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How Much Time to Spend on Anki Reviews — 3 Comments

  1. I have been using SRS for 15 months.

    This article seems spot on. The numbers the article cites are about right for me. My review/learning/relearning times vary, but stay within the ranges this article suggests.

  2. Currently I’m mostly going through the Jalup Next Decks (Intermediate right now) and it really depends a lot. I did spend quite a bit on vocabulary building before starting Jalup (the traditional textbook way) so sometimes I just read a sentence and get it right away. I still make sure to read the explanation because they are nice practice as well. But essentially if that’s the case it’s only slightly longer than the consecutive reviews.

    However of course for really new items that’s a bit different. Funnily enough I think I usually spend the most time on the first and second review and not on the initial learning of a card… For the initial learning I just try to get a rough grasp and to “kind of” get it. Read the card out a couple of times. Maybe click on a few links if I’m a bit unsure of something there, but in general I don’t think I usually spend more than a minute there…
    And then for more or less easy cards, the first and second review might be somewhat similar (I might be able to read it or roughly understand it, but make sure do go over the explanation properly again etc) and then it usually starts sinking in.
    For more difficult cards, I start out doing the same, but if I get to the point of “…. -> flips card, look at the explanation …… I still don’t get it -> fail” and the cards then pop up in the same review session at the end, that’s where I usually put in more time. I don’t have an exhaustive kanji knowledge (tried multiple ways, but compared to reviewing normal Japanese sentences I just burn out way easier on reviewing kanji standalone, so I’m going reeeeaaally slowly at that, so they mix in nicely) and that sometimes poses a problem. So I might look up the kanji on their own, and maybe see if I know other words with it. I might write the word down in my notebook with its kanji and the reading. Look up some more example sentences for the word, to get a better grasp and try to relate that to the explanation again. Work through the explanation more in detail again as well. Read the sentence a few more times, stare at the problem word while pronouncing it. etc pp. And then I move on (understanding will probably still be hazy, but you know~) It’s not like I do that for every card or sometimes I only do one thing or the other, depending on where the difficulty is for me. But I’d say in general, that’s probably the time when I’m really putting the learning effort in. (I think the 1 min to 5 min estimate seems about right for that)

    I guess part of that has to do with using a premade deck. I imagine that would probably be somewhat different if I were to make my own cards. (Then the most time would probably be put in during card creation and that would serve as the first learning) but I’m currently too lazy for that. However for the premade deck this does seem to work out so far. I feel like on the reviews I actually do get a better feel for what my problem with the card really is (is it actually the new word or am I struggling with an old pattern? Do I confuse some kanji? Get the reading wrong all the time but get the meaning? do I feel like I get the main sentence but the explanation keeps confusing me?) so yah, I guess I prefer doing it this way :)

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