k. i've seen lots of posts in the last few days i wanted to reply to, but i thought i'd stick it all together in one place.
I want to talk about various things, 1 being the learning resources / real material debate. Secondly, about how i've changed things since i wrote that post on speaking a few weeks ago, and the effects i'm starting to see. And 3rdly about things i've observed from the way my baby cousin is learning to speak english. Sorry if i mash them all together...

(I did Rosetta stone, I've used well over 1000 smart fm sentences, about 400 KO2001 sentences, a chapter of read real japanese, about 600 cards made from dramas i watched, and less than 100 from manga. I didn't finish RTK, and i didn't mine any grammar books, though i do look at grammar books when i need to. So these are the things i can compare.)

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Learning materials vs. Real stuff.
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Using learning materials is without a doubt the quickest way to gain a large passive vocabulary (for understanding things). I don't regret for a second using the learning materials i have, and at some points in the future, i'l probably go back to them to try to cram a whole load more words into my head when i feel i'm starting to plateau.
However, i think they seriously seriously lack in a number of ways, even despite having the audio on smart fm which isn't quite so boring.
The thing that they lack is *context*. This, theoretically, will impact learning in a number of ways. As i do more cards, i'm finding it to be more true.
I've seen people suggest in other threads that you should amass big collections of subs2SRS material and then search it when you come across a word. I really disagree with this, unless you don't have much time. When you do this, i think you give up nearly all of the benefits of taking things from context in the first place while still retaining the worst parts. It is a step up from learning materials in that you might sometimes remember the context it was said in, and at least it's more fun. But, for instance, i saw Blackmacros wrote that once the sentences are in your deck, they don't have the context anyway, so become the same as learning materials in a way. I agree.

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Using Anki in better ways to improve different skills and keep context
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I think the best way to a.) keep context, and b.) make anki not just something to get done with in a day, but to really enjoy, is to make *double sided cards*. Nowadays, opening anki each day is like opening a bag of sweets that i just want to keep dipping into throughout the day, rather than the vegetables you have to eat as quick as possible before you can have your pudding. But, it's sweets that are even better for you than vegetables!! big_smile
This is also much nicer because, while there are some interesting or funny one liners that you can SRS, what really makes things funny in dramas a lot is the interaction between characters. It's not any particular one line that they say.
Anyway, here's a list of some of the card models i've set up (from dramas), and what skills i think they help with:

* RESPONDING CARDS
---Front side: Picture and Audio of someone saying something.
---Back Side: Response to what they said picture and audio, Japanese transcriptions of both.
---Tested on: How well I can respond (remember the back side). This includes both grammar and vocabulary. But for the first few times I see the card, i test on how well i can shadow both sides only.
What kind of sentences: Sentences that I should really know how to say already on the back. Generally, at the moment, they are short, and relatively easy.
---How it helps: It really makes you think about what the other person has said, and how you can respond to it. Even if you can't remember the actual response, you can amuse yourself trying to make up your own. As i get better, these cards will probably get longer. Atm they contain only short answers, short comments, or well used polite phrases to be used in situations, though i do have a few memorable longer ones.
Since you are presented with the situation in which to say these sentences on the front side, i think it'll be good training for fluid output in a real situation. I know that, because of these cards, I can think in short full sentences more often than I could before, anyway.

* PRONUNCIATION / READING CARDS
---Front side: Picture and audio and transcription of someone saying something. Transcription of the response.
---Back side: Picture and audio of the response
---Tested on: How well i have remembered the different pitches and pronunciation of words within the sentence. Obviously if I couldn't read the response to start with, I have to fail it.
---How it helps: Trains you to remember how pitch varies in a sentence along with the words and the mood of the response. Before i started doing these cards i rarely took any notice of pitch or tone at all.

* READING -> LISTENING cards
---Front side: Picture and transcription of a sentence.
---Back side: Audio of the transcription, audio, picture, and transcription of response,
---Tested on: How well i can type in the sentence including kanji.
---How it Helps: Same as normal reading cards, except the audio response helps with the first two types of cards, and makes it slightly more contextful and fun. I also say the sentence trying to include pitch before writing it, and shadow the response.

