How to use Free Software to learn Japanese, and more.

What time of day should I do Anki?

October 27, 2022 — Tatsumoto Ren

As long as you finish your daily reviews, any time is fine. Some people do Anki first thing in the morning, some spread their reviews throughout the day. The worst option would be to do Anki in the evening when you're tired.

I personally try to do Anki in the morning. By dedicating myself fully to finishing my daily reps in one continuous chunk of time, I can finish them faster. To have as little distractions as possible, I usually use a dedicated device (a laptop) with only Anki installed/running.

Tags: faq, anki

Is there a "bare minimum" amount of Anki you would recommend to people who hate Anki?

December 03, 2022 — Tatsumoto Ren

There are more people out there who hate Anki than those who like it. I somewhat dislike Anki too. So you're definitely not alone. Since around 2020 Anki has undergone significant changes that outraged the users. Many existing add-ons break with each new release. Maybe Anki needs to be completely replaced by another SRS, provided that it will be FOSS.

I still use Anki because the benefits outweigh the costs. The way I think about it is that some amount of Anki is better than no Anki at all, provided you do daily immersion. Without mass immersion Anki is not very effective. When using Anki as a supplement to immersion, it helps you learn more efficiently than you would be doing otherwise. If you power through and do just 20 reviews a day, that's 20 words that you won't forget for quite some time.

If you hate Anki because you dread your reviews, you should just change the settings. It is very easy to make Anki unusable by applying the wrong settings. Try to find something that works for you. On this site you can find my recommended settings.

Some tips on Anki settings:

  • Reduce the penalty for failing cards. By default, if you fail a card, its interval gets reset after you relearn it. If you set New Interval to 50% instead, failing a card won't be that big of a deal.
  • Change Starting ease and Interval modifier in order to fix Ease factors and prevent them from reducing after a lapse.
  • Don't do too many new cards a day. Often people learn a gorillion cards a day, get overwhelmed by the reviews, burn out and start hating Anki.

The bare minimum amount of time you need to spend SRSing is highly individual. Usually we calculate it as 1/3 of total study time but no more than 1 hour a day. As long as you can finish your daily reviews, learn new cards and add several new cards from your immersion, you should be fine.

Tags: faq, anki

Anki to immersion ratio. How much time should I spend SRSing?

December 23, 2022 — Tatsumoto Ren

The most popular community guideline is 1 hour a day.

You can't directly control how much time you're going to spend on Anki. The amount of time is determined by what card type (template) you use, how many new cards you add each day, your retention ratio, and how fast you can read Japanese.

If you notice that you overspend you time on Anki, try TSCs instead of normal sentence cards, reduce the number of new cards you learn per day, install Speed Focus Mode Anki add-on.

Also read: How should I divide my study time?

Tags: faq, anki

Does time spent in Anki count as immersion time?

January 11, 2023 — Tatsumoto Ren

Yes and no. If you use Anki, it has to take some time from the total amount of time available to you. Anki occupies a part of your study time.

Whether to call Anki immersion is really a philosophical question. In a way it is because in Anki you read sentences created by native speakers that you saved previously. But since Anki is used for repetition and doesn't provide you with new content, it's not a source of immersion. That's why I personally wouldn't call it immersion.

When someone asks you how many hours a day you immerse, usually you are expected to separate Anki from other activities. State both numbers, how much you spend in Anki and how much you do other stuff. Depending on your answers people will give you different advice.

Tags: faq, anki

When and how to go about dropping the SRS?

October 27, 2022 — Tatsumoto Ren

We don't recommend stopping using the SRS completely, even after you make it.

If you stop using the SRS, you'll notice that you have forgotten many things here and there that you used to know. Maybe you would still like to remember them because you could use them yourself in your output.

If a word is rare enough, you'd be unable to maintain it in your memory only through immersion. This is assuming you don't hone your immersion to the language domain where the word appears more frequently.

A few minutes of SRSing each day is a hundred times better than no SRSing at all. If you feel overwhelmed, try to reduce the time spent SRSing by deleting or suspending cards with very large intervals and deleting or suspending easy cards containing basic vocabulary that you may have made when you just started learning your target language. In Japanese that would be words like 私, 走る, 月曜日, etc.

As you progress, you slowly approach a point where your vocabulary is large enough that it becomes challenging to find unknown words. Reaching this point helps you naturally reduce the number of new cards you add per day. You can also reduce the number of new cards you learn each day to a certain number in Anki's settings.

Tags: faq, anki

Should I make cards for grammar to study in my SRS?

November 30, 2022 — Tatsumoto Ren

Mining grammar points from a grammar guide is not required. But I did it, Khatzumoto did it too. If you decide to do the same, you may end up creating cards for very basic grammar, in which case delete them once you progress towards intermediate. I don't recommend mining every sentence like Khatz did, instead try choosing only the ones that look challenging. Don't add duplicate cards. The same grammar point should not already in your SRS, even if the example sentence is different.

Mining grammar very much like mining regular words. You create TSCs as usual. Grammar points become target words.

Tags: faq, anki

How much reading is required to counteract not SRSing?

February 05, 2023 — Tatsumoto Ren

You can't fully counteract not SRSing. This is true for every use case of the SRS, especially when learning things like math, programming, physics, anatomy, biochemistry, etc. In language learning it is less noticeable, which leads to the idea that one can stop SRSing and experience no negative effects. This idea is more common among language learners.

