What is the right thing to do in cases where you fail a review from non-memory-related circumstances? I’ve noticed that there are some edge cases where “Again” and “Hard” both seem wrong.
Attention failures: Usually this is when cards are starting to get easy, and I’m answering quickly. For example, when conjugating French verbs, I’ll misread the subject “il” vs “ils” or “vous” vs “nous” and produce a conjugation for the wrong subject. Or I’ll have a bunch of one verb come up in a row, and then the next card is for a different verb, and I’ll conjugate the old verb.
To be clear, these are not the “Oh, wait! I knew that.” failures where I read a card correctly but produce the wrong answer which is obvious in retrospect. Those are memory failures and I click again. And with respects to fixing the cards to avoid these mistakes – it’s a large premade deck and it would be a lot of work to fix an occasional issue.
Card errors: For my primary French deck, I make all my own cards, which are usually bidirectional vocab. I occasionally find myself editing the front-side of a card, after seeing the back-side.
In both cases, I want the card to come up again, soon, but not right away. And I don’t want this particular review to count, because it didn’t really test my memory of the correct thing. How should I handle this?
This is a situation where you need to think about the message you’re sending to Anki by the grade you give. You need to distinguish between –
I got that card correct, because I remember that piece of information, so it is appropriate to schedule it for at least as long an interval, if not longer.
I got that card wrong, because I don’t remember that piece of information, and I need to relearn it.
Paying attention when you’re studying your cards is important. If your mind is wandering because it isn’t being stimulated (“when cards are starting to get easy”), you should be grading those cards appropriately so you don’t see them so often. That will help teach your mind that now is not a good time to wander. Other ways to prevent this sort of attention lapse –
Make sure your workload isn’t more than you can handle.
Study when you mind is fresh and you’re likely to be able to pay attention.
Don’t make tons of repetitive cards for things like regular-verb conjugation [which is what it sounds like you’re describing], because you probably don’t need to memorize every verb for every person and tense.
But once this has caused you to miss a card, it’s too late for prevention. The cure is to figure out – if you can – what I said above: whether you actually remember this piece of information. If you’re sure you do, and you would have gotten it right if you’d read it correctly – you should grade that Good. If you’re not sure you would have gotten it right – you should grade that Again. [I can’t quite imagine a situation where you’re sure you would have remembered it eventually but only after struggling. So, I don’t think Hard belongs in this discussion.]
You’re using FSRS, which is much better at dealing with new intervals after lapses. You don’t need to be afraid to grade a card Again.
Bury. Best to use Bury Note, so the sibling card doesn’t come up today either.
You didn’t remember the information – you didn’t fail to remember the information. Really, you haven’t studied it at all, because the card had a mistake. There’s no harm in waiting until tomorrow to introduce it.
Completely in agreement that attention failures are undesirable. They’re much more of an issue with the conjugation deck, which is fundamentally kind of boring (but still very useful to me).
I had forgotten that bury existed, and that it could be used mid-review. It seems a fine solution. It doesn’t reset a card in learning to “new” anymore, does it?
I should also mention that no, I’m not repeating conjugation for regular verbs. I have pretty much one verb per conjugation pattern. However, it’s still kind of boring, and I haven’t covered enough cards to ensure variety as I do my reviews.
Bury has never reset cards to New. If a card comes into the study session as New, and you bury it instead of studying/grading it – it will still be New. But the only thing Bury changes is whether the card is available for study today. Studying - Anki Manual
Consider shifting the focus of your card to memorizing that conjugation pattern/rule, instead of practicing using it on a single verb. That might relieve some of the repetitiveness and (as a bonus) create a more useful memory.