* LISTENING / SHADOWING -> READING & LISTENING
---Front side: Picture and audio
---Back side: Transcription of 1st side, picture, audio and transcription of response.
---Tested on: How well i can type the sentence by hearing it
---How it helps: Same as normal listening cards, again it helps with the first two types of cards, and i shadow both sides of the card.

* OTHER
other one sided cards that test either the front or back side of the other types of cards, either for reading or listening.

I don't make all these cards for every single sentence or anything. I pick the areas I think will be weakest. Unless it is a one liner, I try to have one double sided card at least, but generally a few one sided cards to help the process that i can probably delete once mature. For example, if the sentence contains Kanji i don't know, i'l generally focus on reading cards for it. Sometimes if someone's speaking fast i'l try to do a listening card for it. If only one side of the card will be a challenge, i'l use only one double sided card, and focus it with one sided ones. Usually i add 2-3 types of card for one clip, but if both sides are difficult, it might be 5 or 6. It's no problem to delete or change them when they get too easy. There's other variations on cards also to try later.

---Why are double sided cards better?
I really think that double sided cards are a ton better than one sided cards!! Seriously, so you get a card from your subs2SRS deck that says "私は心配していってるの！". 1. i'd never add it because i know all the words. 2. If i did add it, i'd probably be going, why is the いってる there again?? Now make that the back side, with the front side going, "何で水を差すこと言うんだよ". Both sides are helped by having the other side there. Now you go, oh, yeah, i remember that! Your mind flashes back to the situation you watched.
Or, the audio turns out to be a little difficult on one of your subs2SRS cards, and you end up having to delete it, despite liking the sentence. With double sided cards the context gives you enough to remember it.
With double sided cards, where i would have only been able to give a one word response a month ago, i can respond with some sentences i know are correct if the situation occurs.

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About japanese vs. english definitions vs. context
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A few weeks ago, i thought it didn't really matter about english definitions. I still don't think it matters to the point where you should force yourself to use a japanese dictionary if you can't understand the definitions, because in a few months it'll be easier. But, i have noticed a difference, both since i started using these cards, and since starting to use japanese definitions. Before, when i was using the study resources, with english definitions, my mind would flick naturally to the english translation on seeing the word. On using japanese definitions, sometimes my mind goes to the japanese definition i looked up, but in most cases, those definitions only went into fleshing the concept of the word out, and my mind skips straight to the context i associate it with instead. I dunno, but that seems better...

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About children's learning processes and speaking
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There's an interesting book about this, called "the language and thought of the child" (or something similar) by Piaget about how childrens thought, speech, and grammatical knowledge develops at different ages. It's pretty easy read, i think, but i havent read it for years, so...
Anyway, i've been watching my little cousin learning to talk for the last year. He's now 2 years and 4 months old. For anyone who says, well, learning to repeat sentences isn't going to help you to communicate naturally - i disagree.
Young children, it seems, mimic everything before they can produce it on their own. My little cousin repeats things after someone says it a huge amount of the time still. He's saying things on his own, but they are very short sentences that he has definiately learnt already. He even mimics their tone of voice, the stress they put on words, etc. It's how children learn to use words in the right context.
He has tons of problems with grammar, past and future tense, putting in all the grammatical words, etc. "please can i leave the table" sounds more like "pleaseculeaventable", because he hasn't yet differentiated all the different words that make the sentence up. When making up sentences on his own, he generally misses them out altogether.
Have you ever heard a small boy or girl say something that seems strange for their age? It's because they mimic their parents tones of voice and vocal patterns even when parents don't intend them to.
Understanding is really important. You can tell that he understands almost everything you say because he responds appropriately. He can't say everything on his own, but when he does say things, he says them in the right context. 8 months ago, he didn't. He'd sit at the table and say random words... "eyes" "yes, we've all got eyes" "plane" "yes, you went on a plane on holiday, didn't you". etc.
i guess i'm rambling a bit, but the point i was going to make is that learning to respond with sentences you've taken from different places in the exact way that they said them isn't going to hurt your ability to create your own sentences in the long run. Children don't learn a dictionary and then work out when to use which definition. They just repeat stuff until they get it. The first stage of that is repeating after someone when they say something. Then they say random stuff. Then they say individual words in the right context. The second stage is repeating short sentences they've heard people say before in the right context. After that, the sentences will get longer. How old were you before you really started speaking with any creativity?
He doesn't mind if he doesn't get all the grammar exactly right, because he's always got someone to repeat the sentence again straight after he says it. "want go play swings" "You want to go and play on the swings? Ok, let's go". The same thing can be acheived with Anki, if you make cards well, i think...

