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SRS for high school students - harusame1 - 2011-08-14

Hi guys,

This is the first time I've posted so I'd just like to make this clear - I've completed JLPT1 in the past and a lot of it was thanks to RTK - i am very devoted to koohii and the Heisig method!

I am now a high school Japanese teacher, and we will be implementing technology in our classrooms - mini laptops for every student. our students need to learn a list of 200 kanji in total before graduation, and they always struggle to remember vocab in general... so i'm really hoping to introduce an SRS into the school for our languages department. If it will work for them I would like to use RTK, but i am also thinking of implementing Anki or something similar...

any suggestions? I think that something that requires the least effort for them will bring the most results. I can have them take turns at making the flashcards and share them across the class...

something i would love to have is something similar to the iPhone's 'Kotoba!' and 'Jiseki' application synchro... basically when you look up words in the 'Kotoba!' dictionary, click a button to add them to a list then import them to Jiseki. Your flashcards are made for you as you look words up, which i think is brilliant... unfortunately we won't be getting iPads to my knowledge, so I was wondering if anyone had heard of something similar for PC?

Any feedback on the rikaichan REVTK plugin and whether people think it might work for them would be helpful too -> http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5351&page=1

Anyway, as a first post i suppose it's very presumptuous to expect any kind of detailed answer, but perhaps some people have thought of this stuff before! よろしくお願いします！ｍ（＿）ｍ

SRS for high school students - DevvaR - 2011-08-14

By any chance, are you from Australia? Seems suspiciously familiar to my school's curriculum.

I'd say, unless they are committed to serious long time Japanese study, and not doing it only because it's compulsory, I'd say don't bother with RTK. They'll be in excess of 1800 kanji.

But for SRS, I'd go for it. Also get Rikaichan/EPWING dictionary for dictionary lookups. EPWING might cost of bit though.

SRS for high school students - harusame1 - 2011-08-14

yup, teaching in Sydney. are you a teacher or a student at the moment?

That's pretty much what i thought, but wanted to at least put it out there because of these forums haha...

the trick will be selling it to the kids - I'm aware of Rikaichan, and have just found out about the plugins that automatically save words to an Anki deck. I'm not quite sure how i feel about it because I think if they get used to having all of their readings pop up for them then they won't bother to learn anything. Another problem with pushing technology in the first place is that they don't get used to writing kanji, so we shall have to see...

I am a bit worried that EPWING will scare them off, as the example sentences contain all of the joyo kanji.

2 further points:
*the students have elected to choose Japanese twice (end of middle school/year 8 and beginning of senior/year11) so they are more committed than most.
* i am wondering how to deal with the autosaving of entries, as it will always pull out the kanji as well - perhaps setting the anki decks to always display hiragana with kanji and then create a separate deck to test knowledge of kanji readings...

SRS for high school students - DevvaR - 2011-08-14

Well I'm a VCE student, so down in Melbourne. Seems like you have 2 years to prepare them for their exams, do it right and they can top the state, 2 years is a lot of time.

If they are dedicated, you could go the RTK but you have to explain what it does, what they'll achieve from it, where they'll be at the end of the two years and lastly the dedication essential for it to work. If you go with RTK, you might as well go full out with other study methods explained on the forums. By the end of the 2 years, they'd be somewhere between JLPT3 and JLPT2. Not sure about HSC, but for VCE, the Japanese SL level is somewhere abouts JLPT 4 and JLPT3.

Say, hypothetically you go with RTK and set a buffer of about 6-7 months to finish it. That's about 10 Kanji/day. That leaves about 13-14 months. Then you cover say about 10 words/day using SRS. By the time end of year exams come, they should have a passive vocabulary of about 4000, to be conservative. Again, not sure about HSC but for VCE, that's overkill compared to the 1500 vocabulary required. Cover the grammar(65 grammar patterns for VCE) over the 2 years and that's about it. Then try to ensure they get comprehensible immersion.

Then again, I don't know how much of that you would be able to implement in your class and whether the school/education board would allow it etc. It more or less what I wish I had done at the start of VCE instead of hoping that my Japanese would improve somehow. And hence a hypothetical but possible solution.

