掲示板 Forums - Am I self-sabotaging by excessive use non-default study-vectors?

Someone on reddit posted a learning-progress-report and I chimed in and mentioned how impressive his numbers are and how mine are much lower after a similar time.

Some people commented under my comment that, for the time I've been studying my numbers were really low.

So I elaborated by mentioning what I think the reasons might be.

Like writing out the Kanji, when they come up in my meaning=>japanese vector.

Reply was kinda long the lines of "Handwriting Kanji is completely useless nowadays and WTF is even a vector? Stop overcomplicating and just read!"

Thing is, I did deviate quite a bit from the renshuu-defaults with my settings.

In my vocab-schedules I have:
Kanji question => Kana answer
Japanese => meaning
Meaning => japanese
And then with:
Use sentence questions
Type/write when possible for both Kana and Kanji
Ontop of that I have copied my vocab-schedules to one where I do Listening-questions where there's:
Definition, Kana and Kanji enabled

A typical Anki-deck, like Kaishi 1.5k basically just has: Word (inlcuding Kanji) => Meaning. You just have to think of the answer and that's it.
So a review there is, of course, way faster than anything where I actually write the Kanji.

I know I can emulate that style of review in renshuu too with the right but I thought "I learn much more thoughly, when I quiz myself on doing meaning=>japanese with writing the words."

And about the "just read". I asked them, "How can I possibly read before I know the majority of Kanji?" to which they answered just look up the stuff you don't know. They gave me an example text and ... I didn't know 70% of the words in the first sentence (if you don't count particles).

Accoding to them the ratio should be about 1:3 SRS:Reading/Listening

So I'm now seriously considering to switch off all the vectors except for japanese => meaning, which should dramatically reduce the time I use for my reviews or conversely increase the amount of reviews I can do in the same amount of time. But of course, at the expense of "producing" output.

I wouldn't knock handwriting at all. It is useful for certain situations. There's nothing overcomplicated about what you're doing.

I agree with the above that you really don't need to compare yourself to others. Aesop was a wise fellow. The tortoise and hare applies here. You could be good at short distance running, but you really can't expect that skillset to help you in long distances. Not without stamina.

If it's any consolation, "just read" doesn't really help with educating one about precise context, especially not without knowing and remembering a lot of Japanese. Obviously Japanese has simplicity, but it requires a lot of familiarity to figure things out. Especially when kanji is used in multiple ways, it's easy to teach yourself the wrong way, and too much of that is hard to correct/undo.

People on reddit are rather the ones overcomplicating it. I wouldn't take much stock in what they advise, especially if they have accused you of overcomplicating things when they have no idea what you're talking about. Renshuu isn't a complex system. It's not unlike Anki or anything else I've seen, only that it's less elaborate than other resources.

It's ok to seem like you're falling behind. The important thing is just to keep up the consistency in learning. It doesn't have to be speedy.

​Yeah, I think I'll experiment a bit with limiting the vectors for now and going a bit more "wide" compared to going "tall", which is may be a fitting comparison in that sense.
Those other vectors are not going anywhere and I can reenable them at any point, should I notice I'm unsatisfied with it.

むじな (02月9日, 19:11)

Sounds like you have a perfectly functional recipe for durable learning there. Nothing wrong with trying out new ways, obviously (and changing up learning methods can get you moving when you're stuck in a rut), but what you're describing seems unlikely to sabotage anything. And, unless you have an exam looming ahead, マイペース is exactly fast enough. Are there any faster ways to learn Japanese? Maybe. Who cares? But your message somehow gives me the feeling you know that already.

You're doing good. It's nice to know you're out there, on this journey with us all. Enjoy!

​Your profile is a good example of what I mean though:
Your level is 2.88x mine. Your total mastery is 2.65x mine. But your items is 3.87x mine.

I've been "trying to pave the road before the city exists."

By getting rid of some vectors today I had like 40 reviews less than I otherwise would have had and the remaining ones also were faster due to being easier. So I used the time and added 20 new words and then recursively about 30 new Kanji.

I'd like to point out that levels and mastery stars can be very misleading. If I didn't consistently play a ton of Shiritori, I'd be around 200 levels lower. I also started Renshuu with many years of prior experience, so my stats make way more sense with that in mind.

You get stars and term count when manually setting mastery, so you'd need to also look at "All time" questions count. Even then it's still a guesstimate.

Another example is kanji count. Someone only doing Heisig is going to have a much higher count than someone who's not, but they won't know most of the readings. It's meaningless without context.

The data itself is flawed, so you can't reliably compare progress.

As long as you are consistent, motivated and overall happy, I don’t think it really matters. I assume, if you have more vectors, despite not being that fast, you probably get a better understanding of each term, you properly memorize them, and it will be easier for you in the long run. But also if you have less vectors, you familiarize yourself with more terms on a more general level and will probably get a deeper understanding later on in your learning journey. I think it doesn’t hurt to try everything and then figure out what works for you. At the end of the day you can always adjust things and reach a more balanced approach.