在课堂上使用间隔重复软件的第二年

本文使用 Zhihu On VSCode 创作并发布

This is a follow-up to last year's report. Here, I will talk about my successes and failures using Spaced Repetition Software (SRS) in the classroom for a second year. The year's not over yet, but I have reasons for reporting early that should become clear in a subsequent post. A third post will then follow, and together these will constitute a small sequence exploring classroom SRS and the adjacent ideas that bubble up when I think deeply about teaching.

这是对去年的报告的跟进。在这里，我将谈一谈我第二年在课堂上使用间隔重复软件（SRS）的成功和失败之处。这一年还没有结束，但我有理由提前报告，这在随后的文章中应该会变得很清楚。第三篇文章将随后发表，这些文章将构成一个探索课堂 SRS 的小系列，以及当我深入思考教学问题时涌现的相关想法。

Summary

摘要

I experienced net negative progress this year in my efforts to improve classroom instruction via spaced repetition software. While this is mostly attributable to shifts in my personal priorities, I have also identified a number of additional failure modes for classroom SRS, as well as additional shortcomings of Anki for this use case. My experiences also showcase some fundamental challenges to teaching-in-general that SRS depressingly spotlights without being any less susceptible to. Regardless, I am more bullish than ever about the potential for classroom SRS, and will lay out a detailed vision for what it can be in the next post.

今年，我在通过间隔重复软件改进课堂教学的努力中经历了净负面的进展。虽然这主要是由于我个人优先事项的转变，但我也发现了课堂 SRS 的一些额外的失败模式，以及 Anki 在这些用例中的额外缺点。我的经验也展示了一般教学中的一些基本挑战，SRS 令人沮丧地指出了这些挑战，但却不容易受到影响。无论如何，我比以往任何时候都更看好课堂 SRS 的潜力，并将在下一篇文章中对它的前景做出详细描述。

Prologue

序言

You might want to at least skim last year's report, even if you've read it before. My job description is unchanged, and my core approach to SRS stayed the same. I will not be going into those details today.

你至少可以略读一下去年的报告，即使你以前读过。我的工作描述没有改变，我对待 SRS 的核心方法也保持不变。今天我就不谈这些细节了。

Also, you'll probably find much of this report disappointing for reasons that have nothing to do with SRS itself and everything to do with me—reasons I will now invite you to understand with a philosophical introspective. If gazing into my navel really isn't your thing, just skip the next section.

此外，你可能会发现这份报告的大部分内容令人失望，原因与 SRS 本身无关，而与我有关——现在我将邀请你通过哲学的内省来理解这些原因。如果你真的不喜欢我的钻牛角尖，那就跳过下一节。

Autopilot years

自动驾驶数年

The commonly appreciated upside of being a public schoolteacher in the United States is having more days off and greater job security than most workers. Less commonly appreciated is that, once you've got things figured out, you probably don't need to put in tons of extra hours. You can mostly leave your work at work.

在美国，作为一名公立学校教师，人们普遍了解到的好处是比大多数工人有更多的休息日和更大的工作保障。很少被人注意到的是，一旦你把事情搞清楚了，你可能不需要投入大量的额外时间。你基本上可以把你的工作留在工作日。

So what do you do with the time?

那你怎么打发时间呢？

Good teachers usually direct a lot of that back to the students. They coach a sport, or sponsor a club. They leave detailed feedback on essays. They tutor.

好的老师通常会把很多东西反馈给学生。他们指导一项运动，或赞助一个社团。他们对论文留下详细的反馈。他们进行辅导。

I've done most of those things, but my personal preference is to reinvest in my core classroom offerings by improving my content and tooling. On top of some smaller tweaks, I usually pick one big project every year that will add a new layer of awesome to what I do. One year, it was better writing mini-lessons and example content to go with them. Another, it was visual vocab slides with real-world example sentences. Twice, it was improved systems for grading and classroom management, facilitated by my hobbyist programming skills.

我已经做了这些事情中的大部分，但我个人的偏好是通过改进我的内容和工具，对我的核心课堂课程进行再投资。除了一些小的调整之外，我通常每年都会选择一个大项目，为我的工作增添一层新的精彩。有一年的项目是更好地编写迷你课程和与之配套的示例内容。另一个项目是带有真实世界例句的视觉词汇幻灯片。有两次，是通过我业余的编程技能，改进了成绩和课堂管理的系统。

Not all such projects are successful. My first management system, for example, was an unworkable mess, necessitating the System 2.0 I brought on line the year after and have used ever since. But lest I drift uselessly on waves self-doubt and shifting interests, I pre-commit to seeing a project through for the year, aborting only if I have strongly compelling evidence that I'm wasting my time.^[1]

并非所有这样的项目都是成功的。例如，我的第一个管理系统是一个无法运行的烂摊子，导致我不得不在第二年上线了系统 2.0，并一直使用到现在。但是，为了避免我在自我怀疑和兴趣转移的浪潮中无用地漂流，我预先承诺在一年内完成一个项目，只有当我有强有力的证据表明我在浪费时间时才会放弃。

Last year, my pet project was the SRS experiment. The daily commitment to card creation, on top of everything else I do, was substantial. For this year, it would have been natural for my project to be a similar commitment to improving those cards and the the lessons that go with them.

去年，我最喜欢的项目是 SRS 实验。在我所做的一切之上，每天对卡片创作的承诺是非常大的。今年，我的项目很自然地成为一个类似的承诺，即改进这些卡片和与之相关的课程。

It didn't happen.

没有发生。

The commonly-appreciated downsides of being a public schoolteacher in the US are low income and emotional weathering. The intensities fluctuate, but the effects are cumulative.

在美国，作为一名公立学校教师，人们普遍认识到的缺点是收入低和情绪化。其强度是波动的，但其影响是累积的。

Which brings us to those years where a teacher pours little or nothing back into their job, pressing “replay” on whatever they did last year and staying relatively detached. I've never heard a teacher use the term “autopilot year”, but every teacher who's been around long enough knows exactly what I'm talking about and has probably had at least two.

这就给我们带来了那些年，教师很少或根本没有回到他们的工作中， "回放" 他们去年所做的一切，并保持相对漠然。我从来没有听说过一个老师使用 "自动驾驶年" 这个词，但每一个工作时间足够长的老师都知道我在说什么，而且可能至少有两个。

I discourage you from judging them for it. A good teacher on autopilot is better for your kid than the flailing rookie who takes their place when they switch careers. Sure, there are bad teachers on autopilot, but you should prefer they stay that way; the only thing worse than a bad teacher on autopilot is a bad teacher who is not detached, and actively imposes on the self-motivated students who might have otherwise learned something on their own.^[2]

我不鼓励你因此而评判他们。一个自动驾驶的好老师对你的孩子来说，比那些转行时接替他们位置的菜鸟更好。当然，也有自动驾驶的坏老师，但你应该希望他们保持这种状态；唯一比自动驾驶的坏老师更糟糕的是，一个坏老师不离不弃，主动强加给那些自我激励的学生，否则他们可能会自己学到东西。

Life happens, and even this job is still just a job. Maybe your kid's teacher seems a bit checked out because they're taking care of an ailing family member. Maybe they're running a home business to fill the income gap left when you voted down the tax override. Maybe they're still reeling from the emotional damage of the student who viciously jabbed at their worst insecurities for most of last year.