I know that we're adults rather than children, which is great, cos we can speed the whole process up. But i'd still kind of like to skip the part where i have really awkward conversations taking 10 minutes to string together a bunch of random words if i can... I can see how having a large vocabulary helps with understanding, but it's equally important to know how to use them. If you tried to teach my cousin all the names for different shades of red at once, he probably would find it a lot harder to just say things like "red sock". if you see what i mean?

IceCream Wrote:*************************************
About children's learning processes and speaking
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There's an interesting book about this, called "the language and thought of the child" (or something similar) by Piaget about how childrens thought, speech, and grammatical knowledge develops at different ages. It's pretty easy read, i think, but i havent read it for years, so...

Anyone interested in this book, here are free PDF and djvu copies:

http://ia331318.us.archive.org/3/items/l...529mbp.pdf

http://ia331318.us.archive.org/3/items/l...29mbp.djvu

http://www.archive.org/details/languagea...g007529mbp

(Don't worry about copyright! It's an old book in the public domain)

Might like this: http://www.scribd.com/doc/16668529/alan-...sonal-view - He describes being inspired by Piaget, then Bruner, in thinking about the enactive/iconic/symbolic stages while coming up with the whole mouse/windows thing, his goal being a 'modeless' multimodal environment where moving from one mode didn't require terminating another.

Alan Kay's best-known quote is "The ability to read a medium means you can access materials and tools created by others. The ability to write in a medium means you can generate materials and tools for others. You must have both to be literate." (There's more to that quote related to using technology to become more proactive in our learning, but I shan't ramble on about that.)

I posted these before in random comments and they're related to a theme I harp on a lot, but here's some relevant articles on learning from the Mind Hacks fellow:

http://schoolofeverything.com/blog/strai...ing-styles
http://schoolofeverything.com/blog/learn...-invisible
http://schoolofeverything.com/blog/learn...uld-be-fun

I can't believe I missed this post until now. First of all, I really like the concept behind the two sided cards. Once I'm through with all my JLPT/efficiency stuff I will definitely give that a shot because...

IceCrean Wrote:But, for instance, i saw Blackmacros wrote that once the sentences are in your deck, they don't have the context anyway, so become the same as learning materials in a way. I agree.

...I agree with the fact that you're agreeing with me. As it is, sentences in an SRS really have no context anymore. Hopefully this double sided card thing will help with that.

By the way, I believe this exchange is what you were referring to.

blackmacros Wrote:

Codexus Wrote:Are sentences from "native sources" really more interesting once they are taken in isolation?

Having completed KO2001 and been mining native stuff for around a month now I've come to essentially the same conclusion. Sentences in an SRS have no context outside themselves. Sentences, once they have been mined and placed in the SRS, are nothing more than a collection of words. Sure they are interesting when you're reading it in your manga. But once its in your SRS its just another sentence. The sentence itself might be funny or interesting; but that is a function of the sentence, not its context. I don't find reviewing natural sentences any more fun or enjoyable than reviewing KO sentences.

