SRS vs Reading

[jd144]

Hey

 

I would describe myself as being a higher-intermediate learner of chinese. When i started learning chinese in the early days i enjoyed using SRS programmes such as Anki, and then later things like skritter. However i am now at a point where i find reviewing words for 20 mins etc, is slightly tedious. Would it be better to spend that time reading some chinese instead? The problem i have with SRS is that allthough it worked for me a few years ago when i couldnt access native material, but now that i can i feel spending time reviewing individual charatcers and words without context feels a little pointless.

 

Can anyone share any thoughts on this? Would like to hear from a range of people on what they think. Perhaps there may be some newer learners to chinese who never bothered with SRS, as i know some people find it dull and dry to sit an a computer clicking through cards.

 

 

[Jaxx Morton]

Im interested in this because I currently play the SRS game, except i spend around an hour everyday using Anki. When you are reading how often do you have to look up words. 

 

Also, my teacher always tells me that just reading texts over and over again is a great way to memorize vocab, but i dont see how you can review that way. If i learn a word then dont use ill forget. Thats why i like SRS

[li3wei1]

If you're not enjoying it, do less of it. An hour sounds a bit excessive. How much time do you spend reading? You should be spending anywhere from 3 to 10 times as much time reading as SRS. Try starting over with a new, and therefore smaller, deck, so you can spend most of that hour reading. Whenever you find yourself taking more than 15 minutes to get through your deck, ditch it and start over again. If you've learned the words, great, if not, and they're important, you'll see them again and you can add them to your deck again. If you don't see them again, don't worry about them.

[Jaxx Morton]

Well i have a special case I think because I study chinese from 7AM to 6:PM every weekday so I really have alot of time. However, most of my time is spent using Anki in the way that I get a word on Anki and then I write a sentence for it. The problem that I have with reading is that other than my textbook its hard to find material that I dont have to stop and look up a word every 2 lines.

[renzhe]

I'd say that you should definitely concentrate on reading.

In terms of SRS, think about pruning your deck. Go through it manually (it will probably take a few days of work, but what the heck) and ruthlessly throw out everything that seems easy. Cut it down to 20-30% of what it is now, keeping only difficult words in it.

Everything else is common enough that you'll run into it while reading.

[laurenth]

Why are you learning Chinese? I'd say that you should practice what you want to do with your Chinese as soon as possible. If the reason why you learn Chinese is because you enjoy Beijing opera, start listening to Beijing opera. If you want to understand the news, listen to the news. If you want learn to read Tang poetry, read Tang poetry. If you want to chat with friends, find a Chinese friend to chat with, etc. SRS is useful for bootstrapping your knowledge of (mainly) vocabulary. It's important but it's not an end in itself.  And not very enjoyable in and out itself, I might add.

[Ruben von Zwack]

 

Well i have a special case I think because I study chinese from 7AM to 6:PM every weekday so I really have alot of time. However, most of my time is spent using Anki in the way that I get a word on Anki and then I write a sentence for it. The problem that I have with reading is that other than my textbook its hard to find material that I dont have to stop and look up a word every 2 lines.

 

Whow, 7am to 6pm! No offense but personally I would put my time to better use than Anki. Aren't you getting bored with it?

Looking up a word every 2 lines doesn't sound bad to me

[gato]

He said he spends one hour per day with Anki in his first post above. Presumably he's spending the other 10 hours doing something other than flashcards.

[Ruben von Zwack]

I see, I guess I misunderstood. It seemed absolutely possible to me, because I found Anki quite difficult in the beginning so I easily spent a couple of whole days on it.

[gato]

Yeah, it takes a lot of will power to focus on studying rather than playing with gadgets and technology that's supposed to help one study.

[c_redman]

When I was around that intermediate level (one lookup per 2 lines), learning the higher level HSK words gave me a big step toward the next level. I would spend about 30-40 minutes on SRS, but after that fatigue set in, and the study was no longer effective.

What is your 60 minutes composed of? Do you just have a large queue? Lower your maximum reviews per day, and don't worry about the backlog. Are there a lot of difficult words cycling through lapses? Mark or suspend the cards, and study them a different way outside of SRS. Is your failure rate too high or too low? The system is allegedly optimized for a failure rate of around 10-20% of mature cards. Too high and the queue stays large for longer, too low and you're spending time reviewing cards sooner than necessary. You can try to adjust the easy bonus from 130% or the starting ease from 250%, either of which will affect the scheduling and thus your forgetting rate.

Using SRS with pre-made decks was more useful for me than looking up words frequently. It's hard to feel fluent when I can't make it through a sentence without being interrupted. But everyone's experience and preference is different.

[Silent]

 

i feel spending time reviewing individual charatcers and words without context feels a little pointless.

I think it ain't pointless at all. SRS makes you learn the word and remember it much better then reading. While reading you spend the bulk of the time reading well know words. The higher your level gets the rarer the words you have to learn will be. A large share of the vocabulary in a book occurs only a couple of times, reading a complete book for exposure to the vocabulary of only a couple of times is not very efficient even if you have the added benefit of context.  When your language level progresses reading is not a very efficient way to study. But reading does offer utility!!! You should read for the utility, entertainment, to get informed (news, study etc) and to maintain your network. The vocabulary you learn in the process is great, but with SRS  you will be able to expand your vocabulary much faster. Of course reading does offer benefits of context and developing reading fluency. Good example sentences in the SRS deck may help in that respect.

 

The time spend on SRS is largely dependent on the number new cards per day you learn. So to lower the reviewing time you should cut down on number of new cards per day.

[Pingfa]

"Everything else is common enough that you'll run into it while reading. "

This.