生活会继续，这份工作也只是一份工作。也许你孩子的老师看起来有点不在状态，因为他们正在照顾生病的家人。也许他们正在经营家族生意，以填补你投票否决税收超支时留下的收入差距。也许他们还在为去年大部分时间里恶狠狠地刺伤他们最不安全感的学生的情感伤害而感到不安。

Maybe they're like me, not doing any of those things at the moment but certainly feeling pinched by expenses that climb faster than his salary; feeling like he doesn't quite need to switch careers but needs to feel like he has the option; feeling like it's time to reinvent his approach to teaching but unable to execute on his ideas; feeling like he should pour every spare minute into aggressively levelling up his programming skills, and then doing so, on the theory that “If you don't know what you need, take power.”

也许他们和我一样，目前没有做这些事情，但肯定会感到被比他的工资攀升得更快的开支所压制；感觉他不太需要转换事业，但需要感觉他有这个选择；感觉是时候重塑他的教学方法了，但无法施行他的想法；感觉他应该倾注每一分闲暇时间，积极地提升他的编程技能，然后这样做，理论上是"如果你不知道你需要什么，就拿权力。"

So no, I haven't done much of what I set out to do in my SRS goals list from last year. I didn't rework very many of my cards. I didn't take a less linear and more opportunistic approach to introducing new content. I didn't even reduce the number of cards!

所以，有很多我在去年的 SRS 目标列表中设定的事情，我没有做。我没有重新制作很多卡片。我没有采取更少的线性和更多的机会主义方法来引入新内容。我甚至没有减少卡片的数量！

Because, in the end, these tweaks began to feel far too small, like cobblestones on a path terminating in a local maxima where I'm doing “pretty cool” things in my classroom that no one else will replicate. I've been down that road before, and I'm not in the mood.^[3]

因为，到最后，我开始觉得这些调整太小了，就像一条小路上的鹅卵石，终止于一个局部的最高点，在那里我在教室里做着其他人不会复制的“非常酷”的事情。我以前也走过这条路，但我现在没有这个心情。

It's time to go big or go elsewhere, and upgrading myself has felt like the only way to make that happen. Course improvements would have to wait.

现在是大干一场或去其他地方的时候了，而提升我自己感觉是实现这一目标的唯一途径。课程的改进将不得不等待。

Standardized test results

标准化测试结果

State test results for last year's students came back eventually, and were disappointingly inconclusive. Being a brand new test, the reports were sparser than I was used to. There was no “value-added” analysis to show me whether expectations were beat for my particular students (an area I have historically done well in), only a broad comparison to the students of other teachers in my department. My classes' average was only marginally higher than that of our most similar peer classes—a difference I would put handily within the margin of error, as we often seen very uneven distributions of talent between classes. The most noticeable signal was of my classes producing more outlying high scores than would otherwise be expected, but that's a small n.

去年学生的州测试结果最终出来了，令人失望的是没有结论。作为一个全新的测试，报告比我所习惯的要少。没有 "增值 " 分析来告诉我，我的特定学生（我在这个领域历来做得很好）是否达到了预期目标，只有与我所在部门的其他教师的学生进行广泛比较。我的班级的平均成绩只比我们最相似的同届班级高一点——我认为这个差距在误差范围之内，因为我们经常看到班级之间的人才分布非常不均。最明显的信号是我的班级产生了比预期更多的高分，但这是一个小样本。

I'm not going to make up stories explaining why the scores might be disappointing because I could just as easily tell stories that would have explained a stronger signal of success.^[4]

我不会编故事来解释为什么分数可能会令人失望，因为我同样可以很容易地讲故事来解释更强烈的成功信号。

Still, I think it says something that my classes continue to perform with increasingly minimal note-taking and homework. Certainly, the student experience is improved without harming test outcomes. I'm the English teacher students beg to have again (and occasionally manipulate the system into getting). A teacher can be effective without being liked, but positivity has real advantages. Certainly, I enjoy teaching more when my students are having a good time. Creativity and connection-making are also known to be enhanced by a positive mood (at the expense of vigilance and accuracy).^[5]

不过，我认为这说明了一些问题，我的班级在笔记和家庭作业越来越少的情况下仍然表现出色。当然，在没有损害考试结果的情况下，学生的体验得到了改善。我是学生们渴望再次拥有的英语老师（偶尔也会操纵系统来获得）。一个老师可以在不被人喜欢的情况下变得有效，但积极性有真正的优势。当然，当我的学生玩得开心时，我更喜欢教书。众所周知，创造性和建立联系也会因积极的情绪而得到加强（以牺牲警惕性和准确性为代价）。

I can't also help being cynical here, though. It may be that what we do in class simply doesn't matter on the test, because the state is evaluating softer skills that derive more from raw intelligence and pleasure-reading habits than from anything I can teach them.

不过，我在这里也忍不住愤世嫉俗。**也许我们在课堂上所做的一切在考试中根本不重要，因为州正在评估那些更多来自纯智力和快乐阅读习惯**的软技能，而不是来自我可以教他们的东西。

Just before classes started up for the new school year, I was given an impromptu opportunity to present SRS and what I'd done with it to most of the other teachers in my department. They seemed interested and supportive, asking some good questions, including about implementation details for starting up classroom decks of their own.

就在新学年开学前，我得到了一个临时的机会，向我所在部门的大多数其他老师介绍 SRS 和我用它做的事情。他们似乎很感兴趣，也很支持，问了一些很好的问题，包括关于启动他们自己的课堂牌组的实施细节。

Not one of them tried it.

他们中没有一个人试过。

I wasn't surprised, and I certainly don't fault them for it. I'll get more into why in my next post, but over the weeks that followed the main impression I got was that they saw classroom SRS as being at the teacherly equivalent of a low technology readiness level; they were glad someone like me was experimenting with it, and hoped it would become a more obvious win down the road.

我并不感到惊讶，当然我也不会因此而责怪他们。我将在下一篇文章中进一步说明原因，但在随后的几周里，我得到的主要印象是，他们认为课堂上的 SRS 在教师方面相当于低技术准备水平；他们很高兴像我这样的人在试验它，并希望这将成为一个更明显的胜利方法。

I did come close to getting a couple of teachers to at least try SRS for their personal use when I talked about how I was using it to learn my students' names before I had met them—as they had seen me doing between meetings.

当我谈到我是如何在见到学生之前就用它来了解他们的名字时，我确实接近于让几个老师至少为他们的个人使用而尝试 SRS——他们在会议之间看到我这样做。

Names and faces

姓名和面孔

I'm not someone who organically picks up people's names very well; without some kind of a system in place I can go embarrassingly far into the year relying on my seating chart. Pre-learning names with Anki is something I had seen talked about on this forum before, so I tried it.

