Thank you for the very in-depth and thoughtful advice.
I think that because I’m drowning so much in Anki reviews, it’s cutting into the time I could be spending reading material or studying textbooks. Although I’m drowning in leeches, my # of kanji/hanzi is high enough that I can do some reading okay… Your explanation of how encountering the words in more context can help with solidifying (and thus theoretically help me stop leeching cards) makes a lot of sense. So it seems that cutting back on Anki and shifting more of that time into practical practice might just be a better use of my time overall.
I definitely understand what you mean by rut and routine. I kind of wake up every day dreading seeing the number of due cards and estimated time it will take me to get through them every day, and aside from simply being demotivated, I notice that I think my level of comprehension in practical settings is quite weak relative to the number of hours I’ve put in, compared to what someone else might have, so that’s additionally frustrating. Someone else also suggested just not even bothering with the 800 or so cards that are killing me over and over, so I’m going to take that more seriously.
I really liked your note about just varying things up with SRS, reading, listening, etc to get a source of more immediate improvement and increase motivation. I’ve been very 70% SRS 20% grammar and I’ve just felt like I’m stagnating, so if I can let go off the mentality of “do SRS first and when you’re done for the day, then do other study,” I think going into these practical fields where I’m weak will surely have some results. I’ll try that for sure. (Thankfully I have the Anki extension that lets me delay due cards…)
I don’t think this should be a problem. You shouldn’t really rely on mnemonics past the beginning stages anyway, and it’s natural for them to fade and words should instantly just “click”.
I put my suspend as a leech count at 4 a while ago. I can really get those leeches out early if they don’t stick, and I can always return to them and give them more attention when I feel like it. They are not going anywhere, and I don’t have to drill them now. Even seeing them those a few times before automatic suspension will leave a an imprint, that can later help me pick the word up in the wild.
This sounds perfectly normal to me. Those leeches will really stretch your review times. That’s another reason I like to suspend them automatically, so that I can deal them in a different setting than normal reviews.
I’m definitely someone who falls to sunk cost fallacy a lot, as well as someone who always sets rules for myself that maybe just don’t matter anymore in the long run.
That’s a good point. I peeked ahead at the kanji in the 50-60 levels of WaniKani. Some of the keywords are certainly different from what I was doing in RTH/RTK Anki (although that might also be a Chinese-Japanese thing), so that might just get confusing for me. They mostly look familiar, and there are some I know right off the top, some that I can remember if I stare long enough, and some where it’s just not coming to me.
I don’t know if I’ll really be able to assess it well just from free trial, but I’ll try WaniKani for a bit to see if the approach with learning kanji + vocab together feels any faster for me. At this point, I suppose at least trying something new is more important, and if WaniKani just doesn’t make sense with what I already have, at the very least I think there is some good advice in these comments about other approaches!
Thanks for sharing your experiences. This is definitely very similar to what I’m currently going through myself. It’s great to hear that it made such a clear difference in your studies.
Since my current Anki studies are also through mnemonics, I’m of course a bit worried about that and potential confusion, but maybe another set of mnemonics will just give me another angle to remember the character… And certainly since my previous method was a lot of me making up my own mnemonics, a lot of those are pretty uh weak and lame, so to some extent I think WaniKani ones might be better than what I came up with myself…
I was a bit on the fence on WaniKani since I wasn’t sure if it would kind of mess me up, but your comment has convinced me to try it. And at the very least, some of the more dynamic elements that you describe seem like they would help me with retention more than just the same old “yes/no” of straight flashcards.
Oh wow, a leech count of 4! I mean, aside from the fact that I turned off suspend and therefore my leech count is infinite, I think the default is 8 so that is a pretty big difference. Actually looking at my stats, the majority of my cards really are mature, so it really seems that re-re-re-reviewing the same leeches over and over is what’s killing me the most. If this is really what’s hampering me, then maybe an aggressively low leech count would make sense for me as well. I think I’ll try this, thank you.
Let me know how it goes . Note that my learning steps are set at 1 day → 6 days, with a 14 day graduating interval. Failing the card in the learning stage does not count as a lapse toward the card being a leech. Only if they lapse as a review card. So some cards may bounce around failing a few times before they graduate (but don’t get marked as leeches). I found this works well for vocab that I’m also reinforcing with reading.
Also the “new interval” for lapse cards I think should absolutely be something else than 0%. I have it set at around 40-50% for most decks.
. Note that my learning steps are set at 1 day → 6 days, with a 14 day graduating interval. Failing the card in the learning stage does not count as a lapse toward the card being a leech. Only if they lapse as a review card. So some cards may bounce around failing a few times before they graduate (but don’t get marked as leeches). I found this works well for vocab that I’m also reinforcing with reading.