Having said that, though, I would like to make a small amendment. If you are reviewing just sentences, once they are in the SRS they are essentially contextless and natural stuff is no more enjoyable than KO. But, I've recently found myself really enjoying my Full Metal Alchemist subs2srs reviews because I *love* the cool voice/acting and audio that I try and shadow on the answer side. When I review those same sentences on my iPhone (sans picture and audio) they're just as boring and dull as the rest of my stuff. So I guess if KO had better voice acting....?

Aren't all cards double-sided, simply by definition?

Well yes, that's true; Front and Back, Question and Answer are on all cards. But I think you're being a little facetious in the context described here its a little different.

Quote:* RESPONDING CARDS
---Front side: Picture and Audio of someone saying something.
---Back Side: Response to what they said picture and audio, Japanese transcriptions of both.

This type of card, the one that caught my attention the most, is less of Question/Answer and more like a combination of two different cards entirely. Normally these 2 facts would be placed on two separate cards. Instead you link them and put them on one card, one on the front, one on the back. Hence "double sided" cards.

Sounds to me like one card, but one that will take 3-4 times as long to review.... And it has the problem all cards with too much information has: Very hard to grade. Did you get the first side correct but not the second one... um... is that hard? Or normal? Or failed?

I say go with the advice on Supermemo keep the factors as few as possible to make cards easy to review and grade.

blackmacros Wrote:Having said that, though, I would like to make a small amendment. If you are reviewing just sentences, once they are in the SRS they are essentially contextless and natural stuff is no more enjoyable than KO.

Actually, I remember the context for every sentence in my deck. Especially so if they have audio.

As I mentioned here in a related conversation, I always remember the context of every card, that's one of the key and best elements of SRSing for me, the context is preserved into this fuzzy matrix. I've applied that effect to some interesting things in regards to historiography, but that's for another identity/area of the net. ^_^ I think that if a sentence loses its context for you, maybe you're doing something wrong. ;p

Doesn't really matter how many fail points you have, in my opinion, you grade and fail till you get them all right. The card will come up more in reviews, but it doesn't matter because you're only paying attention to the aspects of the card that you failed/restudied, the other fail points that you've already successfully memorized you don't need to invest effort into as part of the 'failing in layers', it doesn't take any longer than if that card was split into multiple cards.

Also Tobbs, you really seem hung up on the SRS cards taking so much more effort when you do something besides a super minimal rendition of SRSing, but my cards contain every sensory modality and multiple fail points and they take me mere seconds...

I still think call-and-response cards would work best as part of a strategy like so, but having them pop up as production cues is good, too. I also think that Japanese or non-verbal variations of Pimsleur-style active recall cues that resolve emphasized in a previous link would be effective.

Stuff here from Thora + the renewed thinking about the value of videos for visual speech cues (plus my annotation/video clip related ramblings here hehe) made me want to invest some effort into the possibilities of video clip playlists. I saw a few multimedia corpora online, though they seemed more like sequestered academic projects than anything (tangent).

PS - As far as I'm concerned, there is no 'learning materials' versus whatever debate. We have the ability to make any Japanese source into structured learning material, custom to individuals, on an automated, mass scale. That is such an epic achievement, it still blows me away. We've got a ways to go, though, as my recent realization that I'm a newbie when it comes to 'generating materials and tools for others' (for myself) pointed out in the 60/30/10 thread (the 'tools' being file manipulation/scripting, the 'materials' being my only vague conception of how to create 'condensed reading' materials from corpora).

IceCream Wrote:Even though, some of the sentences i would definitely remember the context from watching, i find i remember the context of the scene, or worse, the program in general, rather than the actual context of what has been said.
For example: 大体これ物理的に無理なものがあるでしょう！
was one of the cards i entered on a single sided card. When i came to reviewing it the first time, i could remember the scene, but not quite what it was referring to. Having the previous sentence, ９０点。 ウソつけ?！ really puts me at the right point in the scene, and i remember who and what is being referred to.