我不是一个能很好地记住别人名字的人；如果没有某种系统，我可能会在这一年里尴尬地依赖我的座位表。用 Anki 预先学习名字是我以前在这个论坛上看到的，所以我试了一下。

I had five calendar days between the time I could access the rosters for my classes and the first day of those classes. Our district's roster management system has images on file for students that have been in the district for at least a year or so.

从可以访问班级名册到给这些班级上课，我有五天时间。我们区的花名册管理系统有在本区至少一年左右的学生的图像档案。

After subtracting the photoless newcomers and the students I had last year, I had about 120 names I could learn. It was straightforward (if grindy) to use the standard Windows image capture “snipping” tool to paste these images into Anki cards.

在剔除没有照片的新人和我去年的学生后，我有大约 120 个名字可以学。使用标准的 Windows 图像捕捉 "剪裁 "工具将这些图像粘贴到 Anki 卡片上是很简单的（尽管很麻烦）。

I was striving for a high level of automaticity, as well as both first and last name recognition. So I did multiple daily sessions. In total, I spent about 3.5 hours, spread out over that 5 day period. This doesn't include the time I spent making the decks (40 min maybe?) or the much shorter review sessions I continued to do after school started.

我一直在努力争取高水平的自动能力，以及对名字和姓氏的识别。因此，我每天进行多次训练。在这 5 天时间里，我总共花了大约 3.5 个小时。这还不包括我花在制作卡片上的时间（大概 40 分钟），也不包括开学后继续进行的更短的复习会话。

For students who resembled their cards, I could (and occasionally did) greet them by name as they walked in my door that first day, intentionally adding uncertainty to my voice to cut down on the creepiness quotient.

对于那些与他们的卡片相似的学生，当他们第一天走进我的门时，我可以（偶尔也会这样做）问候他们的名字，故意在我的声音中加入不确定性，以减少他们的恐惧感。

There are some obvious inefficiencies to pre-learning. Not everyone looks like their file photo, or goes by a name that resembles their legal name. And rosters tend to fluctuate that first week.

预先学习有一些明显的低效率。不是每个人都像他们的档案照片，或用一个与他们的法定姓名相似的名字。而且第一周的名册往往会出现波动。

Will I do it again? I might. It helped us hit the ground running. Historically, I would pad the first couple days with some independent work just to give me a chance to stare at them, which is awkward for everyone. Name learning also fits with that impending start-of-year mood where I often feel less prepared than I am, and seek out compensating tasks. But 4+ hours is not an insignificant investment, and there were still a lot of names I couldn't know for lack of photos.

我还会这样做吗？我可能会。它帮助我们打好基础。从历史上看，我会在头几天用一些独立的工作来填补，只是为了让我有机会盯着他们，这对每个人来说都是尴尬的。学习名字也符合那种即将开始的年头的心情，在这种情况下，我常常觉得自己的准备不足，并寻求补偿任务。但 4 个多小时不是一个微不足道的投资，还是有很多名字我因为缺乏照片而无法知道。

I think my preference would be to wait for the first day of classes and use an app that has you take a picture of, say, five students at a time holding up name cards, automagically turning this into SRS cards.

我想我更倾向于等到上课的第一天，使用一个应用，让你拍一张照片，比如说，每次有五个学生举着名片，自动把这个变成 SRS 卡片。

Someone go make that.

有人去做吧。

The sapping seduction of legacy cards

遗留卡片的消耗诱惑

Having an autopilot year was disturbingly easy as far as our class Anki decks went. Last year I had made sure to tag everything, and to organize the archives a bit before summer. Pulling out the right cards for a day's instruction this year was thus the work of a few clicks.

就我们班的 Anki 牌组而言，自动驾驶年是令人不安的。去年，我确保给所有的东西都打上标签，并在暑假前整理了一下档案。因此，今年为一天的教学抽出正确的卡片只需点击几下就可以了。

But a wealth of existing cards makes new card creation feel onerous by comparison. Worse, you're reluctant to modify a lesson if it might “break” some existing cards. This could definitely have pulled me towards stagnation even if I hadn't made a conscious decision to coast this year.

但是，丰富的现有卡片使新卡片的创建相比之下显得很繁重。更糟的是，你不愿意修改课程，如果课程可能会“破坏”一些现有的卡片，你就不愿意修改它。肯定会把我拉向停滞不前的境地，即使我今年没有做出一个明智的决定。

There's also a related problem here, which is that it's harder to stay excited about cards you've seen dozens of times. Cracks began to show in the affable MC personality I wear for review sessions. That “apathetic third” of students I talked about last year? It's more like the apathetic supermajority when I haven't brought my 'A' game. The lesson here is a general one, I'm sure: charisma is a poor foundation on which to build a lasting system.

这里还有一个相关的问题，那就是很难对你已经见过几十次的卡片保持兴奋。我在复习课上戴着的和蔼可亲的主持人性格中开始出现裂痕。我去年谈到的 "漠然的三分之一 "的学生？这更像是当我没有拿出我的最佳表现时漠然的超级多数。我相信，这里的教训是普遍的：魅力是建立一个持久系统的糟糕基础。

Missing out: creation

遗漏：创作

The aversion I've felt to making new cards for my students this year is actually kind of funny in light of the fact that I've made some 3,000 cards for my personal use over the same period, and that these, being more technical (programming), were mostly harder to write. I think some of that hesitancy stems from a growing apprehension that I'm not doing students any great favor by writing all of their cards for them.

今年我对为我的学生制作新卡片感到厌恶，这实际上有点可笑，因为在同一时期，我为个人使用制作了大约 3000 张卡片，而这些卡片由于技术性更强（编程），大多比较难写。我认为这种犹豫源于一种日益增长的忧虑，即我为学生写所有的卡片并不是在帮他们的忙。

There is much to be said for figuring out how to take an idea that is new to you and put it into concise form. As I continue to think of ways to reduce the note-taking I make my students do, I'm also cognizant of the fact that I rarely take notes for myself anymore—I just go straight to making Anki cards.

要想知道如何把一个对你来说很陌生的想法变成简明扼要的形式，是很有必要的。当我继续思考如何减少我让学生做的笔记时，我也意识到一个事实，即我很少为自己做笔记——我只是直接去做 Anki 卡片。

But I've also gained a deeper appreciation for the difficulty of creating a truly good card, so much so that I'm hesitant to trust teenagers to do it even remotely well.

但我也对创作一张真正好的卡片的难度有了更深的体会，以至于我不太相信青少年能做好这一点。

So the question I keep asking myself is how to give students most of the benefits of participating in the card creation process without sacrificing the time-efficiency and card quality that come from a professional writing the cards. It's thorny. But having turned it over in my head enough times now, I think I have some answers (which will have to wait until the next post.)

