SRS at Intermediate Level

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Do you use SRS software as a learning tool at the Intermediate level?

Yes - it's indispensable (must have)
16
39%
Some - targeted at specifics (self created cards)
17
41%
Some - generic decks (created by someone else, even if you edit some cards)
1
2%
No - I have better approaches
7
17%
 
Total votes: 41

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luke
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SRS at Intermediate Level

Postby luke » Fri Nov 12, 2021 2:47 pm

Spaced Repetition Software - Anki, memrise, etc - do you make much use of it when you're an intermediate learner?

Yes - it's indispensable (must have) - this doesn't mean it's the only thing you do, just that you feel it's very important.
Some - targeted at specifics - you may create your own cards or decks, etc.
Some - generic decks - use something prepared by someone else.
No - I have better things to do.

Intermediate means you're not what you consider a beginner and not yet what you consider advanced.
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Re: SRS at Intermediate Level

Postby AllSubNoDub » Fri Nov 12, 2021 3:31 pm

I waffled. An SRS makes things faster and more efficient at the expense of making them more tedious and demotivating. So it depends on your goals. You don't need an SRS if you're willing to use lots of input for a long time, which for a lot of people is enjoyable anyway. Definitely don't need it if you live and work in the country (though it can still be helpful to "get up to speed").

I feel like the upper intermediate stage is where SRS shines. No point in learning the first few thousand most common words in an SRS, those will pop up over and over in your courses and beginner literature (and your sentence cards when you start SRSing). I think it's most useful for bridging the "gap" that Arguelles, Nation, and others talk about between courses/textbooks and reaching 98% vocabulary coverage of real literature. Of course, this can also be achieved through intensive reading and other techniques (goldlists, etc.) or if you have access to true graded reading material for this explicit purpose (it exists in English, not so much in other languages).

I've changed my mind again. I'm not sure if I could learn to read Chinese or Japanese to a high level without an SRS. To those brave souls who have, you have my highest respect.


  • Have lots of time, willing to spend years to get advanced, learning the language for fun: Not needed
  • Extremely closely related language: Not needed
  • Live, work, and otherwise breathe in the language: Not needed
  • Need to learn the language as fast as possible: Needed
  • Trying to reach a high level in logographic language (in under a decade): Needed
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Re: SRS at Intermediate Level

Postby german2k01 » Fri Nov 12, 2021 4:22 pm

Definitely don't need it if you live and work in the country (though it can still be helpful to "get up to speed").


I see no advantage of living in a country as far as picking up vocabulary is concerned to an extent where you can call yourself to be proficient in reading and speaking. Based on my observations shopping around at bakeries and stores in Germany apart from a few greetings you hardly pick up any new vocabulary. I just started a part-time job on the weekend in a food manufacturing company. Again, communication is so limited and you pick up a few essential nouns for objects that you need to perform your tasks. Language acquisition process is way too slow. -- You need to put in extra hours on your own. I have learned this lesson the hard way. The real progress I have made in German has stemmed from putting in hours on my own not from interacting with locals. You need to absorb thousands of words to understand all kinds of conversations effortlessly.


I chose option one. I am glad I did not waste my time using it at a beginner stage. I am a full-time student so I could not come up with extra time for adding and reviewing words. In hindsight, it was a blessing in disguise. Rather I focused on reading short stories and made heavy use of DeepL to make sense of the German language and allowed my subconscious mind to soak up the language naturally.

Now I have started using Anki for Sentence Mining; at the intermediate stage. It is yielding fruits.

1. Now the language is sticking better inside my head. Also, I am picking the usage of prepositions and verb tenses naturally.

2. Reviewing words daily helps me retain these words in a mental dictionary of mine. In a spontaneous conversation, when these words are still freshly stored(due to daily review sessions in Anki) it is much quicker to pull them out from my mental dictionary.

3. For example, I picked up a word during my reading; I added it in my Anki collection and then used it in a real conversation. It is the most beautiful feeling to experience that your efforts are not wasted.

To cap it off, it is a very important tool to use at the intermediate stage in order to increase not only your vocabulary range but also recall them actively. The key is; don't be a slave to it; spend 30-60 minutes a day along with other language learning activities.
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Re: SRS at Intermediate Level

Postby AllSubNoDub » Fri Nov 12, 2021 4:45 pm

german2k01 wrote:
Definitely don't need it if you live and work in the country (though it can still be helpful to "get up to speed").


I see no advantage of living in a country as far as picking up vocabulary is concerned to an extent where you can call yourself to be proficient in reading and speaking. Based on my observations shopping around at bakeries and stores in Germany apart from a few greetings you hardly pick up any new vocabulary. I just started a part-time job on the weekend in a food manufacturing company. Again, communication is so limited and you pick up a few essential nouns for objects that you need to perform your tasks. Language acquisition process is way too slow.

To be clear, when I say you live in, e.g. Germany, I mean you become German. You work in German (professionally, not manual labor), you do all your business in German, your friends are German, your spouse is German, etc. I work with dozens of immigrants, most of whom have extremely high levels of English (some, higher than the average native), none of whom even know what an SRS is.

