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Jalup Group Challenge 9: Anki Zero — 31 Comments

  1. I definitely need this challenge right now; perfect timing! I hardly did any Anki this past month, and while I was able to get my kanji reviews down to zero today, I have a sizeable backlog of sentences that yet await.
    Level: 40+. I’m not quite sure at this point.
    Game plan: School started up again on Wednesday, so that gives me structure to my day that I didn’t have during summer. I’ll make a point of doing all my kanji reviews before the school day ends. As for sentence cards, there isn’t any talking allowed in my study hall, and since I read them out loud, I’ll do those at home.

    I didn’t do great during the last challenge, so let’s make it up during this one!

  2. 1. Level 32
    2. AnkiDroid
    3. I will study for an hour each day and divide it into four 15-minute intervals. Since I’m awake from 9am to about 1am, that’s about 15 waking hours so I’ll set alarms for 915am, 215pm, 715pm and 1215am.

  3. Oh shit, I definitely need this. Trying to add more vocab and sentence exposure into anki..

    1. Maybe 10-15? Currency about 700 sentences into the beginner pack.

    2. Anki Droid, anki desktop. I also use a service called Wanikani for learning kanji and some vocab.
    Current anki decks: Jalup beginner 1-3, Core 10k, Genki 1+2 vocab with kanji writings.

    3. I recently just moved and now will have my own quiet space for studying.. Whoo! Daily plan: clear out WK when I first wake up, will take about an hour. Will also do at least 10 new words a day to get through the backlog of lessons. Priority for Anki decks will go Jalup, then Core 10k, then Genki. Goal will be 10 new Jalup, 20 new core 10k, 30 new Genki. Genki will be easier, I’ve gone through the first 12 chapters in college.

    So, yeah. Time to get caught up on stuff.

  4. I do this every month. Not really. I always miss a day at least once a month and have never gone more than a day without bringing my reviews down to zero. So I’ll take on this challenge. This entire month, no matter how busy I get, I will bring my reviews down to 0 every day! Anki Zero!

    1. Your level: Beginner/Elementary, 9th or 10th level
    2. Resources you will use:

    – a custom JLPT Kanji Deck that contains all kanji necessary with Joyou readings.
    – a grammar deck based on Rita L. Lampkin’s Essentials of Japanese Verbs and Grammar
    – Jalup Beginner Deck Phase 1 and 2
    – Kanji Kingdon Phase 1 and 2
    – A miscellaneous deck that contains cards from past decks that I still want to review (all Japanese of course, including Kanji Radicals and Japanese Slang)
    – Fluentu for Immersion (I have to review cards here too)

    3. Game plan/strategy:

    Get up every morning during the hour of 5:00. Never later than 5:59 AM and start studying Fluentu, then begin studying Anki Reviews. Do this until I have to leave on the bus. If any reviews left, do them on the bus. Try to finish before arriving at school. If not finished by the time I get to school. Finish at lunch.

    • So this is a mid-month check-in of sorts. I have made two edits to my materials. First, I am no longer quizzing myself on individual words on Fluentu. I was getting up to 200 reviews a day on Fluentu which included individual words and sentences. Now I am just reviewing sentences on Fluentu.

      The second change I made is completely rejecting the custom Kanji deck above where I studied the readings of the Kanji and the meanings and the writing and am now just going to stick with Kanji Kingdom for my kanji learning and learning new words for the readings. I had 20 reviews left tonight and I was just got sick of spending an hour just on the reviews of this deck and the 90 minutes in the morning to learn the cards. So just on this one deck alone I was spending up to 3 hours a day. That is 3 hours I could spend watching anime or reading manga or some other form of immersion. So, I guess I kind of cheated tonight by dropping the deck with 20 reviews left. But after I dropped it, my review count was at zero so I think I technically am still in the game. See ya at the end of the month.

    • So it is not quite the end of the month but I started early. Pretty much when I first commented on this challenge. I already illustrated an issue above in my first mid-month reply. I made some edits to my materials because things were getting overwhelming. I don’t regret making the edits because my studies are much more enjoyable as a result. In hindsight, I definitely made the right decision even though it technically compromised my attempt at this challenge a little. I am now going to start the October challenge early. This means a further edit to my studies. I will preemptively stop doing J-E on Fluentu and only use it for immersion and shadowing, and not for vocab, at least not directly. This means I will stop doing the reviews for the sentences and stop using their quiz feature. This will mean more time for immersion and possibly for branching in the future when I am done with the Jalup series.

