Link: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1687853

This is a cloze deck I built to study for JLPT and BJT because I was getting really frustrated with not feeling like I had a good grasp of grammar despite having passed JLPT N1 a number of times already. I like doing flashcards in Anki, but I could never figure out how to implement grammar studying in Anki until someone suggested to me I use hinted clozes.

I looked to see if something like this had already been made, but the only cloze grammar deck I could find was the Tae Kim one that only covers beginner and lower intermediate. So I started to make my own, and, surprisingly, it went fairly quickly.

I was also really surprised by how well the deck worked for cementing the understanding of grammar. After studying with the deck for only a few days I felt like I could open up my Kanzen Master grammar drill books, and not feel like I was just making random guesses based on my gut anymore. I also felt like I was able to make better use of more varied grammar patterns when I was actually speaking Japanese.

I shared that deck in a thread here right after I finished making the cards, and people seemed to like it. There were still a lot of typos/problems in it at that point, and so Flamerokz and I have spent the last few weeks making it quite a lot better. It's finally to the point where I thought it was okay to make a thread so that more people could have a look at it, and give me even more feedback if they wanted.

The one thing I would recommend when using this deck is to combine this with some kind of real grammar textbook like Kanzen Master or どんな時どう使う日本語. There's enough detail on the cards to differentiate them from each other, but not enough detail on the cards to get a sense for the nuance and how each of the grammar points is used in real life. So this deck is mostly for helping you solidify your understanding of grammar and make sure you don't forget the grammar you're studying.

Let me know what you guys think, and hopefully there's suggestions that will make the deck even better.

Downloaded! I'll let you know what I think once I've used it for a while

In the description of the deck, you mention the following:

"I'm improving this deck over time, and using the Note ID feature from the Note ID plugin so that the cards may be updated easily going forward by downloading the shared deck again and re-importing in order to update the cards."

This is a question that has worried me for a while : if a shared deck is updated when one has already started studying it, how can the revision be included (i.e. both changes and additions) without losing the review history? It seems that you have got the answer, but could you explain more precisely how it works?

On the Import menu there's an option that says, "Update cards if first field matches an existing card." When you have this option enabled Anki will check to see if the first field is the same as a card you already have, and then merge in the information from the imported cards that are different.

Usually you have some kind of unique information as the first field of a card, but sometimes this can be problematic. For instance if your first field is a sentence, but then you notice a typo in that sentence then it could lead to a duplicate card when you go to share it due to Anki thinking that since the card doesn't have a first field that matches any other card in your deck then it's a new card.

Note ID works around this problem by making the first field of the card a tracking number for the card that is unique and never changes. The rest of the fields on the card can be changed to whatever they need to be changed to without it accidentally creating duplicate cards since the first fields of the cards never change.

So when I update this deck all you have to do is download it again, import while making sure that option is checked, and Anki will look at the tracking number in the Note ID field first then update the cards that have changed. This will not overwrite any of your own review progress.

Note ID can easily be added to your own decks by using the Note ID plugin available on the Shared Plugins part of AnkiWeb. It's a great way to bounce card information back and forth between Google Docs and Anki in order to edit decks in a collaborative fashion while avoiding errors with duplicate cards. This deck has been exported back and forth between Anki/Google Docs dozens of times without ever affecting my own review history or scheduling.

Great reply. Thanks a lot.
BTW, this should be posted as a sticky on some Anki help page. I wish I had known this trick a long time ago.

Thanks erlog, you're awesome! I desperately want to nail the N1 grammar. @_@

jmignot Wrote:This is a question that has worried me for a while : if a shared deck is updated when one has already started studying it, how can the revision be included (i.e. both changes and additions) without losing the review history?

In addition to what erlog said: when importing an .apkg, Anki keeps the latest version of any duplicate notes, so if you've made edits to the deck yourself, importing an updated deck won't overwrite them (unless the author happened to edit the same notes later than you did).

[RawToast]

erlog Wrote:Link: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1687853

This is a cloze deck I built to study for JLPT and BJT because I was getting really frustrated with not feeling like I had a good grasp of grammar despite having passed JLPT N1 a number of times already. I like doing flashcards in Anki, but I could never figure out how to implement grammar studying in Anki until someone suggested to me I use hinted clozes.

If anyone wants to use this as a non-closed deck, use {{kanji:Reading}} on the front of the cards instead of {{Expression}} This will should the meaning without the furigana on the front as long as you have the Japanese Support plugin installed and active on the deck.

I know they work for many people, but I never found closed-delete decks worked for me. My mind decides to be lazy, memorises the sentence and links the particle to it

Another nice deck, this has been a good month for useful Anki decks

First of all thank you very much for the effort you put into this and sharing it so freely. As I have similar, severe reservations about the extent to which I actually 'get' the grammar that I study using conventional anki flashcards, I really had high hopes for this deck.

