I'm sick of being at beginner level Japanese and want to move on. Having finally completed RtK1 in December, I was shocked on returning to Surusu this year to discover I had started about 20 decks over the past few years - from all different grammar resources. I felt sick looking at them as they seemed to represent my failed attempts at learning, so in a fit of "I-don't-know-what," I merged them all. In Surusu that's an irreversible move. I now have one deck containing more than 2,500 cards.

1) Does that matter - or have I completely blown it? Were there advantages in having lots of smaller separate decks that I've lost? Are there any advantages in having just one deck?

2) I didn't understand about srsing being for reviewing what you've already learned, not for studying something in the first place. When I get to a sentence in which I don't yet understand the grammar, I can choose "Skip card" - but how long does it skip it for? On this site people often refer to suspending cards in Anki. Is it the same as skip card in Surusu? If not, can you suspend cards in Surusu? Is there an AJATT link explaining this? (My searches only result in "Twitter Tweets"...)

3) I would like to use cloze deletion, and I've read http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...-in-surusu ... but tbh I don't understand most of it. I decided to have a go anyway and experimented with a really simple これはぺんです. I hoped it would create a card in which I have to answer with the missing particle. I got this msg: "Adding multiple cloze cards using mixed mode to deck cloze [may take a few minutes to complete]." Does this mean　I have to wait a few minutes before entering another card?!
The msg has been there for a while - is it ever going to say, "Successfully added card" on my screen?
I got a "Successfully added card" msg in my emails (?!)... but it created 8 cards, where the missing parts included れ、　 ペ　and で... So now I feel I have to spend time deleting 7 of those 8 cards...　That can't be right, can it?
What I've found on YouTube is just how to add cards generally, which apparently I've already done 2,500 times!

Many thanks.

1.) With multiple decks, you can choose what specific topic you choose to study. With only one deck, you do not acknowledge what you're reviewing, the cards just come and go. It isn't really an issue though.

2)Unsure about skip function. There's no suspend feature.

3)Copy front to base cloze text and choose mode. If you want to manually cloze cards, choose the pieces you want to add and paste in "[Base] Clozetext(s)" and choose Manual mode.

For example:

Front:
これはぺんです
This is a pen [polite]

[Base] Clozetext(s):は です
Mode: Manual

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...-in-surusu

I only spent a few days with Surusu, so my answers may not be completely accurate.

I personally suggest using anki, even if only for cloze deletion cards.

Stole this from ajatt. I thought it would help.
For those starting to use cloze deletion, these are its applications in order of skill level.

1.)If you’re a beginner, start with basic bilingual clozed cards— with Japanese cloze texts and an English translation on the front.
2.)Then proceed to having the English translations on the back (using more context)…
3.)Then proceed to DDCs (dictionary definition cards) — MCDs of monolingual dictionary entries, with Japanese and English on the back…

If Susuru has an export feature you can always switch over to Anki if you like.

Aspiring ... Thank you, your post was really helpful.

ryuudou Wrote:If Susuru has an export feature you can always switch over to Anki if you like.

Thanks. As far as I can tell, Surusu only has an Import feature, not export. (I started srsing with Surusu before discovering RevTK and Anki.)

scarby dancer Wrote:Thanks. As far as I can tell, Surusu only has an Import feature, not export. (I started srsing with Surusu before discovering RevTK and Anki.)

Do you have a Mac or the patience to install Ruby on Windows? There's a github project that is a Surusu exporter: https://github.com/hadashi/surusu-export

If you can't do this yourself I would be happy to help. PM if you have trouble and we'll sort something out.

Thanks, tokyostyle. I have Windows. I'm going away for the next few days - will check it out on my return.

In the meantime, given that some people here follow Khatz's method, I can't help but wonder if there's anyone out there who uses Surusu and would stick with it over Anki?

If you mine and make all your cards, surusu's fine.

Surusu's probably very convenient for clozed deletion too.

Anki's much better for creating automated decks (vocabulary/shows)

Aspiring Wrote:Surusu's probably very convenient for clozed deletion too.

If anyone finds Surusu more convenient than Anki for clozed detection please complain to me so I can improve the Anki MCD plugin.

tokyostyle Wrote:If anyone finds Surusu more convenient than Anki for clozed detection please complain to me so I can improve the Anki MCD plugin.

No complaints here.

You've mentioned somewhere before about using mecab to automatically cloze delete vocabulary through the MCD plugin. I would like to randomly cloze words out. How would I go about doing this ?


Edit:
The MCD plugin has an auto kanji feature, but if you copy text into the "cloze" section that includes repeats (ie if 豊 is mentioned twice), the card gets really messy.

Using cb4960's text analysis tool, I analyze the text, copy the kanji frequency list, and enter it into the "clozes" section. It takes around 15 seconds max

So, problem solved

Aspiring Wrote:If you mine and make all your cards, surusu's fine.
Surusu's probably very convenient for clozed deletion too.
Anki's much better for creating automated decks (vocabulary/shows)

Thank you again, Aspiring, for your helpful explanations.

tokyostyle Wrote:Do you have a Mac or the patience to install Ruby on Windows? There's a github project that is a Surusu exporter: https://github.com/hadashi/surusu-export
If you can't do this yourself I would be happy to help. PM if you have trouble and we'll sort something out.

And thanks, tokyostyle, for your generous offer of help in exporting Surusu.

Since I've made all my own cards in Surusu, and now understand how to use the cloze delete function, I've decided to leave my Surusu account as it is for the time being.

But today I've also downloaded the optimized core 2K/6K deck into an Anki account and am going to focus on studying that. If I change my mind down the track and still want to export Surusu, I will contact you. But I suspect the core decks in Anki will keep me busy enough for quite awhile.

Aspiring Wrote:You've mentioned somewhere before about using mecab to automatically cloze delete vocabulary through the MCD plugin. I would like to randomly cloze words out. How would I go about doing this ?

It was contributed to the Anki 1 plugin and I have not yet ported it to the Anki 2 plugin. I was occasionally doing it manually but I'll try and get that re-added sometime this month.

Aspiring Wrote:The MCD plugin has an auto kanji feature, but if you copy text into the "cloze" section that includes repeats (ie if 豊 is mentioned twice), the card gets really messy.

I updated the plugin today to fix this issue. Make sure it says v2.0-5 at the top of the Add MCD window.

Aspiring Wrote:Using cb4960's text analysis tool, I analyze the text, copy the kanji frequency list, and enter it into the "clozes" section. It takes around 15 seconds max

I so wish he didn't write everything in proprietary C#. It would be awesome to put some of his tools to use in these plugins.