因此，我一直问自己的问题是，如何在不牺牲专业人员写卡片的时间效率和卡片质量的情况下，给学生提供参与卡片制作过程的大部分好处。这是一个棘手的问题。但是，在我的脑海中翻来覆去地想了很多次之后，我想我有了一些答案（这要等到下一篇文章。）

Missing out: free association

遗漏：自由联想

Another benefit they're missing out in is the free association time I get on the exercise walks where I do much of my personal study. Minute-for-minute, I only get about half as many cards done this way, but as I pause reviews to run for a stretch, negotiate challenging terrain, or appreciate my surroundings, I'm also mulling over the cards I've last seen and letting connections form between them—and between anything else I've been thinking about.

他们错过的另一个好处是我在散步锻炼时得到的自由联想时间，我在那里做了很多个人学习。一分种又一分钟，我只完成了一半的卡片，但当我暂停复习，跑了一段路，走了一段具有挑战性的地形，或欣赏周围的环境时，我也在思考我最后看到的卡片，让它们之间以及我一直在思考的其他东西之间形成联系。

This is a strange habit that works largely unconsciously, and one I'm not sure I would have thought to intentionally cultivate but for an older Kahneman quote in my personal deck:

An idea that has been activated does not merely evoke one other idea. It evokes many ideas, which in turn activate others. Furthermore, only a few of the activated ideas will register in consciousness. Most of the work of associative thinking is silent, hidden from our conscious selves.

这是一个奇怪的习惯，在很大程度上是无意识地发挥作用的，如果不是因为我个人卡组中的一句较早的卡尼曼的话，我不确定自己是否会想到*有意地培养这种习惯：

一个被激活的想法并不只是唤起另一个想法。它唤起了许多想法，反过来又激活了其他想法。此外，只有少数被激活的思想会在意识中记录。联想思维的大部分工作都是无声的，隐藏在我们的意识之外。

This year, I've grown to appreciate that the subconscious is a black-box back-office you can deliberately prime with study cards; it will reliably return assorted insights when given enough raw materials and workspace.

今年，我逐渐意识到，潜意识是一个黑箱的后台，你可以有意地用学习卡片来激发它；只要给它足够的原材料和工作空间，它就会可靠地返回各种见解。

I actually added a card I couldn't answer the other day, on a hunch that I might figure it out over the course of a walk once it had popped up a few times.

实际上，前几天我加了一张我无法回答的卡片，因为我有一种预感，一旦它出现了几次，我可能会在散步的过程中弄明白它。

Success.

成功。

How to give students this benefit? That's a tough one. Worth thinking about, though. Worth thinking about… [lowers phone, takes in sunset].

如何让学生得到这个好处？这是一个难题。不过，值得考虑。值得考虑的是……[放下手机，欣赏夕阳]。

Tiers of availability

可用性分级

It's also clearer than ever to me that being able to remember something when prompted is not the only worthy end-goal for a card.

我也比以往任何时候都清楚，能够在被提示时记住一些东西，并不是卡片唯一值得追求的最终目标。

Sure, for some types of information, it is indeed enough that, given a very specific prompt, you can return a corresponding fact. World capitals, for example. Vocab definitions (while reading). Special-purpose algorithms. Usernames and passwords for important-but-infrequently-used services.^[6]

当然，对于某些类型的信息，只要给出一个非常具体的提示，就可以返回相应的事实。例如，世界各国首都。词汇定义（阅读时）。专用算法。重要但不常使用的服务的用户名和密码。

But for most of the information actually worth committing to memory instead of Google, we want it to spontaneously fly out of us without any specific prompting whenever we're in a context where it might be useful. Wise quotations. Multi-purpose algorithms. Vocab words (while writing).

但对于大多数真正值得记忆而不是 Google 的信息，我们希望它能在我们处于可能有用的环境中时，不经任何特定的提示而自发地飞出来。智慧的引用。多用途算法。词汇（在写作时）。

For some information, the most valuable thing it can be doing is bouncing around in your near-subconscious, making itself a target for collision and fusion with other ideas. If you're looking for an analogy to nuclear physics (and why wouldn't you be?) think of this as increasing the neutron cross section of an idea.

对于一些信息来说，它最有价值的事情就是在你的近潜意识中跳动，使自己成为与其他想法碰撞和融合的目标。如果你想找一个与核物理学的类比（你为什么不找呢？），可以把这看作是增加一个想法的中子截面。

For still other information, you want it to retrieve itself instantly as a matter of reflex before you even become consciously aware of it. This is true where speed of recall is critical, and in situations where conscious recognition is unhelpful or a point of failure. Think grammar error recognition. Word fragment meanings. Muscle memory tasks. Implementation intentions. (aka Trigger Action Plans).

对于其他信息，你希望它能在你有意识地意识到它之前，作为一个反射性的问题，立即检索出来。在回忆的速度至关重要的情况下，以及在有意识的识别是无益的或失败的情况下，这是真的。想想语法错误的识别。词汇片段的含义。肌肉记忆任务。执行意图。(又称触发行动计划)。

The thing is, different levels of availability require different rehearsal commitments. I've not seen any explicit support for varied automaticity goals in Anki or the other spaced repetition programs I've played with. The best I can do is try to decide on a review-by-review basis whether I should set the next interval of a given card more conservatively than suggested.

问题是，不同的可用性水平需要不同的排练承诺。在 Anki 或其他我玩过的间隔重复程序中，我没有看到任何对不同自动性目标的明确支持。我所能做的就是在逐个复习的基础上决定我是否应该把某张卡片的下一个间隔设置得比建议的更保守。

I find that cards needing rapid reflexive recall are best kept very short. This lets you review them aggressively without a huge time commitment, and also makes them more likely to bubble out of your head in response to relevant stimuli.

我发现，需要快速反射性回忆的卡片最好保持简短。这可以让你积极地复习，而不需要投入大量的时间，同时也使它们更有可能在相关的刺激下从你的头脑中冒出来。

My existing classroom decks predate these insights, and could definitely use some optimization.

我现有的课程牌组是在得出这些见解之前制作的，绝对可以做一些优化。

Crickets and chihuahuas

一声不吭和吉娃娃

I've seen that the particular mix of students you get in a given class makes an enormous difference in student buy-in.

我已经看到，在一个特定的班级里，学生的特殊组合对学生的认同产生了巨大的影响。

I have one morning class where eyelids hang low, indifference runs high, and we can go several Anki cards in a row without anybody raising a hand. Crickets herald a death spiral where we can't review as many cards in a given period of time, and where don't spend as much time reviewing because the energy falls off more rapidly.

我有一节上午的课，眼皮低垂，漠不关心，我们可以连续过好几张 Anki 卡片而没有人举手。一声不吭预示着恶性循环，我们不能在限定时间内复习那么多的卡片，也不能花那么多时间复习，因为精力下降得更快。

I have another class for whom Anki is the highlight of their day, and they beg to spend a greater portion of class doing it. I can go through 15 cards without needing to call on the same volunteer twice. These students are my little Anki chihuahuas, and to see what would happen I decided early on to let that class stay caught up with with the deck more often, even if it meant cutting into other planned activities.

