Must have changed the settings or something? o_O

Mature just means the interval is at least 21 days. I already knew most of the words, so I set the easy interval (=the interval you get when you press 'easy' on a new card) to 60 days.

Well I finished adding new cards today in Core 6k, I think.

I have the number of new cards/day set at 50 or whatever but today there were only 7 new cards generated.

The weird thing (this is ankidroid) is that it says I still have 822 new cards (atarashii ka--donomaisuu: 822).
What does this mean?

Vempele Wrote:Mature just means the interval is at least 21 days. I already knew most of the words, so I set the easy interval (=the interval you get when you press 'easy' on a new card) to 60 days.

If you don't mind my asking, what was the point of doing it then? (curios)

Also, why not just delete all the cards you already know. Or do you not plan to keep reviewing this in the future? In which case, above question again.

Suspending takes two fingers, and I seem to recall there being a lag when you suspend a card (just tested, it's instant now. The pop-up message could be distracting, though). I don't even know if there's a shortcut for deleting a card you're reviewing.

I'll probably end up suspending them. Or I might increase the interval even more and see if I forget any of them in the next 6 months. Some of the words may have been merely fresh in my mind at the time instead of actually mature.

1853 mature, 488 young+learn now. Nearly 98% recall yesterday (mostly forgetting days of the week and つ and 日 counters), 100% today (added ~50 young cards yesterday).

The delete key 'Del' is the hotkey you're looking for. I got to know that one well...

I'd advise deleting cards you think are obvious, but not the ones you think are easy. There's a subtle difference there. You can forget anything given a long enough period, so easy is less significant in the long run. But if the front suggests the back in a natural way, like you know the readings and meanings of the kanji, and you can easily guess the meaning of the word from that, I think there isn't much reason to keep it around. Given your correct percentage, you've probably got a few of those around.

With yesterday's cards, I've gone past 2k... 4k more to go.

I finished adding new cards in Core 6k today. I'm going to continue reviewing for a few months, since I know I don't know all of them perfectly.
I think I'm going to start a separate deck for words that I pull out of texts after a week or so; I think a month of periodic intensive reading will be good before the next Tadoku round starts.

gdaxeman Wrote:Yeah, it's missing the last card, as frony0 pointed out and Nukemarine confirmed. This is the card that's missing:

Code:

Vocabulary_Kanji = 生ずる
Vocabulary_Furigana = 生[しょう]ずる
    Vocabulary_Kana = しょうずる
Vocabulary_English = arise, occur
   Vocabulary_Audio = [sound:41b786da0c235b88ecb3cc7e97b68a7d.mp3]
     Vocabulary_Pos = Verb
            Caution =
         Expression = 想定外の問題が<b>生じた</b>の。
            Reading = 想定外[そうてい がい]の 問題[もんだい]が <b>生[しょう]じた</b> の。
      Sentence_Kana = そうてい がい の もんだい が <b>しょうじた </b>の。
   Sentence_English = An unexpected problem arose.
    Sentence_Clozed = 想定外[そうてい がい]の 問題[もんだい]が<b>（　）</b> の。
     Sentence_Audio = [sound:31a25150179f3c257fda2ed74a6a26a5.mp3]
     Sentence_Image =
              Notes = Core 6000 Step 12 - 500b
         Core_Index = 6000
Optimized_VocIndex = N/A
Optimized_SentIndex = N/A

Today I finally got around to adding this card, so today I will "officially" complete core6k XD

I'm also going to start on core10k now ^^ My tentative goal is to finish it by the end of March. After going over 2 months without adding any new words, I'm reeeeally looking forward to it =D

I passed the 1k mark, if that means anything. Feels like I only know 200 words though.

2001 words. Going to review them for a while before adding more.

Just finished Core2k, 48% mature. I added between 100 and 200 new cards a day, finished it in 83 days.

