I just started practicing for the 語彙 section and I was wondering how to prepare best for it. Of course, there are Kanzen Master and other prep books, but I feel like I will need to learn every Japanese definition for every vocabulary I have ever learnt, when seeing tasks like, e.g.

頼もしい
ア） ちょっと頼もしいことがあるんですが、よろしいですか。
イ） この新聞は頼もしいから、うそは書かないだろう。
ウ） 毎日勉強してきたので、テストの結果が頼もしい。
エ） 私には頼もしい友達がたくさんいます。

It's very difficult for me picking the right one here.. Basically this task wants you to know the definition of the words (by heart): 頼りになりそうなさま｡心強さを与えるさま｡

Incidentally, I added monolingual definitions to all my cards in Anki and I was wondering how to proceed now. Learning the definitions by heart (which I can, as it seems. I tried and I can remember them word-by-word, however, reviewing takes much longer naturally. Whether the defs will stick also in future whilst adding more cards, is uncertain, though)? Just reading them? I am kind of at a loss here T-T

I have also made a list of words I cannot tell the difference of. Certainly lots of them had been explained previously and I do use a dictionary to look them up but.. they just don't stick.

1. 適当・適した・適切・適度
2. 失う・なくす
3. 大きい・大きな (other い・な Adj. pairs)
4. 冷たい・寒い
5. 目的・目標
6. 行動・行為
7. 混じる・混ざる
8. 強制・強行
9. 信用・信仰・信頼
10. 使い道・用途
11.　増す・増やす

Please feel free to use this thread for explanations and as "What's the difference?"-thread.

よろしくお願いします。

Tori-kun Wrote:It's very difficult for me picking the right one here.. Basically this task wants you to know the definition of the words (by heart): 頼りになりそうなさま｡心強さを与えるさま｡

It's pretty easy to dismiss ア and ウ because they don't make much sense. After that it's a bit more tricky but that word is mainly for people and less-so for inanimate objects.

This seems like a similar issue:

Tori-kun Wrote:4. 冷たい・寒い

Weather cannot be 冷たい and food, drinks, people, and objects cannot be 寒い.

Tori-kun Wrote:I don’t use monolinguals for various reasons; I simply need Jp->Eng with a translation I can keep in mind.

There's a reason that both AJATT and JALUP recommend doing this.

What level are you studying for?

I got behind the reason and started using monolinguals now. I can see that I improved in terms of understanding longer passages of texts without knowing every word ever since when reading novels and such.

I prepare for N2. I think vocabulary-wise I have a fair amount of words under my belt (12.354 according to Anki). I think the listening part will be the most difficult one for me, however, I didn't expect this type of tasks appearing in the 語彙 section to be that hard for me. Appearantly they are

[Zgarbas]

Some of these are certainly subtle differences, but some seem pretty basic =/. Fairly sure 寒い　ｖｓ　冷たい　was in the first few lessons of my 1st year textbook. I may be wrong on some of these but...


1. 適当・適した・適切・適度
適当=Appropriate(weak). Fitting, but not necessarily the only choice. Think textbook exercises where you choose the correct word from a list; it's not like they are the only answers, but they are the best out of the available offer.
適した= Proper, suitable or reasonable. Not the only choice and not a necessarily perfect fit, but it will do just fine.
適切= Appropriate(strong). The perfect choice. Just right. Fitting the situation perfectly.
適度=moderate. A moderate amount of something.

2. 失う・なくす
I think you mean 失う vs 無くす.　As far as I know,亡くす refers strictly to physical death. Of course, both 失う（命を失う） can have that meaning, as well as to lose someone in death (友人を失う、友人をなくす）. 失うrefers to more abstract feelings and strictly to loss, whereas なくす can be both physically misplacing something and destroying something. I don't think なくす can be used for wishful thinking (hoping I don't lose something) and it definitely has a more final feel (misplaced my keys, versus lost my keys).
3. 大きい・大きな (other い・な Adj. pairs)
I thought they essentially meant the same thing, but with 大きな having a bit of a stronger nuance? Like "That's a big city"*observation* versus "That's a pretty big city"*observation enhanced with a bit of feeling, maybe unexpected?*
4. 冷たい・寒い
Objects are 冷たい, weather is 寒い & 涼しい。 Similarly, objects are 温かい＆熱い whereas the weather is 暖かい＆暑い。
5. 目的・目標
Not sure on this one. I think 目的 is more physical than 目標, but I'm not betting on it.
6. 行動・行為
行為　is more general thank 行動.　Someone's constant misbehaviour would be 行為 whereas someone's recent change in behavior, particular action, action at a certain time, etc. is 行動。
7. 混じる・混ざる
Isn't　混じる　used when some things are being mixed together, whereas 混ざる when they are mixed to the point where the original items are indistinguishable from one another? (say, ingredients in a salad versus ingredients in cookie dough).
8. 強制・強行
No idea.
9. 信用・信仰・信頼
信用 is general reliance, credibility, etc. (someone being a reliable source) whereas 信頼 is more personal trust. Having faith in someone.
信仰 only applies to religious beliefs.
10. 使い道・用途
Isn't 使い道 just "way of using" whereas 用途 is use?
11.　増す・増やす
Ignoring the fact that one's intransitive and the other transitive?　I always thought that
増す was more abstract than 増える.