我有另一个班级，对他们来说，Anki 是他们一天中的亮点，他们恳求用更多的时间来做这个。我可以过 15 张卡片，而不需要叫上同一个志愿者两次。这些学生是我的小 Anki 吉娃娃，为了看看会发生什么，我很早就决定让这个班的学生更经常地跟上这副牌组，即使这意味着要削减其他计划中的活动。

A natural experiment, you ask? Nah. They self-selected, and are my only section of that grade level. Has it done them extra good? I'm not so sure. But I've learned a few things.

你问这是一个自然实验吗？不是。他们是自主选择的，而且是我的那个年级的唯一部分。这对他们有额外的好处吗？我不太确定。但我已经学到了一些东西。

Here comes a new failure mode!

新的失败模式出现了！

Newly identified, at least. I've had a hunch, but now I know for sure that many students see Anki only as a way to get validation for ideas they remember, rather than as a way to re-learn information they had forgotten. This is most visible among the chihuahuas, where a number of students have a reputation for “owning” particular cards, answering them with cultivated panache and expressing indignation if someone else “steals” them.

至少是新发现的。我有预感，但现在我确信许多学生认为 Anki 只是一种验证他们所记住的想法的方法，而不是一种重新学习他们忘记的信息的方法。这一点在吉娃娃中最为明显，许多学生以“拥有”特定的卡片而闻名，他们用文雅的装腔作势回答卡片，如果别人 "偷 "了他们的卡片，他们会表示愤慨。

This is entertaining to preside over, but isn't exactly the point. I'm glad Anki locks in the cards they know, but it seems that if they didn't know the card the first time it came up, they'll probably *never* know it.

主持这个会议很有趣，但这并不是重点。我很高兴 Anki 锁定了他们知道的牌，但似乎如果他们第一次出现的时候不知道，他们可能永远不会知道。

I could draw a couple of lessons from this. 1) That the “vivid memory, card ready” mantra I devised last year is even more important than I thought. 2) Nothing short of pressing the red button will do for a student who has forgotten a fact.

我可以从中吸取一些教训。1） 我去年设计的“生动记忆，卡片就绪”的咒语比我想象的更重要。2）对一个忘记了一个事实的学生来说，只按一下红色按钮是不行的。

Horizontal integration

横向一体化

From that same class of enthusiasts I've seen another pattern emerge. Students strong in cards with a common theme tend to take more interest in other similar cards. They become Grammar Dude. Little Miss Word Fragment. Chief Petty Officer of Words-That-Sound-Vaguely-Like-Genitals.

从同一班级的爱好者中，我看到了另一种模式的出现。对有共同主题的卡片有强烈兴趣的学生，往往会对其他类似的卡片产生更多的兴趣。他们变成了语法老兄。词汇碎片小姑娘。听起来很像生殖器的单词的首席士官。

Alas, this does not seem to help their interest in other categories, and actually seems to work against it. Turns out many of my chihuahuas are actually hedgehogs.

唉，这似乎对他们对其他类别的兴趣没有帮助，实际上似乎还起了反作用。结果发现我的许多吉娃娃其实是刺猬。

Absolute zero

绝对的零

A few of my students have an impressive, empirically verified zero absorption rate. I am not exaggerating. I can compare pre-test performance to post-test performance and find absolutely no improvement, even with easy objective content that we covered extensively.

我的几个学生有一个令人印象深刻、经经验验证的零吸收率。我并没有夸大其词。我可以将测试前的成绩与测试后的成绩进行比较，发现一点改进都没有，即使是我们广泛涉及的简单的客观内容。

SRS has nothing in particular to do with this, but it does shine a soul-crushing spotlight on it. A student can show up every day, take every note you give them, look like they're paying attention over weeks of Anki review… and test exactly as well as if they'd spent every minute in the bathroom doing their hair instead.

SRS 与此没有什么特别的关系，但它确实照亮了一个令人心碎的焦点。一个学生可以每天都来，记下你给他的每张纸条，在几周的 Anki 复习中看起来很专心......而考试成绩却和他们在浴室里做头发的每一分钟一样。

Stuck in neutral

卡在空档

Stand back as I invoke the name of the adversary, She-Who-Will-Not-Be-Inspired, the Angel of Trite, the Rock of our Stagnation, the Blahgiver, the Alpha and the Neutrogena. Her name is Apathy, and she doesn't give a shit.

请退后，因为我引用了对手的名字，不会被激励的她，陈腐的天使，我们停滞不前的岩石，Blahgiver，Alpha 和 Neutrogena。她的名字叫 "漠然"，而且她根本不在乎。

You know how you can zone out and review something three or four times without processing it, but then you realize, kick yourself in gear, and engage your faculties, pushing it into your mind?

你知道你怎么能把注意力集中在某件事情上，复习三四次而不去处理它，但是后来你意识到，你要振作起来，发挥你的能力，把它放在你的脑海里？

You have to care, just a little bit. To keep it up, you have to care a little bit more. It's not always easy to find and sustain that spark of caring, because the learning target might be only indirectly instrumental to your goals. But you can do it.

你必须关心，只是一点点。为了保持这种状态，你必须更关心一点。要找到并保持这种关心的火花并不总是容易的，因为学习目标可能只是间接地有助于你的目标。但你可以做到。

But what if the vending machine stopped carrying your Juice of Sapho? What if you lost your Care Bear Stare?

但如果自动售货机不再有你的 Juice of Sapho 怎么办？如果你失去了你的关爱熊的目光呢？

A large fraction of teenagers lack the ability to direct caring at will. They can be made to understand why they should care about something in school, but there are too many layers of indirection between it and the impulses that can actually move them. You can chalk this deficiency up to short time preference and trouble delaying gratification, if you want. You can even blame the more obvious fact that, at any given moment, a teenager is probably sleep-deprived, hungry, emotionally preoccupied, or some combination of the three. But whatever their reasons, they Just. Don't. Care.

很大一部分的青少年缺乏主导有意愿的关注的能力。他们可以理解为什么他们应该关心学校里的一些事情，但是在这些事情和能够真正感动他们的冲动之间有太多的间接因素。如果你愿意，你可以把这个缺陷归结为短期时间偏好和嫌推迟满足麻烦。你甚至可以指责一个更明显的事实，即在任何特定的时刻，一个青少年可能是睡眠不足、饥饿、情绪激动，或三者的某种组合。但无论他们的原因是什么，他们只是。不。关心。

Some, I fear, are so in thrall to Our Lady of the Vacuous Conception that they don't even know where to find the part of their brain that tries. Maybe they never did. Is it possible? Could some people be born without the ability to mentally engage? I almost feel silly asking, like I'm ranting about a pandemic of philosophical zombies. But I've seen things, all right?

我担心，有些人是如此地被我们的虚空观念的女士所束缚，以至于他们甚至不知道在哪里可以找到他们大脑中尝试的那部分。也许他们从来没有做过。这有可能吗？有些人天生就没有精神上的参与能力吗？我几乎觉得问这个问题很愚蠢，就像我在大肆宣扬一种流行的哲学僵尸。但我见过很多事，好吗？

Where does classroom SRS fit in a dystopian world where the High and Flighty One walks abroad, claiming our youth as her disciples of indifference?

