How do you memorize your vocab words/core10k?

How do you memorize your vocab words/core10k? - Printable Version

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How do you memorize your vocab words/core10k? - Chomskyan - 2014-07-19

So I finished RTK 1 recently and I'm moving on to memorizing Core10k while working my way through Genki I/II simultaneously. Unfortunately, I'm having serious problems retaining the vocabulary I'm learning through Core10k. At first I was using this deck: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?pid=194652#pid194652

But having so many words with the same Kanji really bucked me up. I'd get them confused and end up screwing up a lot of reviews. I started on this deck today: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3629073626 . It seems to be a little easier than the "optimized deck". But honestly, I'm just having a hard time memorizing Japanese words in general. First of all, you have to remember the Kanji and what they mean AND the pronunciation separately. Secondly, most words are nothing like English.

I've tried producing simple sound mnenomics for the flashcards, but these are hard to come up with and I often forget them. Does anyone have a good strategy for memorizing and retaining the core10k vocabulary?

How do you memorize your vocab words/core10k? - cophnia61 - 2014-07-19

How many words did you already do? How many per day? Do you have difficulty in memozing them from the beginning, or you memorize them but then you forget them after tot days?

How do you memorize your vocab words/core10k? - yogert909 - 2014-07-19

Are you doing sentences along with vocab? I did a few thousand vocab before I started sentences which I now consider a mistake. Once I started (cloze deleted)sentences along with vocab cards, vocab got a lot easier.

I'd also suggest taking a second look at an n+1 cloze deleted core deck. It really helps knowing most of the words in the sentences and the cloze deletion gives you some production practice.

How do you memorize your vocab words/core10k? - Chomskyan - 2014-07-19

cophnia61 Wrote:How many words did you already do? How many per day? Do you have difficulty in memozing them from the beginning, or you memorize them but then you forget them after tot days?

I did 30 words a day. Made it through 120 words or so before I realized that I was retaining less that 60% of what I memorized in the beginning. I didn't stick to the deck long enough to know what my mature retention rate was. Most of what I did retain were vocabulary words that had overlap with my Genki vocab production deck.

yogert909 Wrote:Are you doing sentences along with vocab? I did a few thousand vocab before I started sentences which I now consider a mistake. Once I started (cloze deleted)sentences along with vocab cards, vocab got a lot easier.

I'd also suggest taking a second look at an n+1 cloze deleted core deck. It really helps knowing most of the words in the sentences and the cloze deletion gives you some production practice.

I've started doing this with the new deck. For the record, the new deck has 1 sentence per vocab word so you can see it used in context. I've started paying attention to the sentences a lot more this time around. While I don't necessarily know the words in the sentence, since I've completed RTK I usually puzzle out what the sentence means even without knowing the words. And like I said, taking on all the different kanji readings for the same kanji at once was confusing me. So I'm not sure returning to the i+1 deck is a good idea.

What I'm having the most trouble with isn't remembering the meaning of the words, but the pronunciation. Completing Heisig makes it easy to form Mnemonics for word meaning.

How do you memorize your vocab words/core10k? - vosmiura - 2014-07-19

The i+1 decks also have sentences.

If you're having difficulty so soon it sounds like you need to spend more time learning the words before letting them advance in Anki. You need to either form mnemonics, or get sufficient repetition of new vocab to the point where if you looked away for 10 minutes you would still be able to remember most of the new words.

I usually do the repetition route rather than mnemonics for pronunciations, doing something like Iversen word list method before adding words to Anki http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Word_lists.

If you don't have a learning method, you could try iknow.jp which is where Core material originates. They have multimodal tools for helping memorize the vocab.

How do you memorize your vocab words/core10k? - yogert909 - 2014-07-19

vosmiura brings up a good point. You can't add too many cards at a time. iverson's 5-7 block is a good range. Personally I add 5 at a time and make sure I know those, then do 5 more, make sure that I've got those down, then I go through all 10, etc. I have a few filtered decks that I use to do this all within anki. I also make sure that at the end of every day I know that's day's reviews 95-100% accuracy by reviewing ones that I've gotten wrong a few times. Here are a few filtered decks you might like to try:

I go through this deck after adding another 5 cards.

Code:

rated:1:1 prop:reps<20

This deck catches all the cards I've gotten wrong in the past 2 days. I usually go through this deck at the end of the day until I get close to 100% accuracy.

Code:

rated:2:1

Or you could try adding another learning step. Something like

Code:

1 10 60

How do you memorize your vocab words/core10k? - vosmiura - 2014-07-19

Interesting, could you explain a bit more about how to use the filter?

For example when I use "rated:1:1 prop:reps<20" Anki says there are no cards matching that filter.

How do you memorize your vocab words/core10k? - Chomskyan - 2014-07-19

yogert909 Wrote:vosmiura brings up a good point. You can't add too many cards at a time. iverson's 5-7 block is a good range. Personally I add 5 at a time and make sure I know those, then do 5 more, make sure that I've got those down, then I go through all 10, etc. I have a few filtered decks that I use to do this all within anki. I also make sure that at the end of every day I know that's day's reviews 95-100% accuracy by reviewing ones that I've gotten wrong a few times. Here are a few filtered decks you might like to try:

I go through this deck after adding another 5 cards.

Code:

rated:1:1 prop:reps<20
This deck catches all the cards I've gotten wrong in the past 2 days. I usually go through this deck at the end of the day until I get close to 100% accuracy.

Code:

rated:2:1
Or you could try adding another learning step. Something like

Code:

1 10 60
.

Where is this code supposed to go exactly? I absolutely want to add another learning step.

How do you memorize your vocab words/core10k? - yogert909 - 2014-07-19

vosmiura Wrote:Interesting, could you explain a bit more about how to use the filter?

For example when I use "rated:1:1 prop:reps<20" Anki says there are no cards matching that filter.

The rated:1:1 part catches all cards failed today. The prop:reps<20 part limits it to newer cards that you haven't answered more then 20 times. Did you fail any newish cards today? If not it won't find anything. This link explains all the code you can use.

Chomskyan Wrote:Where is this code supposed to go exactly? I absolutely want to add another learning step.

In the options for your deck. I don't have anki on this computer, but I believe it's called "relearning steps" or something. It'll probably be set to default, so just set to custom and put the minutes you want for each step.

How do you memorize your vocab words/core10k? - yogert909 - 2014-07-19

I forgot to mention. The code works in the browser search field as well. So you can test it out there to make sure it's working before you make a filtered deck.

How do you memorize your vocab words/core10k? - vosmiura - 2014-07-20

Thanks yogert909, you made my day with this Anki gem. Today I used a filter deck to add 60 words instead of my usual word list.

Fwiw to anyone, I'm using the following custom steps for learning new vocab "0.08 0.16 0.32 0.64 5". This roughly fits the rep pattern I've used with pen & paper word lists.