I have been living in Japan for two years now, but I only began to seriously study Japanese 7-8 months ago. I had zero previous study or interest in Japanese and figured before coming that I'd just pick up the language by osmosis. I maybe learned 100 words in my first year, it was pretty pathetic. In my defense I've been living with a Japanese girl nearly fluent in English the entire time and she handles pretty much all my personal business (bills, etc).

Once I finally decided to study I was lucky enough to pick up a free copy of Rosetta Stone. I also bought Genki I. I finished Rosetta Stone 1-3 and did the first few chapters of the textbook and was still not even JLPT5.

At this point I started looking for a flashcard program because I was forgetting a lot of the stuff in Rosetta Stone. I began using Anki and after reading about sentences I began to build up a sentence deck by mining from RS and Tatoeba.org.

I literally started with "XはYです" and slowly built my way up from there. I got to about 2000 sentences in the deck before getting frustrated with my lack of ability to recall the words when I wanted them. I then stumbled across the Core packs and started Core2k. I also began RTK halfway through Core, and am now on frame 1100 or so.

Initially my study time was less then an hour a day with weekends off doing just Rosetta Stone. It's slowly been building and on a normal weekday now I study for between 5 and 6 hours (2 hours Core: ~600-700 reviews, plus new cards; 30-45 minutes on sentences; 60-90 minutes adding new RTK kanji; 1 hour reviewing old RTK kanji). Kanji are my last priority, but I have two weeks off for Christmas and hope to power through them while I rep my Core2k deck. So currently I am running three Anki decks: Core2k, RTK, and my sentence deck which I am now using as reinforcement for problem words in Core (if I fail a mature card I add 2-3 sentences to the sentence deck). Sentence deck is 80% mature and now stands at just shy of 3000 sentences, 75% of which are from Tatoeba.org. I do not watch or read any native materials (don't even own a TV), but living and working in Japan means I am surrounded by the language. I actually teach in Japanese 80% of the time and get 5+ hours of listening/speaking practice a day in the classroom (small cram school, no oversight, just me and the kids).

I have no idea what my vocabulary is, perhaps 3000-4000 words. Working vocab which I can actively recall is probably closer to 2000. Based on practice tests I'd put myself at JLPT3+. My boss told me essentially the same, and she's been in the business for 30 years--I trust her judgement. I knew or was able to discern the meaning (e.g., 引き出し、車道、etc) of 80% of what was in Core2k--steps 3 through 5 were the hardest.

Having never taken the JLPT I don't really know, but I've gone from understanding literally nothing around me 7 months ago to being able to follow nearly every conversation. I can participate in a limited way. My speaking ability is decent, but of course input lags behind output. I've never actually studied grammar directly, I've just passively absorbed most of it from hearing it/reading thousands of sentences. Core2k sentences were super easy for me, and sentence listening comprehension was by far the easiest of the 5 card types (not sure I ever failed a single sentence listening card). Hardest for me is hearing words in isolation.

From here on out I'm going to Finish RTK (~3 weeks) and rep Core2k to mature (~3 weeks). I'll then dive into Core6k, probably at about 150 new cards/day. If Core2k had 10,000 cards I'll assume 6k has 20,000 cards, which will mean I should be done with that in about 4.5 months. After that I am not sure. From what I have been hearing the quality of the 10k decks aren't as good as 2k/6k. Maybe I'll buy a TV? At any rate I see daily improvement because I have to use Japanese on a daily basis, it's easy to stay motivated when your progress is measurable in the real world. It's also going damned fast: it's crazy to think that a few months ago I couldn't understand a damned thing, and now I can hold my own in most conversations (especially if there's drinking involved).

Less than 1,000 to go until the end of Core10k (991 to be exact). Posting to keep myself motivated and held accountable for finishing what I've started.

The 35-word-a-day mezbup challenge--is it okay if I call it the mezbup challenge?--is definitely quite the test. Some days I breeze through Anki and feel great, other days it's a slog that leaves me feeling terrible.

I have noticed improvements in native media consumption, however, which makes all of the effort worth it.

I should be done late January. See you then.

Finished adding cards at the end of October, pretty much forgot to post it here. I started about 9 months ago, but added most of my cards in July, August and October.