Unfortunately I find that it doesn't seem to work for me. When my doubts surfaced, I initially was not sure if they are to be attributed to the deck or my incomplete understanding of the grammar that I want to ameliorate. After giving it some more time, I'd now tend to say it's the former.

Here are some of my problems:
#1: The hints are often insufficient for me and I don't even get what should go into the blank. Other times when there are several possible candidates (according to my understanding) I might think of a different one compared to the solution. I then get frustrated and confused, not knowing if my answer is actually correct or not, maybe missing some detail, and so on.

#2: After some failed tries on a sentence, my motivation and confidence go away and I just want to be done with it. So my brain starts to remember what answer goes where and so on, sidestepping the whole part about understanding that I hoped to address in the first place - d'oh!

Some thoughts about the problems described above:
#1: To solve the issue, the explanation about what goes into the blank could be extended and more standardized. However, the longer the explanations, the more painful it becomes to do the reps. I am giving this approach a try now, as I've started to use the cloze grammar deck about ADoJG created by "uisukii":
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/sf3skjl...ed%20media
The explanations used there are much longer (making them a pain to read), and there's also an English translation that helps some more if I still don't get it.
Another way to address this problem would of course be to make my own notes and hints, as you have.


I can try to elaborate some more if you're interested.

If you feel like you're memorizing the sentences, or want more grammar reps, I'd recommend looking up the ドリル＆ドリルN1 series by UNICOM.

It's three books-- one on grammar, one on vocab/kanji, and one on reading/listening. And it's just a book full of practice questions for the N1, with pretty extensive explanations for the answers in the back. (So you better understand why the correct answer is the correct answer.)

The breakdown is 300 sentence grammar problems, 75 ★ problems, and 50 cloze reading passage problems in the grammar drill book. Not bad.

hyvel Wrote:The hints are often insufficient for me and I don't even get what should go into the blank. Other times when there are several possible candidates (according to my understanding).

The deck was created by consulting with 2, and sometimes even 3, different grammar references in order to avoid the collisions you're talking about. Yeah, there's still probably some collisions in it, but I disagree that it's rife with them in the way that you're insinuating. The entire time I was making it my goal was to make flashcards that had 1 and only 1 answer based on the context of the sentence and the keywords involved.

I'm not going to be so arrogant as to say that the issues you're having are due to your own lack of understanding of grammar because the deck could very well be wrong. You haven't given me any examples, though. So there's no way for me to really know what you're talking about.

If you think there's a problem with a card then please post it here so we can have a discussion about whether or not there's a mistake or it's too vague. I'm happy to make changes to the deck moving forward if there's a problem.

I would like to add in defense of the deck, for anyone who hasn't used a cloze w/ hint format deck like this before in Anki, or alternatively someone who's only done recognition decks, expect to see a higher failure rate on cards particularly at the beginning. Most likely for the majority of people it will take more effort and time to improve individual success rate.

Regarding #2 from hyvel that is definitely a concern I had thought about. I feel like it might just be a matter of having the patience to read through the whole sentence. Out of curiosity, was using the deck the first time you encountered most of the grammar? For people to whom this description applies, I'd particularly like to hear feedback.

It is quite a challenge to distinguish quite a few of these grammar points given the very slight nuance in which they differ, and for a non-recognition format I'm not so sure how much can be done to ease this. Making the hints too long I feel would become quite burdensome to the reviewing process; I'm not confident that it would be a reasonable solution given the other potential issues that may pop up as a result.

But I'm really no expert on crafting study materials. My own (obviously biased) opinion is that using this deck has certainly done far more good than harm for me. I hope at least it will achieve that for most others.

@rich_f: Thanks for the suggestion.

@flamerokz:You make a good point regarding the unusually high (and therefore frustrating) failure rate. What surprises me though is that my failure rate is consistently high across the board for N1,N2 and even N3 cards, making me wonder if it's just me or maybe also the deck.

I've seen most of the grammar points before, so I don't think that's the main problem. This is another good point though, because "my #2" complaint about simply memorizing the blank definitely applies for the cards that are new to me.

I also agree with your last bit.

@erlog:
My incomplete understanding of the grammar definitely also plays a major role - otherwise I wouldn't be studying grammar after all.

Let me give you some examples of cards that troubled me. Hopefully we can figure out where the root cause lies.

