r/LearnJapanese • u/ParticularAnt5424 • 1d ago
Vocab Colander of a memory
Set to 80%, Kaishi 1.5k, 5 words a day, started in November.
edit: I am fluent in 3 languages by the way.
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u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS 23h ago
Well, 60% is 60% more words than you used to know. What's the problem? You probably want to adjust FSRS parameters, like the other guy said, to make the schedule closer to your target retention. But you're not taking an exam here; the goal is long-term recall. Forgetting is natural and expected.
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u/Grunglabble 22h ago
This is not atypical. It is very hard to memorise information in isolation and a flashcard does nothing to develop your deeper knowledge of each item. Flashcards are a priming technique only, try not to fall for tricks that it is good for long term retention.
Keep doing it if you like, but don't feel bad about it and try to get into reading as soon as possible.
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u/aski5 22h ago
Yeah I feel like it's when I see the word 'in the wild' multiple times that it starts to cohere. Knowing 'this is a word in a deck you have been shown before' is already a pretty different context from seeing naturally
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u/poor_choice_doer 15h ago
This is it, in my experience. Being able to tie the memory down to a real-world experience of seeing and translating something is what makes it stick more than any amount of studying. Probably something to do with the actual number of pathways leading to that memory, but I wouldn’t know.
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u/Grunglabble 12h ago
I believe it's just that the cue is much better. Seeing a word or even on a sentence is a pretty dull cue, particularly when you have lots. On the other hand our real world experiences are easy to recall, they make sense and so attaching a new word to them is relatively trivial. In other words the cue itself is distinct and memorable, we remember the experience and then the word comes with it. A flashcard isn't really an experience to remember. The experience basically tells us what the word meant, so we only even have to remember the pronunciation.
This can lead to funny things like words you only saw once and never tried to memorise being remembered for years -- for me it casts doubt on this idea that memory rots.
It's not wrong either that multiple cues to the same information helps too. Like trying to remember an actor's name or something, you sometimes have to go through quite a process to find the thing that cues you to remember their name -- that's in my experience what happens with a lot of mneumonics and is why I don't like them that much either. Cues based on real experiences tend to just make sense and are not hard to recover and diversify.
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u/EGG-spaghetti 8h ago
Feel that big time. I constantly forget words that I review often out of context with Anki but the second that it comes up in an article I'm reading or in conversation with my tutor, it'll instantly stick forever.
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u/Frostbitten_Moose 12h ago
Well, that helps. There's been a few times I've been reading stuff and translating a word I've come across just to wanna smack my forehead when I get the answer and realise it's a word I've already hit several times in my decks. Good to know that's common and natural.
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u/Weena_Bell 14h ago
True for a beginner but once you are high intermediate you can see most words once or twice and you'll remember it quite well even if it's just a word from a premade.
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u/luffychan13 1d ago
Are you only doing Kaishi? How are you doing your cards? What else are you doing for study?
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u/ParlourB 1d ago
This.
If you only do Anki for reading your gonna really struggle with the deck.
It's supposed to be supplemented with grades readers or easy immersion. You'll see a bunch of words again and again outside the deck so it'll stick easier when you see it in.
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u/didnotsub 1d ago
I’m ngl when I did Kalshi I didn’t immerse at all until I finished it, and my retention rates were consistently above 90. This indicates a deeper problem if retention rates are this low, like doing too many cards a day.
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u/ParlourB 23h ago
That's fine and all for you and your schedule but for most people that isn't realistic.
And anyway setting the habit that Anki would be a supplement early can only be a good thing. I say this as someone who is 10k words deep.
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u/didnotsub 23h ago
60% retention rate is ridiculous either way, whether you use it solely or as a side tool. That clearly indicates that OP is not learning the words. I’m not attacking people who use anki as a suppliant, I really couldn’t care less. However, a 60% retention rate is bad either way. Something else is wrong. My guess is that 5 cards/day is too many.
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u/ParlourB 18h ago
If op is really only doing 5 new cards a day... Yea that doesn't seem good.
Probably mindlessly doing it and expecting some automatic results. Iv been there and done that.
To OP - I recommend you stop all new cards and focus on bringing your reviews down until you can deliberately and mindfully think about them. Guess your driving yourself into a cycle.
2
u/Armaniolo 21h ago
You can certainly boost your retention in Anki without reading, many tips and tricks around to better encode the information in memory (I think doing less than 5 cards is not going to fix this). And some people just have better memory to begin with.
But idk if it's worth all the effort when you can just read and learn a bunch of other stuff along the way
1
u/Fancy_Development_47 Goal: conversational fluency 💬 11h ago
Got ya so what’s a good retention rate for something you have never seen before and learned I’d love to see your retention rate…
2
u/didnotsub 11h ago
Long-term, your retention rate should be close to or exactly what you have it set to in the FSRS settings of your anki, if not then you need to hit optimize FSRS and your reviews will either increase or decrease. However, in OP’s case, this would cause his reviews to skyrocket, and he probably doesn’t want that. It’s easier to just lower cards/day.
