Clarity With Distance

Whoa. I got a late start today on my Anki routine, and was surprised to see that an update was available - and what an update! Apart from some slick aesthetic changes, Anki now offers some tidbits of review information when you start it up, as well as the options to set a time limit, and question limit! Timeboxing straight outta the box, folks. I don't mind using an external timer, but this is just too sweet. Not to mention a question limit, which will seriously help me to stop being lazy and do 100 Heisig reps every day. Heck, I could even set a time limit and question limit. The best SRS application just got better, somehow.

I really haven't had a lot of time to study over the past few days, but business willing, I'll be back in full swing tomorrow. Rather than adding new material to my sentence deck, I've been exploring iKnow's application, which is surprisingly well developed and effective (at least as far as vocabulary-building goes). It doesn't really function like an SRS, but it does seem to reintroduce older words regularly, so at least it has the right idea. Sort of reminds me of the DS My Language Coach line of "games", but without the annoying crap and a lot more straight to the point.

I think I'm gonna stick with iKnow while concurrently reviewing sentences in Anki, at least until my vocabulary is a little better. As I mentioned previously, I'm just having a tough time right now, especially with getting vocab to stick. This could be for any number of reasons, including iKnow's somewhat longer sentence length (often breaking 10 characters, sometimes going well over that) or impatience on my part. And it's not like my brain is completely rejecting any and all vocab, as I've been able to learn and retain a few hundred words up to now, and I continue to do so! Just... at a much slower rate, lately. If spending a little extra time with iKnow can help all of this stuff stick, then it's time well spent.

Yeesh, let's hope I can stick to a concrete plan by this time next week.