  5. 1. Level 20-25?
    2. JALUP Intermediate. Trusty Ankidroid and Anki for Windows.
    3. I will need to be waking up early to get this done. I definitely do way better on reviews bright and early – which means between 5am and 5:30am. Which is a 9pm bedtime… which will be a lot easier now that the days are a bit shorter. Early wakeup also means exercise which will also improve my Anki and work performance.

    I have been on vacation over the last 10 days from basically everything (which means sporadic Anki reviews and no immersion), so I’m really itching to get back to my Japanese studies. Perfect time for this challenge to come along. No regrets on the vacation though- I have thoroughly enjoyed spending so much time with my friends and family and allowing my brain to take a break. And I’m 100% sure that this vacation saved me from some serious burnout.

    • Complete failure, but it allowed me to realize what I want Anki to be. I just kind of hate hundreds of RTK reviews and I really like my J-E and J-J reviews. So I am going to into October with my Zero Anki Reviews goal, but with a mix of Anki reviews I actually like.

      Had a short term burnout for long term gain in motivation and efficiency, I’m totally OK with that!

  6. 1. Forever 25
    2. Anki Desktop and AnkiDroid.
    3. I’m just going to do my best. My overall plan is to fall back in love with learning Japanese and hope the rest takes care of itself.

  7. 1. Around level 35 still. It’s hard to gauge since my reading is pretty high up but my writing/speaking are still like a 2.

    2. I’m going to be finished with JALUP Advanced on the 12th, so my resources are going to come from reading and immersion (mostly Pokemon, Zelda and Sailor Moon)

    3. I got my Anki reviews to 0 every day in August so I figure I can just continue on with this momentum and do it again for September. I’m really trying to buckle down pretty hard so I can play both Pokemon SunMoon in Japanese with little to no problems at all as well as Final Fantasy XV if it comes with language options.

  8. Seems like a good time to join; I have been wanting to catch up on my reviews before september 1st, so let’s extend it into september and keep it at 0 after I catch up in the next 3 days!

    1. Your level: Probably around 10
    2. Resources you will use: As far as reviews go I have 3 decks right now:

    -Kana Conqueror (which has been done for a while but I do want to keep reviewing it)
    -Kanji Kingdom (Currently in Stage 1)
    -JALUP Beginner 1000; I’ve done this whole deck before but after stopping japanese for a long period of time I have decided to restart it. I am currently in stage 3 of this

    3. I usually have no trouble doing all of my reviews; the problem comes with motivation going down and having trouble with self discipline. For that; I have recently started using Habitica (formerly HabitRPG) and am looking forward to seeing how it will help me stay on track. Speaking of track, I also track how much I do every day, so that should help too.

    • 1. Completion date
      -September 30, 2016

      2. Completed or failed? How far did you get?
      -Completed!

      3. Your experience (issues, struggles, discoveries)
      I’ve learned that I need to do this early in the day or else it becomes really hard for me to focus. Other than that though as long as I dont have too many reviews I didn’t have any trouble. Using Habitica was always a good reminder to do my reviews but by the end I didn’t need it anymore (I’d do my reviews and THEN go on Habitica, whereas in the beginning it was the opposite). Pretty much I do 5 minutes of reviews, then some other japanese thing (ie active watching or reading), then when I’ve done my minimum for said thing, I do another 5 minutes of anki, etc. So over 2-3 hours I finish all of my minimum daily japanese & did all my anki reviews (and new cards too).

  9. Oh man, I definitely had some skipped days this month, or would leave a few stragglers.

    1. Not sure, about 190 from finishing JALUP Beginner.

    2.Resources; I should be done with JALUP beginner near the end of the month, and after that I’m taking the month off from adding sentences to catch up on all the holes in my grammar. I want to try and build my base before jumping into Intermediate. So, yeah, JALUP Beginner, and my ROTK deck are the two I will be using.

    3. I’ve really been trying to do reviews the moment I wake up, but it does’t always go as planned. I have about 40 minutes to an hour before I have to get ready for work, so I’ll try to do as much as I can then, during lunch, and after I get home.

  10. This challenge is perfect timing. I have let my kanji decks avalanche for a month now, not good! But no looking back, now it’s time to move forward. Tomorrow I will have good time for getting those 400+ pending reviews down to leave me in for a nice start on this challenge.

