Haych Wrote:So yeah, edit the modifier if you feel like it, but you're probably better off using common sense.

If theory had caught up with the workings of the human brain, perhaps we'd be uploading languages into our brain overnight, and what's the fun in that?!

Side note: Some posters have mentioned the words get easier for them as they progress to the latter couple thousand because they are familiar with the use of the kanjiin compound words. Maybe this is especially the case for those who are delaying their dive into native material to finish Core.
For me sometimes it's harder to learn these new words I hear them less frequently in communication. Maybe I should be reading more news since this corpus was taken from newspapers (right?).

tashippy Wrote:Some posters have mentioned the words get easier for them as they progress to the latter couple thousand because they are familiar with the use of the kanjiin compound words.

I definitely found this to be the case. But the new words I am studying now are clustered by kanji, so that makes it easier. I don't think you really need lots of context to be able to get a good enough sense for most words (for interpretation, at least), unless it is used in a lot of idiomatic or figurative expressions. Also, once you see a lot of words using the same kanji, you start to form connections and understand what part of the meaning they represent in those words, which is a bit of a breakthrough for your overall understanding, I think.

tashippy Wrote:

Haych Wrote:So yeah, edit the modifier if you feel like it, but you're probably better off using common sense.

If theory had caught up with the workings of the human brain, perhaps we'd be uploading languages into our brain overnight, and what's the fun in that?!

*cue Matrix scene*

Quote:...I know Kung Fu

It could have it's upsides.

I was definitely thinking of that scene when I said that, lol.

I would suggest learning a lot of vocabulary first (japanese word in kana on front :: english word on back). Maybe learn some kanji at the same time. After you do at least 500 vocabulary, then start filtering in sentences while you continue with vocabulary. core 6k and anki makes this method really easy and it's how I study.

Starting with sentences makes it needlessly complicated because there are so many words that you probably don't know and to a lesser extent complicated my grammar. MUCH easier to learn grammar once you know what all the words mean!

yogert909 Wrote:I would suggest learning a lot of vocabulary first (japanese word in kana on front :: english word on back). Maybe learn some kanji at the same time. After you do at least 500 vocabulary, then start filtering in sentences while you continue with vocabulary. core 6k and anki makes this method really easy and it's how I study.

Starting with sentences makes it needlessly complicated because there are so many words that you probably don't know and to a lesser extent complicated my grammar. MUCH easier to learn grammar once you know what all the words mean!

Hmm that's interesting. When I can read novels more easily than children's books in mostly hiragana I think, 'well, kids learn to speak before they learn to read and they learn hiragana before kanji'. But if you're an adult starting the language and you already did RTK, then wouldn't you want to build vocab and kanji knowledge in such a way that they work together to make it easier?

yogert909 Wrote:After you do at least 500 vocabulary ...

tashippy Wrote:But if you're an adult starting the language and you already did RTK, then wouldn't you want to build vocab and kanji knowledge in such a way that they work together to make it easier?

Mmm, my knee-jerk reaction was like yours, then I realized... he's talking about picking up a base vocabulary so you can understand advanced vocabulary and sentence cards.

Certainly before you start putting your RTK-earned kanji to work, it would make sense to learn the meaning of する・から・まで・より・なら・ここ・そこ・あそこ・これ・それ・あれ・です　and so on, and I suppose they would be worth SRSing if you didn't already know them. If you don't know the few hundred most common framework words (and the grammar behind them) it's true you can't understand sentences.

That's true. When I wrote that I guess what didn't come through was the thought that maybe somehow incorporating hiragana into studies more would be useful. I often have the hardest time remembering words that are just hiragana when they come up in kore, so I think I would need practice in improving my comprehension of the language as a phonetic system.
Maybe one could find a way to make a card for some of the notes in kore (say every 5th note) that would have hiragana of the word, audio of the word, and maybe audio of the example sentence (now I'm thinking like that two-step Japanese deck) before seeing the kanji and/or English on the back. It might be a useful kind of card to build awareness of the language from that perspective.

yogert909 Wrote:Starting with sentences makes it needlessly complicated because there are so many words that you probably don't know

This isn't necessarily true. It just means your sentences weren't simple enough. For someone brand new the first 100-200 sentences would be things like:

これはペンです。
いいよ。
あの人、誰なの？
どうしよう？
これで最後？
何だこれ？

I have a problem with learning vocabulary. I currently add sentences into Anki (which definitely works) but the retention rate isn't as good. I wish to also do something besides Anki. Would it help to use frequency lists without Anki?

tashippy Wrote:Maybe one could find a way to make a card for some of the notes in kore (say every 5th note) that would have hiragana of the word, audio of the word, and maybe audio of the example sentence...