Ex1:
そのテレビドラマは1回目が放映される (on the heels of... unexpectedly... [describes reality])、国中に大きな韓国ブームを引き起こした。
The hint leads me to search for something that grounds the boom in the broadcasting and hence causally links the two. However, consulting ADoAJG (from which the sentence apparently originates) I see that [ya ina ya], which is supposed to fill the blanks, implies only an (abrupt) temporal connection.
(To be completely honest though, part of what misguided me was the "on the heels" formulation that I wasn't familiar with before).

Ex2:
首相は国民の批判 (indifferent to...) イラク戦争支持を表明した。
What do I put here? I've got several candidates: 「をよそに」、「にもかかわらず」、「によらず」or maybe even「をものともせず」. Is he actively ignoring the criticism? Boldly or coldly? I'd guess that not all of my candidates actually fit. However, not knowing which one does and which one doesn't vexes me.

Ex3:
このように地球温暖化が進むとは、30年前には、想像 (さえ, never even..., not at all... [formal, literary]) しなかった。Looking at the hint, the most obvious solution that comes to my mind is すら. According to my understanding sura is more or less a formal equivalent of sae, so your hint screams for it. The correct solution is だに　though. And I'd immediately agree with it once I've seen it. But the hint really led me astray.

Ex4:
道は通行止めだし。これではそこへ (行く: want to but have no way to..., no reason to...)。
The hint leads me to suspect 行こうにも行けない, but the answer given on the card is 行きようがない. So now I don't know if my suggestion also works...

Ex5:
田中 (やっぱり、as usual of course)、遅れるでしょう. Answer: のことだから
Here the answer isn't hard to arrive at, but I'd still argue that the hint is somewhat off. The "as usual of course" doesn't necessarily implicate that it has to do with tanaka. Something like "as usual for him" would be clearer.

Ex6:
雑誌を (読む: in the middle of doing)、そのままうとうと寝てしまった。
In the middle of -> 最中! However, the solution is 読みかけて. According to my understanding 読みかけて just means that one hast started reading, but doesn't emphasize "in the middle of" or anything. Like 食べかけたケーキ - a cake that has been partially eaten. So the hint irritates me.

I hope that my examples help you to understand my troubles somewhat. Summarizing, I'd say that my main problems are:
1) Unclear hints, or hints leading me astray. However, this might be hard for you to address as you are the creator of the deck after all, so you probably don't really notice it to the same extent as I do. Many of my complaints in the examples above probably appear quite pedantic, but I'd argue that those small things do matter quite a lot. Maybe others can jump in and tell us if it's just me, or if they also have troubles.
2) Not being sure if other solutions are also acceptable.

I don't want to trash your deck or anything. It definitely helps to anchor the grammar patterns in my brain. But it can be quite frustrating at times, and I'd say often unnecessarily so.

RawToast Wrote:If anyone wants to use this as a non-closed deck, use {{kanji:Reading}} on the front of the cards instead of {{Expression}} This will should the meaning without the furigana on the front as long as you have the Japanese Support plugin installed and active on the deck.

I'm going to do just that! Thanks for the tip, RawToast.

I already have an N2 grammar deck based on 新完全マスターN2文法, which I've nearly repped to maturity. I'm going to change the cards for this deck and merge it with my current deck. I love the additional material in this deck, but the cloze deletion format drives me schizo. (That's not a knock on your work, erlog. I love the new material itself, and am really thankful that you've put so much effort into this.)

hyvel Wrote:Ex1:
そのテレビドラマは1回目が放映される (on the heels of... unexpectedly... [describes reality])、国中に大きな韓国ブームを引き起こした。
The hint leads me to search for something that grounds the boom in the broadcasting and hence causally links the two. However, consulting ADoAJG (from which the sentence apparently originates) I see that [ya ina ya], which is supposed to fill the blanks, implies only an (abrupt) temporal connection.
(To be completely honest though, part of what misguided me was the "on the heels" formulation that I wasn't familiar with before).

I think this may have to do more with you not understanding "on the heels of." I think I wanted to use "on the heels of" because that's what's in DTDTN(どんな時どう使う日本語). "abrupt" is not a word that appears on any other card, though, and if it makes it easier to understand for people then I'm fine with changing it.

I've changed the card to:
そのテレビドラマは１回目が放映される (abruptly and unexpectedly... [describes reality])、国中に大きな韓国ブームを引き起こした。

hyvel Wrote:Ex2:
首相は国民の批判 (indifferent to...) イラク戦争支持を表明した。
What do I put here? I've got several candidates: 「をよそに」、「にもかかわらず」、「によらず」or maybe even「をものともせず」. Is he actively ignoring the criticism? Boldly or coldly? I'd guess that not all of my candidates actually fit. However, not knowing which one does and which one doesn't vexes me.

This one seems to hinge on you not quite understanding the several candidates you've posted here. When thinking about all of those in English I can understand why you would confuse them since they can all be translated roughly as "without regard to," but the only one that fits when you look up each of those grammar points is をよそに.

