Hey all... the current Core2k/6k deck I'm using with Anki gives me kanji (no context) and asks for reading and meaning on the other side. It's working pretty well for me (I've gone through Genki 1 and 2 in a classroom environment). I'm currently starting to read some easy manga and visual novels; for now, I've decided that any words I don't know I'll try to figure out from context.

Should I instead add these words/sentences to a separate deck and review that as well?

Thanks..

Experiment and see what works for you. The key is that you don't want to slow down too much if it will cause you to lose interest in the manga or light novels you seem to be enjoying already using context.
You could try, for example, to mark each word or phrase you don't fully comprehend with a pencil, but carry on if you can guess it from context. Then, go through after each chapter or reading session and create a card for the words or phrases that you marked. Once you've reviewed these cards a bit, you can re-read the book if you so care to. You could even simply finish reading the whole series this way and you'll probably begin to see that common vocabulary pop up again and again. Then you can read the whole series again with your new ease with the vocabulary of the subject matter.
It is good, I think, to start adding some words or sentences to a personal deck, as the Anki user manual also advises.

Hyperborea Wrote:- I struggled with this on how to mark up the book - it was a hard thing for me as I had always been told from when I was kid to not mark up books (there seems to be a hard line between the book markers and non-markers)

There is no perfect answer for this. You could buy a million of those little sticky colored place-markers. I just use a pencil and try to mark it lightly enough so I can erase it after I learn the word, but dark enough so I don't miss it when I'm going through the book again. Yeah, it kinda feels wrong to mark up a book, and it depletes the resale value if you plan on reselling it.

Hyperborea Wrote:3) on the weekend go over the sections that I read during the week and turn on the Core6K/10K card for those words
- if no card exists then I create one

What do you mean by this? You do a search in the browse section to see if you already have the word in core? Then you prioritize those particular words?

tashippy Wrote:

Hyperborea Wrote:3) on the weekend go over the sections that I read during the week and turn on the Core6K/10K card for those words
- if no card exists then I create one

What do you mean by this? You do a search in the browse section to see if you already have the word in core? Then you prioritize those particular words?

I think they probably have those cards suspended and go through and activate the cards as needed. I saw someone mention that before.
Of course, I could be wrong.

As for the original topic, I mainly been working on Core and then I just read through part of a manga or VN, only looking up the words that really bother me. I intended to make a deck for these cards, but I haven't been adding cards often enough for it to really help any, so I'll just keep reading and see if I can remember those words when they pop back up.

You could try just sentence mining a website and using J-J cards for it to start getting into them. I'm just throwing something out there though.

@tashippy

The workflow you follow when you are starting with an empty deck is not necessary the workflow that you have to follow when you have a pre-made deck. When your deck is empty, your only choice is to create cards that you want to remember.

With pre-made decks though, especially when they are big (like Core6k/10k), you also have an option to:
1) at the very beginning, suspend all the cards in the deck
2) as you read your book (or any other media you use for study) unsuspend the cards that you want to remember.

Obviously, this second option is more time efficient.

I'd recommend just continuing what you're already doing - going through Core2k-6k & just figuring things out in context. You didn't say where in Core you are, but if it's near 2k I don't think it's worth adding cards. For most native materials, you'll be coming upon too many unknown words. Hyperborea was okay with a base of 3k but for me that's too low. I guess it just depends on your tolerance for the process. =/

When I started Core6k, I would write down unknown words I read (it was a library book) in a notebook (I can't read books in front of a computer), and then later see if they were in Core and unsuspend them. But this was taking lots of time - first copying the words, and then entering them using the mouse-based IME if I didn't know the reading, and then if they weren't Core words, making cards... It also raised questions like Is this word common enough to be worth learning? and Is the TTS pronouncing that correctly? I was dreading reading new material, and it also didn't help that I dislike rereading things. Lots of words ended up being Core6k words anyway, so I decided to forget about the unsuspend-words-as-you-see-them process and just get through Core6k.

Currently, I'm a bit past 5k, and I read things whose words I can look up easily: internet news articles, VNs, and Kindle novels. When I see an unknown word I look it up and move on. This way I get exposure to things above my level and don't get dragged down by vocab. When words repeat I often end up remembering them anyway, but these words tend to vary in usefulness, from the more practical (貢献, contribution) to the less practical (暴走族, club of rabble-rousing reckless-driving delinquents). I'm still debating with myself over Core10k, since the audio isn't as great, so maybe I'll start adding my own words again after I get through Core 6k and new words in Obunsha's N1-N2 vocab series (~7.5k words total).

Personally I just maintain one deck for absolutely everything, be it sentences from Core, sentences from other sources, random single vocabulary words etc. If you are reading through a book and see a word you want to remember, then why not put it into Anki?

Worst case is you get snowed under by reviews, but that will sort itself out over time anyway. Its probably better to be adding too much content than not enough, in my opinion at least..

I guess in the end I'm going to do what I planned to do in the beginning..

Just look up words I don't know from manga/vn/anime as I encounter them, and do the smart.fm deck separately. If language learning gets unfun, then it's over for me.

I would like to discuss the merits of taking language classes in a university setting.. should I make a new thread perhaps? Mods?

[RawToast]

Hyperborea Wrote:What I've been doing for a little while is to have a fixed amount of new cards per day from all sources - let's say 10. That means 70 new cards per week. On the weekend I un-suspend all the words in the Core10k deck that I have collected from all my reading that week. Let's say, for example, that I have 27 words one week. Then I also un-suspend the next 43 words in the Core deck in order of sorting for a total of 70 new words for the week. Those get reviewed 10 per day. Repeat each weekend. The number of cards you do each week is entirely up to you.

I do something similar. I am still sloughing through core so instead of suspending the cards, I move them into a 'reading/other' subdeck until they reach maturity. I use the same process for any vocabulary that appears in grammar decks and iknow (order is drastically different these days).

I would definitely recommend completing a portion of the core deck first, even 500 words would be a good starting point.

Quote:I would like to discuss the merits of taking language classes in a university setting.. should I make a new thread perhaps? Mods?

It's probably best to do a new thread.