I reached the 2k milestone in July, 3k in August and after that pretty much stopped adding cards for a whole month. I just kept reviewing what I had already added. In October I had the crazy idea to finish core6k in that month, that meant adding 3000 cards in just 31 days. That meant adding about 100 cards everyday. I didn't get to add 100 every day, sometimes I did 200. But near the end of the month I started to slack off and pretty much had about 800 left to add. I did add them on the last day.

This was crazy, I had to spend a lot of time on keeping up on my reviews to make this even possible. I wouldn't do it again, as I burned out right after that. I tried to keep up with my reviews but in the end I couldn't keep up and the reviews kept piling up. A few days ago I started working on clearing that backlog to make my anki reviews in 2014 a bit more sane. It would mean sacrificing a few days right now and be okay afterwards. My retention really dropped, but that's only temporary as I relearn the cards and let them mature.

Stats from the last few days:
22/12
Studied 5557 cards in 483 minutes today.
Again count: 1560 (71.9% correct)
Learn: 0, Review: 3993, Relearn: 1564, Filtered: 0

23/12
Studied 780 cards in 86 minutes today.
Again count: 147 (81.2% correct)
Learn: 0, Review: 635, Relearn: 145, Filtered: 0

24/12
Christmas party with family and couldn't do reviews.

25/12
Studied 1250 cards in 163 minutes today.
Again count: 373 (70.2% correct)
Learn: 0, Review: 889, Relearn: 361, Filtered: 0

Tomorrow I've got 400 reviews and I hope that I'll be at around 150-200 a day by new year. I've got a few cards suspended as they were leeches, I'll slowly add them back in when the rest has matured.

Here's my deck life stats as of today.

I'm really happy that I've done core6k, a lot of the words have really helped me in my reading. Though there are still a few words in them that I doubt I'll have much use for.

Thanks to Flamerokz for being such an awesome sensei and teaching me horrible anki habits (and destroying my life in the process)!

I'm just a beginner here. I started RTK 1 within the last two weeks and have gone through about 600 kanji. I wanted to ask a question to people finishing up these core decks.

(1) Do you guys memorize Kana for root words that are normally written in Kanji?
(2) About how often to root words appear in Kana form in native material like newspapers and everyday emails?
(3) I'm just trying to figure out if memorizing the Kana version of words almost always in Kanji form would be a good use of my time. My main interest in learning to read everyday Japanese. Thanks for the help guys.

Hello everyone-- another beginner seeking knowledge from all the here who are at the level I hope to be at some day. Currently I'm going through Nukemarine's Core2k/6k deck and I have a few questions on learning strategy please.

1) In the deck I'm using, the kanji is hidden on the front of the card, but the sentence and definition are present. I'm finding often I will remember the word, but not the kanji compound--would you suggest writing this out several times, reading it outside of Anki in separate review deck for that day? Curious what types of strategies you've all used while studying.

2)I hear people who've worked up to 35 - 60 words a day which sounds un-achievable for me. How much time do you spend going over cards upon initial review?

Sorry for all the questions, but I'm trying to walking in the footsteps of giants and hopefully save myself any more headache

Thanks.

@supermancampus

1. You have to change the setup of the card. If you'd like to practice the recognition of kanji compounds, you have to put the kanji compound in the front of the card, the rest on the back.

2. Some people has different strategies for learning vocabulary. If I really feel like it, I can easily add more than 100 words a day, but I like to split it between grammar, vocab, and listening practice.

What I *used* to do, this might be for you

Use a notebook for all core words. On each line (in order)
English word ---> reading ----> kanji
Example

Tree - き　　　　　　　　　　　　　　木
*Try and put the kanji on the far end of the paper

So after making a huge list of vocab words, this is where you're going to brute force these vocabulary, for now. So pretty much just look at 木, guess the reading and english word on the left side. If right, move on. You DON'T need to be 100% here, just go for one run down, then put everything into Anki and do it AGAIN.