What I've found is that how VCE Japanese SL(and probably most high school SL in Australia) is setup. Native material is too hard but then there isn't enough "learner material" for want of a better word, to do well. The only way you're going to improve is getting exposure to the language but then none of it is comprehensible and too difficult for at which the level is set.

If you don't decide not to go down the RTK path, the dictionary that is recommended for VCE Japanese is Kondasha's furigana dictionary which has furigana for all the kanji and pretty basic example sentences.

SRS for high school students - Rekkusu - 2011-08-14

Tbh I think why Anki works great for us is A) The whole science backed SRS thing, of course, but also B) because it is fun for us and we gladly do it daily (or have some sick masochistic side and do it anyway).
I'd be a bit leery on forcing it down on them too much, as I think if they don't enjoy the process they will probably stop doing their reps often enough thus sort of neglecting the whole use of the SRS. I'd personally instead would tell how you learned Japanese and what tools you used to do so and how they helped you (while of course making absolutely certain to clearly inform them how and where to get them Wink), and hope the smart ones will pick the trend up.

SRS for high school students - harusame1 - 2011-08-14

We can really teach whatever we want as long as it's within HSC guidelines... i'm surprised that there's only 1500 vocab required. In reality when we mark the HSC, while we have a provisional 'vocabulary list' it nowhere near covers the level of vocab required, as well as the level of vocab which we get - the Korean students especially, one of them is going to take JLPT1 this year and i'm pretty sure he will pass it. he started studying Japanese 4 years ago... (not normal however, a special case haha)

thanks for the input! how helpful do you find EPWING at the moment?

SRS for high school students - SendaiDan - 2011-08-14

Rekkusu Wrote:Tbh I think why Anki works great for us is A) The whole science backed SRS thing, of course, but also B) because it is fun for us and we gladly do it daily (or have some sick masochistic side and do it anyway).
I'd be a bit leery on forcing it down on them too much, as I think if they don't enjoy the process they will probably stop doing their reps often enough thus sort of neglecting the whole use of the SRS. I'd personally instead would tell how you learned Japanese and what tools you used to do so and how they helped you (while of course making absolutely certain to clearly inform them how and where to get them Wink), and hope the smart ones will pick the trend up.
Yeah I would do this. The ones who are really motivated and love learning Japanese will take it upon themselves to do it. Also if you can show them what you have achieved by doing it they might be more likely to listen eg. get a Japanese guest speaker come in and you only speak to the guest in Japanese or something. It will definitely get you in the good books cause the kids will see you know what you are talking about.

SRS for high school students - Torrential - 2011-08-14

Let us know what you go with in the end, and how the students respond.

If you have any super-keen students, please consider sending some my way as I am looking for people to beta-test my own kanji drawing program. I started writing it because I have children learning Japanese (in Canberra), and I'm willing to add features as needed. It has the EDICT dictionary built in, and lets users grab usage examples, so it has some of the flavour of grabbing flashcards as you look things up. But its not primarily a vocab program. It's basically designed for people wanting to learn the joyo kanji, especially those who want to use their motor memory - learning by writing kanji.

Google "Kanji Sketch Pad" and find me if you are interested. (j_torrentialATYAHOOCOMAU).

BTW, I think keen students should learn the joyo kanji early on in their studies, even if it is not strictly required in secondary school. Ten kanji a day is reasonable, and will set them up for further learning. The foreign language vocab requirements in secondary school in Australia are pretty lame from my own experience.

Cheers,

Torrential.

SRS for high school students - DevvaR - 2011-08-14

harusame1 Wrote:We can really teach whatever we want as long as it's within HSC guidelines... i'm surprised that there's only 1500 vocab required.
1500 is pretty depressing if you think how much you need for JLPT3+, fluency etc. Then again, half of the VCE students would find it near impossible to remember all 1500 in 2 years without efficient study tools like SRS. In fact, my class is only 3/4 through the list after nearly 2 years and theres only 2 months left before the exams. I've pretty much SRS'd the whole list months ago and watch my fellow classmates dread the weekly vocab tests of 30 words in selfish pleasure. Before SRS, I wondered how I could even learn 30 a week. Now its more like 50 a day.

Whatever method you go with, I reckon it's always good to ask the class what they want to get out of your class and what their personal goals are. That way you know how to structure your class so they can enjoy it and learn the most from it.

