making sentence cards less a chore?

making sentence cards less a chore? - Printable Version

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making sentence cards less a chore? - cokabears - 2012-05-17

when i sentence mine from a book or the internet its always a chore.
is sentence mining a good way of making cards? or should is it just always a pain like im having and should use a premade deck (like japanese core 2000)?

making sentence cards less a chore? - Crispy - 2012-05-17

Why is it a chore? Because it's boring or because it's a pain in the ass?

making sentence cards less a chore? - Marble101 - 2012-05-17

I agree, sometimes it's a chore. But consider why. If you're mining from something you need, then continue with the thought of finisheing. But if it isn't something you need, stop and find something more fun.

Example: I was sentence mining in Hindi (yes, I'm learning Hindi via the sentence method too) and I came across a song I liked. It had new vocab and everything. SO I added about 1/3 of it to my deck (19 sentences). Then it got boring. So i stopped. I didn't even finish the song, beause having fun is the most important part of sentence mining.

making sentence cards less a chore? - jordan3311 - 2012-05-17

I Have had this problem the best thing is find something that you like. Lets say, you find a Japanese article taking about video games you could mine sentences from that until you get bored. Then you find something else that you are interested into and pick out sentences from that. Just work off things you like and doing this will make you want to learn about grammar and the "boring" stuff.

making sentence cards less a chore? - nadiatims - 2012-05-18

one way of cutting the boredom out of sentence mining is to just cut out the sentence part. Just mine vocabulary and short phrases/idioms. Just note the important unknown vocabulary from whatever sources you're using. As long as you're using japanese outside of the SRS, you'll be getting plenty of sentence practice anyway.

making sentence cards less a chore? - Inny Jan - 2012-05-18

I'm with nadiatims on this one - sentence mining/picking is a misuse of SRS invented by AJATT for the benefit of plebs. Sentence mining/picking is less efficient than ordinary reading of native texts.

making sentence cards less a chore? - kame3 - 2012-05-18

I would say that SRS-ing sentences could be useful in the begining of Japanese study, so that you use sentence cards not only to learn new vocab, but also to get acquainted with grammar and sentence patterns. When you reach the stage where you just use the sentences for new vocab and the sentences are not giving you anything extra, I would switch to vocab only like Nadiatims suggested.
As a result of this approach I would say that you should never have to input any sentence into your SRS yourself. Use pre-made sentence decks until the tipping point, and (before and after) only input vocab words. Of course, use Core6000 vocab-only to learn the most common words. I recommend this because I feel in general having to input stuff into an SRS yourself is terribly time-consuming and inefficient, particularly when there are already plenty of wonderful pre-made decks including sound available.

Another way of using sentences is of course to do audio -> reading, like in sub2srs decks. I would say that this remains more useful than doing vocab only audio -> reading, as long are the sentences are difficult enough.

making sentence cards less a chore? - partner55083777 - 2012-05-18

One problem I have with vocab-only decks is that I don't feel like they help me with actually being able to use Japanese. For instance, I could add the card "寸前" with the answer being "on the verge of" (or "ほんのわずか手前。その事の起こるほんの一瞬前。"), but I feel like it is much more helpful to add a sentence/phrase like "餓死寸前の子供たち" with the answer being "children on the verge of starvation" (or maybe just a japanese definition of 寸前 and 餓死). It gives more context with how the word should be used and the other words it should be used with. For instance, from this sentence you can see that 寸前 is often paired with 餓死.

What is your argument to this? I feel like the normal argument to this is "if you read enough, then you get context for the words you are studying through reading." That's a good argument, but it kind of ends the exchange. There is no counter-argument that can be used against it. Other than personal experience, does anyone have any "scientific" evidence that sentence-mining is ineffective? In my experience, sentence-mining is effective and worth the time put in to it, possibly even more so the better your Japanese gets.

(Full disclosure: I also have a lot of just vocab cards for nouns that are directly translatable to english, i.e. ヤモリ and トカゲ.)

making sentence cards less a chore? - blackbrich - 2012-05-18

I think sentences are great for helping to memorize grammar, along with using said grammar. But for learning vocabulary its a bit much. Sentences takes probably about 5x longer to process than just a word. You could be getting through more material with just vocab.

I'm of the belief that most srs boredem comes from reviewing only(at least for me). If you rarely see new material it becomes very boring. One way to make sure you see new material more often is to make your reviews quicker by doing vocab only.

