Too many flashcards?

[habote]

So for about 9 months now I've been studying 20 new words every day. Originally, I started with HSK5 vocab and made it through all the HSK6 words. I did all this using Anki. After that I added 20 new cards every day to my Pleco flashcards from news articles, TV shows, movies, novels, etc. 

 

At this point, I probably have around 5000 flashcards, and the reviews are getting to be a bit too much. 

 

In general, I have about 120 Anki flashcards and about the same Pleco reviews per day. If I miss just one day it quickly becomes very difficult to catch back up. I'm at the point where I think that I don't need to review the cards as frequently as a did before. I think it is more important to spend my time reading/listening more. However, I don't want to completely let the flashcards go by the wayside. 

 

For people who have thousands of Anki/Pleco flashcards, do you still do all the reviews everyday? Is there an easy way to lessen the amount of daily cards you have? I'm past the purely vocab building state and need to just be "in" the language more. 

 

Any and all recommendations highly appreciated

[大肚男]

I'm pretty sure that you can setup how many cards are due every day.

What I do is that I have two sets of flash cards, one for new words, and one for old words. Once I'm very familiar with a word that I recently learned, I move it to the old words category.

I review the New word category every day. Since I usually only have 100-200 words in that category, it didn't take that long.

And every week or so, I review the old words category, to make sure I haven't forgotten anything.

I think This approach has been helpful for what I'm learning right now, which is the tones based on hsk vocabulary lists.not sure how useful will it be for other learning goals.

BTW, I'm using the pleco flashcard system

[renzhe]

What you need to do is stop learning new words and just do daily reviews for a month or two until the load drops.

Definitely keep doing the reviews every day. Skipping days does not work well with SRS and will only make it harder. You're supposed to review cards when they're given to you, that's how the algorithm works.

Sounds like you overloaded yourself and need to take a few notches off for a while.

[hedwards]

I have a tendency to sort of binge a bit and then wind up with indigeston. But, what you're probably going to have to do is reduce the number of cards that Anki requires every day for a while. I'd also recommend against keeping cards in different programs. You don't really need multiple decks, but you definitely do need to separate the cards that you know well from the ones that you are still learning.

 

In fact, when it comes to the HSK1-3 cards, you're probably going to touch on most of those regularly just through using the language, so those probably only need to be formally reviewed rarely.

 

Personally, I pay attention to the rate at which I'm correctly answering the questions and the amount of time that I'm taking with it. Flashcards are useful, but they're not as useful as actually using the language. Also, bear in mind that a native speaker will learn about 4 words per day, so if you're trying to do more than about 20 a day over a long period, you're likely to have logistical challenges.

 

IMHO, if you're not getting the cards right at least 80-90%of the time, you're definitely going to fast and you'll probably make more progress going slower and using some sort of mnemonic system.

[querido]

I've been there, habote.

 

"I'm past the purely vocab building state and need to just be "in" the language more."

 

You should probably do that whole-heartedly while keeping up with your cards just as renzhe said, if you can; they'll settle down over time. 

 

Some people probably push this to a "breakdown" and crash. Don't do that! :-)

[querido]

(Hedwards, Anki fully-automatically separates the cards you know well from the cards you don't, and it automatically slows down those cards you have trouble with. Part of the benefit is that one may trust it and not have to worry and fuss over it. There's more than one approach to regulating how many new cards one should add and how to deal with backlogs, as discussed in other threads.)

[hedwards]

Querido, kind of sort of anything that Anki shows you will show up again and again with less frequency. In a situation like what the OP has going on, there's a tendency for there to be waves of reviews that come in depending upon when the cards were being memorized. Anki also doesn't have any intelligence to know that you don't need to review something, it's purely based upon the time that it was last seen and how well you knew it. So, even those really easy HSK1 cards will add to the backlog the same way that the HSK4 ones will, even though in practice most of those HSK1 vocab words get drilled to death whenever you're using the language as they're pretty much all high frequency words.

 

Also, if the OP is regularly hitting the limit of what time is available, those cards will clog things up even more.

[habote]

Renzhe, I think that's probably a good idea. I definitely don't want to forget what I've studied, but I also don't need to be adding a flash card for every word I learn every day. If it isn't integral to understanding the sentence I won't add it.

But I don't have any cards from HSK1-4. I had studied a few years before I started doing anki, so it's not that my anki is clogged with really basic words. There's only some words from HSK5 and all of HSK6. And then I have nearly 3000 words of post HSK6 study in pleco from newspapers and books and things.

My average correct % in Pleco is 89% so that isn't the problem. It's just that I spend too long simply reviewing. I don't think that's a very "natural" language learning tool. Learning that many words a day catapulted my Chinese, but now I need to focus on other things to balance it all out.

Thanks for the help

[hedwards]

Sounds like you're doing things right. I think the main thing to do here is probably try and scavenge time while you're waiting for things. Waiting for a bus, at a restaurant waiting for the food etc., scavenging time that would otherwise be wasted often times results in more time becoming available than you really realize.

 

Unfortunately, I suspect the words you're working on now are just going to take more effort to use than earlier vocabulary. There's only so much Tier 1 out there.

[Guest realmayo]

You could find the 365 cards in Anki that you forget the most often. Suspend them all. See if that makes a difference to your daily workload. Then every day relearn and add back into your deck one of those suspended cards.

 

Another way to buy yourself time while not destroying the whole deck is, for a week or a few weeks, instead of failing a card, suspend it. Then when things have calmed down, slowly return the cards to the deck, re-learning if necessary.

 

You may find that there are troublesome words which end up easier to learn & remember after leaving them alone for a few months.

 

Edit 1: Easiest way in Anki to find those most difficult cards is to order by the lowest 'ease'

Edit 2: Avoid at all costs just spending a frustrated day blindly passing 800 cards just to clear the backlog!

[Pingfa]

 

 

What you need to do is stop learning new words and just do daily reviews for a month or two until the load drops.

 

This. Most important is maintenance. Just stick with what you already know for a while. I'm currently learning Japanese, and whenever I've had enough of learning new words I just watch a show or a movie I'm already comfortable with (I watch the material many times over to maintain vocabulary).

 

When it comes to quantity I like the idea of deleting more than one adds - add frequently, delete more frequently. Don't horde flashcards; if you think a flashcard might have worn out its welcome, delete it.

 

Personally SRS is not a bother for me because I spread it out throughout the day. I think scheduling reps makes the process more painful than it needs to be.

[Kelby]

Might it be possible that after getting to this point it is worth it to scrap the decks and do some reading for a spell? In the OP you say yourself that you need to be 'in' the language more, so why not take a vacation from the SRS and follow your own advice? Sounds like you already kind of know what to do.

I did this recently for about a month and it really cemented my understanding of the stuff I studied already, so I can attest that it works.

I will note that scrapping the decks may sound a bit harsh, but to be honest this has always worked for me because A) anything I don't know after months of study isn't going to get learnt without special context/mnemoics/impetus to learn it and B) the new deck will natrally fill up with words I studied before but haven't committed to memory.

Nothing's lost but words and reviews that suck up time.