SRS for high school students - Kuma01 - 2011-08-14

The SrS is a great tool for languages, especially vocab, I dare say I would never have been able to attain the level I'm at now so fast without Anki. I do think however that most students would lack to discipline to actually keep up with the reviews daily, unless they were very interested in the language for personal reasons. And that's the key to SrSing, constant effort over a large amount of time. I think the biggest problem would be to convince your students to actually keep up with reviews as much as possible.

SRS for high school students - Sebastian - 2011-08-14

Some ideas:

- Make your students create Anlki Online accounts, so they can synchronize their decks between their home computers and the classroom.

- Before starting, make a demonstration of Anki with a deck you know well. Make yourself look good with your knowledge memorized through Anki so they see it actually works.

- Make them send a screenshot of Anki's progress graphs once a week to make them accountable of their work.

- You could create a forum or something similar so they can share experiences and questions.

SRS for high school students - ta12121 - 2011-08-14

Kuma01 Wrote:The SrS is a great tool for languages, especially vocab, I dare say I would never have been able to attain the level I'm at now so fast without Anki. I do think however that most students would lack to discipline to actually keep up with the reviews daily, unless they were very interested in the language for personal reasons. And that's the key to SrSing, constant effort over a large amount of time. I think the biggest problem would be to convince your students to actually keep up with reviews as much as possible.
It's helped me achieve a high level of reading/listening and I have complete confidence that my speaking/writing will follow-up in a few years(2). It's that effective but most people are put off of it because they don't understand how effective this software is. I'm going to gear it to my studies(school) and have confidence it will all pay off.

SRS for high school students - nest0r - 2011-08-14

You might want to start them off with a streamlined, simple version, where you just have, perhaps, a group of word pairs, done online? (Anki Online or whathaveyou). Maybe those word pairs would be extracted from a sample text you present in class. So you'll have the basic ideas instilled, then you can demonstrate ways to customize information on cards beyond simple word pairs, extract words from texts (e.g. with Rikaisan) on their own, using Anki on their own, share decks, etc.

There should be some version of Anki for kids. ;p I guess that's the iOS app.

Edit: A concept that might be useful for supervising their Anki reviews without making them feel graded/intruded upon might be the idea of ‘criterion level’ as applied to spaced retrieval.

Here's a super simple example:

“Let us consider a practical example. A 5th grade student needs to learn the capitals of the 50 states. She creates flash cards for each state with, for example, Montana on one side and Helena on the other. The 50 flashcards would first be studied one at a time, perhaps employing some mnemonic (my aunt Helen was from Montana). After this initial study, the cards are shuffled and then ten minutes later the student gives herself a test, looking at the name of each state and trying to remember the capital. Whether or not she produces a name, she turns the card over to study the reverse side (see Butler, Karpicke & Roediger, 2008). Any items missed are put at the end of the deck for further practice in the same session. She records the number correct on the first pass through and then returns to test herself again on the ones she missed, again with feedback. After this phase, the student puts the cards away and studies other material. Then, hours later, she returns to the cards and tests herself in the same way. This process would be repeated the next day and then sporadically thereafter, as needed. Each time the deck would be shuffled anew... ” - via: Intricacies of Spaced Retrieval (Bold text mine.)

The criterion level there is to correctly recall all cards once, then that phase is over. That's an example without Anki, but using flashcards for spaced retrieval. I took this and some other papers to create this, which I'm in the process of streamlining and rewriting because it works spectacularly well: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?pid=141918#pid141918 Edit 3: And in case it wasn't clear, this is for learning/relearning new/failed cards.

Edit 2: Going beyond criterion level is overlearning, which you want to avoid, unless you're learning some intensive procedural skill (e.g. surgery).

