^That works too.

But for new learners, a corpus with basic sentences is helpful. e..g. Core6k

*referring to OP

Why not utilize both? I don't look at the sentences if I remember the word in isolation. If I don't, I look at the sentence.

mmhmm


It's not an either-or situation

This should pretty relate to the vast majority of topics on this forum whenever someone insinuated a dichotomous position:

Hyperborea Wrote:"Why not both?"

The reason for why not is if the cost of doing both is not free. So, if creating the sentences costs you something in time that you could put to other uses (creating more vocab cards, reading time, anything). If that cost is higher than the benefit then you would be better off not doing both. In a number of cases getting the sentences is pretty much free - e.g. pre-made decks such as Core2k/6k/10k, tools such as Rikai{chan|kun|sama} - so there it really does make sense to have the sentences even if only just for disambiguating confusable words.

So something takes a little longer therefore it's better off not doing? I'm not saying either is better -I use a premade deck, read native material, and are also creating a vocabulary deck based on 俳句, which takes time to create due to archaic language and certain idiosyncratic kanji usage. An extra half an hour to an hour a day, sure, it adds up over time, but so does spending hours watching TV, etc.

I understand the desire to make the process efficient as possible, but fluency in a language is going to take years regardless. If enough of the efficient attitude towards study was transferred to the tasks of the rest of our lives, you'd probably find yourself enjoy time to be able enjoy your studies at whichever pace you liked and still progress at a faster rate than those trying to force a hour a day of study and stressing over efficiency and the most correct route.

Though I wonder where you get the values for the cost-benefit equation. If someone enjoys spending more time studying a certain way, then whatever extra time they are spending in the language does not come as a cost. Some people are happier, for example, going through Core6000 (for example), at a pace of ten words a day while others are happier to go at a rate of 60 words a day. Those at a higher rate will get through the initial review process faster, and in the same time gained a higher "benefit" in vocabulary than those at a slower pace- but that is assuming the aim is to learn words at a certain pace, or to aim for a certain goal.


You can't simply prescribe the same goals for everything, therefore a cost-benefit perspective is meaningless to those which don't care to go at a certain pace. There might be faster means to achieve something, but language learning is a individual thing, and at the end of the day all that matters is whether or not the individual is satisfying their own demands.

I don't generate native speaker audio for my non-core vocab cards because I enjoy listening to certain music while reviewing them, not because of the time it may take to set them up. The time isn't really a issue, considering I spent over a week, around 70 hours, creating an Anki deck for Japanese the Manga Way, and aren't using it. It was made because I found a few people after it and no one seemed to be sharing one, if it was made. It is a good experience getting used to the Japanese IME, if anything.

Japanese is something I want to learn more than pretty much most other things, therefore I focus my life around making sure there is enough time for study and enjoyment of Japanese, without having to worry about efficiency- rather trying different things and see what I enjoy the most. I don't watch TV, nor do I read the papers, nor do I pay a lot of attention to much else on the internet which isn't in at least some way related to what I'm doing with my studies.

I try not to think about it too much past the point of "this is what I want to do, how do I go about doing it". I'm more focused on time activity/enjoyment. Call it cost/benefit if you want, but as long as you're happy to call it fuzzy, may as well leave it at that and not throw around statements like "The reason for why not is if the cost of doing both is not free", because you are never going to be in the position of another person's will to approximate the value of time and decide whether or not something is a better opinion for someone, based purely on a system of time taken to complete an activity/productivity.

It tends to lead to oft discussed online controversy of butter-side up or butter-side down -er, I mean "which is the better way to do X".

[RawToast]

I use both single words and sentences on my vocab cards. My main vocab cares are like:

Font:
りんご
Hint:
僕はりんごを食べてい

Back
Apple
I am eating an apple

I find I can recognise words (and the reading) using the sentence. I was not sure if I was learning the word or just memorising a sentence, so I ended up hiding the sentence and making it a hint. I mark things as hard if I have to use the sentence.

I use grammar cards for sentence reading and I use multiple grammar decks to avoid 'memorising' the sentences. At the moment it's Genki I, Tae Kim (Basic and some Essential) , and JSPFEC. Every now and then I'll find any commonly occuring words in the sentences and make/move vocab cards for them.

Hyperborea Wrote:Do you generate native speaker audio for all of your new non-core vocab cards?

unless you have a japanese person handy to 'generate' audio, this is going to be very difficult. I take it you mean a voice synthesizer. I would use one of these if it were reliable, but they're not as far as I know.

The iSpeech on the iOS platform (imiwa? uses it) is the best synthesizer I've come across, but it still has issues with pitch/pronounciation. not trustworthy those things IMHO.

if you use subs2srs tho you can have your cake and eat it too... ;D

Hyperborea Wrote:Do you generate native speaker audio for all of your new non-core vocab cards? Word and sentence? Why not? Is it more trouble than it's worth? Surprise, you've made a cost/benefit calculation.

I would counter that for anyone except the few people who accept the philosophy of Pragmatism as their Bible, human beings are capable of thought at a level of abstraction a little higher than just reducing every individual option to a cost/benefit calculation.

I really don't need to calculate the costs and benefits of taking the time to find a sentence (even if I could, which of course I can't, and this is where Pragmatism falls apart in general), to figure out that I should. Understanding the role of sentences in a language is more than enough for me to realize that that's something I'm gonna have to just go ahead and do.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Why not utilize both? I don't look at the sentences if I remember the word in isolation. If I don't, I look at the sentence.

This. I would add that by also generating audio for that sentence, you can have the benefit of the sentence without ever looking at it (if you choose to play the audio in the question, and the card is a production card, of course).

AnkiMobile allows you to directly record audio into cards. Not sure if this works for Droid.

For some cards, I'm sure it would be worth the effort.

e.g.:
you come across a very memorable scene in a show you're not willing to convert to subs2srs.
you enter the sentence [or picture] into a new card in ankimobile, and you record the audio.

I would only do this for fully comprehensible media. Even then, I'd only use scenes that I deem enjoyable.

Otherwise, it would be tedious to create the card through AnkiMobile.

Note: this can also be done on a computer.

(My audio card doesn't support recording, but it's easy enough on an iphone.)

If one doesn't mind sometimes archaic grammatical patterns, or sometimes less common kanji usage, AND one enjoys poetry... one could always take a look at the randomly generated haiku page with David G. Lanoue's rather brilliant efforts in translating some 一万俳句 by 一茶. When it comes to creating a image to remember words by, well, one really cannot find too much fault in Issa- hell, even two or three wouldn't pass it off as dry:

http://haikuguy.com/issa/random.php?



but four or five might. There's no accounting for taste, as they say.