<edit December 7th, 2014>
While working with my Anki grammar decks for beginners (see below for a list of links if you're interested) over the past few months, I've come up with a number of (what I felt to be) improvements that I've incorporated into them. (In retrospect, I should have named this thread "Practical Bite-sized Grammar Decks" since I aimed to keep these decks as learner-friendly as possible and avoided linguistic jargon as much as possible. So far, the phrase "non-past verb-type modifier" is one of the highest concentrations of jargon in these decks.)
Aside from tracking down and fixing a number of my own mistakes (some minor, some rather embarrassing like incorrectly simplifying the way to obtain a verb's て-form *1), I made the following alterations:
- generally added more explanatory notes;
- added more mnemonics (some, perhaps, rather tortured ones);
- added interjections (although I would have called them 'exclamations' myself) to "General Grammar";
- added colloquial contractions to "Verb Conjugations and Combinations";
- added more short examples (not long sentences) so that many of the rather abstract rules on conjugation can be put to immediate use, which should also aid memorization;
- added some signal words and fixed expressions, although this aspect is still in an embryonic stage;
- added the voiced and the aspirated kana (i.e. the g-,z-,d-,b- and p-rows) to the Hiragana and Katakana mnemonics decks (although without separate mnemonics, which are provided with their unaspirated cousins), as well as the combination sounds that I thought were so obvious that I hadn't included them before. Extra mnemonics were added for the irregular (and more rarely used) ぢ/づ and ﾁﾞ/ﾂﾞkana for ji/ju. As well as for the horizontal and vertical order of the kana, since that order is followed in Japanese dictionaries. Some older mnemonics that weren't working so well for me have been replaced with new ones that I hope will be more effective;
- added some more basic particles to the deck with that name, because there's no harm in including some easier cards in a deck;
- added some ko-so-a-do words that also serve as formal and less formal personal pronouns to "Personal pronouns";
- corrected some な's that had been mistyped as あ's in "Ko-so-a-do words";
- corrected some お's that should have been typed as う's.
(*1 My apologies to anyone who was inconvenienced by my previous mistakes! And for any remaining mistakes that I haven't noticed yet...)
All in all, I have experienced some real study benefits from using these decks. Specifically in noticing (and understanding) endings of verbs and adjectives a lot more often than I did when my grammar studies were limited to reading and summarizing my text book. Not that I am criticizing the method of anyone who skips formal grammar study and instead concentrates on full sentences in order to pick up the grammar that way. I'm simply sharing what works for me, since it may also benefit others.
Most (if not all) of the grammar points covered in the decks "General Grammar" and "Verb Conjugations and Combinations" have been combined into a Google Docs file to make it possible to search for specific verb- and adjective-endings (with Ctrl-F) and find an explanation for them (again, as much jargon-free as I thought possible) in the column beside it. Copying its contents to a Word document should also be possible. I aim to add the most important signal words, fixed expressions and other grammatical constructs as I encounter them, since I think those are at least as important for learning a language as endings to verbs and adjectives/adverbs. This file can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14Lum...OXGGQo/pub
<original post follows with some minor adjustments; version numbers added to corrected/expanded Anki decks>
In an attempt to make grammar learning more dynamic than just reading chapters in grammar books, I converted all the grammar points I could find in my current grammar book (Wayne P. Lammers' "Japanese the Manga Way" (2005 edition)) into various Anki-decks while converting the romaji its author used so often into kana. Where I could think of them, I included mnemonics (occasionally hints) in a "hint" field that the user can choose whether or not to reveal during reviews (although it always becomes visible after flipping the card).
I generally limited the info on the Anki notes to the grammar points, while leaving out the practice sentences and manga pictures. Not only would including those be a rather massive copyright infringement, but even if I could get away with that it just wouldn't feel right to rip off someone who wrote such a helpful book on Japanese grammar.
The links to the downloadpages for the main grammar sets are as follows:
- General Grammar: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/563967761 (version 1.02);
- Verb Conjugations and Combinations: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1935090034 (version 1.02).
