I've been using Kaishi 1.5k for a while now and I'm at around 45% "done" with new words (710ish words). I use it daily throughout the day, while going to and back from work, on the toilet etc. I've been using green and red buttons in a majority of cases. If I can recall the kanji's meaning and reading correctly I press green, if I need help from the example sentence I press white, if I can't recall regardless I press red. MOST of my presses throughout the day are red and I get to around 300-400 seen cards. If I focus only on doing it I can go through it in roughly 40 minutes. If I spread it throughout the day it takes probably a bit over an hour. For a while now I've had roughly 100 to 120 cards to review alongside 10 new ones. From what I've read it's supposed to take a lot less time so I wanted to check with others. Am I "slow"? Am I doing something wrong?
My Anki stats: https://pdfupload.io/docs/07ca63ad
by CheeseBiscuit7
7 comments
I’m about 500 words into the Core 2.3K deck, and I’m experiencing the exact same thing as you. I was doing 20 new words a day, and then a few days ago I bumped it down to 12. Which is how you lower the number of cards you need to review everyday. Bump down your daily new cards.
I’d just stop adding new cards for a while, until the daily review cards reduce and you’re able to remember them better. I don’t like spending more than 20 minutes a day on Anki, so if I end up going over that I’ll stop new cards, once its dropped under 20 minutes I’ll then go up from a couple new cards a day and increase it if I want more later on.
Are you using the default Anki settings? I haven’t changed mine in a long time so I can’t remember what I did change, but maybe better settings would space words better or help in some other way
And I’m not sure how but you can probably tell cards to go back into the ‘new’ pile, I’d consider just sending half back into new so it’s a bit easier to properly learn a fewer amount of cards, trying to remember 100 words and recall them will be a lot harder then 50
just finished the core 2k deck, on most days, usually adding 4 new cards daily. Took approx a year and a half. For new kanji, I would usually write it out, research it, and really let it sink in. Took anywhere from 20-40 min to do reviews when I got a rhythm down
Everyone is different, between mental capacity for a new language, and the time for it. Finding the right amount is up to you. I started with too many cards in the beginning, and reviews snuck up to 2 hours, including some other decks I was doing.
There’s no shame in giving yourself days where you don’t add cards. The less you do, the easier new ones will be to learn
Have you done any direct kanji practice? I was able to get back to 20 words a day by spending a few weeks with an app called Learn Kanji where you draw kanji starting from simpler ones. This has helped me break the kanji down so I can remember them. I also got a deck of kanji components in Anki so I don’t forget. Also, I switched from Kaishi to Core 10K which I think is a bit better (and you’ll probably do it anyway since 1500 words is not much).
I use AnkiDroid with the FSRS scheduler, buttons hidden and gestures enabled (swipe left for red and right for green). Using the other two options is apparently not good.
it’s not have much to do with your problem, but it will make your Anki learning better – configure FSRS if you don’t yet. There is plenty info about it either on YouTube or here, on reddit
Yes, you’ve basically overwhelmed yourself. You’ve been studying for about 10 weeks, so you don’t even have mature cards yet, so expect your time to grow even more. But, don’t worry, plenty of people here have been in the same exact situation. People are competitive, you hear someone saying that they do 100 new cards a day and you decide to do 50, and that’s how it happens.
You need to understand that when it comes to Anki quality has a quantity of it’s own. Or in other words, if you do 10 cards per day and keep next-ing cards without really learning them, while someone else is doing just 5, they can actually learn faster than you, with less time spent per day, because their cards graduate to mature and stay there, while your not.
As someone who has been in this exact situation, my advice is similar to other posters here. Find what’s the maximum effective time you can focus on Anki. For mere mortals it’s rarely more than say 30-40 minutes(in one session). Then choose a normal maximum time that’s even lower than that. You’d have bad days, sometimes you miss a day or two and need to catch up, so it’s nice to have an extra time buffer. Then stop doing new cards until you reach that normal time per day goal. After that you can slowly work up the new cards number until they fill your goal time.
Don’t be worried that you may be doing only a few new cards per day, because eventually you’d gain skills that would allow you to learn the cards quicker and you’d be able to do more new cards in the same amount of time.
Are you reading the words you learn outside of flashcard practice? If you’re not getting enough input, a good (temporary?) remedy would be to simply do extra reviews of your flashcards. When I didn’t have a good source of input, I faced similar retention issues, so I wrote a script interfacing with AnkiConnect to quiz myself on either random words I’d encountered in my deck or words with the lowest learning intervals and found doing typing tests to be an insanely effective substitute. Perhaps you could give it a try?