Extensive reading and reading speed

[phills]

On 10/13/2021 at 10:27 PM, realmayo said:

To add a datapoint, here's a record of the five days I spent reading 余华's 许三观卖血记.

 

@realmayo  Thanks for the data.  I'm curious, how many characters would you say you've read, or if you haven't kept track, how many books?  Just want to put your numbers in context.

 

Also, from your other messages, it seems like you might have taken a break from reading Chinese (at volume) for a while, and recently picked it up again.  Curious if you have any sense of how much loss in speed / vocab / fluency you experienced as as result of the break.  If that isn't the case at all, then please forgive my question

 

[Guest realmayo]

Probably read about a dozen books, mostly 2015-2017, then stopped studying/using Chinese. Some time last year I started studying some Classical Chinese, and this year ended up back with the 现代 stuff.

 

In terms of effect on reading speed: when I restarted I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could remember. But then I got frustrated: I think there's a normal process where if we come across a word or collocation that we realise we should know, the brain can almost instantly piece it back together again based on familiarity with the characters involved, or memory of similar words/collocations. But that process just wasn't firing for me so efficiently, when I restarted - it felt like part of the machinery of my brain was missing.

 

I've since brute-forced a whole load of vocabulary back into the brain and found myself reading novels probably as fluently as before.

 

But that took two to three hours of reading per day. And for me that's not the most efficient use of my study time, so I'm now going back to focus on textbooks, which I think are harder than novels and give my brain a tougher workout (novels of course are great for building confidence and for accumulating masses of simple vocabulary).

 

 

[rickardg]

On 10/15/2021 at 9:43 AM, realmayo said:

ve since brute-forced a whole load of vocabulary back into the brain and found myself reading novels probably as fluently as before.

I’m almost in the same situation as you are, although my pause was probably longer than your. The last few months I’ve tried different study strategies and I’ve started to suspect that the most efficient intensive study is to simply cram a few frequency word lists into my SRS. Particularly given I get a couple of hours of extensive study (podcasts and reading) on my commute every day. 

[phills]

I finally exceeded 200cpm on a book, for the first time!  I just finished 兄弟2 at 208cpm.

 

bro2-1: 2.71 hrs, 30694 chars, 188.79 cpm
bro2-2: 2.05 hrs, 24852 chars, 202.34 cpm
bro2-3: 84.49 mins, 17224 chars, 203.86 cpm
bro2-4: 112.44 mins, 21618 chars, 192.26 cpm
bro2-5: 82.63 mins, 20133 chars, 243.65 cpm
bro2-6: 84.94 mins, 17844 chars, 210.08 cpm
bro2-7: 2.04 hrs, 24777 chars, 202.49 cpm
bro2-8: 2.05 hrs, 26980 chars, 219.72 cpm
bro2-9: 2.19 hrs, 27814 chars, 211.48 cpm
bro2-10: 2.06 hrs, 27533 chars, 222.85 cpm
bro2-11: 2.64 hrs, 33611 chars, 212.10 cpm
Total: 21.81 hrs, 273,080 chars, 208.68 cpm

 

1. 兄弟2 also puts me just past 4 million cumulative characters, at 4.11m. 

 

余华 is relatively breezy read for me -- by now I'm very familiar with 余华‘s style, vocab & sentence structures, and I found his writing really flows in my head.  I estimate my normal reading speed to be 180 cpm +/- 30, or 150-210.  I almost never go below 150 anymore even on unfamiliar stuff, and can reach into the low 200s when I'm in a good flow state.

 

2. Timing all my reading sessions seem to have accelerated my progress.  I used to be nervous about a clock ticking in the background while reading, but now realize my reading speed is pretty stable.  If I'm not in the mood, it'll be slower but not that much.  If I have to look up a few phrases, it won't affect my speed that much either (I include lookups in my time).  My speed range is my speed range, for things that I can comfortably read.

 

3. Ironically if I have to scroll back, usually that means my session is going to be recorded as a fast one.  Unless it's boring material that I've totally zoned out on, scrolling back usually means that I read too fast in the near past and skipped over something important that I have to look back to.  As a result. I've become less anxious about re-reading stuff that I don't understand; some amount of scrolling/ jumping back and forth is a normal part of reading and could be good for you.