    1. Around 25
    2. I’m almost only using AnkiDroid. I’m in stage 3 of Jalup Advanced and also in the process of switching from RTK to Kanji Kingdom.
    3. I have been doing this before, so I’m sure I can do it again. My primary Anki-slots are when commuting to and from work. I have been doing 12 new cards per day to finish the August challenge of 350 new J-J cards, which have left me with quite a lot of sentence reviews. Partly the reason the kanji decks have been neglected. I will be slowing down a bit back to 10 new cards per day for September so hopefully that will also help by lowering my amount of sentence reviews.

    • Well that was fast… I started out with not reaching 0 on 1st of September, so that’s it for my participation in this challenge… I decided to go to a concert instead of doing Anki on Tuesday, so I started out with those many many reviews pending and 2 days work trip. Not a good combination.

      I will be trying another approach instead. Every day I will aim to ensure that the number of reviews on the next day will be fewer. So right now I’m at 202 Kanji Kingdom reviews and 314 RTK reviews pending. Every day those numbers should decrease until I reach 0.

      Best of luck to my fellow challengers!

  11. I’ve been on an extended anime binge and neglecting Anki. I want to start moving forward with Anki again, so I might as well get on board.

    1. Level: low intermediate? ~1500 sentences
    2. Anki Desktop
    3. I don’t have work tomorrow (the 31st) so I’ll divide my reviews up into blocks of 40 and do them one block at a time throughout the day. Once I get them knocked down, I will set aside the hour before I go to work every day to do anki reviews. I’ll finish the challenge on the 30th of September.

    I ordered the Soul Eater manga recently and I’m excited to try to read it. Maybe failing to read it will motivate me to get into Anki :)

    • I slacked off yesterday morning and ended up being busy in the evening and didn’t finish my reviews. HOWEVER! I am at zero now, and back on the path!

    • I wasn’t extremely successful at this. I did get zero in Anki most days, and I did at least some of my reviews every day though. I have other things in my life besides Japanese right now. From here on out, I will try to add a small number of cards every day and get my reviews to zero at least every couple days.

      TL;DR: I failed the challenge.

  12. 1. 65-70
    2. Sentences mined from content I am reading. I find having to manually search for characters that I can’t guess a reading for really helps the new reading stick. I have a separate Kanji and sentences deck and a Mandarin writing deck.
    3. Goal: To add only as much new as I can maintain. I would like to add every day, but consistency is the challenge here not volume. Long term optimization not short term perfectionism.

    Tools/strategies:
    Turn difficult cards from my sentence deck into “write the kanji” cards which I move to my Kanji deck.
    Work early in the day before I am too frazzled or stressed.

    • I ended up skipping my first day around the 22nd…I made a recovery, but then the precedent had set in. Around the 25th I skipped two days and on the 28th when I got back to it, I made so many mistakes. Plus the backlog is large enough after two days that I can’t get it done all at once.

      I mean, I have my excuses: 3hr/day 5day/week commute, full course load and TA position at a University, more homework than I have ever seen in my life…

      However, my take away from this challenge is just that I need to lower my daily review amount even if it means I am not zero-ing my decks. Something everyday is much better than nothing for 5. Maybe next challenge, I’ll be smarter about this!

  13. I’ve been neglecting my anki for a while and now it’s the right timing for this challenge! I’m struggling to make time for my previous study routine and I need to get back on track!

    1. My level is jalup beginner stage 4, kanji kingdom stage 4. Need to review/restart stage 3 for both of them as I already forgot lots of stuff.

    2. Jalup beginner and kanji kingdom decks. I’m aiming for intermediate decks by the end of this month!

    3. I know this would be hard, but I’ll try my best to wake up 2 hours earlier every day to do Anki.

  14. 1. I use a self made deck, so I can’t really say.

    2. Primarily AnkiDroid. Anki on PC for finishing touches of cards.

    3. Well, I try to be more productive and to minimize my backlog of about 800 cards. Also about a third of my deck is new cards. I have lots of time on my hand, so I will study throughout the day, perhaps primarly on the toilet.

    • 1. Completion date
      Just some minutes ago. It’s already October 1st where I live actually.

      2. Completed or failed? How far did you get?
      I learned all the cards on 25 of 30 days. Like I expected, the days I was on the convention I did just a few cards, because I was tired like hell and I’d rather talk with the people I wouldn’t see on other occasions.