在一个高高在上、飞扬跋扈的人在外行走，声称我们的年轻人是她漠然的门徒的反乌托邦世界中，课堂上的 SRS 在哪里？

It doesn't fit well when the cards will go on without them, as happens when we do Anki together as a class. This doesn't make SRS any worse than all of the other things they won't do (like the things it replaced), but it doesn't make it better, either. I had very good reasons for starting out with a whole-class model rather than a 1:1 model, and those reasons haven't disappeared. But I don't think I can expect SRS to significantly improve the outcomes of apathetic learners without 1:1 learner-app interaction. And I don't want to keep writing those kids off.

当卡片在没有他们的情况下会继续下去时，它并不适合，就像我们作为一个班级一起用 Anki 时发生的那样。这并没有使 SRS 比其他所有他们不会做的事情（比如它所取代的事情）更糟，但也没有使它更好。我有非常好的理由开始使用全班模式而不是 1 对 1 模式，这些理由并没有消失。但是，我认为，如果没有 1 对 1 的学习者应用互动，我不能指望SRS能明显改善漠然学习者的成果。而且我可不想一直把那些孩子们给打发走。

Because brains in neutral can still learn. They just can't do it on purpose.

因为处于中性状态的大脑仍然可以学习。他们只是不能有意这样做

I credit my relative success with lower-tier teens over the years to my pragmatism about this. I try to keep things breezy, sweeping the students along in a gentle flow that washes them through the Zone of Proximal Development and out the other side with a few bits of knowledge surreptitiously clinging to them.

我把这些年来在低年级青少年中取得的相对成功归功于我在这方面的实用主义。我试着让事情变得轻松愉快，以一种温和的方式把学生们带到近端发展区在另一边偷偷地掌握着一些知识。

I said last year that easy cards are important. I also talked about the value of a vivid narrative or experience as a hook for new content. Let me go a step farther now and assert that a good card for an apathetic learner will feel unneeded on creation, because it's only a baby step away from what they already knew and because you pounded it home by way of a narrative so gripping that even the laziest brain couldn't help following it to its conclusion. A card for this will smell like overkill. Hold your nose and make it anyway.

我去年说过简单的卡片很重要。我还谈到了一个生动的故事或经验作为新内容的价值。现在让我更进一步，断言对于一个漠然的学习者来说，一张好的卡片在创造时会觉得没有必要，因为它离他们已经知道的东西只有一小步之遥，而且因为你用一种扣人心弦的叙述方式把它敲回家，即使是最懒惰的大脑也忍不住跟着它走到最后。这张卡片闻起来像是矫枉过正。不管怎样，捏住鼻子也要做。

Everyone will get such a card right on the very first try, but that doesn't make it unnecessary. A vivid implanted memory will replay and refresh itself readily, but only if something prompts it. So it still needs a rehearsal schedule.

每个人在第一次尝试时都会得到这样一张卡片，但这并不意味着没有必要。一个生动的植入记忆将很容易重放和刷新自己，但只有在有什么提示它。所以还需要排练日程。

Neglected, it is the fate of all things to be claimed by the Whore of Babble-On and cast into Outer Wherever with a flash of her indolent smize.

忽视了这一点，万物的命运就是被 "咿呀学语的妓女" 夺走，并在她懒惰的微笑中被扔到了外面的任何地方。

Abort, retry, fail?

中止、重试、失败？

One of my goals from last year was to be more conservative when setting the next reviews of cards. This worked well enough at the start of the year when the decks were relatively small. By second semester, however, we had outrun our tail again, just like last year. Considering that I didn't reduce the number of cards or increase the length of our study sessions, this was inevitable. For every card I kept in higher circulation there was another card languishing unstudied. If you don't keep up with your reviews, the effective size of your deck will always be smaller than its actual size.

我去年的一个目标是，在设定下一次的卡片复习时要更加保守。这在年初牌组相对较小的时候，效果足够好。然而，到了第二学期，我们又撵上了尾巴，就像去年一样。考虑到我没有减少卡片的数量，也没有增加我们学习课程的长度，这是不可避免的。每有一张我保持较高的流通量的卡片，就有另一张卡片被束之高阁，未被学习过。如果你不跟上你的复习进度，你的牌组的有效大小将永远小于其实际大小。

Where I never thinned my deck, the thermodynamics of Anki did it for me. Cool? To the degree that I chose higher-priority cards wisely, this worked out fine. But it added an additional wrinkle to cards on the margins.

我从来没有缩小过我的牌组，Anki 热力学为我做了这个。酷吗？在我明智地选择优先级较高的卡片的情况下，这样做效果不错。但是它给边缘的卡片增加了一个额外的麻烦。

See, due to the way Anki works, when you review a card that is long overdue, if you don't press the red button to re-learn it completely, your only other feedback options set the next review far in the future. I understand the logic: If you didn't know the answer, then why wouldn't you reset it? And if you did know the answer, then it clearly didn't matter that the interval was so long, so why not set the next one even longer?

你看，由于 Anki 的工作方式，当你复习一张早已过期的卡片时，如果你不按红色按钮完全重新学习，你唯一的其他反馈选项就会把下一次复习定在很久以后。我理解这个逻辑。如果你不知道答案，那么你为什么不重新设置它？如果你知道答案，那么很明显，间隔时间这么长显然无关紧要，那么为什么不把下一次的间隔时间设置得更长？

However, these are not great options when sharing a single instance of a deck with a roomful of students. These are also poor options if you're trying to sustain a higher level of automaticity with that card (see the Tiers of Availability section above). Should I press the red button and make it one of the Chosen again—dooming some other card to oblivion if our reviews don't get any longer—or should I press the next button over and kick this card so far back out that it might as well be dead?

然而，当与一整个班级的学生分享一套牌组的单一实例时，这些都不是很好的选择。如果你想让这张卡片维持较高的自动化程度，这些选择也很差（见上面的可用等级部分）。我是否应该按下红色按钮，让它再次成为天选者之一——如果我们的复习时间不能更长，那么其他的卡片就会被遗忘，或者我应该按下下一个按钮，把这张卡片踢得远远的，让它像死了一样？

Even in the case of my personal learning, I think there is room in an SRS for buttons that reduce the next interval on a card without resetting it all the way back to zero.

即使是在我个人学习的情况下，我认为 SRS 中也应该有减少下一个间隔的按钮的空间，而不需要将其全部重置为零。

Red button repulsion

排斥红色按钮

I had made it an explicit goal to reset a card when it was clear we had lost our grip on it. But even when I wasn't worried about time constraints, I still found it very difficult to press that red button. I think this was mostly self-consciousness. Pressing that button means putting the card back in an initial learning mode where, unless you cut the session short, it will come up multiple times again that day. This is by design, of course. But at the front of a classroom, it feels wrong. I blame two factors:

我明确的目标是重置一张卡片，因为很明显我们已经失去了对它的控制。但即使我不担心时间的限制，我还是发现很难按下那个红色按钮。我认为这主要是自我意识。按下该按钮意味着将卡片放回初始学习模式，除非你缩短课程，否则当天它会出现多次。当然，这是经过设计的。但在教室前面，感觉是不对的。我归咎于两个因素：

1. “Vivid memory, card ready” means we get most new cards right on the first try, so a repeated card feels broken by comparison.

