Couple of questions; just finished rtk1 and having read numerous similar threads/advices/nuke's thread,

1. How do you guys study the core 2k/6k deck (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1102215805)? Do you fail each new card at least once because unlike rtk, there's no book to study before doing the srs?

2. About grading each card, in addition to getting the question of the front card correct, you also have to memorize the kanji reading of another word on the sentence correct? Basically two++ questions on 1 card that you have to get correct? And fail each card if you do not get the reading located on the [ ] correct right?

3. About the grammar, would you recommend genki i+ii or tae kim first? Or any recommendations?

4. Do you guys still do the rtk1 deck? I don't mind but just wondering.

Also, thanks koohii & members for providing a very helpful site and stories that helped me through rtk1 !

BlackIce Wrote:Couple of questions; just finished rtk1 and having read numerous similar threads/advices/nuke's thread,

1. How do you guys study the core 2k/6k deck (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1102215805)? Do you fail each new card at least once because unlike rtk, there's no book to study before doing the srs?

2. About grading each card, in addition to getting the question of the front card correct, you also have to memorize the kanji reading of another word on the sentence correct? Basically two++ questions on 1 card that you have to get correct? And fail each card if you do not get the reading located on the [ ] correct right?

3. About the grammar, would you recommend genki i+ii or tae kim first? Or any recommendations?

4. Do you guys still do the rtk1 deck? I don't mind but just wondering.

Persoanlly, I stopped studying the RTK1 stuff one here after about a couple of months of consolidating reviews. I did RTK2 the book, using the book and an anki deck I found based on the 5th edition. Have mostly added the new 6th edition words to it, and sometimes I remember to review things. I also use benkyo.co/iikanji sometimes, and am really trying to start pmnox's wonderful 10k core deck, but my work schedule at the moment is very tiring, and I find it's hard to have the energy at the end of the day to devote to studying.

1. Yes I fail the card if I don't know it beforehand. Anki 2 has the "learning mode" anyway so this works just fine.

There's few cases where I fail a card: if I know the reading but not the meaning, the other way around, if the reading is incorrect (I'm not too concerned about chyuu vs. jyuu and such though), or if I know nothing about the card.

2. Sounds like too much of a hassle and I did not do that. Most words in a sentence that I don't know beforehand (aside from grammar structures) will be in the deck to be learned later on. Learning two words in a single card puts too much pressure on you and I don't think it does much good. You don't have to prove anything to anyone. To me, the sentences are a source of additional clues and a single context in which the word is used. There's no need to memorize them, or get upset if the sentence isn't of much help early in the process.

3. I did Tae Kim followed by the "Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar" (and it's related deck with all the sentences used in the book). Both sources gave me crucial information and I don't think I would have survived with only one (granted, if I had to I would choose the dictionary over Tae Kim). I also bought the Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar but that is more of a referencing tool for now.

4. No, I stopped doing it like 2 weeks after finishing it. I know my writing ability is crap now but I still recognize the kanji so it doesn't hinder my recognition ability at all (which is the important thing for now).

BlackIce Wrote:1. How do you guys study the core 2k/6k deck (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1102215805)? Do you fail each new card at least once because unlike rtk, there's no book to study before doing the srs?

I basically write out the word(s) on a piece of paper and go over them until I feel comfortable with them. I also look up the unknown words on jisho.org to see if the target word has multiple uses or meanings before adding them in anki

BlackIce Wrote:2. About grading each card, in addition to getting the question of the front card correct, you also have to memorize the kanji reading of another word on the sentence correct? Basically two++ questions on 1 card that you have to get correct? And fail each card if you do not get the reading located on the [ ] correct right?

This is where some people may or may not disagree with me. I personally want to be able to read and understand the sentences that are presented to me. Before I started core I made a personal vocab deck (of 1000 words), mining genki I, srsing about 95% of the vocab in tae kim's grammar guide and srsing some random words I felt were useful.

For srsing vocab from TK's guide I would take the target word and put it in to http://jisho.org/sentences/ and pick the hardest sentence I could understand. However sometimes no sentences appealed to me and I just put the vocab word on the card. This helps immensely in the long run because when you work through the guide instead of trying to learn vocab + grammar all in one go, you can focus solely on grammar and reinforce the vocab.

Now this may delay getting in to core for a month or two because making cards is time consuming. However this changed my mindset on how to go about core.

