Going through Anki, I realise that i’m forgetting a bit more then half the cards from the previous day, is that normal?

7 comments

1. The timing is a little slow but I have never studied both reading and definition in a single card so I wouldn’t know. I did different decks for those. You might find allowing your mind to focus on singular aspects to be easier to get though.

2. If you’re just shuffling through cards, and not reading any material using these vocabulary terms, then yeah you’re going to forget a good amount of them. Though, even with supplementary reading, you’re going to forget new words a few times before they stick with you. Half of remembering is forgetting and looking it up again.

   If you are taking a long time with reviews I’d suggest limiting your review time down to a short period, maybe 20 minutes, and using the rest of your time to **read something.** News articles, kids stories, you could even start a Japanese exclusive twitter just so you can read some tweets. You will benefit more from, and remember more, if you read. I guarantee it.

3. No sorry to be the one to tell you but, forgetting 50%+ of your cards is way too high.

   Also 70 reviews shouldn’t take 40 min, like basically, 150 reviews should be like 25-30 min

   My guess (tell me if this is wrong?) is that you aren’t learning the words before reviewing them in Anki. You are just skipping straight to review phase.

4. I personally wouldn’t sweat retention rates for new cards as long as you’re otherwise able to progress cards at a steady rate, and retention is actually improving as cards mature.

   If not, you might want to consider switching up your method of study or rate at which you’re introducing new cards to keep your review load manageable over the long term.

5. You may want to check out different decks to see if those have cards that are more memorable for you.

   Specifically, there are many variations on the Core 2k idea. Some decks have minimal cards, more geared to pure recognition with only one card for each word. Some have as much as 5 cards per word, which gives you much more exposure to the word, which, at least for me, greatly helps learning the word.

6. For me personally, the core 2k was not the most beginner friendly deck. I’ve experimented with multiple decks, including the refold jp1k deck. The only one that works effectively for me is Tango N5. Refold is not very good because it doesn’t give you the vocab in sentences, it will just give you the word. Some people love it and can do it, but I personally cannot. Core 2k was just too much because it uses some fairly advanced vocab and grammar structure if you are a beginner. At this point in my learning it’s not awful, but still not that amazing for myself. I’d say just try some different decks and see what works best.

7. If you’re forgetting cards it’s because you’re not studying, you’re relying on anki to teach you Japanese without putting the work into actually studying the language. There are words that are hard to remember but 50% is not good