 

4. Speaking of scrolling back being a good thing, session 5 (bro2-5 in the list), a real outlier in terms of speed, was triggered by scrolling back.  For those who've read the book, it's the part where 宋钢 is happily married, while 李光头 just suffered a big business failure and is scrounging for food & sympathy in the streets. 

 

Early in the session, I realized that I had to scroll back to look something up, and all of a sudden while scrolling backwards, I stopped noticing the forms of the Chinese characters.  It was like I was reading English, going thru the previous paragraphs and noting what each was about.  When I then went forward, I started scanning lines, even whole (short) paragraphs, something that I've never done before in Chinese.  I wasn't reading every character anymore, but still seemed to processing all the characters.

 

5. Unfortunately, once that session ended, I couldn't get back into that state again.  I tried different ways to trigger myself into that state, psych myself out, but I never got back.  I even tried sacrificing comprehension, just having characters tumble into my head -- session 8 -- but then I realized that was counterproductive, when I started losing track of the narrative thread.  Even then I didn't get back to 240cpm. 

 

So I gave up for now ... I suspect it'll come back again in spurts during the next million characters.  But something to shoot for.

[ablindwatchmaker]

@phills

 

This is insane progress. Awesome work! I would be ecstatic to read at 200cpm. That is fast enough to really maintain a strong reading habit without having to spend hours per day reading. You could read 20 pages in 70 minutes, assuming 700 characters per page, at that rate. That’s 24 books a year, which is a very solid reading habit most people would be happy to have. This will give you plenty of time, once you pull your foot off the pedal, to focus on other weaknesses and really allow you to take off in your Chinese. 

[phills]

 

On 10/15/2021 at 11:23 PM, ablindwatchmaker said:

That said, I seem to have stumbled and feel like this third book is much harder to understand than the previous two, mostly due to the grammar and lengthy sentence structure.

@ablindwatchmaker Just to put a number of the difficulty of 死神永生, and its effect on reading speed, I just finished my first session:

 

deathend1-1: 2.84 hrs, 16875 chars, 98.86 cpm

 

I read it at 98cpm, less than 100.  That first section on Constantinople, and Mehmed II attacking Constantine XI was brutal. 

 

Even though I was already familiar with the author's style, that section was like reading a chapter in a Byzantine history book written in Chinese, with magic & sci-fi sprinkled in so you're never sure if what you're understanding it correctly (a brain really popped out of a head by magic?).  It was really hard for me to parse, and I had to read over long parts of it twice.  I think I read that whole Byzantine section at ~75cpm.

 

It got a big better once it reached the modern times, but I think I read that at ~150 cpm.  It was still sluggish.  I'll get a better check on it once I read more.

 

It confirms for me that once you start reading more, your limiting factor isn't the speed of decoding characters, but the speed at which you can understand the content that is being expressed, in a foreign language.  I was comfortable decoding almost of the Chinese characters in there, but they were just put together in odd ways that didn't seem to flow, and I wasn't grasping the plot.

 

Although at the time I didn't time myself, I remember reading through the second half of 三体 2 rather briskly.  The start of 三体 2 was tough though, a long discourse on an ant travelling through tunnels.  So maybe that's just how the author rolls.  He doesn't make On-Boarding easy.

[ablindwatchmaker]

@phills

 

I just have to laugh ? 

 

After finishing 黑暗森林，I remember feeling really good about my progress…until I ran into the intro for 死神永生 lol. I ended up reading it over several times to make sure I understood it. It definitely gets better later on, but there is still an awful lot of expository text with huge, run-on sentences, and it’s sometimes hard to follow his reasoning process, which further complicates matters. I often found myself looking at the English edition to confirm or deny my understanding, found that I did, in fact, understand it, but still couldn’t piece together his reasoning process. Additionally, there are still a few sections that I’m not entirely convinced were translated properly, indicating just how ambiguous it can be, but I’ll wait for you to get there before I mention it. 
 

I also remember being confused with the beginning of 黑暗森林 lol. 
 

Overall, I think the series is pretty awesome, and I’m happy to have read it, but if I could do it all over again, I would have waited to have more under my belt before I tackled it. I think it is way too hard for people just starting out with novels, and I absolutely disagree with anyone recommending these books as an introduction to real Chinese. Between the three books there are 20,000 words, a ton of highly descriptive, abstract sections that wouldn’t be easy for your average native in English, and the sentence structures are quite complex. I’ve browsed through a few other books, and they are nowhere near as grammatically challenging as the 三体 series. 

