Akurasu Blog

Recently I started studying Japanese again. To reinforce my learning experience, I have been using an almost magical method. Spaced Repetition Software. These software programs show you flashcards for you to review. By grading yourself on how well you knew the flashcard, the program will work it’s magical calculations so it knows when best to show you that card to review again. In theory, this should be before you are forget it. The more often you rate a card well, the more it will increase the time between subsequent reviews. Therefore drilling this knowledge deeper and deeper into your memory, to the point where it will be years before you will need to go without forgetting it. If your native language is English, It would probably take several lifetimes of isolation for you to forget your alphabet, because you use it so often.

There are various choices out there in the SRS world, many of which are free. The two main choices are Mnemosyne and Anki. Khatzumoto also made his very own web based SRS, called Khatzumemo. It doesn’t matter what SR Software you use, just as long as you use one. I have chosen Anki as my SRS. Not only is it easier to spell, it seems to be one of the most advanced ones around, and it is also in rapid development. Here I am going to discuss the interval options Anki provides you.

Anki is a little unique in the fact that it gives you cards to review by the minute, rather then by the day. Isn’t sleep important to learning? It is but it’s still effective to recall something you first reviewed in the morning and then later in the evening, or periodically throughout the day. Besides, the more often you see a card, the more it will get spaced apart to the point where it will be days between seeing it again. Hence your going to get sleep between the times you review that particular card regardless, it just might not happen right away. Also, nothing is stopping you from coming back the next day before reviewing again.

Even better, Anki allows you to customize the starting intervals between reviews. Personally, while reviewing my kanji, I’ve discovered that the default intervals are a bit long for me. Which is forcing me to either fail a card or rate it on hard every time I see it. When you mark every card with the same difficulty, your going to get slammed with cards all around the same time again. Why not reduce these intervals to make actual use of the full range of options? This would spread out your cards when you review them, and probably make your life a little easier. I am certainly not an expert at Spaced Repetition theory, but I know what makes sense to me.

Here are the defaults intervals that Anki gives you for cards you see for the first time.

(Anki’s settings only gives you days for intervals options. So you need to use decimals as partial days for cards you want to see more often. It would be nice if you could just say “8 hours”, but It’s not hard to load up Excel and do a little math. Because of this, the tables in this articles includes the hours and minute equivalents.)

If you look at the range on these default values, it’s between 8 hours and 9 days. Honestly, I am not confident on a card I have just learned to wait even 3 days before seeing it again. I figure seeing a card too often is better then not seeing it in a long while.

Now, Anki has a Cram option, this allows you to export your cards into a new deck which automatically reduces your intervals, and by quite a bit.

Wow, these numbers are pretty small. Between 20 minutes and 6 hours. This is probably great if you have a test in a few days, but me, I’m not taking any classes. I am here to learn, not cram. I have found if you use numbers like these for learning, your going to need a lot of time to study these cards. And they are going to be more frequent they you really need them to be.

I decided I needed a range that is between these two extremes. I figure between an hour to a 24 hour day is good range for me to try out. Currently these are the numbers I have been using on my Kanji cards for the past week.

Now, I would not say take these numbers and run with them. If anything, think about how your rating your cards. If your making use of the full range of rating options, and you do not need to fail a card you have not seen in 3 days, your probably fine. If your a busy person, you might not have time to make use of quicker intervals. Right now if I don’t touch my reviews for a full 24 hours, I will have ~120 kanji cards scheduled to review. This piles up rather fast but I have plenty of time throughout the day to review often. I think as I get more busy, I’ll expand the numbers to max at two or three days.

How good are the default intervals for you?