Between this and kazelee's output post and the comments there, I'm thinking that perhaps the biggest problem people are having with context/input when using scripted-type materials is more along the lines of having underdeveloped/passive art appreciation and critical analysis: really thinking about the nature of the characters, following the nuances of their scripted behaviours and how they say things, why the writers had them say it, the social norms and taboos, tropes, idiomatic phrases, nonverbal cues, interpersonal dynamics in regards to politeness and other group/individual-related differentiations, et cetera. Following along like this to the point that you can quickly and easily quasi-immerse yourself and in a Frankenstein fashion recombine and resurrect them in new forms. Developing these exegetic and eisegetic skills while being 'meta' aware is very valuable. (Normally I would add ostranenie/reduced listening here but I figured I've already hit convolution overload.)

When I remember the context for a card, I remember the fictive context as a reader/viewer, the context from an authorial perspective, the communication/semantic context, and the actual meta context of when I was extracting the materials and using it to create linguistically relevant cards.

Note I say for 'scripted'... unscripted, as it were, is another topic: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...4#pid43224 and http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...3#pid43233 ^_^

One thing that's amazing me as I dig more and more into language learning with the SRS is how much my approach changes. For example, between here and AJATT, I was really excited to jump straight into pre-mined sentences, Supermemo's warnings about simple items be damned.

Boy, did I get burned. Trying to remember the reading of three different words and failing if even one is wrong--ugly.

But, I learned something from RtK: Take a character like 虜: writing it requires knowing the top part of 虎 and 男, which in turn require ト, 厂, 田 and 力. It's not "simple" in the ideal SRS sense. But the complexity isn't just hanging: I had already learned 七、田、力、男、虎, (plus a whole flock of characters using the cliff and divination radicals) and had cards that ensured I'd remember them.

When I initially read about the Iverson method, I was initially put off. It sounded like word pairs combined with SM-0 (a version of Supermemo that collects facts on pages in a notebook and schedules the entire page together). I've used word-pairs without sentences in my study of Esperanto and wasn't completely satisfied (reduces the frequency of dictionary lookups, makes it much easier to use a monolingual dictionary, but doesn't do anything beyond that).

Anyway, I'm back to word pairs in Anki (target-language word -> target language reading, brief source-language definition). This isn't because I've given up on sentences--I still like them, it's just that I feel the complexity of a sentence (understand all words, read all words, grok grammar, etc. etc.) requires support from simpler cards. I see basic vocab-out-of-context as similar to the kanji-out-of-context environment of RtK: it's a starting point, not an end, something to be done quickly and finished with.

It's certainly not as much fun as reading 宮沢賢治 short stories, but doesn't burn me out as fast, either. (Dictionary and flashcard every. single. word. ugh.)

I've got a lot of single words cards in my deck. I still have audio/images for them, but I do them as active recall dictation. The ones I remember best are the ones I excise extemporaneously from a memorable context, the way I do in English when I encounter cool words (I have a bazillion year long list of fetishized words in a txt file ;p). Usually when I encounter them, say, in a show/book, I don't interrupt my experience to make a note of it, I just chunk them together in my head under abbreviations then write them out later to be defined/added to SRS.

Plus of course since you can preserve the context with the SRS, good to make sure you capture that in some way to so you get the usage/pronunciation/etc correct.

Weirdly enough I haven't started using cloze deletion with Japanese yet since Anki added the quick formatting (I've been doing it with other topics from the start, just not Japanese, and the new key shortcuts do make things easier). You could put the full sentence with the target word omitted on the question side and audio with the answer. Could be good with general reading practice as well, omitting target words from a lengthier piece of text (I'm thinking of applying this as text version of 60/30/10 listening environment somehow). Those are pretty old school applications tho I guess. Coming full circle! ;p

Regarding what I said previously about context: it's not so much about forgetting what the context of the sentence was; its about the fact that the sentence is no longer in that original context.

