SRS: best 'environment' to remember?

[imron]

That's true, but here's another way to look at it: The second person in your example misses 50% more words than the first.

First of all, that's not necessarily true.  A large portion of the words at that level aren't going to be frequently used and/or may be for specific fields/areas of knowledge.  For general purpose content you might find that they both understand things equally well.

 

Secondly, so what.  Say they are reading a newspaper article and for every hundred words, person A misses 2 words, and person B misses 3 words.  That's your 50% more missed words right there, and when you say it as 50% it seems like a big number.  The reality is it only represents a tiny difference in real understanding, and that being the case, at that level you will find you make more progess by focusing on other aspects of the language instead of vocab acquisition (though doing a small amount of vocab acquisition is still important - it just shouldn't be the primary focus or measure of your learning).

[imron]

By simply deleting (B) and by lowering (A), you can have a big deck but not spend so much time reviewing.

This is something I can agree with.  You are right, the problem is not a big deck, but rather the amount of time spent adding and reviewing cards.  If you can keep that time to a manageable level (say 30 min or less a day), and make sure you are spending at least as much, if not more time getting exposure to native content then I think that's fine.

 

You should also keep in mind though that doing what you said achieves a similar effect to deleting your deck anyway.

[realmayo]

WestTexas, I broadly agree. And yes, despite having a big deck it should only take me 30 mins max each day. But my interest is in making sure that my brain is best primed to benefit from those 30 mins. If I have a word in my deck that I came across for the first time 2 months ago, learned and added to the deck, and have seen a handful of times since in the SRS, each time at increasing intervals, I want to make sure that when I see it in my deck today that I'm doing everything I can to strengthen the relevant connections in my brain. If I'm distracted, but do remember the word and pass it, it will be pushed double the interval into the future. But that doesn't guarantee that the memory will strengthen sufficiently that I'll be able to remember it again after that time has passed. That's why the SRS system is only half of the solution, i.e. repetition is only half of the solution. I might walk past the same advertisment on the street every day on my walk to work and not remember it, because my brain doesn't think it's important enough to remember.

[realmayo]

I still struggle with the logic behind deleting decks. Sure, if it's a burden that is inhibiting further study or exposure to the language, then kill it, sure, but you could say the same for any drill or exercise, no?

 

Consider someone using SRS sensibly, without it becoming a burden, keeping it very much a means to an end rather than vice versa.

 

There are basic nouns or unambiguous verbs which I know only thanks to my SRS deck. Once their interval is out to a year or more, then I probably know them well enough to continue to know them without SRS. But what's the harm of keeping them in SRS? The next interval will be in two year's time! Someone who has a massive 20,000 words in their deck all at two-year intervals will be seeing 25 words a day. Factor in some mistakes and maybe you get 30 or 35 a day. That’s no burden at all!

 

So, there's no harm in keeping well-known words in the deck. 

 

What's the benefit?

 

Simply that you have a safety net for words which for some reason you forget one day or get confused with another. If I get a word with a two-year interval wrong, then I can decide whether to fail it or delete it. But if I didn't have it in my deck simply because it was one year old, I never get that option. And it's almost a free option, because for year-old cards the deck review is such little effort.

 

It would be much more effort to find that word 'in the wild'. Why? Because I'd be ploughing through so many super-common words that I know extremely well, just to get to the less common one. Which is inefficient, a waste of time.

 

Ah!, you could ask, how can you ever say reading is a waste of time? 

 

Easy. To come across that word 'in the wild' you'd have to read loads and loads. Once you can do that with not too much effort, great, your language skills are high, you can maintain your vocabulary by reading. But for people who aren't at that level, they either use an efficient method/tool to maintain their vocabulary, or they start forgetting words.

 

That's the crux, for people whose reading skills aren't yet quick enough. Yes, they need to read lots so that they can increase their speed and reading skills. But until they get to that level, they have the choice: forget, or use a tool. Simple as that. That's why I just don't buy the argument that words you almost never see when reading just aren't worth remembering. It applies if you can read loads, quickly. But for everyone else, it does not apply.

 

If your ability is high enough that you don’t need a tool, don’t use SRS. If your ability is not that high but you can’t use SRS efficiently, don’t use it or start to use it more efficiently.

 

But surely that’s extremely obvious advice that applies to any tool for anything!

[realmayo]

One final thought. Comes from the idea what when you're very young, your brain 'remembers' everything. But when you're an adult, your brain has to have a good reason to remember something. If there's not a good reason (e.g. repetition, surprise, reward etc) you will forget it soon enough.

 

This has got to be one reason why children can learn vocabulary quickly, no? Because they're set to remember new stuff. Adults learning a new language are not so lucky. 

[Ruben von Zwack]

I've just looked into the Amazon page of the book you are reading, and it says he does give practical advice. So I wonder what his advice is?

On another thought, I'm not sure if and to which extent this conception about child's brain vs. adult brain is actually correct. Of course it is one of these things "everybody knows", but that doesn't necessarily mean much.

[roddy]

I split off a new topic on gamification, which I think is quite interesting.