「にもかかわらず」and「によらず」are the same as one another, and could be translated as "without regard to", but are more accurately thought of as "without exceptions for..." They're used to describe conditions for certain situations, and that there are no exceptions to the application of that situation for the type of thing that precedes the grammar point.

「をものともせず」I don't think applies here because we're talking about a somewhat dry political context. This grammar point is used in cases where someone is doing something despite a set of circumstances that might lead you to conclude that they are literally not able to. So it's used when talking about overcoming adversities like injuries or going mountain climbing in a snowstorm. It would not be used in this context because the opinions of the voters do not mechanically and literally impede the prime minister from announcing support for the war in Iraq.

hyvel Wrote:Ex3:
このように地球温暖化が進むとは、30年前には、想像 (さえ, never even..., not at all... [formal, literary]) しなかった。Looking at the hint, the most obvious solution that comes to my mind is すら. According to my understanding sura is more or less a formal equivalent of sae, so your hint screams for it. The correct solution is だに　though. And I'd immediately agree with it once I've seen it. But the hint really led me astray.

I think you're right that すら is a collision here, and so I've changed the card to:
このように地球温暖化が進むとは、30年前には、想像 (さえ, すら, never even..., not at all... [formal, literary]) しなかった。

hyvel Wrote:Ex4:
道は通行止めだし。これではそこへ (行く: want to but have no way to..., no reason to...)。
The hint leads me to suspect 行こうにも行けない, but the answer given on the card is 行きようがない. So now I don't know if my suggestion also works...

It seems like the example sentence here is a problem because it doesn't highlight one of the unique differences between the grammar you thought was the answer and the real grammar for that sentence.

I changed it to:
推薦状を書いてくれと言われても、あの人のことをよく知らないのだから、 (書く: want to but have no way to..., no reason to...)。

hyvel Wrote:Ex5:
田中 (やっぱり、as usual of course)、遅れるでしょう. Answer: のことだから
Here the answer isn't hard to arrive at, but I'd still argue that the hint is somewhat off. The "as usual of course" doesn't necessarily implicate that it has to do with tanaka. Something like "as usual for him" would be clearer.

Yeah, it should have just a little extra detail. I want to avoid putting sentence-specific direction in the hints for the cards because this could be used for Tanaka-san, but you could also use it to talk about other situations too. I've changed it to make it a little bit more clear that it's something that connects to Tanaka, and not an interjection like やっぱり.

Changed to:
田中 (やっぱり、as usual of course for...)、遅れるでしょう.

hyvel Wrote:Ex6:
雑誌を (読む: in the middle of doing)、そのままうとうと寝てしまった。
In the middle of -> 最中! However, the solution is 読みかけて. According to my understanding 読みかけて just means that one hast started reading, but doesn't emphasize "in the middle of" or anything. Like 食べかけたケーキ - a cake that has been partially eaten. So the hint irritates me.

Yes, it means "had begun but is not finished" and one of the other ways of saying that is "in the middle of." "In the middle of..." does not actually mean "halfway finished." It just means that the process has begun and is unfinished.

I agree that it shouldn't collide as much as it does with 最中, but that's really hard to do since they mean almost literally the same thing. So instead what I've done here is differentiate based on the mechanics of using them. This card prompts for a conjugation of 読む whereas the card for 最中 does not.

So instead of changing this card I have changed the card for 最中 so that it's an example where only 最中 would fit since it's being used with a noun rather than a verb:
会議の (right in the middle of...) いねむりを始めてしまった。

If you have a better idea of how to untangle this collision then let me know.

7. 警察 (にしたって [polite]) 取り締まりの方法がないだろう。
This made on sense to me until I googled it and found the beginning of the sentence: こんなに駐車違反が多いのでは、警察 (にしたって [polite]) 取り締まりの方法がないだろう。

8. 10年前に別れた女性の居どころなど知る (わけない, naturally it's not possible...)。
Sounds like a textbook example of 知る由もない - the Green Goddess even has a nearly identical example sentence (30年前, 彼, slightly different wording).

9. K社は人件費を削減す (for the purpose of, thinking to...) 大規模なリストラを行うよていだ。
削減す is not a word. I'd put する inside the parentheses.

10. The "grammar point" field for を余儀なくされる is を余儀なくさせる

Thanks for the elaborate reply, Erlog. I'm somewhat relieved to see that it's not only my incomplete understanding after all. Should I continue to post the cards that confuse me so we can discuss them?

Are these sentences correct?

夏休み間ににガールフレンドが出来ました。
-->の間?

これほど多くの作品を手がけた監督をY氏をおいてほかにいない。

-->The first を feels strange