What I do now. Pretty much the same thing above, just all on the computer now as it's much faster. I just pre-study vocabulary cards on anki itself (browse deck).

Japisfun25 Wrote:(1) Do you guys memorize Kana for root words that are normally written in Kanji?
(2) About how often to root words appear in Kana form in native material like newspapers and everyday emails?
(3) I'm just trying to figure out if memorizing the Kana version of words almost always in Kanji form would be a good use of my time. My main interest in learning to read everyday Japanese. Thanks for the help guys.

Just use the kanji, you will usually always recognize it in kana if you know the kanji of that word really well.

supermancampus Wrote:Hello everyone-- another beginner seeking knowledge from all the here who are at the level I hope to be at some day. Currently I'm going through Nukemarine's Core2k/6k deck and I have a few questions on learning strategy please.

1) In the deck I'm using, the kanji is hidden on the front of the card, but the sentence and definition are present. I'm finding often I will remember the word, but not the kanji compound--would you suggest writing this out several times, reading it outside of Anki in separate review deck for that day? Curious what types of strategies you've all used while studying.

2)I hear people who've worked up to 35 - 60 words a day which sounds un-achievable for me. How much time do you spend going over cards upon initial review?

Sorry for all the questions, but I'm trying to walking in the footsteps of giants and hopefully save myself any more headache

Thanks.

1) I've always gone kanji only word/sentence (for recognition, I don't do production cards) and all the rest on the answer side. Most of the words you'll always find in their kanji form (except some of them, but it won't hurt knowing the kanji for that as well).

2) It certainly is possible to do much more than that. You've just got to accept the fact that you'll forget a lot when you're adding cards. I don't think much, I keep failing cards until I know it immediately and that way I don't spend too much time on just one card. I add 20 new cards in about 6-8 minutes, and always working in batches of 20.

When reviewing I just look at it and ask myself, do I know this? If I don't in the next 1-5 seconds, I fail the card. Using the keyboard shortcuts for reviewing also helps with speeding up the reviews. Of course this way your retention will drop a lot using this, but it will even out in the end.

I wasn't able to do this immediately, I had to build up to this. Trying to get my reviews done faster everyday, as the daily reviews kept increasing.

Thank you both for the excellent advice! I made some notes and will put these strategies to use today in my Anki studies.

supermancampus Wrote:1) In the deck I'm using, the kanji is hidden on the front of the card, but the sentence and definition are present. I'm finding often I will remember the word, but not the kanji compound--would you suggest writing this out several times, reading it outside of Anki in separate review deck for that day? Curious what types of strategies you've all used while studying.

Do a search for "production vs recognition site:koohii.com" on google and read up on the pros and cons of production vs recognition. If I had to give a flat-out recommendation, I would tell you to scrap the production layout and switch over to recognition ASAP, but you do what is best for you and your goals! ^_^

supermancampus Wrote:2)I hear people who've worked up to 35 - 60 words a day which sounds un-achievable for me. How much time do you spend going over cards upon initial review?

I agree with ikore; the trick is to sacrifice your retention rate and focus on speed, going through your reps quickly and being unafraid to fail cards here and there and everywhere. A lower retention rate is preferable to spending more time in Anki, in my opinion, and failing a card just means you're going to see it even more and become extra familiar with it, which is a good thing since you DO need to spend extra time with it if you can't recall it within a few seconds.

On initial review, I only spend a little bit more time with the card; I read the example sentence and make sure I know the right flavor of the definition (very rarely I look it up in a dictionary if I have doubts), then I fail it and fail it probably one more time that day and then usually fail it the next day too, but after that it becomes familiar and usually by then I'm able to pass it more often than fail it.

All this being said, if you have a limited time available to study due to other life circumstances, by no means try to go faster than you ought. It's FAR better to go slow and steady than to rush and burn out and end up with a mountain of backlogged reviews. So, build your review tolerance slowly, and don't be afraid to cut back if things begin to get overwhelming. But if you have 2-3 hours every day to study, 35-60 words is highly within the realm of possibility, so don't underestimate your ability to consistently reach those sort of numbers. If you haven't read this thread by Mezbup, give it a go. I was in your shoes, thinking, "Wow vocabulary is so hard, I better take it super slow," until I read that thread and got really inspired.