Or sometimes SRSing is boring as shit and you're tired of it.

making sentence cards less a chore? - nadiatims - 2012-05-18

yes.

the compelling reason is primarily time. Sentence cards take longer to make and longer to review. Regarding your example for 寸前 perhaps the sentence demonstrates it's meaning better, but you don't need a perfect definition. You only need a general idea of word's meaning (like 'right before' or something), that is good enough to understand it when you see it context. That is after all the whole point, to learn things so you can use the language.

making sentence cards less a chore? - vix86 - 2012-05-18

My 2cents on this is to do what was suggested by nadiatims.

Mine the word. But if you like sentences then use the net to find an example sentence. This is what I decided to do, but I even found that a bit tedious. I wrote a program in Python,

but I haven't gotten around to putting it in a format to deploy since it uses PyQt. You feed it a list and then go through the list selecting each word and it queries Weblio's example sentence finder. You can then dump the list and then add the entries to a spreadsheet, export to CSV, import to your deck.

But yes, definitely go the word route. Often times sentences from material are just way longer than they need to be. There are going to shorter sentences that you can you to use for a bit of context.

making sentence cards less a chore? - howtwosavealif3 - 2012-05-18

Don't forget to go monolingual when u hit some number (ajatt said 1000 cards ) or u feel like u can't or u can otherwise you're just holding yourself back

making sentence cards less a chore? - Marble101 - 2012-05-18

In both languages I'm learning via SRS (Japanese and Hindi), I haven't reached the level yet where I would value vocabulary over sentences. Many sentences that I've encountered have grammatical structures that I need to see in context to internalize.

But I agree, if you're mining a sentence simply for vocab that can be done without sentences (Nouns, adjectives, some verbs) then just do vocab; it's much easier. However, if you're dealing with things that context is helpful (Ex: I still haven't grasped where to put "Kyon" the Hindi word for "Why?" in my sentences and as a result need the ful sentence when I see the word).

making sentence cards less a chore? - partner55083777 - 2012-05-18

I'm sorry, I may be conflating terms. When I say "sentence mining", what I actually mean is mining vocab, then getting an example sentence from 研究社新和英大辞典 or one of yahoo's dictionaries. I agree that mining overly long sentences from native material takes too much time (but can be made faster with MCDs).

When you (nadiatims, blackbrich, etc) are adding vocab words, what do you put as the answer? Is it a Japanese definition? An English definition?

making sentence cards less a chore? - blackbrich - 2012-05-18

I put English definition. Mostly for speed. Reading an entire Japanese definition takes as long as a sentence does sometimes.

making sentence cards less a chore? - nadiatims - 2012-05-18

@partner

I don't make cards or use an SRS. I just note down words with short english definitions.

For chinese, I use english or japanese definitions (mostly because my dictionary are all 中日 and 日中).

making sentence cards less a chore? - Seamoby - 2012-05-18

I too do not see why one needs to include sentences in the SRS when mining words. Presumably these words are mined from native material and sentences anyway, so you already encountered the sentences and presumably understood them before mining the sentences for words. It is more fun and productive to just keep on reading coherent native material that you enjoy instead of copying sentences, especially those which are pulled from vacuum.

making sentence cards less a chore? - vix86 - 2012-05-19

Seamoby Wrote:I too do not see why one needs to include sentences in the SRS when mining words. Presumably these words are mined from native material and sentences anyway, so you already encountered the sentences and presumably understood them before mining the sentences for words. It is more fun and productive to just keep on reading coherent native material that you enjoy instead of copying sentences, especially those which are pulled from vacuum.

Because it helps to have context to help make sense of when and where to use a word. When you stop learning nouns and start learning some of the more incorporeal stuff; you need it.

Also, why would I mine a word/sent I already know...that doesn't make sense. I thought it was pretty obvious that you don't mine stuff you already know unless there's a particular reason to.

making sentence cards less a chore? - nadiatims - 2012-05-19

vix86 Wrote:Because it helps to have context to help make sense of when and where to use a word. When you stop learning nouns and start learning some of the more incorporeal stuff; you need it.

The point is that whenever you actually encounter the word in the future in authentic materials there is going to be context, so all you need to bother putting on your flashcard is a simple approximation which acts as a hint to a word's meaning.

vix86 Wrote:Also, why would I mine a word/sent I already know...that doesn't make sense. I thought it was pretty obvious that you don't mine stuff you already know unless there's a particular reason to.

