(2016-06-08, 10:05 am)CureDolly Wrote: The problem with core decks is that they don't give you the vocabulary you need for what you are reading at the time, so I think it is better to acquire vocabulary as you go. The truly "core" words you will learn whatever you do.
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Rikaisama's real-time import function really helps anki-card making to be little more trouble than just looking up the words. It is a one-keypress affair once you have it set up.
Agreed. Again, that's harder to do at first when your language skills are limited, but you can still find good material that you can mine vocab from. I started off mining from NHK News Easy, 童話, learner texts, and whatever else I could find that wasn't completely beyond my abilities. I attacked it in read-study-read cycles: read first and mine vocab, study the vocab, and read again to reinforce the vocab I was learning.
LingQ was valuable for this for me in the beginning. It has a fair amount of beginner and intermediate texts, which can be hard to find in electronic format. Since LingQ also keeps track of what you're reading in your library, you can go back and re-read an article a few weeks down the road to keep the words you're learning fresh in your brain. The site even supports a flashcard system that lets you drill the vocab just for a specific article you're working on.