[phills]

@ablindwatchmaker  I'm about a third of the way through 死神永生 now -- the two starships are going to deep space, and both Earth and Trisolarans have been exposed to the rest of the galaxy.  Humans have just discovered 4d space bubbles and seen one evaporate. 

 

I've regained my 三体 sea-legs, and am getting back to a brisk speed. 

 

deathend1-1: 2.84 hrs, 16875 chars, 98.86 cpm
deathend1-2: 104.88 mins, 17316 chars, 165.10 cpm
deathend2-1: 2.70 hrs, 26643 chars, 164.46 cpm
deathend2-2: 2.52 hrs, 24589 chars, 162.54 cpm
deathend2-3: 2.43 hrs, 25087 chars, 172.11 cpm
deathend2-4: 106.24 mins, 18743 chars, 176.42 cpm
Total: 14.01 hrs, 129,253 chars, 153.72 cpm

 

It took about 50k characters to "warm-up".  After the Byzantine section, I got most of my speed back, but not my comprehension.  It was still pretty spotty.  I got the gist of a Staircase project, sending a head into space, but I was still a bit disoriented and didn't grasp many nuances. 

 

It wasn't until halfway through the 3rd session that I started following all the plot again.  By then I was comfortable, and it no longer felt sluggish.  Though I was still stuck between Gear 2 (learning) and 3 (rauding), according to the classification in @realmayo's paper.

 

It wasn't until 100k chars in, that I'm starting to hit Gear 4 (skimming) ocassionally (still slowing down to Gear 2 when plot become confusing).  We'll see by the end of the book how much of my max speed I can reach with this book.

 

How far along are you @ablindwatchmaker?  Now that I'm comfortable, I'm no longer finding the language hard to understand (although I don't necessarily aim for 100% understanding). 

 

If you have questions about sections before the 4d bubble collapses and the Blue Space / Gravity shoot off into deep space, feel free to post them (in your other 死神永生 thread).

[ablindwatchmaker]

On 10/28/2021 at 3:55 AM, phills said:

How far along are you @ablindwatchmaker?  Now that I'm comfortable, I'm no longer finding the language hard to understand (although I don't necessarily aim for 100% understanding).

I’m about 80% finished, 415/527. I’ve had a few issues where something didn’t make sense and I ended up consulting the English, as I mentioned before, but the worst of it seems to be behind me. Overall comprehension of material, excluding looking at the translation, is probably 99%. I seem to struggle the most when I can’t follow the logic and/or the material is exceptionally visually demanding. There is a section with a 40-page long info dump coming your way (ridiculous), but the book is still solid. I broke 100 CPM today for the first time, across all three books I’m reading, so that was awesome! 
 

I love the part where they go into 4D and encounter the ring. Also, 逻辑 is a badass character.  

[phills]

I just finished up 死神永生.  It ended up being mostly a smooth experience, other than having a heavy "warm-up" time as I got used to the sci-fi terms again and the Byzantine bit (which never came up again in the rest of story, just like the whole ant-tunnel story in 三体 2). 

 

Despite the rough start, I would rate the whole book at an "average" difficulty.  My overall speed was similar to, or even a little faster than my speed in reading 撒哈拉的故事.

 

deathend1-1: 2.84 hrs, 16875 chars, 98.86 cpm
deathend1-2: 104.88 mins, 17316 chars, 165.10 cpm
deathend2-1: 2.70 hrs, 26643 chars, 164.46 cpm
deathend2-2: 2.52 hrs, 24589 chars, 162.54 cpm
deathend2-3: 2.43 hrs, 25087 chars, 172.11 cpm
deathend2-4: 106.24 mins, 18743 chars, 176.42 cpm
deathend3: 2.14 hrs, 21801 chars, 169.78 cpm
deathend4: 2.11 hrs, 26059 chars, 205.58 cpm
deathend5: 2.29 hrs, 25975 chars, 188.99 cpm
deathend6: 2.23 hrs, 24237 chars, 180.95 cpm
deathend7: 2.81 hrs, 29581 chars, 175.58 cpm

deathend8-1: 112.31 mins, 19897 chars, 177.16 cpm
deathend8-2: 2.75 hrs, 30116 chars, 182.81 cpm
deathend9: 113.53 mins, 21468 chars, 189.10 cpm
deathend10: 99.31 mins, 18156 chars, 182.82 cpm
Total: 33.76 hrs, 346,543 chars, 171.07 cpm

 

1. The easiest session by far was the fairy tale (deathend4).  It seems fairy tales really are easier to read than other stories -- no wonder why people like to read them to kids.