1）“生动记忆，卡片就绪”意味着我们在第一次尝试时就获得了大多数新卡片，因此一张重复的卡片在比较中感觉很糟糕。

1. I feel like I'm playing the part of an 18th century schoolmaster leading a class in chants at ruler-point. “Drill and kill” is a catchy phrase today's teachers hear in their heads whenever they use rote learning, because we've been heavily conditioned via our training and Hollywood that this is what Bad Teaching looks like.

2）我感觉自己就像在扮演 18 世纪的校长，在统治地位带领全班同学诵读。"操练和杀戮 "是今天的教师每当使用死记硬背的方法时脑子里听到的一句话，因为我们已经通过培训和好莱坞受到了严重的制约，认为这就是不良教学的样子。

This might be one of the greatest overcorrections in the history of education. I'm not saying we should use unadorned repetition as our tool of first resort, but learning and remembering do not happen without some sort of reiteration going on, and we've made it taboo to use the most direct approach to it. We're like soldiers in a gunfight who have decided we should only kill via ricochets.

这可能是教育史上最大的矫枉过正之一。我并不是说我们应该把不加修饰的重复作为我们的第一手段，但是如果没有某种重复的发生，学习和记忆就不会发生，而我们却把使用最直接的方法作为禁忌。我们就像在枪战中的士兵，决定我们应该只通过跳弹来杀人。

It looks deathly boring to an observer, but, in moderation, most students actually enjoy traditional rote learning. They enjoy the confidence that they will for sure get the information into their head before moving on. They enjoy the validation they get with each chance to confirm that they remember something. They enjoy going with the flow of a whole class doing the same thing.^[7]They enjoy the respite of learning on rails for a change, without any expectation that they take initiative or parse instructions.

在旁观者看来，这看起来枯燥得要命，但是，在适度的情况下，大多数学生实际上喜欢传统的死记硬背的学习。他们很有信心，认为他们在继续学习之前一定会把信息记在脑子里。他们喜欢每次有机会确认自己是否记住了某些东西时得到的验证。他们喜欢随大流做同样的事情。他们喜欢在轨道上学习的喘息机会，没有任何期望他们主动或解析指令。

So, when I do work up the courage to press that red button, it's not uncommon for me to see students perk up and show additional interest even as I'm feeling embarrassed and fighting off an icky sensation in my gut.

因此，当我鼓起勇气按下那个红色按钮时，我经常看到学生们兴奋起来，表现出更多的兴趣，即使我感到很尴尬，并在内心深处抵制一种恶心的感觉。

Fight it I do, though. For one content type—Greek/Latin word fragments—I've actually switched to using Anki as our first exposure learning tool. It's a natural fit, and far more time efficient than the softer introductions I've used in the past. Adding 6-10 new word fragments a day builds a solid repertoire in just a couple weeks, and each day's learning builds to a rewarding climax as they go from timid to confident with the newest cards.

不过，我确实在与它作斗争。对于一个内容类型——希腊语/拉丁语单词片段，我实际上已经转而使用 Anki 作为我们第一次接触的学习工具。这很自然，而且比我过去使用的软性介绍更节省时间。每天增加 6-10 个新的单词片段，在短短几周内就建立了一个坚实的词汇库，而且每天的学习都会达到一个有益的高潮，因为他们对最新的卡片从畏惧到自信。

I propose a new catch-phrase: Drill and instill.

我提出了一个新的口号：操练和灌输。

So say we all

我们都这么说

The stats say I went faster with the cards this year. This was deliberate. Our total number of reviews did not rise, however, as our study sessions tended to be a bit shorter. This was notdeliberate, but more a reflection of engagement tending to peter out sooner. It remains my policy to stop reviews before they feel too much like drudgery.

统计数字显示，今年我过卡片的速度更快。这是有意的。然而，我们的复习总数并没有增加，因为我们的学习课程趋向于短一些。这不是有意的，而是反映了参与度趋向于更快的衰减。我的策略仍然是在感觉太过枯燥之前停止复习。

[Two years of data for one class period, accidentally merged together (I hadn't realized Anki would remember the history of deleted decks).]

[一个课程的两年数据，意外地合并在一起（我没有意识到 Anki 会记得被删除的牌组的历史）。]

Most of the time savings came from stopping the use of our colored feedback cards. By December, nearly every student had stopped holding up any color other than green, perhaps tiring of the small inconvenience of considering their personal relationship with a card and rotating it to the appropriate color. Once I felt like the quality of information I was getting from them was too low to justify those few seconds I spent soliciting the feedback on each card, I stopped asking for it.

大部分时间的节省来自于停止使用我们的彩色反馈卡。到了 12 月，几乎每个学生都不再举起绿色以外的任何颜色，也许是厌倦了考虑他们与卡片的个人关系并将其旋转到适当的颜色这一小小的不便。一旦我觉得我从他们那里得到的信息质量太低，不足以证明我花了几秒钟来征求每张卡片的反馈，我就不再要求他们这样做了。

This may have been a mistake.

这可能是错的。

I felt like engagement levels dropped off a bit after the switch and never recovered. I don't think it had to do with feeling de-voiced, since hardly anyone was still giving actual feedback via the cards. But I think the cards might have served as a participation priming device, keeping students in the Anki mindset by giving them a way to say “Amen”.

我觉得在转换之后，参与度下降了一些，而且从未恢复。我不认为这与感觉被剥夺了发言权有关，因为几乎没有人仍然通过卡片提供实际反馈。但我认为卡片可能是一种参与的引子，通过给学生一种说 "阿门" 的方式让他们保持在 Anki 的思维模式中。

The calendar is a harsh(er) mistress

校历是个苛刻的女主人

Last year, I bemoaned the difficulty of keeping up with an SRS regimen when not every day is a school day. Well, our calendar changed this year. We now take a shorter summer in exchange for longer breaks in the fall and spring. Pause and predict the consequences! You will very likely be correct.

去年，我抱怨说，当不是每天都是上学日时，很难坚持 SRS 的方案。今年，我们的校历发生了变化。我们现在用一个较短的夏天来换取秋季和春季较长的休息时间。暂停一下，预测一下后果吧！你很可能是正确的。

Ready?

准备好了吗？

We were able to recover from two weeks off in the fall readily enough, but just as we were about to catch up from the winter holidays were were beset upon by an equally lengthy spring break. Right on its heels was a short holiday week that was itself hounded by three full weeks of a special block-period testing schedule that saw each class meeting only three times a week.

我们能够很容易地从秋季的两周假期中恢复过来，但就在我们准备从寒假中赶出来的时候，却被同样漫长的春假所困扰。紧随其后的是一个短暂的假期，而这个假期本身又被整整三周的特殊考试时间表所困扰，每个班级一周只开三次会。

And so it was we went into the state test with our Anki freshness at an all-time low.

