![]() ![]() L2 acquisition was also seen to increase in this study of Japanese students taking the TOEIC. For example, this study found that use of electronic, self-rated flashcards through Anki increased the pass rate of the bar exam by a whopping 19.2%! Another study found that use of Anki was associated with significant gains in terms of L2 acquisition, even in a group that actively disliked using the application. I don’t think self-assessment will get us far due to the difference between Anki and a typical classroom environment, so I took a look at the actual literature on SRS software, which seems to be a ringing endorsement. The fact they can direct check the answers while the students in these analyses couldn’t is big enough, let alone the gap in complexity! In contrast, an Anki user knows the answer the moment they flip over the flashcard, and has a comparatively far simpler time deciding whether that answer they held in their head fits. They’d be asked, for example, to rate their own performance on a math test before getting the mark back. Lastly, I don’t think students in a classroom is necessarily comparable to a learner using an SRS! The students in these studies were 1.attempting to summarize their performance on complex, multi-question tests and 2.did not have access to the answers. These studies also implicitly assume the perfect accuracy of teacher grading, which has in fact been shown to be inconsistent and idiosyncratic. This may mitigate some assessment bias in the field of Japanese-After all, everyone using Anki for Japanese has the goal of learning Japanese, which incentivizes them to grade themselves as accurately as possible so their learning is more efficient. Secondly, as Boud and Falchikov indicate, if an accurate assessment is somehow incentivized, people will assess their performance more accurately. However, this research doesn’t come without qualifiers! First is that both analyses sharply criticize the studies included for a variety of very basic methodological flaws, which may undercut the reliability of their findings a bit. I’m aware of two good literature reviews on the subject in the classroom, and they both come to the same conclusion:student rating moderately-to-highly correlates with teacher rating, but students will still often over- or under-estimate their own abilities, especially when in lower years of school(possibly a proxy for inexperience in their discipline). This (), for example, found an effect size of d=0.42, which is pretty considerable! However, of course, this study pertains to spaced repetition, not self-rated spaced repetition, so we should probably get more specific! ![]() In terms of academic research, there’s solid evidence that SRS systems contribute heavily to learning. I think there’s also plenty of online Anki success stories out there-frankly, I’m surprised to see someone in the online Japanese-learning community who doesn’t swear by it! Jeopardy champions like Arthur Chu and Roger Craig have also dominated the show using programs like Anki. In terms of how I know, I know a large amount of people who’ve reached high levels of proficiency in Japanese, Spanish, medicine, and other areas using self-rated spaced repetition systems. This problem could theoretically be addressed by giving more readings to each word or kanji, but I think that practically speaking, adding enough alternate meanings to cover every possible nuance of a kanji or vocab’s meaning would be incredibly labour-intensive, and some would probably still be missed. Secondly, systems like Anki and Memryse are entirely self-rated, and don’t have a rash of people highly rating cards they don’t really understand to warp-speed through their decks. Firstly, we’re all adults with the self-control to dedicate ourselves to learning a language, so I think the userbase can be trusted not to use an override button except in cases where they genuinely got the kanji correct. I understand some people may see the potential for abuse here(people misunderstand cards but mark them right anyways to speed through levels), but I’m not sure about that. I’d appreciate the option to simply press a button to make the program re-mark it as correct. The same problem exists in the case of small typos, which can set back an item you otherwise understood. As an example, I’ve spent over a month with one kanji because I keep writing “congratulate” instead of “congratulations”. You’re locked to a specific set of definitions or interpretations for every vocab or kanji, and even if you submit something that’s as accurate as, or a synonym for, the given readings, you still get the item wrong. I think one of the biggest issues with WaniKani, as much as I like the platform, is the lack of user empowerment. ![]()
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