Now that we're through the exams, I'm going to be away for a few days so I won't be reviewing kanjis nor vocabulary. Th problem is that terms will be added to the review lessons taking them to stratospheric lessons. Yesterday I only had 500 words to review, today it says I have 1000, in a week I'll have something like 4000 per day... Is there a way to stop that without erasing the schedule?
Not currently, no. I have debated this problem with myself for months, years now. While I see the advantage in the situation you are pointing out, 'freezing' the schedule would...defeat one of the mechanisms of spaced repetition learning. Let's say such a feature existed; would you simply want to to freeze everything, prevent you from taking the schedule, then....when you unfreeze it, the numbers would start up again as if time hadn't passed by?
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13 years ago
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Since mastery levels don't degrade over time, wouldn't you eventually catch up anyway? There must be a point when the system can't add any more questions for the next day, because it is still waiting for you to answer all of them for every vector. Or can each question "roll-over" on itself? In other words, if I don't answer a particular vector for a particular term, the system can never ask it to me again, right? Because it is still waiting for a response from the first time it asked me, and since I didn't pass or fail it, it has no way to predict when to ask me the question again.
Of course even if this is true, you are still talking about at least a handful of vectors multiplied by hundreds, or more likely thousands, of terms...so maybe at some point it might be easier just to kill the schedule and start over...
On a side note, does the SRS algorithm take into consideration whether you answered the vector correctly the very first time it presents it? As in, if you got it right the first time then it figures you already knew it somewhat, and pushes it farther back in the queue? If it does, then it seems like you could start the schedule over again, and assuming you still knew a majority of the terms, you could just blaze through it and only the ones you missed would be asked again immediately (the next day).
Sorry for not replying earlier, I'm already away and don't connect that much. What I would like is a button that pressed, would stop all updates from all the schedules. And as you say, when you unfreeze it, the numbers would go up again as if the time hadn't passed by.
I understand the purpose of the spaced repetition, but if like in my case the number of terms go up to 2000 or more a day, I just won't do it. 2000 terms already mean something like 2-3 hours, and I doubt cramming vocabulary for longer than that is of any use.
I guess I'll have to erase the schedule and create it again. That's ok for the jlpt lists, but if I've added terms manually, they will be lost.
If I freeze the account, go away for a week and in the meantime I forget a term, the next time I'm tested for that term, I will probably fail and it will reappear the next day. That would be ok with me, but if after a week I have to test something like 4000 terms a day, I think it's too much. I will probably not have that much time and that would completely mess the whole system.
For the moment, I'm going to erase one of my schedules as valymer says.
even if you get up to a backlog of 4000 terms, you don't necessarily have to clear that out all at once - you can pace yourself and only answer maybe 100 more terms than you normally would per day and gradually clear that backlog out. That's what I do whenever I go away - I look at all those schedules with thousands of terms listed and I start feeling so very overwhelmed, so I just set the # of terms per quiz a little higher than normal, and do one quiz per schedule every day until things are back down to normal ;)
That's what I've done in the past but there are two reasons why I think the freeze would be better.
The first is because the schedule is supposed to tell you how many terms you have to study on that day, if I ignore it then there is no point of it being there in the first place.
The second is that if I add new terms, they won't show up until I've gone over those 4000+ terms. I can several schedules and work on the ones I'm more interested in, but I like to have a schedule in which I have all the terms I've studied . Plus, there wouldn't be any difference between having one schedule with 4000 terms or ten schedules with 400 terms each.