That's exactly the way my vocabulary deck is set up and it's working well for me. Once I've learned a bunch of vocabulary, reading the sentences is a non-issue and I just fly through them. Of course I'm biased towards speaking fluency, so I'm reading the furigana in the sentences. But if I were to study more kanji, I could turn off the furigana and everything would 'click' together since I have memorized all of the building blocks to the written and spoken language. I've done this a bit with the few hundred kanji I've learned so far and it works well.

screamingfields Wrote:I have a problem with learning vocabulary. I currently add sentences into Anki (which definitely works) but the retention rate isn't as good. I wish to also do something besides Anki. Would it help to use frequency lists without Anki?

Try installing yomichan and make cards for all of the vocab words that you don't know in the sentences. If this makes the sentences easier and more fun, then you can reformat the core deck to just do vocabulary. Study a few hundred vocabulary cards ahead of the sentences and then you should be able to go through the sentences like butter.

ryuudou Wrote:This isn't necessarily true. It just means your sentences weren't simple enough.

Agreed. This would be a good way to study as well. The list of sentences should also progressively add one new at a time for n+1 learning. Perhaps there are such lists, but I haven't found any.

yogert909 Wrote:

screamingfields Wrote:I have a problem with learning vocabulary. I currently add sentences into Anki (which definitely works) but the retention rate isn't as good. I wish to also do something besides Anki. Would it help to use frequency lists without Anki?

Try installing yomichan and make cards for all of the vocab words that you don't know in the sentences. If this makes the sentences easier and more fun, then you can reformat the core deck to just do vocabulary. Study a few hundred vocabulary cards ahead of the sentences and then you should be able to go through the sentences like butter.

I use textbooks like Genki to put in sentences though.

screamingfields Wrote:I use textbooks like Genki to put in sentences though.

Try yomichan and see how it goes. If it makes it easier and more fun, then there should be some way of getting vocab into anki. I don't use genki, but perhaps there is a vocab list somewhere..maybe in the index at the back..? There's probably an anki deck out there somewhere too. But the point to trying yomichan first is that you will learn words that are in the sentences that you are currently studying so that you will know rather quickly if studying vocab first suits you or not.

I learn it in context. just now I learned the word danshari from sakai masato off waratteittomo, then i start watching my shabekuri episode from the middle because that's where i left off with that muramoto of WOMAN SAID the tv show that he doesn't want to go on again ever is called dansharian (a play on words off danshari). I swear this always happens... where you learn a word and then it shows up right away.

here's danshari 断捨離

For production in core2k/6k, show I worry about being able to write the word or just how to say it? I've been just learning how to say the word but not what kanji make it up and stuff. I kinda don't really feel like learning that but would it be a good idea to start doing it?

learningkanji Wrote:For production in core2k/6k, show I worry about being able to write the word or just how to say it?

If your goal is to speak the language as quickly as possible, then what your doing is fine. If you want to be able to read proficiently and speaking isn't the highest priority, go with recognition cards. If you want to be able to write and read proficiently do production cards, and actually write out the word. You could even do listening cards if you wanted to.. It all depends on what you want to be able to do with your japanese.

Edit: -

I found that after a lot of Anki'ing (6000 self-input cards), reading on its own became just as effective (result : effort) as inputting them into Anki, and my vocabulary is still evolving, although I don't anki anymore. ("to anki" is a perfectly valid verb, right?)

rokudo Wrote:

learningkanji Wrote:For production in core2k/6k, show I worry about being able to write the word or just how to say it?

If your goal is to speak the language as quickly as possible, then what your doing is fine. If you want to be able to read proficiently and speaking isn't the highest priority, go with recognition cards. If you want to be able to write and read proficiently do production cards, and actually write out the word. You could even do listening cards if you wanted to.. It all depends on what you want to be able to do with your japanese.

I want both. I do recognition and production but don't write down the kanji in the word. I was just curious about how much of an impact that has.

At first I thought you were doing only production cards with out any emphasis on the kanji. IMO I do believe production would be more effective actually writing out the kanji. If you're worried about your accent or speaking ability, read the sentence or word out loud after you hear it. It definitely helps you get the feel for the pitch and intonation of the target word/sentence better.

learningkanji Wrote:I've been just learning how to say the word but not what kanji make it up and stuff. I kinda don't really feel like learning that but would it be a good idea to start doing it?

If you feel its not useful or working for you drop it, there are so many different ways you can approach the language. Production + Recognition cards = double the reviews and a lot more time, or you could drop one of the two and focus on something more enjoyable (subs2srs, reading nhk easy news articles, beginner mangas etc).