May 19, 2017

SRS Revelations

I’ve started my Japanese Sentence deck. Again. Again. Again.

That is to say, I tried SRSing vocab, sentences, and even MCDs. Couldn’t ever bring myself to enjoy any of them… Until now. This time it’s here to stay. I’m gravitating more to my sentences now than to my RTK deck.

In short, I accidentally figured out

1. that I always quit sentences because it wasn’t fun to add or rep them, and
2. a process that made adding/repping sentence cards easy and fun.

When I figured out a process that worked for me, I found I had some tension points where it became mildly tedious/error-prone. Thank goodness I’m a programmer! I decided to make an Anki addon.¹ And lo did he open-uppeth Spacemacs and starteth typing.

I’d never made an Anki mod before. I’d never used Python before. What could go wrong? Well, everything, if I were a less bright individual. Good thing I’m smart or I might’ve programmatically deleted all my decks. Man, wouldn’t that’ve been a riot?²

Anyway, here’s how this works:

1. I use Clozes in a way similar to MCDs, but with one but major difference: Clozes don’t hide text - they highlight it. To accomplish this, I construct the Cloze c1::ClozeText::HintText such that ClozeText == HintText. This is quite tedious, so I made an addon that automates this for me.

   This gets rid of that intimidating [...] text on the front of my cards, and replaces it with the actual clozed content I’m testing myself on.

   There are 2 reasons for this.

   1. It’s way less intimidating, which keeps me motivated to do reps. I’m using these to learn readings and grammar the easy way, not train myself on linguistic fill-in-the-blanks.
   2. Anki represents clozes as <span class="cloze">CLOZED TEXT</span> when it generates the front side of the card. This allows me to use CSS to highlight the cloze text and remove the brackets. I can also programmatically extract the text I’m testing myself on using javascript and do fancy things like add dictionary links for it on the back of the card. The result is quite appealing.
2. I made a new Cloze card type with 4 fields: Sentence, Context, Meaning, Extra. I essentially split the Text/Extra fields of the normal Cloze card into two extra fields. This is a preference on my part so that I can have more fine-grained control over my card templates. Sentence and Context go on the front, Meaning and Extra go on the back. Sentence is the textual content I’m trying to learn. Context is often some form of media for the Sentence to make the card more compelling. The Meaning is a general overall meaning of the Sentence. The Extra is reserved for readings, definitions, and misc notes. I fill that section out as I go.
3. Before I add add a card, I always capture context. I import some form of media to the Context field; no more, no less. No need to fill out the Sentence text or Meaning/Extra just yet. GifCam + VClip + OfficeCam = media ripping excellence. Whenever I see a scene in an anime I’m watching that really grabs me, I use GifCam or VClip to capture it. Whenever there’s a page in the manga I’m attempting to read that piques my curiosity, I scan it with OfficeCam or take a screenshot in cases where it’s a digital comic that can’t be downloaded. Sometimes context is just a short description or a link to the content, such as Twitter posts. In the case of songs, I usually just put the title of the song as Context.
4. If I feel like it, I’ll add content to one or more of the other fields, in whole or in part. No rush. Maybe I don’t know how to write all of the sentence. That’s okay. I just fill out what (I think) I know and leave some blanks where I’m not sure. I can always fill it out later when I know more. Maybe I only cloze one word at the end of the day without actually knowing the full meaning. Maybe I only have the word. Whatever. Just do one.
5. I only Cloze things that I immediately want to learn, and only in the order that seems most fun. I eat my desert first. When I feel like I need some extra cards generated later in a pinch, I cloze the less-interesting content for the sake of adding cards. Perhaps days or weeks later, I’ll get around to really fleshing out the other content like Meaning and Extra. I usually fill out the Extra field as I go. The Meaning field is the most time consuming one if I don’t have some help. Thankfully I know some Japanese people who can help with that when I’m stuck. Most of the time I just do my best guess, though. Is it sometimes wrong? Sure, but being wrong is okay. Wrong action is easier to correct than no action. I’m still gaining valuable contextual exposure, and that’s arguably the most important thing.

So far this has been working well. I’m generating 1-3 new cards every day with this process, which is significantly better than before.

One pattern I’ve noticed in myself is that I learn best through use, even if it’s slow and takes some healthy indifference to sucking. It’s how I learned Kana, it’s how I’ve maintained interest in Kanji, and it’s what has finally gotten me into the swing of sentences. When I say use, I mean that in a very casual sense. For instance, I (pretend to) read manga every day. This equates to looking at a few pages and occasionally looking up a word. It sounds silly, but it has made a serious difference. It’s one of those black magic things you gradually get from immersion. It’s also a crazy good feeling when I make a connection between an RTK card and a compound in the manga.

All that to say, my “study” of Japanese is going well. I’m also approaching a whole year since I decided to start. That means ~10 months of immersion and SRSing. Lazily, mind you. I’ve really half-assed it. RTK can be cleared in 3-6 months if you really put your mind to it, and I’m only about 2/3rds through it in about twice that time. So what? I spend maybe 10-60 minutes per day doing active learning, and it’s completely at my leisure. I think that really drives home the point that any fool can do this if they take their time with it and stop trying so hard.