その捕獲の指揮を君に任せたいのだよ

Is a sentence from FMA. When I hear it in the anime, it is in that context and is enjoyable as a part of comprehending the show as a whole. When I write it now, its in the context of a forum post and its impact changes. I can remember the original context, of course, but its in a new one now and the impact isn't quite the same. And when its in Anki...well its sitting there on a blank screen, with no context. Video/pictures/audio help a lot of course in retaining that original context. I will definitely admit (as I did above) that subs2srs really is excellent for solving this problem. But if you're just mining plain sentences (from a book, perhaps) once those sentences are in an SRS, they're nothing but a collection of words. Thats why, when I review on my iPhone without my media, I find native sentences no more interesting than anything else. Even if you can remember the original context, the impact is just not the same. Reading *random sentence from various sources**random sentence from various sources**random sentence from various sources*その捕獲の指揮を君に任せたいのだよ*random sentence from various sources* in Anki when you review is not the same as hearing that sentence in the context of the story it is telling. Even if you remember the context, you're still not getting the continuity of the sentences that come before and after that continue fleshing out the story. But on IceCream's double sided cards, you do.

blackmacros Wrote:Regarding what I said previously about context: it's not so much about forgetting what the context of the sentence was; its about the fact that the sentence is no longer in that original context.

その捕獲の指揮を君に任せたいのだよ

Is a sentence from FMA. When I hear it in the anime, it is in that context and is enjoyable as a part of comprehending the show as a whole. When I write it now, its in the context of a forum post and its impact changes. I can remember the original context, of course, but its in a new one now and the impact isn't quite the same. And when its in Anki...well its sitting there on a blank screen, with no context. Video/pictures/audio help a lot of course in retaining that original context. I will definitely admit (as I did above) that subs2srs really is excellent for solving this problem. But if you're just mining plain sentences (from a book, perhaps) once those sentences are in an SRS, they're nothing but a collection of words. Thats why, when I review on my iPhone without my media, I find native sentences no more interesting than anything else. Even if you can remember the original context, the impact is just not the same. Reading *random sentence from various sources**random sentence from various sources**random sentence from various sources*その捕獲の指揮を君に任せたいのだよ*random sentence from various sources* in Anki when you review is not the same as hearing that sentence in the context of the story it is telling. Even if you remember the context, you're still not getting the continuity of the sentences that come before and after that continue fleshing out the story. But on IceCream's double sided cards, you do.

*shakes blackmacros* Why didn't you tell me you can have video in Anki?!?@#32353ddfg

Well I think you can...its an option in subs2srs right? I've never tried it myself though.

*shakes nest0r harder* wake up and pay attention, boy!

I think you guys are expecting way too many wonders from the SRS.

If you just used the SRS for what it does best, remembering words, you wouldn't worry so much about context. Why does it matter that the context of the FMA sentence changes slightly when you see it in an SRS instead of in the show? You're still forced to remember the readings and the meanings of the words in the sentence, and that's what the SRS does.

If you want fun sentences in an FMA context, watch FMA instead. Forcing it to work in the SRS is just... illogical.

You won't get proper real context-full exposure in an SRS. That's not what it's for. You get proper real exposure from native sources.

Tobberoth Wrote:I think you guys are expecting way too many wonders from the SRS.

If you just used the SRS for what it does best, remembering words, you wouldn't worry so much about context. Why does it matter that the context of the FMA sentence changes slightly when you see it in an SRS instead of in the show? You're still forced to remember the readings and the meanings of the words in the sentence, and that's what the SRS does.

If you want fun sentences in an FMA context, watch FMA instead. Forcing it to work in the SRS is just... illogical.

You won't get proper real context-full exposure in an SRS. That's not what it's for. You get proper real exposure from native sources.

SRS is just a framing, adds control. A window, a HUD. I disagree with you about what an SRS is for. I think you're waaay too limiting. For someone good at programming, you've only got a reader's mindset, not a designer/author's. Too bad. ;p I ever admire your cool logic, however, I find it inspiring to play my own ideas off of.

Think about it. Adding extra crap to cards is the same as adding readings, example words and tons of other stuff to your RtK cards. You think you're hitting two birds with one stone, when in fact you're throwing 30 stones and not hitting a single bird.

