When should I start using SRS? After how many characters?

[Coffee Kitten]

Hi all. I'm a very new learner of Mandarin, focusing on reading and writing. I'm employing the use of flashcards to help stick the pronunciations and meanings of characters in my head. Right now, I'm dealing with about 250 of the more common characters, and slowly adding a few more each day.

I've read around that SRS is a better way of doing this. The first time I tried it, I didn't find it suitable for me, as I wanted to repeat the newer characters every few minutes until they stuck. And then I would move on to another set of characters.

Now dealing with overa couple hundred characters, is it about time I use SRS? Or should I wait until I get to 1000 (that's the smallest number of characters I've seen in discussions regarding SRS, but there's no recommendation on whether that's the threshold to start using the method)?

[Guest realmayo]

There's no rule, obviously! The common advice is to use SRS for remembering -- which means you need to learn the material first. Consider picking the 50 characters you know best and adding them, kind of like a trial. If after a couple of weeks you feel happy adding more, then start adding more. Adding around 10 new cards a day can actually be quite a challenging amount once they all start adding up.

[Demonic_Duck]

I'll second what realmayo says, I've been adding upwards of 10 cards a day for the last several months and I'm currently facing a sort of "painting-the-Forth-bridge-but-the-Forth-bridge-is-getting-longer" situation whereby every time I have more cards due than the last (currently at over 400...)

[Silent]

I've read around that SRS is a better way of doing this. The first time I tried it, I didn't find it suitable for me, as I wanted to repeat the newer characters every few minutes until they stuck. And then I would move on to another set of characters.

Basicly there are two ways to use srs. To (rote)learn things and to remember things.

Many people don't recommend SRS to learn things and if I interpret your negative experience is about learning. To learn you basicly just add new cards and treat them the same as cards you're reviewing. To remember things is basicly learning the item and then adding it to the SRS stack for reviewing.

The difference is not as black and white as I paint it here. You can take as much or little extra time on new cards as you like. Or you can only add cards to the deck after you feel you are familiar enough with the item.

The number of items is irrelevant for when to use SRS. The real issue is do you intend to make a continuous (structural) effort to learn? If yes, use SRS, the first day you may have only a few items but over time it will grow. If the answer is no and you only intend to put in some effort for a couple of days SRS has little to no added value.

[Coffee Kitten]

I understand now. Thank you for your inputs. Based on your suggestions, this is what I'll do now: I would have a set of non-SRS flashcards for new characters, then study these repeatedly until they stick to my head. After that, I'll input these learned characters into an SRS system, and then use that SRS side-by-side with a new set of non-SRS flashcards for new characters. Lather, rinse, repeat. Sounds good?

[Botterli]

That's exactly what I do, and I find it working nicely, as long as my definition of "sticks to my head" is good (I catch myself being too impatient sometimes).

Pleco makes this very easy to do as well - just maintain separate score files for the learning deck and the SRS deck.

[Coffee Kitten]

Okay, I'll do that then. Thanks so much for the help, everyone!

[Guest realmayo]

Sounds good?

Sounds good except: is the first part "study these repeatedly" the best way for you to learn new stuff? I mean, what worked for me was a combination of repetitive self-testing (like you mention) but also effort on working out how the character works (what's the radical, what's the pronunciation, what other characters have the same pronunciation-component, what are the most common two or three words that this character appears in -- and lots of mnemonics).

It might be that what works for you is just the self-testing again and again -- I only mention the other side because, even though SRS was the reason I learned characters quickly, it's no magic bullet.

I've used Anki as my SRS programme. I used to have two decks: one for the initial learning stage, and one where I'd dump stuff from the first once I felt I'd learned it. The new(ish) version of Anki actually allows all this to happen in one deck. New cards begin in the "learning" category: you have to answer them correctly a set number of consecutive times (you can tweak the settings), or you have to tell the programme that you know the card well, before it graduates into the regular "review" stack and gets treated like a regular SRS card.