I'm at 1000 in core and every card I add I can read 100% and understand. I may have taken a longer route but I feel like it was worth it.

BlackIce Wrote:3. About the grammar, would you recommend genki i+ii or tae kim first? Or any recommendations?

I'm working through tae kim's guide and anki deck, supplementing it with Japanese the Manga Way by Phillip Lammers. You'll get a little exposure to grammar via Genki

BlackIce Wrote:4. Do you guys still do the rtk1 deck? I don't mind but just wondering.

nope I failed miserably at trying to attach rtk meanings to kanji when learning vocab.. kanji don't look foreign anymore and I'm ok leaving it at that.

Anyways good luck!

BlackIce Wrote:Couple of questions; just finished rtk1 and having read numerous similar threads/advices/nuke's thread,

1. How do you guys study the core 2k/6k deck (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1102215805)? Do you fail each new card at least once because unlike rtk, there's no book to study before doing the srs?

If I don't know it, I fail it. Sometimes it takes me 2 or 3 times before I get it (Which means I'm likely to fail it on the next go around, but thus is Anki). I also make the habit of writing down the 20 new words each day before reviewing them. Sometimes they click, sometimes they don't, but it does seem to be better than nothing at all.

Quote:2. About grading each card, in addition to getting the question of the front card correct, you also have to memorize the kanji reading of another word on the sentence correct? Basically two++ questions on 1 card that you have to get correct? And fail each card if you do not get the reading located on the [ ] correct right?

I just work on the word for the card, anything else would be way too much, and as mentioned, you'll be running into those words anyway later on.

Quote:3. About the grammar, would you recommend genki i+ii or tae kim first? Or any recommendations?

Haven't gotten there yet meself. My take on it is, I've done the joyou, I'm going to do 10k, and THEN grammar. The reason being that doing the kanji first allows me to tackle core without having to juggle trying to remember them buggers AND a new word. Doing CORE before grammar will do the same, instead of struggling to remember kanji AND words AND grammar, I can focus just on grammar. I also plan to be reading a lot more material before then as well so it'll sound familiar. It seems to be the long way around, but for me it also seems to be working.

Quote:4. Do you guys still do the rtk1 deck? I don't mind but just wondering.

Yup. I do the review here and on anki everyday along with a RTK2 deck and a deck of stories I made for RTK2 AND then Core2/10k. And yes, it IS a lot, but I'd rather keep up with it instead of lose it. I suspect that when I am comfortable with reading I will slowly start dropping the RTK stuff, but for now...

Besides, I do mean to get to RTK3 one of these days...

I recommend doing it with the sentences.

[RawToast]

Quote:2. About grading each card, in addition to getting the question of the front card correct, you also have to memorize the kanji reading of another word on the sentence correct? Basically two++ questions on 1 card that you have to get correct? And fail each card if you do not get the reading located on the [ ] correct right?

This is were you have many options and there is no panacea.

I reduced my own types down to 2 card types: Meaning (Kanji, reading, and sentence on front) and Recognition (Kanji and sentence on the front). I zoom through the Meaning deck and let the Recognition deck roll on at a slower pace. The idea here is that each card should only test one 'unknown', by the time I reach the Recognition card I should know the meaning so only the reading is unknown. Plus, this lets me rush through the deck and I can read stuff with furigana until I finish the second deck.

Many people like the sentences method as it gives context and helps with reading. Again many just do Recognition and fail on missing either of the reading or meaning. Whilst there are some that do Production cards (L1 -> Japanese), or listening cards.

Thanks for the inputs. I see many people go with different settings, and mostly go for a recognition type & I tried setting my own up:

Can this be called a 'recognition' type deck?
Front:

Back:

-----------------------------

And is this a 'production' type?:

Front:
that, that one

Back:
それ
それはとってもいい話[はなし]だ。
*audio*

How are you supposed to know that それ goes in there just from that picture?

Yeah forgot to edit it lol, the english words supposed to be on the back

RawToast Wrote:I reduced my own types down to 2 card types: Meaning (Kanji, reading, and sentence on front) and Recognition (Kanji and sentence on the front). I zoom through the Meaning deck and let the Recognition deck roll on at a slower pace. The idea here is that each card should only test one 'unknown', by the time I reach the Recognition card I should know the meaning so only the reading is unknown. Plus, this lets me rush through the deck and I can read stuff with furigana until I finish the second deck.