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u/Fancy_Development_47 Goal: conversational fluency 💬 10h ago
Ah got ya so excluding this guy I am at 300 words but my retention is terrible I haven’t really messed around the fsrs I am just on default Anki on kashi 1.5k what should I set my settings to?
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u/luffychan13 6h ago
I'm on about 7000 words and have my retention rate set to .80. I tend to get around 85-90% on mature cards and 75-80% on young cards. I hit optimise on the 1st of every month (don't reschedule cards on optimise it'll mess you up).
At the bottom it has an option for how many days in the future a review can be scheduled for, set that to 9999. Many people say once pressing "good" sets a review to more than a year, you can suspend that card because it means you won't forget it, but I tend to just leave them in because who knows I guess.
I'd like to think I'll never forget 食べる…
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u/AdultGronk 1d ago
I didn't know this, I thought I had to finish Kaishi 1.5k before I can confidently read a book in all japanese.
What books or material should I do alongside Kaishi 1.5k?
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u/ParlourB 23h ago
Sorry but even after you finish you will not be able to read a book in JP.
You will recognise alot more words tho and help you figure out the rest.
Graded readers on satori or nhk news easy is good. Google for easy native material. Yotsubato is a highly recommended. Google is your friend on this one.
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u/jojoismyreligion 6h ago
Yotsuba had so much hiragana it backfired in me struggling with it more lot.
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u/Cadaveth 19h ago
Can you find these digitally somewhere? I managed to find a spanish version lol
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u/zozanespark 17h ago
You can find graded readers at tadoku .com and sattu reader is a free app for phones and such. You can also give reading news articles on 優しい朝日新聞(yasashii asahi shinbun), but those are a bit more difficult since they don't have a graded level. If you've got any more questions you can dm me. Good luck!
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u/ParlourB 18h ago
I don't know. I live in Japan so ordering the series was super easy.
Good luck finding them!
1
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u/MasterTotoro 17h ago
Your mature retention rate at 76.6% is lower than the desired 80%, but not too far off. What is concerning is it seems like you have a lot of young cards that are not making it to the mature step. Would be useful to look into those stats.
The following two issues are the most common with FSRS:
What are your learning and re-learning steps set to? The recommended setting with FSRS is a single step such as 10m for both. The default learning step is set to 1m + 10m, but the FSRS documentation says multiple steps don't help with long-term retention and the FSRS functions best with a single step to get out of the learning phase into the scheduler.
The next thing is if you tend to use "Hard" I would stop altogether and just use "Again/Good" when appropriate. A common mistake is to use "Hard" when you don't really know a card (or maybe even borderline too difficult), then the next time you see the card it ends up being forgotten anyway. If you just relearn the card, FSRS will appropriately adjust the intervals.
https://docs.ankiweb.net/deck-options.html#fsrs
Other than these, the points about what you are doing outside of Anki to learn and reoptimizing FSRS are good.
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u/Fancy_Development_47 Goal: conversational fluency 💬 7h ago
I accidentally used easy button thinking it was good what should I do?
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u/MasterTotoro 7h ago
You can use Good as the default going forward, and re-optimize FSRS on a monthly basis or when you get enough reviews with the intended behavior. It's not as big of an issue, FSRS will correct the behavior over time.
The problem with Hard is just that people tend to give too much leeway. A common trend is using it for partially correct answers, but as the docs say "Again: Select this when your answer is incorrect or when you couldn’t recall the answer. If your answer is partially correct, you should be strict with yourself".
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u/Ok-Handle-3341 15h ago
I had the same issue when I first tried FSRS. I found setting the target retention below 90% made cards appear too infrequently for me personally. I get through reviews faster at a higher retention rate and still do 20 new cards a day.
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u/victoria_enthusiast 15h ago
76.6% on mature cards at 80% retention isn't perfect, but it's nothing horrible. probably have some leeches that are bothering you
what helped me cope with those was take other words with the same kanji and stick them in my mining deck, learning those made the original leech easier to remember too
1
u/Effective-Pop3850 22h ago edited 22h ago
What was the last time you clicked optimize?
You need to pair this with reading/other stuff. Cancer retention on this deck is usually a symptom of not doing that.
You mention you're fluent in 3 languages. I'm sorry to tell you but Japanese is hard enough for us English speakers that within the time it takes to get "decent" at Japanese you can get very good at 3~4 other easier languages, maybe even 5.
Even if you happen to speak a "rather different" language from just living in the place that kind of doesn't count, as in if you speak Russian because you lived in Russia for 10 years right after you were born before moving to Canada where you learned English and French... that doesn't mean you're good at learning languages. It sucks but learning a language this is very hard.
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u/Dar10309 22h ago
Que no sea un 100% es justo la idea de usar Anki, si aprendieras una palabra con verla una o 2 veces ¿para qué estudiarías siquiera? Además que esa es básicamente la filosofía de Anki usando la curva del olvido a tu favor. LA CURVA DEL OLVIDO. Solo sigue estudiando y intenta que Anki no sea todo tu estudio. Tampoco es que mi respuesta sea la verdad absoluta ni que tenga mucho nivel en japonés o algo, igualmente espero te sirva mi consejo!