That's the way I see them. I could be wrong, I'm kind of bad with this myself ^^.
(aaah, this is like correcting things on lang8. I have no idea if any explanations I gave make any sense ^^'.)

Tori-kun Wrote:I prepare for N2. I think vocabulary-wise I have a fair amount of words under my belt (12.354 according to Anki). I think the listening part will be the most difficult one for me, however, I didn't expect this type of tasks appearing in the 語彙 section to be that hard for me. Appearantly they are

Have you taken the practice test for N2?

It does seem like your best bet is to use prep books and make cloze sentence cards for the material you are shaky on. That way you are forced to really focus on the material you are weak on. For example if you want to learn 冷たい ...

自動販売機がどこにでもあり、暑いときには冷たい飲み物が、寒いときには温かいものが買えて便利です。

Then cloze に, 冷, 飲, and maybe 物. That way you'll be forced to not only see the 冷たい part directly but you'll have the extra cards that focus you directly on that sub-phrase. Also create a similar setup for 寒い. (That sentence is borrowed from alc.co.jp.)

You can do the same thing for 頼もしい by adding example sentences for it and 信頼.

@Zgarbas: Thank you for the long reply! I think I need to post these questions on yahoo or so at some point...

Edit: 増す is both vt/vi

@Tokyostyle: Yes, I did take the test. I made only one mistake (namely not recognising the correct kanji choice for 象徴) in the whole vocabulary section except in the part where I had to choose which usage is correct

[Zgarbas]

^^', I at one point started to make lang-8 posts asking for explanations on subtle differences, but then I realized that it would be just too many questions. What helped with certain differences was correcting lang-8 posts. Whenever I ran into subtle mistakes I'd correct them and find an exact Japanese equivalent. That way I also helped out the person I was correcting as well as nailing the idea in my head (e.g. someone asked me why you use "it feels like..." instead of "I feel like" and while trying to explain I accidentally explained 感じる vs 感じがある to myself).

I mean, up to now I have not found even one book picking up these words and their differences and explaining them (perhaps I did a lousy research but anyway). I think what tokyostyle said is hitting the nail on head pretty much, although it seems to easy and dull going through prep books

Perhaps mixing English/German on the "Meaning" field of my decks is becoming an issue at this point. I wonder if there is a core6k in German entirely. If so, I'd like to replace the English meanings in the standard deck with the German meaning field and see what learning is like then. core6k is pretty much the 'basics' deck I have. The other deck I have consist of words I added with Rikai-sama only (+6k cards heavy deck).

I think I lack the right technique of learning for this. How do you learn grammar/vocabulary (with Anki when using monolingual defs on the backside)?? I just use brute-force for vocabulary and after Genki 2 I never really touched a textbook (just DoBJG and lots of reading).

[Zgarbas]

Haha, well there's not too many textbooks that delve that deep ^^. Maybe just make up a double-sentence deck? E.g.
電話の声に雑音が混じっていたの。(core 6k)
川の水に毒が混ざる。(Tanuki)

I did this just by searching 混じる 混ざるin my combined decks; I'm sure you can get pretty similar results for whatever you're looking for . That way they're also pre-made so it won't take as much time to gather up the necessary sentences; it'd probably save a lot of mining time in the long-run.

Similarly:
その男の行動は怪しかったわ。 (行動 popped up a lot in sentences and Tanuki explanations, but this one is from core6k)
児童虐待などは許すべきではない行為だ。 (this is from a DoJG sentence)

And so on. Having comparative sentences makes it much easier than having more detailed dictionary entries, I think.
(and hey, leave out the German. You get to practice your English while you're at it =p)

>(and hey, leave out the German. You get to practice your English while you're at it =p)

Same thought here really, but I'm not sure if my English vocabulary is stable enough in order to build Japanese on top of it. Having come so far I feel like having achieved nothing. It's really just German I can tell the differences of words in.

[Zgarbas]

Hmm, well maybe just keep the German for subtleties? Frankly, adding German just seems like a lot of time spent on mining and making your own explanations. I'd only use it for words that trouble you =/. But associating things in English and then German can get pretty confusing (having exclusively learned everything in English, it's extremely troublesome when exam time arrives and the teacher insists on doing Romanian-Japanese translations...). Either way, if you think it's worth a shot then go for it and see what happens ^^.