Plus I made some smaller sets on various topics that I found I wanted to brush up on separately on occasion:
- Basic adverbs and adjectives: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/423203513
- Basic verbs: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/224611295
- Counting systems (those in JTMW plus a few more): https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/115255341
- Kinship Terms: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/196593780 (version 1.01)
- Ko-so-a-do Words: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/496526742 (version 1.01)
- Particles: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1187096186 (version 1.02)
- Personal Pronouns: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2137546472 (version 1.01)
- Pronouncing Times: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1172824577
- Question Words: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2127160463
- Relative Time Words: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/113518784
- Signal Words (still very much a work in progress): https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1283264811 (version 1.02).
In addition, I converted two sets of mnemonics I came up with for both the hiragana and katakana to Anki decks as well, including some improvements. Their links are as follows:
- Hiragana Mnemonics: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1134367630 (version 1.02)
- Katakana Mnemonics: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/683172726 (version 1.02)
(As an aside, so not to start any heated discussions, I still don't have much faith in the "Spaced Repetition System" aspect of Anki that supposedly guards against so-called "memory degradation". As far as I'm concerned, SRS stands for "Smart Randomization System", and is quite useful for identifying material that doesn't stick so well outside of the context of the textbook where it was first encountered. And for identifying material that needs to be learned differently, since the present method isn't working that well. In some cases, having a card come up again and again in the initial learning phase until it is really "hammered" into my memory has proved useful. But in my experience, when a mature card fails after a longer period of time this is nearly always due to some fault in the method I used to learn it initially. Or since then, some other card that is fairly close in terms of content has come along and confused the point I originally learned in isolation. But forgetting the contents of a card due to "memory degradation"? Nope, I haven't encountered that yet. Unless failing cards due to being sleep-deprived on some given day counts as such...)
Since mistakes are bound to have been made in creating this number of notes (well over a thousand all together, so double that number of review cards), I'd appreciate any and all suggestions for corrections/improvements.
Anyhow, I really hope these sets can be of some use to other (beginning) learners of Japanese!
While working with my Anki grammar decks for beginners (see below for a list of links if you're interested) over the past few months, I've come up with a number of (what I felt to be) improvements that I've incorporated into them. (In retrospect, I should have named this thread "Practical Bite-sized Grammar Decks" since I aimed to keep these decks as learner-friendly as possible and avoided linguistic jargon as much as possible. So far, the phrase "non-past verb-type modifier" is one of the highest concentrations of jargon in these decks.)
Aside from tracking down and fixing a number of my own mistakes (some minor, some rather embarrassing like incorrectly simplifying the way to obtain a verb's て-form *1), I made the following alterations:
- generally added more explanatory notes;
- added more mnemonics (some, perhaps, rather tortured ones);
- added interjections (although I would have called them 'exclamations' myself) to "General Grammar";
- added colloquial contractions to "Verb Conjugations and Combinations";
- added more short examples (not long sentences) so that many of the rather abstract rules on conjugation can be put to immediate use, which should also aid memorization;
- added some signal words and fixed expressions, although this aspect is still in an embryonic stage;
- added the voiced and the aspirated kana (i.e. the g-,z-,d-,b- and p-rows) to the Hiragana and Katakana mnemonics decks (although without separate mnemonics, which are provided with their unaspirated cousins), as well as the combination sounds that I thought were so obvious that I hadn't included them before. Extra mnemonics were added for the irregular (and more rarely used) ぢ/づ and ﾁﾞ/ﾂﾞkana for ji/ju. As well as for the horizontal and vertical order of the kana, since that order is followed in Japanese dictionaries. Some older mnemonics that weren't working so well for me have been replaced with new ones that I hope will be more effective;
- added some more basic particles to the deck with that name, because there's no harm in including some easier cards in a deck;
- added some ko-so-a-do words that also serve as formal and less formal personal pronouns to "Personal pronouns";
- corrected some な's that had been mistyped as あ's in "Ko-so-a-do words";
- corrected some お's that should have been typed as う's.