Tobberoth Wrote:I think you guys are expecting way too many wonders from the SRS.

If you just used the SRS for what it does best, remembering words, you wouldn't worry so much about context. Why does it matter that the context of the FMA sentence changes slightly when you see it in an SRS instead of in the show? You're still forced to remember the readings and the meanings of the words in the sentence, and that's what the SRS does.

If you want fun sentences in an FMA context, watch FMA instead. Forcing it to work in the SRS is just... illogical.

You won't get proper real context-full exposure in an SRS. That's not what it's for. You get proper real exposure from native sources.

I think you misinterpreted what I wrote, or perhaps I was not clear enough. We share essentially the same viewpoint I think. When you put something in an SRS, it loses context. I think we both agree on that. I also don't think its necessarily a problem. I originally put my explanation forward (in another thread) to account for why I don't think the perceived 'lack of context' of learning resources matters as much as people think, because everything becomes contextless in the end.

Having said that, I do think the double-sided "Response card" [Frontentence, Back: Other person's response] could be an interesting way to reintroduce context into the SRS.

EDIT:

Tobberoth Wrote:Think about it. Adding extra crap to cards is the same as adding readings, example words and tons of other stuff to your RtK cards. You think you're hitting two birds with one stone, when in fact you're throwing 30 stones and not hitting a single bird.

Yes, or this could be the case. I personally haven't tried doing this yet so I don't know which way it will turn out. But IceCream seems to have had some success with it, and it certainly does present an interesting solution to the 'problem' [I realise, though, that you probably don't actually view it as a problem. Hence, 'problem'] of the contextless SRS.

Quote:wow... you were pulling lines from programs without any audio or video?!?

A few here and there from books, but mostly no. I usually have audio/images. But the thing is, I can't use that stuff when I review on my iPhone (which I do often) so a lot of my sentences return to just being text, unfortunately.

blackmacros Wrote:Regarding what I said previously about context: it's not so much about forgetting what the context of the sentence was; its about the fact that the sentence is no longer in that original context.

その捕獲の指揮を君に任せたいのだよ

Is a sentence from FMA. When I hear it in the anime, it is in that context and is enjoyable as a part of comprehending the show as a whole. When I write it now, its in the context of a forum post and its impact changes. I can remember the original context, of course, but its in a new one now and the impact isn't quite the same. And when its in Anki...well its sitting there on a blank screen, with no context. Video/pictures/audio help a lot of course in retaining that original context. I will definitely admit (as I did above) that subs2srs really is excellent for solving this problem. But if you're just mining plain sentences (from a book, perhaps) once those sentences are in an SRS, they're nothing but a collection of words. Thats why, when I review on my iPhone without my media, I find native sentences no more interesting than anything else. Even if you can remember the original context, the impact is just not the same. Reading *random sentence from various sources**random sentence from various sources**random sentence from various sources*その捕獲の指揮を君に任せたいのだよ*random sentence from various sources* in Anki when you review is not the same as hearing that sentence in the context of the story it is telling. Even if you remember the context, you're still not getting the continuity of the sentences that come before and after that continue fleshing out the story. But on IceCream's double sided cards, you do.

Maybe I am a super genius *crosses fingers* but I do remember virtually everything. For example:

うそっぷ from one piece says : 魚人達は海軍にしょっぴかれたはずなんだが、あいつ一人脱獄したようだ。

He says this to explain the background of an old character that has reappeared to the new characters that don't know him. So this sentence has who is saying it and their character, who it is being said to and their characters. I don't remember the whole episode and every nuance of the context, but anything that is directly relevant I do. This is quite different from a KO sentence which has nothing.

@IceCream

I think the responding cards are a really interesting idea, but I wonder if drilling the one response over and over is going to make that response come out more than it should. You'll have to let us know how it goes.

BTW, I don't think you can say デカーpost. You could say デケーpost, デカイpost since these are real pronunciations. Also you could say デカpost, you can attached words to デカ like, well only rude ones come to mind..