For those that I work with whose English is still bad, they honestly never truly became Americans. For example, there's a large group of Vietnamese engineers who all have lived in the US for decades and all have maybe intermediate level English with lots of mistakes and poor accents. They only eat lunch with each other, all their friends are Vietnamese, they only read and watch TV in Vietnamese, they only speak Vietnamese at home, they only surf the web in Vietnamese, they speak Vietnamese at work every available opportunity, they live in a Vietnamese neighborhood, etc. Basically, English is just an ugly, compulsory tool in which they need some minimum level of proficiency to earn a living. They will never get better and have no desire to get better. If you live in a bubble, it probably is easy to not learn the language of your country, but, with a bit of effort, living in the country also makes it easier to learn and maintain the language at a high level.
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Re: SRS at Intermediate Level

Postby jmar257 » Fri Nov 12, 2021 4:52 pm

I find it advantageous when trying to get that bump from lower intermediate to comfortably reading novels. I create cards from highlighted sentences in Kindle books with one or more words I'd like to stick, and I've noticed it's helped in French (whereas I didn't do it in Spanish until later). If you read the same genre of book (broadly, obviously you should branch out eventually), especially by the same author(s), the same vocab will keep popping up. For me it's just a way to make some of that stick a bit quicker than it otherwise would, so I can go from struggling when reading to more of a flow state quicker.
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Re: SRS at Intermediate Level

Postby einzelne » Fri Nov 12, 2021 5:37 pm

AllSubNoDub wrote:I've changed my mind again. I'm not sure if I could learn to read Chinese or Japanese to a high level without an SRS. To those brave souls who have, you have my highest respect.


  • Have lots of time, willing to spend years to get advanced, learning the language for fun: Not needed
  • Extremely closely related language: Not needed
  • Live, work, and otherwise breathe in the language: Not needed
  • Need to learn the language as fast as possible: Needed
  • Trying to reach a high level in logographic language (in under a decade): Needed


Excellent summary. That's was my said discovery once I reached the advanced level of in English (and later in other languages) — in order to expand my vocabulary in a more systematic way, I had to implement space repetition.

The only thing I would add is that it doesn't have to be SRS per se. Personally, I cannot stand rigid algorithms of repetition and I have serious reservations about them. But you have to increase the repletion of low frequency words somehow, if you want to progress quicker.
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german2k01
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Re: SRS at Intermediate Level

Postby german2k01 » Fri Nov 12, 2021 5:51 pm

Excellent summary. That's was my said discovery once I reached the advanced level of in English (and later in other languages) — in order to expand my vocabulary in a more systematic way, I had to implement space repetition.


Interesting anecdote. It is the other way around. When people reach an advanced level (C-levels on CEFR); They get into more extensive reading and pick up the fewer frequency words by osmosis. It is the same experience of Matt vs Japan; he stopped using Anki when he reached an advanced level in Japanese. Nonetheless, your instance is an interesting case study. May I know how many words did you memorize in Anki when you had already reached a higher level in English? Did you actually benefit more from this memorization activity vs extensive reading? What if you did more extensive reading?
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Re: SRS at Intermediate Level

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri Nov 12, 2021 5:59 pm

I chose the second option:
Some - targeted at specifics - you may create your own cards or decks, etc.

This doesn't mean that I use Anki for all my intermediate languages. I use it for some of those languages. There are some I have learned long before I knew about SRS (even long before I knew about Internet). I usually create the decks myself.

Related topic:
ANKI: How does your Anki use vary at different levels?
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Re: SRS at Intermediate Level

Postby AllSubNoDub » Fri Nov 12, 2021 6:04 pm

einzelne wrote:The only thing I would add is that it doesn't have to be SRS per se. Personally, I cannot stand rigid algorithms of repetition and I have serious reservations about them. But you have to increase the repletion of low frequency words somehow, if you want to progress quicker.

Yes, as I said, there are other options, just not as efficient. The main point of an SRS is to space out reviews so that you're reviewing as infrequently as possible and only as necessary. It doesn't take long to get your reviews spread out over years, so the rigidity is actually working in your favor. That said, Anki, and I'm sure most other SRS's, allow you to use your own algorithm or adjust the algorithm/review intervals in any way you see fit. Any interval system you come up with to review on your own can be implemented in Anki through the magic of software. Advanced users and learners are encouraged to adjust the algorithm as they see fit (usually, to reduce unneeded effort).
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Re: SRS at Intermediate Level

Postby Le Baron » Fri Nov 12, 2021 6:12 pm

On the question of being in the country of the TL: the language very often doesn't come to you in the way you need or want; you have to go to it. It's up to you to make conversation with people, to initiate it. One of the grim facts of life is that people generally only talk to other people they don't know when they want something. In a situation of work you tend to be in the same boat and so the opportunity for equal casual conversation is higher.

In general most vocabulary past ordinary discourse is indeed gleaned from books, TV/films, listening to other people give talks etc. However base level speaking fluency is cemented with a much lower general vocabulary and the entire thing is training of a reflex action, not a memorisation exercise.

I think SRS is good at any stage. In fact I can't fathom the arguments for/against certain stages because they seem not to make any sense to me. You need to learn words and if SRS makes you learn words then you tailor it to your needs at the given level.
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