I wasn’t particularly good at studying when I was in school, and to make up for this I got really good at cramming. In case you aren’t familiar with the term, the definition of cramming is:

To study hastily for an impending examination

That being said, cramming sucks, and nobody should do it… that is, unless you do it right. I’ve been experimenting with something over the last couple weeks, and I think I’ve come up with a pretty effective study technique that uses cramming.

First, Why Cramming Doesn’t Work

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When you study last minute for something, you’re basically just trying to fill your short term memory with as much info as possible, hold on to it for as long as possible, and then regurgitate that info back onto your test before you forget it (at least, that’s how last minute my cramming always was). As soon as the test is over, you forget what it is you crammed just an hour or two before.

Sure, in school you can take the test and maybe you’ll never need any of this information again. But for a lot of you reading this blog, you’re studying Japanese because you want to and are interested in it. That means doing cheats like this won’t get you very far.

Studying “The Abstract” Is Very Difficult

My idea for using cramming (and please excuse me if everyone already does this… though I’ve never seen it anywhere else before) involves combining cramming with regular flashcard study. Cramming is best used (I think) on small bits of information, like vocabulary, so that’s what we’ll look at in this post.

There’s a problem with learning another language’s vocabulary… it’s abstract. Basically, all these words you have to learn have absolutely nothing to hook onto in your brain (especially if you’re a beginner). In English, you might learn the word cat, and then associate it with groups of other words in your memory (animals, dogs, etc). You already have something in your brain that will help you to remember this English word. In Japanese, it’s the opposite. Each Japanese word, until you build up a sizable vocabulary, pretty much gets stored on its own… if it gets stored at all. Sure, it’ll probably be stored with the English word (so, if you learn 食べます that word will probably be associated with the concept “to eat”), but that doesn’t help you to remember how to say the word or recognize the kanji.

What I’m trying to say is that learning abstract concepts just isn’t the most efficient way to learn anything. It requires way more repetition, and a lot more time. Even then, you aren’t guaranteed to remember anything. You might as well cut a hole in your head to let the information flow out if you’re banging your head against the wall in this way.

The Flashcard Cramming Technique:

Here’s my idea – it combines the best of both worlds. I’ll include an explanation of each point after I go over the process. It’s pretty simple:

1. Take your flashcard list. Identify the 5-10 cards you’re going to study (10 is probably better when using this technique, just because it helps mix things up and adds more time between your “cram cards.”). You don’t want to study more than this many new cards in one session.
2. Pick three of ten cards (can be random, or, if you aren’t feeling confident, pick the simplest looking three).
3. Before you even start studying all of them, cram just these three cards. Do whatever you can to get this information into your short term memory. Pretend you are cramming for a quiz you have no hope for, but you want to get at least a few questions right so you don’t look like too much of an idiot. Try to remember the kanji (if applicable), the pronunciation, the on’yomi, whatever. Basically, pick three things and do some last minute study on them to try and remember as much as possible with them.
4. Study the ten cards as you normally would, while trying to keep the information of three you crammed in your mind.

Here’s why (I think) it works.

First of all, you’re making three of the cards a little less abstract. That means there’s already something in your mind for the three words to hook onto when they show up in your study deck. This helps transition those three words from short term cram memory to longish / long term memory, and that’s good. When you cram for a real test, the answers you answer correctly thanks to your cramming are undoubtedly things you remember after the test (the things you don’t remember by the time you get to the question won’t be remembered, however). Because you’re using this technique in a flash card environment, however, you’re getting repetition. Couldn’t pull up the crammed information the first time? Well, you’ll probably be able to do it the next time, and then it will stick.

There are other benefits as well. Basically, you’re taking a list of ten and making it a list of seven (at least in terms of totally abstract things to study). This means there are fewer things that you have to study the old crappy way. Most likely, you’ll be able to learn and remember three or four of these seven remaining “abstract” cards as well, bringing your total number of cards learned to 6 or 7 by the end of the session. You will need to review them, for sure (any good SRS program will help you do this), but that doesn’t mean you aren’t learning them way more effectively. It just means that the next time you review, you have a way better chance of remembering these things.

In fact, if you’re a TextFugu Member, you might have noticed I’ve been adding this “cramming method” to a lot of the vocab / kanji study lists. It’s a really small change, but I think it could save you a lot of time and a decent amount of grief. I’d say it reduces time and grief by 25-30% and only requires a couple minutes extra work (that is easily won back in the long term). This is all just a hypothesis right now, but if you give it a try, let me know how it goes for you. If you study with flashcards already, I imagine you’ll see improvements right away, the first time you try (and get better at it every time).

If you’re looking for a good flashcard application to use to study Japanese, I’d recommend trying out Anki. It even tells you when you should be studying something again, depending on how well you’ve done with a particular item.

Good luck, and let me know how it goes for you / what you think! You should also tell all your teachers that you just learned that cramming for your tests is awesome.