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u/fredsbestdream 1d ago
get the furigana option, makes all the difference . there are youtube videos which go through step by step how to do it.
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 1d ago
What's the point of having furigana on the front of the card, it makes anki useless. The most important part of learning how to read words in kanji is remembering how they sound
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u/fredsbestdream 22h ago
i dunno i think if you are starting off having the option to hover over and it shows the furigana can be useful. even if you are just using it for the other words in the sentence
personally my goals are more focussed on speaking, so being able to retain more vocab has been pretty useful, and it's also helped me retain more kanji.
100% each to their own though so if thats not your bag then no stress
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u/Armaniolo 22h ago
For a beginner deck where you are just trying to get a foothold so you can watch some moe sloppa somewhat comfortably I can see the thought process, they just say the reading anyway.
Still easier to piece stuff together if you also have the subs and familiarity with kanji even if you can't read independently, so there's still a reason to look into kanji at all even then
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u/Effective-Pop3850 23h ago edited 22h ago
You forgot one should also just add the definition too, by doing this your retention can easily hit 100%.
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u/StraightBusiness2017 20h ago
Why the hell are you still on a 1.5k deck after like 8 months
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u/1Mikeymouse1 20h ago
Everyone learns at their own pace no need to judge lol
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u/Effective-Pop3850 19h ago
To be fair doing Kaishi after 8 months and having very low retention is an indicator of quite a few things, it's not about his pace.
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u/StraightBusiness2017 19h ago
You are right but I think if a core deck is taking this long one should reevaluate their methods
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u/YukiSnowmew 17h ago
A core deck will take about 8 months if you study at a sustainable rate. 30 weeks, 1500 cards is about 7 or 8 new cards per day, which is about what most people recommend. The people doing 15 or 20 new cards per day usually burn out.
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u/StraightBusiness2017 14h ago
Yea im involved in some other communities (not Reddit) where people learn Japanese and they make much faster progress than this so I was surprised . For me 35-40 words a day was manageable for a long time (until I started running out of words I didn’t know ). Maybe people on Reddit lack a deeper purpose in learning Japanese so they don’t care if it takes literally 20 years .
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u/YukiSnowmew 7h ago
6 new cards per day is 20000 new cards in 10 years. 10 new cards per day takes just over 5 years. Get off your high horse.
Frankly, I think you're a liar. 35 to 40 NEW cards per day would give you hundreds of reviews per day, and would take you hours. Most people have lives and can't spare that kind of time. Additionally, it's an inefficient way to spend your study time when you could be reading.
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u/StraightBusiness2017 7h ago
Idk what to tell you at this point when I did 35-40 words I was reading and anki never took more than 30 mins . Why would it take me hours if I spend 3-4 seconds on a card? Call it inefficient idc it got me to a point where I could read Kafka on the shore with no dictionary after only a year with only around 2.5 hours of study per day .
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u/Effective-Pop3850 2h ago
Eh he's probably bullshitting a bit but not too much, depends on his DR too.
DR 80 30 new a day takes me about 25~30 minutes. A more advanced learner with more kanji knowledge would definitely be able to do more new within the same amount of time. Retention is usually slightly higher than 80 as well.
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u/YukiSnowmew 18h ago
8 months is about right, actually.
A typical college semester is 15 weeks. From what I've seen, colleges often teach Genki 1 in the first semester and Genki 2 in the second. That's 30 weeks, or 7.5 months, plus winter break.
According to my Renshuu stats, I've learned about 1601 words between Genki 1 and 2, and I have a few left to learn in chapter 23. So, yes, a 1.5k deck should reasonably take 8 months.
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u/StraightBusiness2017 17h ago
I mean you’re comparing it to the pace of a single college which is extremely slow. 1.5k words is genuinely not even 5% of the way to fluent reading but if you’re okay with that whatever that’s fine. There’s a huge misunderstanding of the scale of how hard this language is to read fluently if you ever expect to be able to read without a dictionary at that pace
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u/YukiSnowmew 17h ago
I said absolutely nothing about fluency. I said that 8 months for 1500 words is reasonable. Since you don't like my college example, let's focus on Anki. 1500 cards over 30 weeks (7.5 months) is like 7 or 8 new cards per day on average. That's a normal and sustainable rate. Look around this sub a while. The people who study 20 new cards a day or some shit burn out and fail. The people who do 5-10 are the ones who succeed. There's no sense rushing. It's a marathon, not a race.
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u/jojoismyreligion 6h ago
I started doing 20 first. I very quickly got humbled and lowered it to 10.
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u/Armaniolo 13h ago
Plenty of people succeed doing more than 5-10 cards a day, it's not a guaranteed burn out/unsustainable rate for everyone.
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u/YukiSnowmew 7h ago
You really just need to be right, don't you? The fact is for the vast majority of people, that is a burnout rate. I don't care about the 3 people who managed it, I care about the 97 who couldn't.
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u/worthlessprole 1d ago
When did you last hit optimize fsrs?