This is similar to what I do with the Core 6k. After trying with two 'unknowns' at a time I noticed that it wasn't so easy to get the reading and meaning to stick at the same time.
Much better retention rate after separating the two.

In addition, I want to do one set in the morning before work and one set in the evening, so this will do the bookkeeping and separation automatically (Yes, you can of course increase new card and review counts and manually decide how many to do in each session, but now I don't have to think about that).

[RawToast]

kanttuvei Wrote:This is similar to what I do with the Core 6k. After trying with two 'unknowns' at a time I noticed that it wasn't so easy to get the reading and meaning to stick at the same time.
Much better retention rate after separating the two.

It definitely improved mine At one point I did have 4 card types (iknow.jp style) but I find these 2 types are sufficient and I could increase my new rate as a result.

kanttuvei Wrote:In addition, I want to do one set in the morning before work and one set in the evening, so this will do the bookkeeping and separation automatically.

I also try and get one set out the way earlier in the day, or at until I am left with errors. Looks like we have a good system between us

One additional point is I play the vocabulary audio for the 'Meaning card' on both the front and back. This is to try and give me some free exposure to the reading (and some listening practice) whilst doing the meaning deck.

BlackIce Wrote:1. How do you guys study the core 2k/6k deck (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1102215805)? Do you fail each new card at least once because unlike rtk, there's no book to study before doing the srs?

I have just started the core 2k/6k and am doing 15 cards a day. Normally, I fail each new card, but if it is a word that I know how to write in hiragana but not in kanji, I will pass it as "good."

For every new card, I will write out the whole sentence with the new word. For new cards and review cards that are verbs or adjectives, I will conjugate their many forms. My time spent on Core daily is ~45 minutes--I don't know if this is good or bad, but it just how long it takes me.

I starded Core 6k optimized about three months ago and I'm going through it 25 sentences a day using basically the "old" AJATT sentence method, so I've got the plain sentence on the Front side and reading/meaning on the Back (furigana + english).

1. For the new cards I'm simply giving myself a Normal ranking after trying to memorize the card, so to postpone it by 10 min. Then when I review the card the second time I decide wether it's better to review it after 1 day or 4 (no first time fail).

2. I try to learn both reading and meaning of the whole sentence. This can seems a bit harder at first but I've gone through 2000 sentence pretty smoothly although some sentences repeat so you've got to sospend them.

3. I've been studying Tae Kim's guide and it worked till now but it's not really complete so I've ordered Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar by Nishiguchi Koichi and I hope it will work.

4. I've done my kanji reps every day since I started and I still need a full review of RTK (scheduled for december) so I'd highly recommend to continue.


By the way, now that I've reached 2000 sentences this deck is starting to feel boring and not completely useful. I'm wondering if my own sentence mining could be better (in terms of both quality of study and time), and I'm starting to understand the power of MCD (clozed sentences) because they force you to remember the writing of the words, which is the most difficult part for me right now.
For example I can read the word 挨拶, I know the meaning but I wouldn't be able to write it from memory if needed.
Maybe with some nice MCD work...

So do you guys think it's possible to switch to another deck of mined sentence without too much trouble? Would you recommend it?

I know most people on this forum doesn't like brute force learning, but this is what I do.

I do about 25-50 words from core, Nhk news easy or both. I write all the words I like in a notebook. Kanji ---> reading ---> Eng definition. I brute force them for about 15 minutes. Then place them into anki and have a rather very high retention rate for young and mature cards. Also the notebook serves as a motivating factor for me, every time I fill out a lot of pages full of words, I write myself an essay of my current progress. My most recent one was rather long and I'm thinking on posting it on lang-8

Xanpakuto Wrote:I know most people on this forum doesn't like brute force learning, but this is what I do.

I do about 25-50 words from core, Nhk news easy or both. I write all the words I like in a notebook. Kanji ---> reading ---> Eng definition. I brute force them for about 15 minutes. Then place them into anki and have a rather very high retention rate for young and mature cards. Also the notebook serves as a motivating factor for me, every time I fill out a lot of pages full of words, I write myself an essay of my current progress. My most recent one was rather long and I'm thinking on posting it on lang-8

I second this. I actually started learning vocab this way because you mentioned this a while ago in a different thread. For me it's definitely the easiest and most efficient way to add new cards to anki.