Btw, just found a good explanation:

・目的：「なんのためにするか」を考えて行動するときの「なんのため」の内容。
・目標：ある行動をする時に、「あそこまで到達したい」として目指すこと。

I must admit, there are lot of くどい explanations just not cutting it, but this one's good I find

I think this forum is lacking such a thread. Feel free to contribute ~

Edit: I have German only on cards I cannot remember the English meaning from. So it's kind of a mixed deck. E.g. I could never remember the English word for くどい haha

You shouldn't really memorise the corresponding English words when doing Anki reps, what you are supposed to do is to understand the meaning of the sentence, and let the definition(s) on the back guide you when you don't.
Do you recall every definition of every word when reading something outside Anki?

And remember, you aren't learning English through Anki; if you need a german definition, use it. くちばし is a word I didn't really know the English counterpart before learning the Japanese word, but adding a Norwegian definition didn't really hinder me from understanding くちばし

Tori-kun Wrote:I mean, up to now I have not found even one book picking up these words and their differences and explaining them

Well, this bit of the test is trying to find out if you really know the meaning of a word enough to use it, rather than just being able to understand it in context. So I think that the approach the test designers would prefer is that you can answer these questions because you've read, written and spoken the word often enough and in enough contexts to know that 頼もしいことがある sounds wrong, for instance. Notice that it's not asking you to actually define the word, so memorising definitions seems a bit off target as a strategy.

pm215 Wrote:Well, this bit of the test is trying to find out if you really know the meaning of a word enough to use it, rather than just being able to understand it in context. So I think that the approach the test designers would prefer is that you can answer these questions because you've read, written and spoken the word often enough and in enough contexts to know that 頼もしいことがある sounds wrong, for instance. Notice that it's not asking you to actually define the word, so memorising definitions seems a bit off target as a strategy.

I agree with that. Reading definitions and example sentences can help clarify, but I think to get that really nuanced understanding requires just seeing and hearing the words used in a lot of real-world contexts. In other words, there's no real way around it other than just getting more exposure in general.

冷たい・寒い

This reminds me how once, some people asked me how to say "cold" in Japanese. I asked them which cold they meant - there was one for when an object is cold, and another for when the ambient temperature is cold.

That elicited an "Oooh." They thought it was neat that Japanese made this distinction.

http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/thsrs/

... Thesaurus!

I agree with pm215. I took the N2 sample test and realised at least for those words on the sample test, I could pick out the right answer and knew the other answers were "off" because of seeing those words in certain contexts over and over again. Also, for a lot of words like 目的　and 目標, I've googled 目的と目標の違いとは　to learn their differences initially and then their differences were reinforced further through immersion. I know there will be words that don't occur often enough to get this level of understanding, so I'm not too sure of a good solution to deal with this problem. Probably using targetted JLPT prep book might be the best option. Otherwise, those are the two methods that have worked for me.

I would really like to use Anki to solve this problem. Whenever I would encounter 目標・目的 in a text for example, my brain would just think "yep, it's the word for 'goal/target/aim'" and nothing more.

I just can change my deck model a bit I think. I will display only the monolingual def on the backside. This must have some effect on me, doesn't it?

@drdunlap: Wtf, this is awesome stuff!

Tori-kun Wrote:I would really like to use Anki to solve this problem.

One of the things I found when I was trying to answer this kind of JLPT question for a word I only sort of knew was that I was sometimes able to bring to mind a specific sentence fragment with the word, and then I could pick the answer that seemed to use the word in the same way. So maybe it would help to make sure your Anki cards have suitably sized sentence fragments (ie long enough to give context but not so long they don't stick in the brain at all) ?

@pm215: For some words I was feeling like you explained. I was like "No, this sounds odd - I don't know why, but this sounds wrong", but sometimes I had really no clue.. Perhaps this shows I was a bit careless learning concentrated at all times?

I can definitely see my proficiency going up after adding example sentences and defs to all of my cards with cb's tool Thank you so much (dunno if you read this, though)!!

Welp. The Dec 2012 results are now up online.

I failed again by the same margin as last time almost. I missed the Vocab/Grammar this time, partially cause I haven't/hadn't been keeping up on my reviews with an OCD pace.

I probably won't be doing it again in 2013. I haven't been reviewing Anki and I'm too busy fretting over how to go back to grad school for a masters without putting my self in ridiculous amounts of debt. While studying other stuff.

Ha. I failed N1 by one point. Why am I so bad at this silly test?

[s0apgun]

"Haha Tzadeck again? gg easy" - JLPT 2012

s0apgun Wrote:"Haha Tzadeck again? gg easy" - JLPT 2012

Yeah, I've taken it a few times now, and this is my third time getting within 6 points of passing, haha.

This time I was more prepared, but I had a lot of trouble on the listening because the guy next to me was annoyingly loud.