Hi, Im learning Japanese and read that lots of people here add like 25-40 cards in Anki daily.
How do you do that? Do you only learn what the definition of the Kanji/Word is in English, or do you also learn the Japanese readings for the words?

Because I have trouble learning 30 words (without Kanji, because I want to focus on listening at the moment) from Japanese to English and from English to Japanese.

And is it somehow easier to learn the English meaning of the Kanji, than the Japanese word with translation (without learning the Kanji)?

I would say first and foremost, the number of cards you do is just a matter of how much time you are putting into it.

30 words without kanji is pretty difficult.
The kanji gives you some sort of context to try and derive meaning from the word at least. If you are learning a word with just kana, then its more like just rote memorization of some random sounds. It can be tough. In a case like that, you want to be sure you are giving yourself plenty of context in your mind (it was something from a memorable story you read, or you come up with some sort of mnemonic, or something).

Well, first of all, it seems like you're doing something fairly uncommon here, which is to leave out kanji completely in your reviews. I'm not sure if that's a good idea because of all the homophones in Japanese. If pure listening is your true aim, then maybe adding the context of an entire spoken sentence (not just one word in isolation) would work out better and cause less confusion. But, really, I have no idea if that would work out practically since I've never tried it.

Second, you're also doing both E->J (Production) and J->E (Recognition)? That is going to add a lot more time to your studying, because it essentially doubles the amount of reviews you have to do (not entirely though; I assume your retention rate would take a slight boost due to the duplication, which might not mean a complete doubling of time, but something near it. At least for young cards.)

I personally spent two straight months adding 40+ cards a day, and I did neither of the above things. I only did recognition, and I used kanji (after doing RTK). And yes, I learned both the pronunciation and meaning of a word. I think many of the people here who add so many cards per day are in the same boat as me, so that might be why you're having trouble, because you're comparing your rate of addition to others' rates of addition without making sure everybody's actually doing the same thing.

Quote:And is it somehow easier to learn the English meaning of the Kanji, than the Japanese word with translation (without learning the Kanji)?

I'm not sure I understood what you asked. By "learn the English meaning of the Kanji," do you mean something akin to RTK? If so, try looking through the RTK section of the forums for discussion about the effectiveness of that method and whether or not it's necessary.

Good luck, and welcome to the forums!

Edit: Maybe it would help to talk about what your exact trouble is. Are the words not sticking? Are they getting confused with each other? Are you getting too many due cards per day?

Ryuu96 Wrote:Do you only learn what the definition of the Kanji/Word is in English, or do you also learn the Japanese readings for the words?

Using nukemarine's optimized core deck as a base, I have a production version and a recognition version.

Production format:

Quote:Front:

bookstore, bookseller
Noun
駅前に(　　)があります。

Back:

本屋[ほんや]

駅前に本屋があります。
えきまえ ほんや

There's a bookstore in front of the station.

To pass the card I have to be able to recall and write the kanji and kana for the given word, and understand what the word means. Sentence is for context, as many words, without further context, could easily be used instead and be just as valid.

Recognition format:

Quote:Front:
本屋
ほんや
Noun

駅前に本屋があります。

Back:

bookstore, bookseller

There's a bookstore in front of the station.

With this deck basically all I do is read the vocab term and understand it, using the sentence if necessary. A 1:1 日本語 ⇨ English translation isn't really something I care about.


Adding between 30 and 100 new cards a day. How you review cards if probably something you'll have to "find your groove". It can take a while before the process feels sensible. For instance, when I first started using Anki (outside of RTK), it took a while before I really got anything out of it, because I more or less floundered around expecting the program to understand how I learn things.

In the end it rather boils down to your learning preferences, and probably a lot of personal research.

Thanks for the answers.
The reason why there I won't put any Kanji into my vocab deck is, because they would help me to guess the word, which would make everything easier. And that's also the reason why I don't now more then like 30-40 Kanji.

The is problem, that some words just won't get into my brain.. So I need like 2 weeks to learn them (only like 4 words out of 100, but it still get on my nerves). My main problem is, that some of them are really almost the same for me.

And I also don't now what I should focus on. My goal is to read as fast Manga as possible, but also to watch Anime without any subs and understand whats going on (I also need N4 for my school, so that I don't have to do an second languge, but getting N4 till next summer shouldn't be that hard).
If I focus strongly on reading Ill not learn that much vocab, but would make great progress on my reading skill. The same with Kanji.
Learning Kanji, producing and recognition at the same time of a word don't work on me. Tried that the very first day after I learned the Hiragana and yeah, it worked really bad.

Any advice how to handle this? Cause focusing on both would slow both of them down, so It would take lots of time to get into the native stuff.
I also though about learning as many Kanji as possible, after I learnt like 1000 vocab for N5. And then focus again on N4 vocab and after that learning for 2-3 month Kanji and so on. But I don't now If it's the right way.
How would you do it, if your goal is to read and listen/speak at the same time?


I hope you understood what I tried to say.

For me, I like to break up my reviews and learning. So instead of doing, say, a 30 new card chunk and 100 reviews all at once, I'll set it so that I'm only reviewing 30 cards, and learning 10 new cards at a time. I find that's more manageable for me.

It sounds to me like you are a little unsure of which direction you want to go. You said at first you want to focus on listening and then mentioned reading manga. You also want to be able to pass N4. If this is the case, I would follow Nuke's beginner's guide sticky thread. Start with kanji and RTK. At the same time to avoid getting bored, study grammar with somthing like Tae Kim's guide or Genki I/II. Start Core later. I think it's unproductive to study Core with hiragana. You'll just have to go back and start over again with kanji later.

Listen guys he says he doesn't want to learn kanji at this time.

::Actual advice for your question::

In addition to Using Anki or any other SRS program to do your reviews. any new cards you can write on a piece of paper with 3 columns (kanji / reading / english translation ) or two columns (reading / english translation ) and just flip through it whenever you have a couple minutes during the day. That's what I did when I did Core6k and I think it helped me during the first couple days of learning a card. After a couple days I'd just throw the pieces of paper out or put them in a folder to never be opened again.

NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:Listen guys he says he doesn't want to learn kanji at this time.

I was responding to his followup question where he expressed indecision on how to continue his studies. I should have quoted it.

NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:Listen guys he says he doesn't want to learn kanji at this time.

::Actual advice for your question::

In addition to Using Anki or any other SRS program to do your reviews. any new cards you can write on a piece of paper with 3 columns (kanji / reading / english translation ) or two columns (reading / english translation ) and just flip through it whenever you have a couple minutes during the day. That's what I did when I did Core6k and I think it helped me during the first couple days of learning a card. After a couple days I'd just throw the pieces of paper out or put them in a folder to never be opened again.

This is pretty much what I do. Write the 3 columns your talking about, brute force them, then study them in anki. High young retention, higher mature rate.

Xanpakuto Wrote:This is pretty much what I do. Write the 3 columns your talking about, brute force them, then study them in anki. High young retention, higher mature rate.

I get the same effect all within anki by using a filtered deck with 'rated:2:1' and rescheduling turned off. This gives me a deck with every card that I missed in the last 2 days including all of the new cards. Going through this deck a few times every day fixes everything pretty well in my brain.

Benefits are that everything is in my phone and I don't have to carry around paper and pencil. Drawbacks are that I don't get any handwriting practice. Since I am heavily biased towards conversation, this is an easy trade-off.