grammar, no corrections, only comprehensible input.
For Arabic at least, he ignores the written language and focusses on speech and oral comprehension instead. The drawbacks of this is obviously that you wouldn’t end up literate without further study. The benefit is with this speech-forward approach, you can make measurable progress in the one area that most people use to judge how well you know a language: how well you can speak it.
It makes me laugh thinking how Steve Kaufman wants to learn languages by reading about Charlemagne and other historical topics, while Brown wants to learn by being spoken to like a small child (albeit, one who grows up within a year). I do wonder if Brown is able to converse on topics beyond that concrete after a year is up. Kaufman seems more eager to be able to discuss philosophy. On the other hand, I feel that Brown even with a limited range of possible topics may be able to speak more naturally having learned from the ground up.
So in the end I think both methods (and others as well) can be effective. Part of it depends on your personality and lifestyle. I kept thinking as I watched Dr. Brown’s video that I might give it a try if I was single and had a fair amount of time on my hands. I’d also have to be pretty extroverted and enjoy spending a lot of time with strangers.
Kaufman also believes in comprehensible input, though I think he tries to get up to speed quicker using a lot of reading and listening with no particular focus on speaking. This is attractive to me knowing that speaking a second (third, fourth…) language is challenging, but I don’t have so much faith that the ability to speak will just happen overnight once you learn enough vocabulary and get good at comprehension. But there is research that apparently says it can happen. I seems like a leap of faith, though, like learning to swim by being pushed into the deep end after watching a lot of swimming videos. I’m naturally more of a start-at-the-shallow-end guy.
Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll change my Japanese study methods much at this point, though I may try to take more advantage of organized language exchanges which are luckily easy to find in my city. I do find that when I have gone to those in the past, I get a certain kind of positive reinforcement that’s different from what I get speaking in my Japanese class or even speaking Japanese with my wife.
As someone who is really interested in second language acquisition, I always love posts like this. I haven’t watched Dr. Brown’s video, but there’s a rather large community of world language teachers who have been using comprehensible-input-based methods to teach their students.
I think the key for both Kaufman’s and Brown’s methods is the heavy emphasis on getting lots and lots of input that is comprehensible. For Brown, it seems like it was mostly oral input, and for Kaufman he seems to advocate doing more reading (though also trying to find resources where he can both read AND listen to something). Another researcher who I really like learning from is Bill VanPatten. He has a podcast (now finished), as well as a number of videos and books that were helpful for me as a language teacher and learner. When I was a Spanish teacher, I relied heavily on the Teaching Proficiency Through Reading & Storytelling (TPRS) method, and my students experienced success with it.
For Japanese, I would say that I’m trying to mimic these methodologies in focusing mostly on understanding written and oral input. This was one of my motivations for starting the children book challenge. I also use NHK Easy News, Graded Readers (with their listening component), and Rosetta Stone. So far I’d say that it’s working well for me!
Great to see this video mentioned!!
I bumped with it while looking some Steve Kauffman videos some weeks ago and actually made me reconsider meeting with language exchange partners while in Japan.
Actually the whole approach seems very logical, but thing is don’t quite know how this translate for Japanese learning because he mentions specifically that for languages not using the Roman alphabet he would avoid dealing with reading altogether for quite some time 
… I can’t really come to terms with that , especially since reading was a priority for me.
Indeed. I’m at the point with Japanese where I feel the need to be able to read, so I’m pushing myself in that direction. And since even learning the “Japanese alphabet” (and I’m including kanji in that term) takes a long time, it does require real individual effort.
I’m also at the point with Japanese where I can converse with people about concrete subjects haltingly but more or less effectively. But listening to stories read aloud that I might be able to read is a challenge still, so I also need to work on my listening. So I feel that at this point, Kaufman’s approach will be more beneficial to me than Brown’s. If I were starting a language from scratch, though, I might try to copy what Brown has done. Maybe I’ll try it with Italian or Portuguese, which should be comparatively simple since I’m already decent at Spanish.
I can see the merits of the approach, but in my case probably would do something like that on a more relatable language too (romance languages).
Also, the extroverted part can be an issue, specially when having those first meetings 
… I will give it a go though, since I will have precisely that in some weeks, time and a lot of japanee people to practice 
… but as for a first approach, I haven’t heard anyone dealing with japanese like that…
Should be a pretty unique experience learning written japanese following something like that 
I learned Portuguese through Brown’s method and I can verify that it works. Nevermind the fact that I was an actual baby at the time.
Funny! But that’s the hard part for most of us: acting like a helpless child as an adult.
@Ncastaneda: I’m pretty introverted too, so forcing myself to go to the language exchange or one-on-one tutoring can be difficult. But once I’m there, I feel pretty good because usually you’re being helped by someone who’s motivated to help and who’s motivated to receive help in return.
I think if you jump into it with a pretty good vocabulary already, you can skip the baby part. The key is probably to be very specific about what and how you wish to learn. I like that it doesn’t put a tremendous amount of pressure on the teacher to come prepared with curriculum. Instead it’s the student who gets the words they need by basically asking for them. Just like a child does.
Some adults I know are surprisingly good at this
I was actually wondering about what you guys are discussing here. I started learning Japanese a few months ago and I’ve been using WK and Bunpro after trying with books, classes, etc.
What’s most important to me when trying to learn a language is to have fun doing it, because even if I have a goal in mind, like going to Japan and being able to speak to people and read, it’s way harder to stay motivated when I’m just going through a schoolbook or doing pure memorization. So far the SRS system with its game-like features has been entertaining but I can’t imagine myself doing this for too long honestly.
I learned english basically from scratch, by reading and watching subtitled stuff. It was a fun and enjoyable way to do it, even if it probably took more time this way.
I want to do the exact same thing with Japanese. I’ve tried it already but it’s a lot harder than for English though, without grammar I can’t really understand the meaning of most sentences I come across and years of anime watching didn’t do me any good.
That’s why I’m using SRS tools right now, they’re really good and well made but when I’ll be able to get by without, I probably won’t use them again.
To each his own though, I don’t think it’s the best way to learn a language, but it’s certainly the most enjoyable to me.