I assume seamoby means that you understand the sentence and any new words when you read them, because at that point (or later) you check them in a dictionary or get them from a translation or context/guesswork. Obviously it makes no sense to mine materials for stuff you already understand, whether that's sentences or words.

making sentence cards less a chore? - Zgarbas - 2012-05-19

I like the Tatoeba anki plugin for vocab-only decks. Good for context and all without having to waste any time on finding the sentences yourself.

making sentence cards less a chore? - Seamoby - 2012-05-19

nadiatims Wrote:The point is that whenever you actually encounter the word in the future in authentic materials there is going to be context, so all you need to bother putting on your flashcard is a simple approximation which acts as a hint to a word's meaning.

Right. There was context when one mined the words, and then again when one encounters these same words later in native material.

nadiatims Wrote:I assume seamoby means that you understand the sentence and any new words when you read them, because at that point (or later) you check them in a dictionary or get them from a translation or context/guesswork. Obviously it makes no sense to mine materials for stuff you already understand, whether that's sentences or words.

That's what I assumed OP was trying to do--mining for newly encountered words while reading native material, and then putting these new words into SRS for review.

For me, it's really very rewarding to be reading native material and then realizing that I actually understand what I am reading because previously unknown words that I mined and studied are now quite familiar. Reading is powerful reinforcement, I think.

making sentence cards less a chore? - Inny Jan - 2012-05-19

Seamoby Wrote:Reading is powerful reinforcement, I think.

You don't have to 'think' - it simply is Smile

Reading is like SRS on steroids where the words fly at you at speed depending on your ability to sequence the text and you don't waste your time on grading yourself. Also, usually the text has some flow so reading can actually be, you know, fun, as oppose to SRS chore where context changes constantly and you can hardly talk about the flow.

making sentence cards less a chore? - Crispy - 2012-05-19

Inny Jan Wrote:
Seamoby Wrote:Reading is powerful reinforcement, I think.
You don't have to 'think' - it simply is

Reading is like SRS on steroids where the words fly at you at speed depending on your ability to sequence the text and you don't waste your time on grading yourself. Also, usually the text has some flow so reading can actually be, you know, fun, as oppose to SRS chore where context changes constantly and you can hardly talk about the flow.

Totally agree. I quit using SRS because for me it felt like this:
SRS - A bunch of random sentences.
A Book - A bunch of sentences with a story.

If I have something specific I want to memorize and it's rare I come across it then I will make flash cards (usually on card), so I'm not saying SRS is a bad method by any means. But I personally like to have the story, it feels a lot less like studying.

making sentence cards less a chore? - partner55083777 - 2012-05-21

Zgarbas Wrote:I like the Tatoeba anki plugin for vocab-only decks. Good for context and all without having to waste any time on finding the sentences yourself.

I feel like this is not much different than adding sentences along with every word you add. (Other than that it saves time).

In general, I agree with what everyone is saying. SRS'ing isn't that interesting. Reading is much more interesting and rewarding. If you had to pick either to never read, or never use an SRS, you should probably pick not to use an SRS.

But here is my fear about not adding sentences/context to vocab I'm adding to my SRS:

A while ago I remember reading some blog post from someone who finished Core10k. They did all of Core10k in a really short period of time. I think it only took them like 10 months or something.

They went on to write that despite finishing Core10k, they still had significant problems reading native material. They can't just open a book and read for fun. They can't read news stories. They can't watch dramas.

I can't help but think they this was because they didn't have any context for the words they are learning. When I went through Core6k, I actually looked up all words I wasn't 100% sure of (based on the English meaning and the example sentence). This took much longer (probably like one and a half years), but I feel like it was much, much, much more helpful than just rushing through it.

The obvious 突っ込み here is that guy probably wasn't reading enough native materials. If he was reading a lot of native materials, then he would have context for the words without having to add context to Anki. I don't really have a comeback for this argument... :-\

making sentence cards less a chore? - Zgarbas - 2012-05-21

partner55083777 Wrote:I feel like this is not much different than adding sentences along with every word you add. (Other than that it saves time).

Precisely. You can spend half an hour adding sentences and only 5 minutes studying or spend that half an hour actually studying =).

After core5k I had some trouble with context when it came to certain words (obvious problematic ones like sentence linkers), but tbh the sentences that came with the deck sufficed for 90%+ of the vocab there. If I see it in a book I'll get it, even though I went by an almost exclusive SRS approach*. Production-wise sure, I have issues with that, but comprehension wise not so much. Reading a book is fun, but it's the SRS that got me able to read it.