Now, if you learn a language to some level of proficiency, and then stop using it completely, including immersion and the SRS, one day you'll forget all of it. If you immerse a little, it will happen later. If you immerse a lot, you will be improving. This all is pretty obvious. Nonetheless, language consists of domains of various sizes. Much like if you go to a math class, learn something, and then stop contacting or using that information, you will forget it, without the SRS you have to regularly come back to every domain you've immersed with, or you'll forget vocabulary specific to that domain.

There are many corner-case words that could be easily lost without repetition. These are words that come up maybe just a few times a year or less. Things like names of different animals, plants, food, fish and birds, stars and planets; words related to various skills, fields science and art; and many more. It's true that they are not very important, but they still come up occasionally. Every time they come up, you're going to feel like you're a child who's lost.

The SRS is the reason why AJATTers can have passive vocabulary larger than an average native their age. They're able to surpass natives in 5-7 years. A native speaker has spent their entire life using the language. When you take out the SRS, you start forgetting words you don't run into often enough, and as a result it takes you way longer to catch up to a native. Without enough immersion every day you may never be able to do it.

That's why it's not possible to counteract not SRSing — there are too many domains to worry about. Even if you read all day, there's always some vocabulary you're not contacting. When you stop using the SRS, the rules change, and you enter the game of fighting a leaking bucket. The SRS becomes especially important when there's not enough repetition of any kind of information.

Khatzumoto has an article on this topic, If You’re Fluent, Why Do You Still SRS. In the article he says that once he stopped SRSing, he started forgetting words that normally you don't see very often, words that you maybe don't see every day but need once in a while. Khatz was frustrated with his inability to improve without the SRS, so he started SRSing again.

Throughout my Japanese learning journey I always knew the consequences of dropping the SRS from reading about what people before me, including Khatz, experienced, so I never stopped SRSing. Once you've used SRS for a while, you start applying it to all aspects of your life, not just language learning. You start SRSing your exams, for example. When you have a variety of different topics in your SRS, it becomes harder to quit it.

If you have too many due cards each day, consider optimizing your settings and retiring mature cards. You could even delete some decks that you're sure you don't need anymore, though I'm not a fan of deleting entire decks.

Tags: faq, anki

Do I have to use an SRS?

July 29, 2023 — Tatsumoto Ren

Immersion is the cornerstone of AJATT, with the SRS serving as an optional supplement. While Anki or other SRS applications can be useful for helping learn vocabulary faster, it is possible to become fluent without using them. If using an SRS reduces your motivation or enjoyment, it may be in your best interest to forgo using any SRS and instead focus on the core of the method.

To improve learning speed and efficiency, it is recommended to incorporate some form of repetition, provided you can tolerate it. We eventually forget everything that we don't review. While total, mass immersion can partially counteract the forgetting curve, it can't help when trying to memorize more uncommon words.

In the case of Japanese, the SRS proves especially useful because it helps you learn how to read words written in kanji and ensures that you don't forget kanji readings. It is particularly helpul when dealing with rare kanji. Japanese learners who avoid using the SRS often struggle more with remembering word readings.

Personally, I have observed that the majority of my failed Anki reviews stem from forgotten kanji readings. I may recall the meaning of a word, but struggle to recall its pronunciation. Therefore, if your target language does not utilize kanji or hanzi characters, it is totally fine to omit the use of Anki.

Tags: faq, anki

Japanese support for Anki

April 12, 2023 — Tatsumoto Ren

Anki can be used to learn a variety of different subjects, including languages. What makes Anki such a fantastic tool for Japanese learners is the vast array of plugins or "add-ons" that extend its functionality. One of the most useful add-ons for learning Japanese is AJT Japanese. Its main features include adding furigana, adding pitch accent information, and adding pronunciation audio files to Anki cards.

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How Anki works

June 13, 2022 — Tatsumoto Ren

Since in this guide we are going to use Anki to study our target language, let's talk about how it works.

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How to review

July 13, 2021 — Tatsumoto Ren

Though Anki is an excellent piece of software, you can learn languages more effectively if you tweak some settings and know how to review. Even if you're using Anki for something other than studying human languages, this article may still help you.

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Discussing various card templates

January 14, 2021 — Tatsumoto Ren

flashcards

Many learners agree that the most effective way to acquire Japanese is to combine the SRS with immersion. After finishing learning kana and kanji you're going to continue to use Anki in your study time to memorize vocabulary. When memorizing new vocabulary, there are various card templates you can choose from.

Card templates are differentiated by what you put on the front of the card. There are two major card templates that people tend to use: sentence cards and word cards. Both have their variations depending on what other information they contain.

This article covers recognition cards. Production cards are covered here.

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Useful Anki add-ons for Japanese

December 30, 2020 — Tatsumoto Ren

In this article I want to talk about Anki add-ons I recommend using when studying Japanese. Anki add-ons are small Python programs that extend or change functionality of Anki. To install an add-on open Anki, go to "Tools" > "Add-ons" > "Get add-ons" and paste the code of the add-on. To find the code you need to open the corresponding add-on page on AnkiWeb and scroll down to the "Download" section.

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Setting up Anki

December 28, 2020 — Tatsumoto Ren

Anki is a Spaced repetition system (SRS), a program which allows you to create, manage and review flashcards.

Many language learners find Anki useful to quickly memorize (front-load) core vocabulary of their target language (TL), as well as help them remember new material later.

One of the downsides of Anki is that it can be a little difficult to learn how to use. Depending on how you use it, you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying or make using Anki a living hell for yourself. If you find yourself confused about how Anki works, it is recommended that you read the Anki manual. However, because it's highly detailed and technical, the bulk of this article will focus on explaining the most useful Anki settings to help you get things up and running as quickly as possible.

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