I’ve been using SRS on and off since 2006 and this post addresses one of the key failure modes I’ve seen in SRS usage—they tend to be fantastic for discrete pieces of information, like the names of capital cities, the pronunciation of various symbols or various physical constants.
Most my usage of SRS in the early days was languages. For that domain, SRS is useful for learning an alphabet (or syllabary), for scaffolding enough common words to start understanding graded readers and for a few other tasks.
They’re terrible as a primary learning strategy, though! Too much of language is highly nuanced and context dependent and the only way to absorb all the unwritten rules, the common collocations and the precise boundaries of word meanings is through extensive input. This means encountering the same words and structures in countless different variations and contexts, not the same few sentences drilled repeatedly (at least past the beginning stages).
By paying attention to the specifics of learning math and tailoring the SRS to match it, it’s possible to make a far more efficient system than anyone could with an Anki deck. I’d love to see similar efforts in other subjects!
I’ve been using SRS on and off since 2006 and this post addresses one of the key failure modes I’ve seen in SRS usage—they tend to be fantastic for discrete pieces of information, like the names of capital cities, the pronunciation of various symbols or various physical constants.
Most my usage of SRS in the early days was languages. For that domain, SRS is useful for learning an alphabet (or syllabary), for scaffolding enough common words to start understanding graded readers and for a few other tasks. They’re terrible as a primary learning strategy, though! Too much of language is highly nuanced and context dependent and the only way to absorb all the unwritten rules, the common collocations and the precise boundaries of word meanings is through extensive input. This means encountering the same words and structures in countless different variations and contexts, not the same few sentences drilled repeatedly (at least past the beginning stages).
By paying attention to the specifics of learning math and tailoring the SRS to match it, it’s possible to make a far more efficient system than anyone could with an Anki deck. I’d love to see similar efforts in other subjects!