So, I have been studying Japanese for a while and I am always interested in new ways of learning the language.

My question is on building vocabulary. If I want to learn 100 new words a week, is it better to:

A) Select 100 words on Monday, and then review those 100 words every day for seven days, through to Sunday.

OR,

B) On Monday, select about 15 new words and focus on them on Monday ONLY. Then repeat the process though to Sunday. So each day, you review only 15 new words. And by then end of the week, you have learnt 15 * 7 = 105, or so.

C) Something else?

Which method is best? Anyone tried either of these?

This should answer your questions.

http://ichi2.net/anki/screencast3.html

Also be sure to check out http://www.iknow.co.jp. Quite a bit of this functionality is built in.

I agree with cjswanson-- Anki is a fine way to cram a bunch of knowledge into your brain and keep it in there. It will let you know when you need to review the information, so you don't have to create lists or piles of flash cards. How many cards you add per day is up to you. Add as many as you can stand.

Aye, neither of them is better. The 'best' way is to use an SRS like Anki or iKnow and let it drill you at the right schedule.

If I do the math, I get an average of 175 new vocab words a week just from sentence collecting what from what I read into Anki. That's actually being safe, here's how I calculated it:
Average of 30 cards a day and to be on the safe side you can say that 25 of those have one new vocab word.
25x7 = 175

But in reality I actually added about 225 this past week from Anki's stats. Factor in that I rarely add cards that don't have new words and quite often add words that have 2, 3 new words in them, I actually learned well over 200 words this past week.

This is all possible because of Anki. An SRS is really the best way to remember, because it's not just for short term, it's for long term. My strategy is to just dump everything I want to remember into Anki and let it take care of everything. So to address your question, I think the best answer is C) Add sentences/vocab to an SRS and let it take care of it.

Yeah, look at it in a similar way you added cards with RTK. Initial portion took the longest, which is the learning (thinking of stories, writing out the kanji once). Then there's the review portion that tells how well you learned/memorized the kanji.

Vocabulary is much the same way.

In my opinion, it's better to think of it as blocks of time. During your day, say how long you have review all your due items. Then, use the remaining time left over if any to learn new vocabulary. In other words, don't say you want to learn XX number of new items a day. Say you want to review/learn new stuff for XX hours a day. What happens in those hours will vary. Less time need for reviews means more time for new stuff to learn. More reviews may mean less time to learn new stuff.

Thinking about this, that's kind of why I like iKnow's graph that shows how much time you've been studying. Before, I was going for set new items (say 20 new words), after all my reviews. The idea was my reviews would be better spaced. Well, on some days, my reviews were very low (say, 35 due items) that were done in 20 minutes. Why limit myself to 20 new words I could do in 40 minutes, when I had 80 minutes of time for 40 new words. Plus, some new words turn out to be easy, while others are difficult. So on another day, 120 items could be due for review. After the time with those, I may not be in the mood for studying 20 more new words. A time limit instead of an item limit takes these in account.

Granted, this is just a method I adopted over time. Ironically, it meshes with how I used to train long distance running. For me, it was running for exactly 40 minutes at 70% Max heart rate. I just tracked how far I went to measure improvements. This helped over running set distances as hills, temperature, your general mood/health can affect what 6 miles feels like, but 40 minutes is 40 minutes.

Anyway, point being, don't add in bulk. Review then add during the time you set aside.

Like the others said, add the material you want o learn to an SRS like Anki.

The way I usually learn new vocab is first study it a bit on one day, going over it several times mentally, and add it to Anki. Then on the following day I start to review them in Anki and rate honestly whether I forgot, remembered with difficulty or remembered well, and then let Anki do the scheduling from there.

With an SRS like Anki, if I add 100 words in one week, I won't know them all with great familiarity by next week, but probably after a few reviews spanning 2 to 3 weeks most of the words will be familiar.

That's soooo true. I remember there was this alien word, 就職, that I would fail in EVERY review. But it is so natural for me now!

SRS IS the best way to build vocabulary, I think that's one of the few things everyone active on this forum agrees on There really is no question about it, the only time when it slightly matters is when you need to cram. If you MUST know 300 words by next sunday, putting them into an SRS won't be enough. So make sure you don't get into those situations

Tobberoth Wrote:SRS IS the best way to build vocabulary, I think that's one of the few things everyone active on this forum agrees on There really is no question about it, the only time when it slightly matters is when you need to cram. If you MUST know 300 words by next sunday, putting them into an SRS won't be enough. So make sure you don't get into those situations

Anki has a "cram" feature now.

playadom Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:SRS IS the best way to build vocabulary, I think that's one of the few things everyone active on this forum agrees on There really is no question about it, the only time when it slightly matters is when you need to cram. If you MUST know 300 words by next sunday, putting them into an SRS won't be enough. So make sure you don't get into those situations

Anki has a "cram" feature now.

