掲示板 Forums - What's your way of studying Japanese?
Top > 日本語を勉強しましょう / Let's study Japanese! > Anything About Japanese
I picked up most of my vocab through immersion, but it took way longer than it would have had I also used SRS flashcards. Horribly inefficient, but I didn't really care at the time. 
I highly recommend spaced repetition (flashcards) for learning vocab, and especially kanji. For example, I was recently able to read 淘汰 in the wild, which is something I never would have been able to do without SRS. It's just not a word you're likely to encounter often enough to learn otherwise.
I know thousands of words that I'm not able to actually read (because kanji is hard 
), and aside from doing lots of reading, flashcards are pretty much the only way to fix that.
"I don't have a proper structure or schedule"
Start with that. You already have the answer in your question.
And you don't more than what you're already doing. You don't even need to schedule anything for now.
Just note the things you did for a week. And after a week look back: What did I practice this week, what did I not practice.
Once you know that, you will also know where you're stand. And once you know where you stand, you can decide where you want to go.
It start with just that. And there're a lot app or method that make the process incredibly easy. You add a daily or weekly routine + a review once in while. All you have to do is take the habit to check the task after you did it, look at the log during the review and continue.
As for the SRS part, yeah, you're not wrong to not believe in SRS for vocab. It's incredibely bad and inefficient to "learn" a term. But it's also incredibly good and efficient at making you "memorize" terms. And that's why you should consider using it. Not to learn terms but to memorize them quickly. But only for the short/mid-term. Past that, it become inefficient and kinda waste your time. At that point, immersion became necessary otherwise you will just artificially maintain the term and become dependant of SRS. It's also important for nuances. That what you're doing and it's a good thing.
But at the same, you lack repetition and consolidation. Either through a SRS (mainly at beginner level and only as support for intermediate level) and/or structured session (around an ability or a theme). I recommend both. Especially if you're organized and can use SRS to boost your structured learning. Either to quickly memorize term before an session for example or after to consolidate what you learned.
If you're organized enough to implement that kind of system, then yeah, you will learn in a more efficient and effective way. Especially since you don't believe in SRS (I wish more people would doubt SRS because when I see 5 year + that still struggle a lot with Japanese and at the same time, I discovered that they mainly relied on SRS, that kinda hurt...).
But... it's also just a tool that is good at certain things. Don't call a fork a knife and expect that it will cut things... But don't think a fork has no use just because you've only or mainly use a knife so far.
Memorizing a word like 犬 which only means "dog"? You don't need immersion nor to understand the word, it's just "dog" and you just need to memorize. And SRS are the best at that. Memorize a word like 掛ける with its 23 meanings? 23 meanings that are not even meanings but translations on top of that? Well, you can stare as much as you want for month or even years through a SRS system, you will just waste your time. Might as well erase everything except for the first meaning and just focus on memorizing "to hang up". At least you will remember one thing quickly rather than staring at 23 meaning for month or perhaps years. Even if you manage to remember more than one, the translations will mess up your understand, you won't get the nuances because it need to be contrasted in context to others uses or others words or others expressions. And that without a dozens of other learning mecanisms that happen only through immersion.
"Learn" is too big of word for "SRS". "Memorize" on the other hand... It's by far one of the most efficient solution which allow to save you a lot of time too. And once you have more time, you will be able to plan and structure your learning journey in a better way. So I agree... but also agree to disagree =p
PS: Renshuu's best strengh in my opinion is "memorize kanji's or word's Readings". Because readings don't need "understanding". You can put everything in schedule, activate the Kanji <-> Kana for words and the readings for kanji and then, you just have to follow a mindless 5-10 mn daily routine everyday. That's where SRS shine the most. Compressing memorize into a 5-10mn windows where you just trust the process and move without bothering about it beyond that.
For everything else, it's more complicated and not as straight as "I only need to do my review on renshuu, raise my term past level 9 and one day, I will be good at Japanese". Though マイコー did an incredibly good job at compensating SRS inherent weaknesses. I started to really appreciate much more the features he implemented on renshuu... 4 years later, now that I don't need them as much because I'm at the late intermediate stage... 
He also suggest ways to use renshuu occasionaly... That ironically most people don't apply. They prefer to learn "faster" by zooming through their reviews. Their loss when they will reach the intermediate plateau. Just saying if you decide to include more SRS into your routine :D
Top > 日本語を勉強しましょう / Let's study Japanese! > Anything About Japanese