I
grew up in a rural area in Florida, which meant that I had my fair
share of menial outdoor labor - such as taking a wheelbarrow around
the yard and loading it up with storm debris after a hurricane. What
does this have to do with learning Japanese? Well you might think of
Anki as a wheelbarrow. Your sentence gathering efforts are much like
my debris gathering efforts - you “walk” through media until you
find something, stop to add it to the barrow, and then you keep
going.
As
you continue on, the wheelbarrow gradually fills and becomes harder
and harder to lift - you find yourself spending longer and longer
doing reviews. What should you do? Stop adding to your stack of
“debris” and focus on continuing to walk with your load (no new
sentences, just reviews)? Keep adding and put more and more energy
into keeping moving (keep reviewing, keep adding sentences)? What
would you do if you were literally pushing a wheelbarrow? You'd dump
it out, then start adding again. So do the same with Anki.
Unlike
with a wheelbarrow, your sentences aren't just debris that needs to
be moved from one place to another, so it's harder to imagine getting
rid of your effort. I've compared sentences to gold nuggets
before, and in truth both metaphors work. But no matter how valuable
your sentences are, they'll still continue to grow in weight until
you can't budge the wheelbarrow. So how do you “dump” Anki
without wasting all of your hard work? Simple – pick out the
sentences you don't want anymore.
If
you want to continue with metaphors, then imagine that your sentences
start out as gold nuggets. They're extremely valuable and you want to
hold them close, look at them often (Anki reviews!), and never forget
them. As time passes, the nugget stops looking like gold. What you
once held onto so dearly is now nothing more than a pebble to you -
it's boring, old, mundane. So why keep it? Throw it out! We need that
room for more gold!
Okay,
enough metaphors for now. What it all means is that you should
suspend or delete sentences that no longer feel valuable to you. As
you progress in your journey through Japanese, you'll no doubt find
that your sentences overlap, or that your earliest sentences cover
vocabulary that is so common you couldn't possibly forget it. So take
those sentences and get rid of them. Cut down on unnecessary
reviewing so that you can focus on adding new sentences and enjoying
yourself with Japanese media.
If
you need help figuring out what you should get rid of, then pay
attention to how you react to a sentence. If you can't even finish
reading it before you pass it (because you've seen it so many times),
then you probably don't need it anymore. Or if you find yourself
putting off reviewing because of a sentence, or groaning and wanting
to quit when you encounter a sentence, then you should throw it out.
Remember, the most important thing is to keep moving and never lose
contact with Japanese - so lighten the load and make it easier on
yourself.
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As a former blogger who still followers your posts here, I just wanted to say thanks this has really been a useful resource.
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