 

I liked how the fairy tale anchored the remainder of the book.  And how the relevance of some of the details don't really become clear until you get to the end.  (I'll put my subject matter thoughts in another thread though.  This thread is just for reading speed.)

 

2. @ablindwatchmaker Curious what you meant by the "40-page long info dump"?  Did you mean the description of how planets were flattened into 2D?  That part was kind of  tedious.  I skimmed that, as I probably wouldn't read that word-for-word in English either. 

 

If I tried to read the 2D flattening part with 100% understanding, I would probably have slowed down there too.  I didn't re-read any part of it twice, like I did for the Byzantine bit, because I thought the Byzantine bit would play into the story later, while I felt the 2-D flattening was pure description.  I got the gist and continued onward.

 

Or did you mean the description of the Bunker Cities?  That part I thought was cool and reminded me of the Wandering Earth movie.  The Bunker Cities part was also a bit of tech dump, but that held my interest and felt like a brisk read.

[ablindwatchmaker]

On 11/7/2021 at 11:38 AM, phills said:

Despite the rough start, I would rate the whole book at an "average" difficulty.  My overall speed was similar to, or even a little faster than my speed in reading 撒哈拉的故事.

I keep hearing 三毛 can be tricky—she is in my queue, so I’ll find out eventually. I’ve got a massive library of classics and contemporary novels, both Chinese originals and translations, that all look amazing. I STILL haven’t decided on my third slot. Probably going to be Dune…Probably. 
 

On 11/7/2021 at 11:38 AM, phills said:

. The easiest session by far was the fairy tale (deathend4).  It seems fairy tales really are easier to read than other stories -- no wonder why people like to read them to kids.

 

I liked how the fairy tale anchored the remainder of the book.  And how the relevance of some of the details don't really become clear until you get to the end.  (I'll put my subject matter thoughts in another thread though.  This thread is just for reading speed.)

The fairy tale was pretty easy. I got really irritated with the description of the bunker cities that seemed to go on forever, though it seems you liked it. Yep, the 2-D folding  was also really frustrating (it was boring), but I pushed through it. I’ve got to start skimming when I get bored so I don’t allow myself to hate books. The hardest and/or most boring parts for me, in order: 

 

1. Byzantine section.

2. Description of the steam governor engine and the structure of the fairytale, not the fairy tale itself. It’s the part where they are describing the metaphorical structure of the fairy tale. In one part they describe it as a double metaphor,  but I’m not sure I understand how it was a double metaphor. 
3. Parts of the description of 2-D folding. I was able to get it, but it was pretty slow going. 

My reading speed for the book never exceeded 100 CPM and was usually less. 
 

I did, however, get to 128 CPM yesterday with 余华 lol. Not a hard book, but still a milestone for me. 

[phills]

I put my reply to the book parts in the Death's End thread.

 

Your speed is just going to slowly rise as you read more.  Something along the lines of pinion's original graph.  I don't think there's any magic or shortcut through it. 

 

余华 is a good confidence booster though... I save his books for every 10 or so, so I can set myself a new speed mark   My 兄弟 speed is not very representative of my average speed, my Death's End speed is closer to it (and more the first half than second half, as second half is me having pre-loaded all the sci-fi terms into my head).

 

But one thing I noticed in reading Death's End is that my brain is continuing to burn energy at a good pace as I'm accelerating through the book.   It reminds me what pinion said earlier in this thread about going past 15m chars:

 

On 10/1/2021 at 4:54 PM, pinion said:

I think my reading speed is still increasing, albeit slowly, but the biggest difference I've noticed in the year(!) since I made the original post is that reading has become much less taxing for me--it used to really require 100% of my attention, whereas now it only requires maybe 70%? I can now read in Chinese as a way to relax when I'm tired (though it probably helps that I tend to choose authors I'm more familiar with for this)

 

I'm getting faster as I get to the end of the book, but it's not a "relaxing" type of faster.  I'm going faster by revving up the engine a bit more.  So that's another milestone to watch for. 