I know, but that sort of goes against the whole idea and isn't SRS anymore, just a cool feature to a good program

Tobberoth Wrote:

playadom Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:SRS IS the best way to build vocabulary, I think that's one of the few things everyone active on this forum agrees on There really is no question about it, the only time when it slightly matters is when you need to cram. If you MUST know 300 words by next sunday, putting them into an SRS won't be enough. So make sure you don't get into those situations

Anki has a "cram" feature now.

I know, but that sort of goes against the whole idea and isn't SRS anymore, just a cool feature to a good program

Making a new anki deck with a handful of facts you need to speed-memorize is a lot handier than making flashcards.

Heck, if you need extra studying, you could just cram the cram deck while waiting for the original cram deck cards to expire[only takes like 26 minutes]

nest0r Wrote:I guess some SRSers must lead double lives, managing high or passable class scores with a binge/cramming diet of quickly lost information. So tragic. Well, that's how it was till I realized the wonders of SRSing *everything*. ^_-

I've used SRS for all of my non-math classes this past semester. The difference has been astounding. It's made my finals a lot less painful.

nest0r Wrote:I've been using it for about every subject I'm interested in, I really can't get over how awesome it is. At first I was a bit overwhelmed at the possibilities, but I've been refining my methods. I wish I'd discovered SRS several years earlier.

For math, I've mostly been inputting formulae and such that I've forgotten.

Man, you're so right about this. If I had SRS in high school, my grades would look a whole lot different... and I would still be good at French, Italian and Latin!

One thing is sure, as soon as my own kids are old enough (when I get them) I will teach them what an SRS is.

Can I ask something related? How do you ppl learn vocabulary? I honestly have no clue how to get more than a few a day into my head, but its tough and straining, cause they all sound the same to me. I thought of using similar sound and association, but with japanese, nothing comes to my mind.
(Background I wanna take the 3. level Proficiency Test next year, so I'll have quite a lot to study, first Heisig, then Vocab and readings and Grammar. Besides I wanna make my uni course, it will help me prepare I hope (though the Kanjis in Genki are just super annoying when you wanna concentrate on Heisig...)
Hope you can give me some advice (I love this site)!

lanval Wrote:Can I ask something related? How do you ppl learn vocabulary? I honestly have no clue how to get more than a few a day into my head, but its tough and straining, cause they all sound the same to me. I thought of using similar sound and association, but with japanese, nothing comes to my mind.

If you want to know how to remember vocabulary, the answer is an SRS. If you want to know where to find vocabulary, I say "read stuff" and other people say "iknow".

Sure sure, I got Genki 1 and Mnemosyne, so I dont need words, I wonder about techniques to learn words easier, like association. Is it possible to find association with japanese words, or do you all use the "stare it for long enough" technique? Seems quite "traditional" and uneffective to me..

Try reading this thread:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/for...p?TID=5307

It might have something worth trying. Leosmith posted a lot of the relevant stuff up front. (The thread goes on for about 24 pages.) Considering that some of the people posting are hardcore polyglots, it might be useful. But then again, it might not mesh with your learning style.

rich_f Wrote:Try reading this thread:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/for...p?TID=5307

It might have something worth trying. Leosmith posted a lot of the relevant stuff up front. (The thread goes on for about 24 pages.) Considering that some of the people posting are hardcore polyglots, it might be useful. But then again, it might not mesh with your learning style.

Thanks, looks promising =)

lanval Wrote:Sure sure, I got Genki 1 and Mnemosyne, so I dont need words, I wonder about techniques to learn words easier, like association. Is it possible to find association with japanese words, or do you all use the "stare it for long enough" technique? Seems quite "traditional" and uneffective to me..

You know the kanji, all you have to do is make the association between the kanji and the word. It's extremely easy, you don't have to stare at it at all. Read it. Did you do right? Good, press accordingly on your SRS. Failed? Press that you failed it and move on.

I do 80-100 words a day. I made a thread about it.

Kind of a complicated system I have here if I was to explain it. How did I end up here...

lanval Wrote:Sure sure, I got Genki 1 and Mnemosyne, so I dont need words, I wonder about techniques to learn words easier, like association. Is it possible to find association with japanese words, or do you all use the "stare it for long enough" technique? Seems quite "traditional" and uneffective to me..

As an effective 'traditional' method, you can learn words by making 5-10 flashcards of the words you want to learn. Look them over, then flip through them all until you remember them all. Then, if you can handle it, repeat with new words and then add the two stacks together for some reviewing 'fun' ^_^ For long term memory, you can SRS those words. Familiarizing yourself with the words will make SRSing easier.

And now I see the linked forum describes something similar....

You might want to complete Heisig first. Learning vocabulary words is easier after you know the kanji that make up the word.

zodiac Wrote:You might want to complete Heisig first. Learning vocabulary words is easier after you know the kanji that make up the word.

Afraid I got no choice for I go to a university course (the third). And I plan on doing the Proficiency test next year. Maybe I can look at the primitives to get some clue at least.

iirc the proficiency test is conducted in december, so 12 months from now. More than enough to complete Heisig without going at it full-time. Why not do, say, 1 lesson using the free sample and this site, and see if you like it?