就这样，我们带着对 Anki 处于历史最低点的新鲜感进入了州测试。

I'm still pretty down on the odds of getting anyone to study an SRS on weekends and days off, but the state of our calendar insists that I revisit the notion.

我仍然很难让任何人在周末和休息日使用 SRS，但我们的校历状态坚持让我重新考虑这件事。

Nature, nurture

先天，后天

A modest number of students from last year had me again this year. It was my goal to keep an eye on them. Would they be supercharged? Would they regress to the mean?

去年的一些学生今年又遇到了我。我的目标是密切关注他们。他们会不会超常发挥？他们会不会退步到平均值？

A bit of both. Some of my mediocre repeats seemed much more confident, but I'm used to seeing that with second-years even without SRS. Anki gave them a way to demonstrate their retention, though, as some of my boilerplate cards are the same for both of my grade levels. They enjoyed having a strong grip on these from the get-go, and occasionally surprised me by recalling something obscure that was unique to last year's deck.

两者都有一点。我的一些平庸的复读生似乎更有信心，但我已经习惯于看到二年级学生的这种情况，即使没有SRS。Anki 给了他们一种方法来展示他们的记忆力，因为我的一些模板卡片对我的两个年级都是一样的。他们很喜欢从一开始就对这些东西有很强的把握，而且偶尔会让我感到惊讶，因为他们会回忆起去年的牌组中所特有的一些晦涩的东西。

Low performers were still low performers.

表现不佳者仍然表现不佳。

But among my high-achieving returners there were some surprising contrasts. Most of them started strong and have generally just coasted along on a plateau of awesome. Two of my all-stars, however, started the year weirdly inept, bombing pretests as though last year had never happened.

但是在我的成绩优异的回归者中，有一些令人惊讶的反差。他们中的大多数人开始时都很强壮，一般来说，他们都是在一个令人敬畏的高原上继续前进。然而，我的两位全明星球员在这一年开始时却奇怪地无能，在预试中被轰炸，好像去年的事情从未发生过。

These cases can be terribly disheartening. If I didn't already believe the research about the mostly fixed-at-birth nature of intelligence, these seemingly leaky brains would certainly have pushed me in that direction. But this is actually a strong argument for SRS. Regular participation in class Anki seems to have steadily pumped at least some students with lower-than-I-had-appreciated innate ability to a much higher functioning level of performance.

这些案例会让人感到非常沮丧。如果我不是已经相信关于智力大部分在出生时就已经固定的研究，这些貌似漏洞百出的大脑肯定会把我推向这个方向。但这实际上是 SRS 的一个有力论据。经常参加 Anki 班的学习似乎至少使一些先天能力低于我的学生稳定地提升到了更高的能力水平。

The two students in question eventually resumed outperforming most of their peers, but it took a while. And here we see a strong argument for the narrower idea of trying to sell students with any motivation on the life-changing potential of an independent, year-round SRS habit.

这两名学生最终恢复了超过大多数同龄人的表现，但这需要一段时间。而在这里，我们看到了一个强有力的论据，即试图向有任何动机的学生推销独立的、全年的 SRS 习惯所带来的改变生活的潜力。

A life changed

生活改变了

It can happen. My wife had spent some time using Anki with her high school Spanish students last year, in tandem with my own experiments. (She has since switched to Duolingo for very good reasons, but with all of the difficulties inherent to getting students to use apps independently).

这能发生。我的妻子去年花了一些时间对她的高中西班牙语学生使用 Anki，与我自己的实验同步进行。（她后来转而使用 Duolingo，理由非常充分，但要让学生独立使用应用程序有很多固有的困难）。

She describes one of her students from last year as a slow-but-motivated learner who really struggled in all of her classes. But she found Anki powerful enough that she started making cards on her own for her other classes. It was the lifeline she hadn't known she needed. Her confidence and performance climbed steadily, and she is now said to be in the running for valedictorian.

她把去年的一个学生描述成一个缓慢但积极的学习者，在她所有的课上都很努力。但她发现 Anki 足够强大，于是她开始自己为其他班级制作卡片。这是她不知道自己需要的生命线。她的信心和表现稳步攀升，据说她现在正在竞选告别演说。

The moral of the story is that the low hanging fruit of SRS is awareness, because there is a tiny fraction of the student population who will latch onto it and reap epic benefits—students who have this enormous pent-up charge potential and are grasping blindly for a conduit. So if you do nothing else, at least get the word out.

这个故事的寓意是，SRS 的低垂果实是意识，因为有一小部分学生会抓住它并获得史诗般的好处——学生们有这种巨大的压抑的电荷潜力，并且盲目地抓着一个管道。因此，如果你什么都不做，至少要把这个消息传出去。

But that's just one student—not even mine—out of hundreds now. And she might have found some other way to succeed. So how big of a deal is this?

但那只是几百个学生中的一个，甚至不是我的。她可能找到了其他成功的方法。那么这有多重要呢？

That's hard to say, mostly because we rarely find out what students do with their lives after they've had us. For all I know, there could be a bunch of sleeper agents among my alumni—students who will remember SRS when they reach a point in their life where they finally have the level of focus and motivation needed to make use of it. This doesn't seem too far-fetched, judging from the often dramatic change in students I see from one year to the next if they have me again, and from memories of my own low motivation at that age.

这很难说，主要是因为我们很少发现学生在接受了我们的教育之后，他们的生活会怎样。据我所知，我的校友中可能有一群熟睡的经纪人——当他们到达人生的某一阶段，终于有了利用 SRS 所需的专注度和动力时，他们会记得 SRS。这似乎并不太牵强，从我看到的学生从一年到下一年的戏剧性变化来看，如果他们再遇到我，以及从我自己在那个年龄段的低动力的记忆来看。

Conclusion

结论

While I've continued to learn from my experiences with classroom SRS, I think we actually got less value from it than we did last year. I'm not content with this. While I could simply blame this on the way I've prioritized my personal growth over course improvement, this would be missing the point, because a classroom SRS system that only a driven tech-savvy veteran in a good mood can make work is not nearly good enough.

虽然我继续从课堂 SRS 的经验中学习，但我认为我们从中得到的价值实际上比去年要少。我对此并不满意。虽然我可以简单地将此归咎于我将个人成长置于课程改进之上的方式，但这将错过重点，因为一个只有在心情好的情况下被驱动的精通技术的老手才能使课堂 SRS 系统发挥作用，这远远不够。

I persist because I know spaced repetition, at its fiery molten core, works, and I want to find an approach that will work for other teachers, other classrooms, other students. I don't think that approach will look very much like what I'm doing now.

我之所以坚持，是因为我知道间隔重复，在其火热的熔体核心，是有效的，我想找到一种对其他老师、其他教室、其他学生都有效的方法。我不认为这种方法会像我现在做的一样。

The good news is that months of hammock-driven development and tech skill-ups have not been wasted. I don't just have goal to make classroom SRS work now.

好消息是，几个月的吊床驱动开发和技术技能的提高没有被浪费掉。我现在的目标不仅仅是让教室 SRS 发挥作用。

I have a vision.

我有个愿景。

[To be continued...]

[待续…]

Notes

附注

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