There could be another option though, and that is that it were possible to reduce the terms to be reviewed the following days. The way I would do it is that if one day you feel inspired and do go over those 4000 terms, instead of getting a message of "you've done all the terms for the day" you got the option to continue quizing. I still prefer the freezing option though
[quote author=jazzmic link=topic_id=5366&post_id=26338#rmsg_26338 date=1341541981]
The first is because the schedule is supposed to tell you how many terms you have to study on that day, if I ignore it then there is no point of it being there in the first place.[/quote]
True, but the point of setting up a schedule is also to encourage you to keep up with the materials on a regular basis ... I think the fact that terms are continually added works as a very good incentive to study regularly ;) If there was a way to freeze a schedule, I think it would be tempting to stop it for whatever reason (life always seems to supply plenty of reasons). I actually like that on days when I'm too tired or busy to empty out my schedules, that I'll have to do that much more the next day (or days). It gives me that extra push, and I don't mind that it's somewhat uncomfortable & overwhelming to play catchup ... it's what I get for slacking :-[
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[quote author=jazzmic link=topic_id=5366&post_id=26338#rmsg_26338 date=1341541981]
There could be another option though, and that is that it were possible to reduce the terms to be reviewed the following days. The way I would do it is that if one day you feel inspired and do go over those 4000 terms, instead of getting a message of "you've done all the terms for the day" you got the option to continue quizing。[/quote]
Skritter has something like this. From their Site FAQ:
[code]There are no huge hidden secrets to getting caught up on reviews, and by far the best thing you can do is to simply push through the reviews until you are back to a manageable daily load again. You can't "suspend" Skritter's scheduling because you can't simply "suspend" the degredation of material in your memory, and Skritter models that process mathematically.
With that said, there is a feature built to help you spread the reviews out so you don't get overwhelmed. It's called the "Save Me" feature, and you can find it on the tool bar on the left side of the My Words page.
Just click it, specify over how many days you want to spread your reviews over, and click the "Save Me" button. Remember that spreading out the reviews doesn't actually help you staunch your forgetting. It's mostly to improve morale and get you motivated to dive in again. You'll have even more reviews total over the time period you specify, so get ready to Skritter a lot![/code]
[quote author=多美子 link=topic_id=5366&post_id=26340#rmsg_26340 date=1341546121]
True, but the point of setting up a schedule is also to encourage you to keep up with the materials on a regular basis ... I think the fact that terms are continually added works as a very good incentive to study regularly ;) If there was a way to freeze a schedule, I think it would be tempting to stop it for whatever reason (life always seems to supply plenty of reasons). I actually like that on days when I'm too tired or busy to empty out my schedules, that I'll have to do that much more the next day (or days). It gives me that extra push, and I don't mind that it's somewhat uncomfortable & overwhelming to play catchup ... it's what I get for slacking :-[[/quote]
True, if there was the option to pause, you would just become lazy and not do it often. I like the fact I have to do it everyday even though I may not want to sometimes but in a good way I am discplining myself for my own benefit to learn Japanese.
For me is different, I trust I will have the discipline to come back and study when I can. There is no point for me in cheating, what I want to do is to improve japanese and not the site's stats (although they're cool too, don't get me wrong)
I agree you tend to forget things really fast if you don't use them, but an overgrown schedule is equally useless to me. Plus it also affects new schedules.
To me is not an incentive the number of terms that get added a day, a schedule to me is important because it keeps an order in wich the terms appear. So I wouldn't really care it says I have 4000 terms to review in that day were it not because if I add new terms, those won't show up until I've been over the said 4000 terms before.
Come to think of it, maybe what I want is to be asked first the unseen terms for the day, then if you want do the 4000 terms and finally, if there are any unseen terms left and you are willing, to be able to continue with those. Hm... but no, I still think a freeze is better :-[
[quote author=jazzmic link=topic_id=5366&post_id=26343#rmsg_26343 date=1341577545]
To me is not an incentive the number of terms that get added a day, a schedule to me is important because it keeps an order in wich the terms appear. So I wouldn't really care it says I have 4000 terms to review in that day were it not because if I add new terms, those won't show up until I've been over the said 4000 terms before.
[/quote]
I might not be understanding right ... but what I've noticed is that even if I have a bajillion terms to study, I will still get new terms introduced at the beginning of each quiz (when I have it set to do so), and it also seems like new-ish terms with very low mastery levels will show up in the quiz first. It's only after I've almost emptied the schedule that I start seeing a bunch of level 8 terms.
