ImpasseTime for another update on my
French learning progress. I am struggling a bit in the moment.
I have grown a bit tired of
Anki lately, and stopped adding new words to my active deck for a while in order to reduce the amount of daily reviews from about 200 to less than 100. This feels much more sustainable. I have been wondering why my tolerance level for Anki is so terribly low, and have identified two reasons:
1) Quite obvious: This is intense studying, not leasure. I have become less and less tolerant to stress in the past decade, and Anki turns language learning into work. I have been spending parts of my weekends with groundwork for a research project (and hopefully a future publication), which is fun and enjoyable, but also energy-draining. Anki on top of this is quite the challenge.
2) Every single review is a tiny exam situation, and I just hate exams. Have always hated them. It may sound stupid, but there is a tiny piece in me that feels completely stressed out when I do not know a card, and which screams "FAILURE" when I have to click on the button on the left.
This is all unfortunate, because I love the efficiency of SRS, and I believe it is a key contributor to successful learning. Especially the intense grammar drilling since last summer has done wonders to my French.
Furthermore, the inability to speed up with Anki has now started to affect my
reading, too: I finished Harry Potter VII and started with excitement the book I had been longing for in the past weeks: "Ce qui ne me tue pas" (D. Lagercrantz) - Part 4 of the Millenium saga. Unfortunately, there were annoyingly many unknown words on the first page already. I hate not being able to add cards to Anki that I find worth learning, but then I do not want to build an endless queue either. So I searched for easier stuff. "Doctor Who: L'horloge nucléaire" promised just the leasure reading I was looking for. Boy, was I mistaken
With up to 2% of unknown words, the second half has meanwhile become n+x>>1 for me, which is quite annoying. (Part of me is just wondering, however, whether this is just my low tolerance level right now). So with the queue now still growing, I need to stop reading soon - or change strategies.
Thoughts on exit strategiesI do not want to give up on Anki, but I have to dial down the stress caused by SRS. Obviously, the reviews need to become easier (and less). I am currently pondering about two strategies:
a) Change in the decision process if vocabulary is worth SRSing. I have been thinking about this anyway, read a lot in old threads here and at HTLAL, and realized that the selection logic becomes highly personal in the upper intermediate level. What do I want to do with the language when I
am feel "operational"? If I am content with solid non-academic B2 level of speaking and writing, should I maybe stop learning L1->L2 and switch to the much easier L2->L1? For some of the cards maybe if not all?
b) Create a new "Look and click" deck. Do what it says. No exam, no pass or fail, just pure exposure. When I am ready (= when the reviews of the learning deck are down to a bearable level), I can "forget" some cards and move them to my learning deck. At that point in time, the pass rate of the "new" cards in the learning deck is probably much higher.
I am tending towards option b tonight, mostly because it only tweaks the current system but does not disrupt it. Before I decide, I need to think a bit more about the unanswered questions in option a.
(EDIT because of typos)