Higher intermediate or advanced level is when SRS is most useful. In the beginning it's enough just to watch and read the same things over and over, but once you've reached the point where you understand most of what you are exposed to the SRS assures frequent exposure to relatively infrequent words.

 

I always recommend not scheduling SRS reps and simply leaving the SRS on all day, flick through at your leisure. This way you can take frequent breaks from it to avoid burnout.

[jd144]

Thanks for your thoughts on this topic. There does seem to be a small divide amoungst people. I thought i would add more about my current situation. I was previously an undergraduate of economics, studying chinese at night or through talking with chinese friends. I have also been to china in my university vacations for some volunteer/low paid work. I am now moving into a professional working environment where i simply do not have the free time i did as an undergraduate. This is why i was asking the question about SRS vs reading. With the little time i have i want to carry on my chinese reading ability. The reason i said learning characters not in a context feels pointless, is because once ive done the srs/skritter, i am usually so tired in the evenings i cannot muster the energy to read. However if i hadnt had done SRS i would have read. I hope this sheds some light on my current situation.

[Ruben von Zwack]

I work full time, too, and when I need to make the choice, then I personally rather do something interesting in Chinese over doing something "proper". That means, I'll read a few pages of a graded reader rather than doing Anki, when I don't have the time to do both. And when I'm totally knackered, I'll just watch a cartoon in the evening.

 

I'm not trying to make a case for it - I think people who have the discipline to do systematic study every day are awesome, and I know they'll rightfully get further than I will - I'm just honest.

 

Something to consider is life-work-happiness balance. Maybe I'm getting you wrong, but I thought you sound as if you would like to read, instead of doing reps. So I'd say, unless you need to learn certain vocabulary for a test or a presentation or something, it is perfectly legitimate to do just what makes you happy and what keeps your motivation for Chinese alive.

[Silent]

 

The reason i said learning characters not in a context feels pointless, is because once ive done the srs/skritter, i am usually so tired in the evenings i cannot muster the energy to read. However if i hadnt had done SRS i would have read. I hope this sheds some light on my current situation.

What is important to you? Choosing for just reading or just SRS won't matter that much. Both are sub-optimal for improving your chinese. If I had to choose I'ld pick reading as it's functional and in the long run is probably better. Only SRS will result in you becoming  a human dictionary with little functional skills. It may be a good choice if you expect to get to a more balanced shortly. But maybe you could alternate between reading and SRS? I think 2 or 3 SRS sessions a week will still give you much of the benefits of SRS and leave's time/energy for reading the other days.

[abcdefg]

I've found what may be sort of a compromise. I live in China and use Chinese all the time. When I encounter things I need to look up, either from reading or from conversation, I use Pleco on my phone and flag them so that they go into a flashcard deck.

 

Then I review each day's "looked up" words that night before bed. When weekend comes, I review that week's new words a couple more times. Then I "flush" them, wipe the slate clean, and move on to a new week, maybe keeping five or ten that I really like and don't know yet.

 

This way the task does not become ponderous, like it used to with Anki, ZDT, and Skritter, and I continue living in the real world, in present time. Figure that I will re-encounter most of what I need naturally in the normal course of things, and after several such meetings, it will finally stick. All my learning is in context; none is "just because I should."

 

Might add, as a disclaimer, that this might not be best for everyone. I'm not in an academic setting and don't aspire to ever pass any exams. Chinese is both a hobby and a daily living tool, but it is not an obsession. Furthermore, I don't expect my Chinese to ever be perfect.

[stivb]

to my mind the main problem with SRS is its underlying assumption: to remember something is a function of how often you come into contact with it (+ some algorithmic stuff about durations and delays).  However, human beings are not computers - if we were SRS would be unproblematic.  But something is memorable not because of how often we see it, but how persuasive, how moving, how beautiful it is (or conversely, how vile, vulgar or ugly).  Human beings are feeling as well as thinking beings.

 

It is difficult for words or characters in themselves to be any of those things -but the context in which they appear maybe - therefore, for that reason, I would say reading is very important.

 

The big difference between chinese and other language however is a much more basic one -namely the number of characters.  If I am learning words in Italian - I don't have to know how to write the various subcomponents of them - in chinese I do.  Therefore learning the arrangements of characters becomes an important underlying skill  (because a character can be defined by its parts) - but very often using SRS for words, means we identify not by subcomponentialization - but by difference (it is a because it is not b, c or d).  If you are memorizing by difference rather than componentializtion - then you never truly "know" - you can only "distinguish" - but that means, as your vocabulary becomes larger, you have more differentiations to make, and something that yuo may have previously recognized, becomes suddenly something that you can easily confuse.

[Lu]

 

However, human beings are not computers - if we were SRS would be unproblematic.  But something is memorable not because of how often we see it, but how persuasive, how moving, how beautiful it is (or conversely, how vile, vulgar or ugly).

This is probably true, but in my experience, one component of learning a language is simply learning a large amount of vocabulary. If I come across a word in an especially memorable way (or even if someting unrelated but moving, happy or sad happens around the time I learn a word), I remember it better. But I can't wait for every word I need to know to become attached to something especially ugly or beautiful, so I use SRS to learn the words regardless. If I do come across them in a grand or terrible occasion, I have a better chance of recognising them.

[Silent]

 

The big difference between chinese and other language however is a much more basic one -namely the number of characters.  If I am learning words in Italian - I don't have to know how to write the various subcomponents of them - in chinese I do.

I hope you know how to write the subcomponents of Italian words too. Without knowing how to write the letters and syllables you're illiterate. I think the differences between characters and words written in (more or less) phonetic scripts is exaggerated. Both contain a number of constituent components that you need to know.