I’m on an SRS holiday right now and I’ve been taking them every few months or so. I’m still going through RTK 1 (closing in on the end of it, though!), so usually these holidays occur when I’ve added everything that I’ve come up with mnemonic stories for and am staring at a chapter without mnemonics. I like to write my stories/cull them from the Remembering the Kanji website ahead of time and write them into the book (this makes learning them at work much easier for me), and sometimes I fall into a lull where the stories are concerned. The inevitable consequence is that I end up having added everything that has a story and am looking to study/add more and have no stories yet. It’s at this point that I go on holiday. I spend my time doing reps and adding stories. It’s a nice little break. Sometimes I feel like I’m not making the progress I should be when I do this, but I always come away with more kanji actually memorized than before, so I don’t think I’m actually losing progress at all.

Blah blah blah… main point = SRS holidays are good and I like. ^^;

www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/15/chelsey-sullenberger-us-a_n_158331.html

“Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, III is a captain for a major U.S. airline with over 40 years of flying experience.”

I believe Khatz had linked to Xilisoft’s DVD Audio Ripper,
www.xilisoft.com/dvd-audio-ripper.html

It has a trial download that you can use for a limited amount of time.

Regards

Another plus to this is that it reduces the amount of daily reps so they’re easier to get through. So, if you do bursts of additions, this is a chance to smooth it over. It is definitely good to pace yourself, though, as mentioned before.

Ever since the author of Anki added a Timeboxing module, I’ve been getting through my reps much faster than before. It came at a good time, too.

I love adding, and to an extent, the reps if done in short bursts with timeboxing (2 sentences in one minute, 6 kanji in two minutes). Short winnable games right? ;D

I find it funny that you wrote this at the beginning January, just after the “holidays.” I (probably along with many other people) were forced to take an SRS holiday b/c of family stuff, etc, etc. That’s actually what I did over Christmas and New Year’s. I didn’t add anything, but I just kept reviewing. It’s actually quite a motivational boost. After a while you start doing really good on everything since you don’t have many “new” cards.

I’m gonna try scaling back now and attempt to do only recognition cards (which can be made quickly and reviewed quickly). With Anki’s new typing the answer feature, I want to try to timebox about 20 minutes a day for reviews in which I just retype (and read aloud of course) the phrase. I got this idea from playing Typing of The Dead and thinking “Damn, it would be really cool to be able to put my own phrases/words in this game!” and then realizing that I can sort of accompolish that with the new feature in Anki. In otherwords, I want to try blasting through the cards really fast, using the typing feature as a way to turn it into more of a game (hand writing is too time consuming [read: boring] for me) while reviewing at the same time. Hopefully this will keep stuck on an SRS!

This might be what you’re looking for,
www.getasianmusic.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=31

Regards

Sorry if I went off topic, but I think the music helps a lot in setting the environment while doing the SRS so I need a new site to get music from otherwise I’ll die…well not really but it will make the reps tedious.

A few months ago, I found an interview (more specifically, a chat, and if I’m not wrong, it was on www.msoworld.com or something like that) where Mr. Tony Buzan said he was going to learn spanish. In that same chat, he said he would apply mind maps to learn new words and review old ones(what we do with the SRS). So, basically, I think he would replace whole sentences with words only, attaching them to images and linking each image with all its synonyms (is this word written correctly?) and other images forming a mind map.

I haven’t tried the method ’cause I’m already accustomed to SRSing and I would have to copy all the words to mind maps (double work, maybe I’ll invent a Mind Map SRS software that reads from normal SRS files into Mind Map SRS files but I guess something will be out long before I even start thinking about this as I’m still a VERY VERY inexperienced programmer. Here stays the idea for the interested people) but I hope newcomers investigate more about it, for example, if Buzan reported his results after going through the experience or if he’s still learning the language and of course try the method themselves and report the results.

If my MEMORY doesn’t fail I think Mr. Buzan said that he could finish learning spanish in 3 months, he also talked about indispensable things (which are common to AJATT) like immersing yourself TOTALLY in the target language.

In my opinion, the mind map method is better than the SRS not only ’cause it contains images(SRS items may also contain images) but also ’cause the words are linked to images, images linked to each other, synonyms linked to the same image, etc..
I think it would make an harmonious picture of a language.
Besides, since Mind Maps improve memory drastically (instant recognition) in many things, why not use them for words of a new language?

A mind map can be made with software so one doesn’t have to use gigantic stacks of paper.

Anyway, what are your (everyone’s) opinions on this?

Don’t be afraid about forgetting stuff. If your SRS timing is set up correctly, you’re forgetting about 10% to 20% of every review anyway. The thing is knowing “only” 80% of 8000 things is better than knowing 99% of 1000 things. Just pace yourself. In time, what you remember is spaced out far enough that you begin finishing daily reviews faster. Again, add new stuff if you have enough allotted time left over.

Put it this way: Marathon runners do not run at a 100m dash pace, as the Marathon would be over in like what, an hour? How can you sell enough “Goo”(tm) in only an hour to pay advertising costs? No, pace yourself for that 26 mile run. But we’re not even talking a marathon. We’re talking 2 miles a day, every day, for 500 days. If you miss 3 days, don’t try to make them up by doing 8 miles. Just do 2 miles and carry on. The goal is not going anyway. PACE YOURSELF. Luke didn’t run around Daggabah with Yoda on his shoulders TWICE at a sprint (it’s true, look it up yourself in the novel adaption), he paced himself with the Force. You can too.