If I have new terms set to introduce as a range of numbers (for example, "allow 2-6 new terms per quiz") then it will introduce a number of terms at the lower end of the range whenever I already have a lot on my plate ... but it will start introducing numbers at the higher end once I've got the schedule cleaned out a bit more. I could be mistaken, but it *seems* like that's the way it works :)
[quote author=jazzmic link=topic_id=5366&post_id=26343#rmsg_26343 date=1341577545]Come to think of it, maybe what I want is to be asked first the unseen terms for the day[/quote]
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but wouldn't this make it even harder to clear out a backlog, since you'd be continually adding to it - and, if you didn't get through all the terms ready for review, you wouldn't necessarily see newly introduced terms at an appropriate interval either? I definitely wouldn't want to add new terms if I already had too much on my plate; I think my overall retention would be much lower.
I've just checked, the new terms are added after reviewing the due terms.
I agree with できるだけさん, adding them first would make it harder to clear the backlog so I stay with the freeze.
I suppose that ultimately, there is always going to be a way to 'cheat' yourself with whatever tools are available. If having a freeze would allow some users to just continuously put it off, then I would say that even without the freeze feature, they would find another way to make things work out for them.
However, if you have the 'discipline' to not abuse it, and use the upcoming numbers to keep you motivated, then it's addition would not be a minus.
However, if the 'too many terms' would indeed keep you from studying altogether, then not having the feature would definitely lead to some people not studying.
The site does try it's best to keep you 'honest' with yourself, but it cannot watch over everything. It's similar to the usages of so many tools in life - they can be used for 'good' or 'evil' (those terms being very loose in meaning).
If a new feature could help some users, wouldn't affect some users (those uninterested in it), but negatively affect some users who aren't being honest with their true study intentions, I don't think it would be a good thing to not implement that feature to satisfy the last group (and sacrifice the first).
Does any of that make sense? It seems a bit...cluttered to me, but I don't have the time to really think through the best way to say it. I'm also not saying this will be easy to implement (might be easy, might be extremely difficult).
I know it's a little late for a reply, but maybe there are more people going on vacation ;)
[quote author=jazzmic link=topic_id=5366&post_id=26335#rmsg_26335 date=1341532680]
I guess I'll have to erase the schedule and create it again. That's ok for the jlpt lists, but if I've added terms manually, they will be lost.[/quote]
Aren't the jlpt lists quite easy to remove from the scedule without erasing the whole thing? You could do (have done) that, do your trip, come back, go through you accumulated 'personal' terms and gradually add the old jlpt terms. During the addition of your 'old' content (I guess) you are still able to add your 'new' terms without waiting for them until you have cleared all '4000' but maybe only 400 (whatever your dayly throughput might be).
All I wanted to express here (if I wasn't able to get my thoughts straight) is that I think that you can 'manually' implement a suspend mechanism, although I don't say it's that easy as just clicking a button.
On the other hand, I do have a question wich is quite the opposite:
Is it possible to get a function which 'skips' days for the scedules? I'm quite new, here and with learning japanese, so I have quite a small number of terms to learn. But sometimes when I'm finished with the scedule, I'd like to keep on going. (I was even playing with the tought of resetting the time when the new scedule is going to be available ;P)
Best
ht
Good timing that you brought this thread back to life. A freeze function is currently available in renshuu beta, and will be available on the main site quite soon.
Sorry - but for the time being, only the 'freeze' feature will be present. I'm not sure I can understand why you'd want to force the schedule forward - the main benefit behind spaced repetition systems is that in minimizes the amount you need to study by spacing out the terms, so if you rush up to the new terms, then it is working against the system.
I realize that the freeze button also does this, but I felt it was a small sacrifice that might keep some people from giving up on a schedule entirely instead of having to deal with (for example) 2 weeks of backlogged terms.
I can understand that, however, repeating the vocabulary many times while it floats around in your short term memory will not help nearly as much as having space in between each review time so that it can transition to long term memory :).