      3. Your experience (issues, struggles, discoveries)
      Well, I need to strech the reviews more over the day, because I mostly learned in the evening/in the night, since the deadline for the day drew nearer.

      I finished earlier on some days and learned some extra cards, but there were days I dreaded doing it and finished last minute. It’s not a good thing to stay up until 5am, because you have to finish the day if you’re really tired. ^^;

      But I also had some days I really had fun studying and it’s really satisfying to get the cards to zero, but on others I was really relieved that I finally finished.

      My backlog is at like 750 cards atm, because I got up to 1000 and then got down, so I’m okay with that. The stack of new cards got down drastically from over 1200 cards, but it’s still at over 700 cards.

      So, in conclusion, I’d try to keep this habit to get those down to zero and try to learn at earlier times of the day.

  15. I’ll be doing this one as well. I’m usually very strict with my anki schedule but slip-ups occur every once in a while, so let’s go and consciously avoid that for an entire month :P

    1. Your level – around 29~30 I believe

    2. Resources you will use – I’ll be using the Advanced stage 3 and 4 decks, and I’m also onto Kanji Kingdom stage 9. Gotta keep up with all Jalup Sentences and Kanji Kingdom reviews.

    3. Game plan/strategy – I’ve been very erratic with the time of the day I take to do my reviews lately, but I’m gonna try to have everything done either in the morning or early in the afternoon. Only on extreme days I’m gonna leave it for night time. Resist the urge to read manga and play Bravely Default/Pokémon before doing the reviews :P

    • Got it done! Only today on the last day I faced some dificulties because of a crazy event at work, but I managed to zero-out my reviews for the day as well. This was a very good way of reminding myself I can be organized when I want to be lol

  16. High 20s to low 30s.
    I always bring Anki to zero… eventually. I don’t think I’ve gone a whole month ever closing it out every single day.
    Most days I get up at 0545 and have everything done by the time I need to go to work, so the plan is just to do this every day.
    The key is to avoid disruption: a late night leads to a skipped morning leads to complete collapse.
    So the main game plan is to get to bed early every day and avoid disruption to my routine.

  17. I’m not quite sure of my level, but I have roughly 400 reviews per day right now, so dropping a day really has an immediate snowball effect.

    Resources: I’ve just bought JALUP Expert about a month ago, and am currently roughly half-way through it.

    Strategy: My current short-term goal is to rush through Expert as quickly as I can without burning out before getting to augmenting my kanji deck with writing questions and individual readings. Currently, I do at least 20 new Expert cards a day, but aim at 60 whenever possible. Of course, this means a rather daunting amount of reviews to do a day (roughly 500 from both my sentences and kanji decks). Specifically, I am aiming for the following:
    1) Do all my reviews every day, by 9pm at the latest, preferably first thing in the morning.
    2) Add new cards from Expert until I run out of material.
    3) Once Expert is done, begin adding new kanji material from the kanken textbooks.
    4) Keep supplementing my sentences deck with new stuff from books and manga whenever I encounter a new word I couldn’t pick up from context or reliably read.

    In the past, I made the mistake of making my new cards before my review sessions (to have them enter the queue straight away), but I’m going to try and do a review – add – learn order this time ’round, since adding cards sometimes burns me out so much I don’t finish the reviews.

  18. Level: 40ish? It’s hard to accurately gauge this when I’m so much more proficient at reading than writing/speaking.

    Resources: Anki desktop and mobile are my tools of choice. 10 new cards a day seems to be my sweet spot atm. Recently started reading Pokemon Special and playing Pokemon Black 2. Will salvage words from those plus Twitter and other random sites I visit.

    Strategy: Unfortunately, I currently have a backlog of ~600 reviews. My goal for this month is to get my daily goals down to zero each day and whittle away at my backlog by the end of the month. In order to make this a successful month, I’ll need to get to bed at a reasonable time (something I have a lot of trouble doing) and wake up early each day. The end goal is absolute zero!

    Also looking forward to playing Pokemon Sun/Moon in Japanese :D

  19. I didn’t sign up for this challenge, but I knocked out a 2000+ review backlog in the middle of the month and did my reviews every day for the rest of it, so partial credit I guess? Weirdly enough I think letting such a huge backlog pile up and forcing myself to plow through it was beneficial in a lot of ways. I can sit and focus and do 100 reviews in 10 minutes when before it felt like hours to do even that many. I think I read faster now too.

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