Hey guys,

Quick question in your personal experience, how did you study vocab?

I'm using a deck that I've created in which I add things as I encounter them, this doesn't seem to be really effective tho..

I use the core10k deck. > https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/702754122

It might take a while to finish, but I think it will be worth it. I'm only 1000 or so cards into the deck, but it's nice to notice some of the words I'm learning when I read something like nhk easy. :p

I actually just started to suspend useless notes as well. ( basic words like 見る that pop up, or loan words. )

ninjabin Wrote:Hey guys,

Quick question in your personal experience, how did you study vocab?

I'm using a deck that I've created in which I add things as I encounter them, this doesn't seem to be really effective tho..

Why isn't it effective? It's what I do and it works well, how are you doing it?

MelonBerry Wrote:I use the core10k deck. > https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/702754122

It might take a while to finish, but I think it will be worth it. I'm only 1000 or so cards into the deck, but it's nice to notice some of the words I'm learning when I read something like nhk easy. :p

I actually just started to suspend useless notes as well. ( basic words like 見る that pop up, or loan words. )

I have also been using the core 10k deck for a year now, even though it became really irregular due to lack of time/motivation after work (I don't live in Japan, so no immersion at work either). I didn't think about altering the deck so far, but I should also start suspending those useless cards.

Once you feel confident enough (although, some argue that you should do it from the beginning), you can start reading small texts on the internet, such as nhk easy or bilingual texts on this website : http://www.nippontalk.com/en/ I am not using it but might do the trick for you to get the confidence and start using monolingual material.

furokansai Wrote:

MelonBerry Wrote:I use the core10k deck. > https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/702754122

It might take a while to finish, but I think it will be worth it. I'm only 1000 or so cards into the deck, but it's nice to notice some of the words I'm learning when I read something like nhk easy. :p

I actually just started to suspend useless notes as well. ( basic words like 見る that pop up, or loan words. )

I have also been using the core 10k deck for a year now, even though it became really irregular due to lack of time/motivation after work (I don't live in Japan, so no immersion at work either). I didn't think about altering the deck so far, but I should also start suspending those useless cards.

Once you feel confident enough (although, some argue that you should do it from the beginning), you can start reading small texts on the internet, such as nhk easy or bilingual texts on this website : http://www.nippontalk.com/en/ I am not using it but might do the trick for you to get the confidence and start using monolingual material.

Yeah, I agree. I'm 1k cards in ( that's not a lot of words.. ) but I'm slowly moving through a kids novel. I think reading alongside core is the best way to do it.

My own way of learning vocabulary is to do the following for each separate reading passage: list the words I don't know, look them up, write the meaning in English, then study list and keep re-reading the passage until the new words are baked into my brain.

Sometimes I also use mnemonics.

My initial vocab mostly came from the textbook, as I used the Genki series in my classes. There I would memorize word lists for the following chapter. I'm fairly good at cramming a big chunk of info. into my head at once, so this method worked pretty well, at least at the start (at least Latin classes were useful for something). Personally it can be a bit quicker, but not always as solid. Still, I remember most of the words I learned this way, and the only ones forgotten were those I didn't use much in subsequent lessons

Core is really dry compared to mining vocab, but it allows you to learn new vocab at a much faster pace. So imo doing core would be your best bet if you want to expedite the learning process. However you can always mine vocab when you get bored, burnt out, have too many reviews etc.

As for actually learning the words I always write them down on a piece of paper like this:
kanji ----- pronunciation ----- meaning. I just go up and down the list and basically brute force them until I know them inside and out and then review them in anki. It works pretty well for me, my retention rate for mature cards is 95.25%.

I got really frustrated with having to look up every 3rd word in a sentence, taking the time to look them all up, and then forgetting what the beginning of the sentence said by the time I got to the end. So I gave up on reading for a little while, and just crammed the Kanji in Context vocabulary in Anki.

That gave me enough of a boost to the point where I could start reading novels and learning new words from context as I moved forward.

Then I got annoyed with my inability to remember 送り仮名 and how to write various kanji compounds, and so I started studying for Kanji Kentei from 10級 on up to 2級 over the course of the last 2 years. That was also a lot of vocab cramming, but I feel pretty good about it.

Reading is fun and good, but it just feels like a kind of inefficient way to learn vocabulary. I like rolling through word lists and example sentences a lot more. If I spend an hour reading 20 pages in a novel maybe I come up with 40 new words or something. I can learn that same amount of vocab in about 15-20 minutes using Anki. I also know that Anki will help me not forget it.

So I know the reading + throwing new words into Anki combo works for a lot of people, but I never really enjoyed the pacing of it. Anki-ing lists of example sentences then doing separate reading practice felt like I had much faster and more efficient progression.

I will add the caveat that I do Anki reviews while I listen to English podcasts or watch American TV shows/movies/video game Let's Plays. So that makes it a lot less boring for me, but I know some people don't quite have the concentration to be able to do that.