Bonus: http://psychologyinaction.org/2011/01/04/desirable-difficulties-in-the-classroom/

SRS for high school students - nest0r - 2011-08-14

Just noticed this:

harusame1 Wrote:the trick will be selling it to the kids - I'm aware of Rikaichan, and have just found out about the plugins that automatically save words to an Anki deck. I'm not quite sure how i feel about it because I think if they get used to having all of their readings pop up for them then they won't bother to learn anything.
Do you mean Rikaisan, with audio and instant card creation? Regardless of whether they use it with Realtime Import to create Anki cards, the added deliberate, lexical focus via audio + glosses (e.g. JDIC sound files triggered with the F key and the popup definitions) will increase their vocabulary learning (which includes onyomi/kunyomi) as they read. (See my comments in this thread for some quotes and references: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?pid=141095#pid141095)

The amount of cards extracted for deliberate learning in Anki, etc., can vary, I think, depending on whether you're targeting all new cards in a text for pre-learning, or it can be a relative fraction of words you use Rikaisan to look up, the ones that seem important or interesting and that you feel you really want to memorize quickly, since incidental vocabulary learning is so slow (relative to deliberate study of words, though using glosses and graded readers enhances the pick-up rate).

SRS for high school students - kainzero - 2011-08-14

I think about this stuff all the time, but with no way to implement it I can't really do much =P

One thing I would experiment with is to make it completely optional. No extra credit; no regular credit; just introduce SRS, how to make cards, and a sample deck. Go over the benefits and how to study. (For me, I would study multiple times per day, and I would promote how in the end you actually do less studying.)

I would introduce it as a method, and let the kids experiment, share cards, etc. if they choose to use it. They're more resourceful than you think. I think that making it mandatory or promising rewards in grades would undermine the real benefit of SRS.

I would also hold regular vocabulary quizzes, and make the quizzes always cumulative. I really believe that vocabulary is introduced at a snail's pace in high school, so adding like... 5-10 cards a day for any student would be easy.

And then, as a teacher, I would of course gather feedback to see who's using it, who's not, why not, etc. etc. and use that to further enhance implementation.

... but that's just me being theoretical...

SRS for high school students - harusame1 - 2011-08-16

just... 'wow' at all of these replies. Truly a forum of scholars!

This is my initial plan of attack, to be implemented in the following weeks (students do not have laptops yet so I will be calling on volunteers to trial it, however we will all set it up in class).

Make files + an FAQ sheet available to students, and spend a lesson testing the process with them. I haven't configured it yet, but I will be going for the following:

Flashcards produced with Hiragana on one side and English on the other for their personal vocabulary (perhaps change this for Chinese background students). Kanji test flashcard decks will be given to them which show both Hiragana -> Kanji and Kanji -> Hiragana.

While I think it is best for them to learn more kanji than what are prescribed for them, these kids have at least 5 other subjects - Physics, Maths etc. The ones who are open to the idea of more kanji, i will teach them to change the settings. I'm hoping that there's a way me to save the settings somewhere and give them the files (eg how Anki imports their saved vocab into flashcards so that it will produce hiragana/English cards).

I'll also premake their first deck with words from a unit which they are studying, and give them the option to persevere with Anki or learn them themselves. A test one week, then two weeks (maybe a third) later should hopefully see some results. In addition, I will upload extra readings onto the school server for them to go through and begin to make their own decks.

I will also up the pace of vocab learnt and see how the different groups cope.

Any suggestions/ideas let me know... or just watch this space Smile

SRS for high school students - semperanimus - 2011-08-17

I'll be leading a Japanese study group this school year (it's a homeschool group, so just my sister and a few friends) and here's my study plan:
we'll go through remembering the kana, (planning on taking 3 weeks for that) using anki for review.
After that I'll introduce RTK1 and JPOD101 lessons. For the RTK I plan for them too go through 10 characters a day. For JPOD101 I plan on listening too one lesson, with the transcription in japanese on display, a day . I'm going to use kanji koohii for kanji review.
I'll have an anki deck with the vocab from the jpod lessons we go through.
then I'll have them write something in japanese and read it too the class each week.
then I'll correct their papers for spelling/grammar mistakes.

at that rate by the end of the school year we will have finished about 1600 kanji, all the kana, and about 1600ish vocab (not sure exactly, just took the average amount of vocab on jpod newbie season 2 per lesson and multiplied it by 160 school days)

I'm by no means a proffesional, I just happened to be the one who is leading our study group. so my methods probably are not perfect, I just felt like sharing.

SRS for high school students - DevvaR - 2011-08-17

Now you have to ensure that they can and will keep up with it. Even SRS 10-20 kanji/vocab a day, SRS requires daily commitment. Some of the not so motivated students may...not keep up.