But all in all, my best piece of advice is to keep in mind that it gets WAY easier as you go, and soon enough you'll be able to guess the readings of many of the words right off the bat, which leaves only the meaning to be learned (which is also easily guessable at times). The first 1, 2, 3 thousand words might be a bit of a test of endurance, but after that, you really do start to see smoother sailing. So don't be disappointed if you can't hit that high stride right away; it'll come!

@zurisu

Thank you for the advice. I'm reading over that thread now, and plan to make some changes. I was afraid to post this at first, but everyone here including yourself has been so welcoming and supportive. Thank you.

I'm at 2000 now, 1/3 of the way there. Hopefully I'll be posting in here as finished by April. But no matter what, 頑張るよ！

Finished Core10k today. Went through the remaining ~4k cards at the same speed of 35 cards a day. Started in October and am just finishing up today. In all, I was able to complete Core 2k, 6k, and 10k in under a year, which I'm pretty happy about.

I definitely feel like my level has increased. I wasn't expecting to feel much of an improvement, but I'm pretty surprised. I think it's a combination of Core 6k's cards maturing, the new kanji readings obtained from Core 10k, and just general Japanese exposure.

When reading websites, I find myself relying a Rikaichan a lot less than before. NHK News has gotten a lot easier as well. I wouldn't say NHK is "easy" yet, but seeing the same words repeatedly every day is having an effect. In short, the increase is about what you would expect after learning a few thousand new words.

Nowadays when I listen to Japanese--given everyday speech or a familiar topic--I find I can recognize most, if not almost every, word that I'm hearing. Full listening comprehension is still a long way away for me, though. Recognizing words and putting them together in real time, verb conjugations and all, is incredibly challenging. I'm happy with where I've gotten to as now it just feels like a matter of time and practice until I finally develop.

As for future plans: I'm looking forward to the time spent in Anki plummeting as reviews go down. I spent way too much time in Anki slogging through reviews, but now I can finally do more interesting things. I also think it's time to start using Japanese to learn Japanese. I've got the Kanzen Master N2 and N1 grammar books and plan to work through those. I'm also planning to try Japanese Level Up's branching method to start working with monolingual dictionaries. I felt their suggested level to start was way too early for me, but now I feel pretty well-equipped to finally give it a shot.

It's been an interesting experience. After reading mezbup's post in February of last year, I felt inspired to give vocab grinding a try for myself. It feels like I've gone from almost zero to actually being able to read things. There's still a lot I don't know, though. People with even higher vocab levels still find new words all the time, and that's true for me as well. From this point, I'll be collecting new words on my own from resources relevant to my interests. It should be a lot more fun than grinding through premade decks. I'm definitely glad to have had the core decks, though. It's a great resource, and if it clicks with you, then you can learn new words at an incredibly quick pace.

Whatever methods you guys are using to learn new words, keep at it. Japanese becomes a lot more interesting after learning a few new words--or ten thousand.

wow another guy following mezbup's advice, what a small world. I just finish core 6k, and I learned 2000 new words from it, but when it comes to 10k almost every word is new for me! that's great because I can just unsuspend them and go straight to reviewing instead of manually go to card by card deleting those that I already know

Finished Core 6k today! (Well, actually I forgot about the missing card until I found this thread and added it). It's weird - I remember seeing this thread when I found Nukemarine's beginner tips. That day, I thought to myself, "When I finish this, I'm going to come back and post of my completion!" And here it is. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get the 6k -10k words + audio entered in so I can continue tomorrow.

EDIT: If Supermancampus (or anyone) happens to come back and see this, here are my stats. I started with 40 new words per day, but after I hit the 60-70% mark, I bumped it up to to 50. 146 days, 202 hours, average 84 min/day, 100% days studied, average 8 cards/min. 82% Mature retention. Towards the end, my due reviews were about 650-750.