(*1 My apologies to anyone who was inconvenienced by my previous mistakes! And for any remaining mistakes that I haven't noticed yet...)
All in all, I have experienced some real study benefits from using these decks. Specifically in noticing (and understanding) endings of verbs and adjectives a lot more often than I did when my grammar studies were limited to reading and summarizing my text book. Not that I am criticizing the method of anyone who skips formal grammar study and instead concentrates on full sentences in order to pick up the grammar that way. I'm simply sharing what works for me, since it may also benefit others.
Most (if not all) of the grammar points covered in the decks "General Grammar" and "Verb Conjugations and Combinations" have been combined into a Google Docs file to make it possible to search for specific verb- and adjective-endings (with Ctrl-F) and find an explanation for them (again, as much jargon-free as I thought possible) in the column beside it. Copying its contents to a Word document should also be possible. I aim to add the most important signal words, fixed expressions and other grammatical constructs as I encounter them, since I think those are at least as important for learning a language as endings to verbs and adjectives/adverbs. This file can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14Lum...OXGGQo/pub
<original post follows with some minor adjustments; version numbers added to corrected/expanded Anki decks>
In an attempt to make grammar learning more dynamic than just reading chapters in grammar books, I converted all the grammar points I could find in my current grammar book (Wayne P. Lammers' "Japanese the Manga Way" (2005 edition)) into various Anki-decks while converting the romaji its author used so often into kana. Where I could think of them, I included mnemonics (occasionally hints) in a "hint" field that the user can choose whether or not to reveal during reviews (although it always becomes visible after flipping the card).
I generally limited the info on the Anki notes to the grammar points, while leaving out the practice sentences and manga pictures. Not only would including those be a rather massive copyright infringement, but even if I could get away with that it just wouldn't feel right to rip off someone who wrote such a helpful book on Japanese grammar.
The links to the downloadpages for the main grammar sets are as follows:
- General Grammar: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/563967761 (version 1.02);
- Verb Conjugations and Combinations: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1935090034 (version 1.02).
Plus I made some smaller sets on various topics that I found I wanted to brush up on separately on occasion:
- Basic adverbs and adjectives: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/423203513
- Basic verbs: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/224611295
- Counting systems (those in JTMW plus a few more): https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/115255341
- Kinship Terms: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/196593780 (version 1.01)
- Ko-so-a-do Words: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/496526742 (version 1.01)
- Particles: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1187096186 (version 1.02)
- Personal Pronouns: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2137546472 (version 1.01)
- Pronouncing Times: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1172824577
- Question Words: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2127160463
- Relative Time Words: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/113518784
- Signal Words (still very much a work in progress): https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1283264811 (version 1.02).
In addition, I converted two sets of mnemonics I came up with for both the hiragana and katakana to Anki decks as well, including some improvements. Their links are as follows:
- Hiragana Mnemonics: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1134367630 (version 1.02)
- Katakana Mnemonics: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/683172726 (version 1.02)
(As an aside, so not to start any heated discussions, I still don't have much faith in the "Spaced Repetition System" aspect of Anki that supposedly guards against so-called "memory degradation". As far as I'm concerned, SRS stands for "Smart Randomization System", and is quite useful for identifying material that doesn't stick so well outside of the context of the textbook where it was first encountered. And for identifying material that needs to be learned differently, since the present method isn't working that well. In some cases, having a card come up again and again in the initial learning phase until it is really "hammered" into my memory has proved useful. But in my experience, when a mature card fails after a longer period of time this is nearly always due to some fault in the method I used to learn it initially. Or since then, some other card that is fairly close in terms of content has come along and confused the point I originally learned in isolation. But forgetting the contents of a card due to "memory degradation"? Nope, I haven't encountered that yet. Unless failing cards due to being sleep-deprived on some given day counts as such...)
Since mistakes are bound to have been made in creating this number of notes (well over a thousand all together, so double that number of review cards), I'd appreciate any and all suggestions for corrections/improvements.
Anyhow, I really hope these sets can be of some use to other (beginning) learners of Japanese!
Edited: 2014-12-07, 3:32 pm