Tobberoth Wrote:If you want fun sentences in an FMA context, watch FMA instead. Forcing it to work in the SRS is just... illogical.

This.
I don't know why everyone's trying to cram everything into an SRS. Recognition, production, double sided, pictures, audio...whether you got the sentence from a fun native source, or from a text book, you're still just sitting at the computer grading yourself on random sentences outside of any real context. I think more time should be spent steadily reading, or actively listening than SRSing. You can easily 'review' by rereading and relistening.

IceCream Wrote:I do think anki can be used really well in the way of shoving a ton of vocabulary in, it worked well for me when i did that too, and, i'm gonna keep switching back and forth between the two. But, with subs2SRS, and double sided cards even more, it throws me back into the situation i saw, which helps my memory work best. Of course, if i watched the whole show it would do that more, but on the other hand, then the information isn't in a manageable chunk that i can savour the taste of analysing and thinking about and extracting information from either...

But aren't you sort of contradicting yourself here? You're saying that your memory works in a different way, you don't think in terms of facts. Yet, you say you need the SRS to analyze chunks. To me, that sounds exactly like what I do, I just make sure each card has just one thing to analyze, making the act almost instantaneous. I add sentences which are so simple and concise, that I almost laugh at how easy they are when they come up... but when I saw them the first time, I didn't know because they contained an unknown word. Just reading the card through makes sure I got it, it's so easy that it's impossible to miss anything.

If I had audio, I would have to spend time on that as well. I understood the written sentence, but did I get all the nuances in the audio? Did I correctly hear the pitch? Did I correctly shadow it? Should I maybe listen to it one more time to make sure? Should I maybe fail the card? The same is true with video. And conversation as well. Did I understand both the first part and the second part of the conversation? Did I understand the real connection between the two sentences?

All of this extra info you need to analyze bogs you down. The only way to get around that is to ignore it... and if you do that, I don't really get what the point is.

I think your view that an SRS lets you cut things down into manageable chunks is a good way of looking at it, but what you call "manageable", I would call "unmanageable".

thermal Wrote:Maybe I am a super genius *crosses fingers* but I do remember virtually everything. For example:

うそっぷ from one piece says : 魚人達は海軍にしょっぴかれたはずなんだが、あいつ一人脱獄したようだ。

He says this to explain the background of an old character that has reappeared to the new characters that don't know him. So this sentence has who is saying it and their character, who it is being said to and their characters. I don't remember the whole episode and every nuance of the context, but anything that is directly relevant I do. This is quite different from a KO sentence which has nothing.

Well certainly everyone is different, and you definitely retain a lot more of the context than I do. Again though, its not so much being able to remember the context. Its the fact thats it not actually *in* that context anymore once its in your SRS. Even if you can remember the context when you review it, you're still not being exposed to the preceding and following sentences/scenes/imagery and all the emotional content that comes with that, which is what actually transform that sentence from a bunch of words into a narrative.

Or maybe you are, and I am just woefully inadequate

Tobberoth Wrote:Think about it. Adding extra crap to cards is the same as adding readings, example words and tons of other stuff to your RtK cards. You think you're hitting two birds with one stone, when in fact you're throwing 30 stones and not hitting a single bird.

I've already thought about that. It's about using different modes to reinforce/augment the encoding process, to simplify the complex into robust cues. With RTK you're using muscle memory, narratives, imagined stories, and keywords to get these complex kanji with the appropriate spatial locations correct and review them till it's internalized, making adjustments to the process, tweaking stories, writing the kanji as you review if you need to, as you go along till you've 'mastered' the kanji.

With other types of information you can do the same thing, except since it's the language itself occurring in context, with audio and text and meaning, there's plenty more you can use to enhance the encoding of the memories, and the goal for me is to find the optimal way to combine them all so I can organize them all into these efficient retrieval structures and parlay them into linguistic knowledge. Rather than info overload/interference, it's synthesizing and enhancing memories. Everything I've read and continue to read about how the memory works tells me I'm right. Also, 9 months of doing this and honing it tells me it works. ;p