SRS and time of day

[Erbse]

I've been using SRS for vocabulary learnign quite a while now. Doing so I realized, that I perform much better during the day when compared to the evening. However at some days I only have time in the evening after work to SRS. When I do my SRS in the evening I do 5 or even 10 times as much mistakes when compared to afternoon sessions, sometimes I fail on the most simple words, that I've known for a very long time. I'm sure this is because I'm tired after work. In these cases I'm reluctant to vote "fail" on a word and instead click "difficult". How do you deal with this situation? Should I still vote for "fail" no matter what?

[imron]

I don't really use SRS so I'm not in a position to answer your specific question, but have you tried getting up earlier in the morning and practicing then? Failing that, are you able to use a mobile version of SRS software that would allow you to do brief revisions throughouut the day? Both Pleco and Anki can be used on mobile phones.

[renzhe]

Yes, your brain is much fresher in the morning (this is why I always did the weekend flashcards immediately after getting out of bed).

If you can't do them earlier in the day, then you'll have to tough them out and do some drilling for the more difficult ones.

Sometimes, you'll find that the character you couldn't remember yesterday seems easy the day after that, but don't rely on this too much.

[Guest realmayo]

I sometimes find myself in a similar situation: you are getting cards wrong that you know normally you'd get right. It's the same as if I'm reading a Chinese magazine, sometimes I'll find myself not recognising a bunch of words that I normally have no problem with. For me it's down to lack of concentration, almost always because of tiredness. In these cases I either give up and leave it for the next day, or have a 20-30 minute sleep: even if I don't actually get to sleep, I often find my brain is refreshed enough to do itself justice in another SRS session.

[simple101]

What SRS are you using? Can you work out if it is a certain type of card that you usually fail on... eg. new cards, production cards, recognition cards?

[roddy]

I'd say you rate it a 'fail' - you're not going to be able to use 'sorry, I can't speak Chinese now because I'm tired' as an excuse very often in real life, so why in SRS . . .

[songlei]

My two cents: do not only take your ability to produce the correct answer into account, but also the speed at which you can produce it. If you can't remember a word within 3 seconds, I'd say that's a fail. Speed is the essential factor if you want to be able to understand and speak Chinese. I have ignored this important aspect myself for far too long...