[ablindwatchmaker]

On 11/8/2021 at 11:55 AM, phills said:

Your speed is just going to slowly rise as you read more.  Something along the lines of pinion's original graph.  I don't think there's any magic or shortcut through it

Yeah, 15 million characters will be a 2 year project for me, most likely. It will depend on when my reading speed increases substantially and by how much. If I get GAINZ like you I’ll be thrilled. Getting to a reading speed of 150 by 4 million characters is excellent progress. I’m trying to hit a million for the month. I might miss my goal by 100k, but I’m doing well. 
 

On 11/8/2021 at 11:55 AM, phills said:

I'm getting faster as I get to the end of the book, but it's not a "relaxing" type of faster.  I'm going faster by revving up the engine a bit more.  So that's another milestone to watch for.

If only…I still struggle to get anything done if I’m tired or not at 100%. I suspect this will be true for a long time, though I’m hoping it doesn’t take 15 million characters to do it. At some point I’m going to have to refocus on listening and reduce reading, I just hope my reading is sustainably fast at that point. 
 

 

[alantin]

Here are some midterm stats for my reading project.

 

On 11/8/2021 at 7:55 PM, phills said:

Your speed is just going to slowly rise as you read more.  Something along the lines of pinion's original graph.  I don't think there's any magic or shortcut through it. 

I've been tracking my reading speed (and some other variables) for 23 chapters now and I've been seeing steady increase in reading speed. I also calculated the correlation coefficients for all the variables I've been tracking and basically the only ones I've found so far to correlate strongly with higher reading speed are the percentage of known words in the chapter and the cumulative amount of characters read so I'm also beginning to have some data to support this statement.

 

My own two cents are that basically there doesn't seem to be much anything else to it beyond those two variables. At-least among the dozen or so variables that I've been tracking.

Black shows recorded values and red are forecasted.
With correlation coefficients 1 shows full positive correlation and -1 full negative correlation. 0 shows no correlation at all.

 

[imron]

On 11/8/2021 at 7:11 PM, alantin said:

My own two cents are that basically there doesn't seem to be much anything else to it beyond those two variables.

Train what you want to learn!

 

As an aside, I'd also like to note how great it is to see these long-form reading threads being so active, and for people to be tracking and collecting data about their learning.

[phills]

On 11/9/2021 at 1:55 AM, phills said:

But one thing I noticed in reading Death's End is that my brain is continuing to burn energy at a good pace as I'm accelerating through the book.

 

I figured out why I seem to be burning more energy recently as I'm reading.  And why it's taking me longer to "warm up" to a normal speed in a book / in a session.

 

It turns out that my character knowledge is still decaying.  In the past 6 months as I've focused more on reading extensively, I've stopped drilling my characters.  I thought reading every day would keep them fresh. 

 

It has... for the most part, but not completely.  After 6 months, my character recognition has decayed.  My pronunciation / tones are a bit off. I start to blend characters with a similar sound/look but different meaning, and I'm relying more on context to help me sort them out.  I'm making too many character recognition mistakes / hesitations (1 per line or so) and having to second guess.  All of that takes more energy -- and it's noticeable while I'm reading.

 

I've gone back to doing more drills and reading a bit less, in terms of use of time.  Even a few days of this seems to make a difference.  It's as if my vision is "sharper", like I put on glasses.  Reading is less taxing energy-wise and it takes me less time to get up to cruising speed.  Especially confusing passages, where I can't just glance at the context and figure out it.

 

At some point, doing character drills will get boring again, and I'll go back to 100% reading (like the last time I did this).  I assume natives never have to drill characters once they reach middle childhood or teenage years, but maybe not? Or maybe it's because I'm not practicing writing, which is an even more precise exercise than drilling. 

 

So far, I'm not sure if drilling chars is helping my top speed.  If it is, it isn't by much... yet.  But it does reduce my energy expenditure a lot, and helps me when reading at less than 100% concentration.

[Woodford]

On 11/19/2021 at 11:31 PM, phills said:

So far, I'm not sure if drilling chars is helping my top speed.

