This thread is to both show my own system and to hear about other systems that have worked effectively.

I’ve used a few different ones over the years, and have recently switched to one that I think will be most effective for me.

This is pretty similar to Anki in a way, but is a bit more stratified and predictable, and thus measurable.

Here are the steps.

A:

1) I take a deck of flashcards that I don’t know or don’t know well. Lets say 25-50, or less, depending on what you are comfortable learning in one sitting. This is the Starter Deck.

2) I make packets of 5-7 at a time, read each one in English and try to come up with the Japanese. Obviously if I don’t know them I’ll get them all wrong the first time. Then I go through them a second time. If I remember one I make a little light mark in pencil on the Japanese side of the card indicating that I got it correct. If I don’t get it, I don’t mark the card. I keep doing that until there are five marks on the back of all the cards in that little packet. I will also often erase all the marks on the card if I get it wrong, so I’m essentially continuing until I get all the cards correct 5 times in a row, that’s optional.

3) I set that packet aside and do the same thing to the next packet. At the end of each packet I will also do a quick review of the previous packets to make sure I remember them. If any cards are giving me trouble I will set them aside and at the end of all the packets will redo the 5 marks with the new “trouble” packet, and specifically try to come up with some mnemonic device to help me remember the trouble cards.

4) Once all the packets are done with their five marks (or ultimately ten marks for the trouble packet), I make a little light pencil mark in the upper left corner of each card and I wrap them up with a black colored hair band. This becomes my Daily Review deck.

B:

1) Every day I take out the Daily Review Deck (black hair band) and go through each card, reading the English and coming up with the Japanese.

2) If I get the card correct I put another little light pencil mark at the top left of the card and move on to the next one. If I got it correct, I’m done with that card for the day, so I only go once through the whole deck. So at this point all the cards I got correct should have two little pencil marks in the top left corner.

3) Each day I do the same thing until each card has 5 pencil marks in the upper left corner.

4) Cards that reach five marks in the upper left hand corner are now marked with a small, light pencil mark in the bottom right corner, and I wrap them with a red hair band. This now becomes my Weekly Review Deck.

5) If I get the card wrong, instead of adding another pencil mark to the left corner, I erase the pencil marks that are already there. Even if there are already four marks (meaning I’ve got the card correct in 4 daily reviews), I erase them all. I still have one more chance on the card though, as I still keep that card in the Daily Review Deck.

6) If I get a card wrong that has no marks in the upper left hand corner, that means I got it wrong the previous day as well, it gets booted from the Daily Review Deck, as I obviously need more than just a daily review of it.

C:

1) The Weekly Deck now works the same as the Daily Deck, but instead of reviewing it every day, I review it one day each week, probably best to choose a day that you have some extra free time.

2) If I get the card correct I make another little mark on the bottom right corner. Once a card has 5 marks (meaning I’ve got them all correct in 4 weekly reviews), I put a little mark in the bottom left corner and wrap them with a white hair band. This now becomes my Monthly Review Deck

3) If I get the card wrong I do the same as the Daily Deck, and erase it’s weekly markings. Next week it won’t have any weekly marks so if I get it wrong again it gets booted from the Weekly Deck.

D:

1) I now do the same thing with the new Monthly Review Deck, but I choose one day per month to review this deck, and put a new little mark in the bottom left corner each time I get a card correct.

2) Once again I only review the deck once. If I get it correct it gets a mark, if I get it wrong it looses any marks it has, if it doesn’t have any marks, it gets booted from the monthly deck.

3) Since new cards will be entering the monthly deck on random days, I make sure to get at least 3 marks on each card. The first mark is for entering the Monthly Deck, the second mark might actually be made only 3 days or less after it entered the Monthly Deck (you might have added it on the 28th and you do your monthly reviews on the 1st). So the third mark will definitely be a month after the second one.

This is nearly the end of the line, so at this point, instead of getting a specific number of marks after 3 for each card, I let go of my cold Vulcan logic and go on feelings. @@!

4) Once a card has it’s 3rd mark I know I remembered the word without reviewing it for a whole month, so it’s definitely in my long term memory. But I need to now figure out if it’s solidly there or not.

5) If I immediately get the word correct I will retire that card from reviews. I take all of these cards and wrap them in a pink hair band, eventually having multiple stacks of these. ^_^

6) If it takes me a bit to remember the card, I might give it a mark and see if I can remember it next monthly review. If I think I’m having a lot of trouble with it, I will demote it to whatever review deck I feel it needs to go back to.

I do the same with the cards that get booted from any of the other decks, putting them back wherever I feel they need to be.

Any card booted from the Daily Deck obviously gets put back into the Starter Deck. As cards from the Daily Deck graduate to the Weekly Deck, the Daily Deck will get smaller, so I simply add as many new ones as I feel the need to from the Starter deck by repeating step A. So the Starter Deck will be composed of a mix of new cards and old cards that were booted from your Daily Deck, or other decks.

As for the pink hair band deck, you can do what you want with it. Either keep them around and every once in awhile review them to see if you still remember them, or you can burn them, or when they get big you can chuck them at your friends, and say, “You feel that!? That’s the power of my Japanese knowledge! Booya!” Whatever floats your boat. ^_^

So if you actually made it through all that, I’d like to hear any methods you use, suggestions, etc.

• This topic was modified 12 years, 4 months ago by  Aikibujin.
• This topic was modified 12 years, 4 months ago by  Aikibujin.