 

It's an interesting topic I think about a lot. I've done a lot of drilling in the past 4+ years of study, probably to a fault. I always think, "Would it be more beneficial for me to drill less and read more?" Because I can only learn Chinese once, I guess I'll never know how things would have progressed if I reduced my drilling time. I haven't deleted any of my SRS flashcards. I've hoarded them all, and my review quota has settled at around 175-200 cards a day, about 45 minutes (I still remember my worst day, near the beginning of my studies, when I had 380 to review in a single day...oof!). I could just stop, but since I've gone so far, and the worst is very much behind me, I'll just finish. My new vocabulary intake is slowing down, and I won't be able to read enough to make up for it. Then my review quota will plummet, and I'll naturally have more time to just read. I think I was reading in a Pleco forum somewhere, and there was this person who said he spent about 10-20 minutes a day reviewing his SRS deck of 20,000 cards. Not bad at all! That's where I'd like to be in the not-too-distant future.

 

But there is something that continues to throw me off--different words that share the same character. Especially those with the same pronunciation, a different tone, and a similar meaning. Like 转 and 转 (3rd and 4th tones, respectively), 撒 and 撒 (1st and 3rd tones), 散 and 散 (3rd and 4th tones) etc. I could list dozens and dozens and dozens of them! I encounter them all the time when reading, and I've thought about compiling a list of them. Some of them are easier to me, like 钉 and 钉 (when it's 1st tone, it's a nail, and when it's the 4th tone, it's the verb "to nail." At least, I think that's the case). Others aren't so straightforward. I wonder if even some native Chinese people struggle with them (much in the same way that native English speakers mix up to/too, they're/their/there, etc.). I don't think I'll ever perfectly master these. I just try as best as I can.

[Publius]

On 11/21/2021 at 3:50 AM, Woodford said:

Like 转 and 转 (3rd and 4th tones, respectively), 撒 and 撒 (1st and 3rd tones), 散 and 散 (3rd and 4th tones) etc.

There's a little trick that might be useful. If a 多音字 has a 4th tone, usually that's the verb form. Unless the other tone is already a verb, then the 4th tone is either a noun (数数 comes to mind) or a causative (to make ... 'verb'). It is generally believed that Old Chinese is toneless but with inflections. An -s suffix existed whose many functions include conversion between noun and verb. This -s suffix gave rise to Middle Chinese 去声 the departing tone, which later became the 4th tone in Mandarin. This phenomenon is most visible in Classical/Literary Chinese 文言文. For example, 衣 yī 'clothes' vs. 衣 yì 'to clothe'; 食 shí 'food, to eat' vs. 食 sì 'to feed' (=饲); 王 wáng 'king' vs. 王 wàng 'to rule, to crown'. And here's a modern one: 饮(yǐn)水 but 饮(yìn)马 (to cause/make/let the horse drink).

[phills]

On 11/21/2021 at 3:50 AM, Woodford said:

But there is something that continues to throw me off--different words that share the same character.

 

When I'm reading quickly, I get very sloppy with pronounciations and tones in my head (e.g. z=zh=j, j=q=x, iu=iao, v=u=ou=o, 1=4).  I also don't pronounce every character.

 

I don't even error-correct when misrecognizing a character, as long as later context helps me figure out what the sentence / clause is supposed to mean.  I started noticing my character recognition error rates were going up, because I was doing double-takes more frequently.  That made reading more taxing, and required 100% concentration or I'd lose my train of thought.

 

E.g. errors usually involve chars with similar radicals and similar pronounciations/ or similar meanings, like misrecognizing 罗 for 逻 or 萝, and then using the second character to figure out which of the 3 the first one was.  Or more egregiously, 军 for 挥, and then realizing a few seconds later the sentence made no sense and going back to error correct.

 

Now I'm drilling more, the error rates are going down again.  The key is the instant feedback you get from drilling, while you can gloss over errors when reading quickly. 

 

I was hoping reading by itself would make error rates go down, and maybe it will eventually  or maybe it will if you go slower, but not the way I was doing it. 

 

It's most obvious when reading stuff I don't understand immediately, which accounted for the long "warm up" times.  Once I was fully immersed in a book's environment, usually everything flowed and I no longer noticed the errors (but still felt the energy/concentration drain). 

[黄有光]

On 11/20/2021 at 8:50 PM, Woodford said:

I still remember my worst day, near the beginning of my studies, when I had 380 to review in a single day...oof!

I set my Anki deck to cap reviews at 250 cards per day. Partly I did this to avoid the total ballooning over the course of normal study, but I also did it so I could take a day off from study from time to time and not come back to a heart-attack-inducing amount of reviews! That actually did a LOT to help my mental health re: studying.