For those who in the beginning did only core6000 or similar vocabs decks, and only after that they started to read, how much is increased their vocabulary retention thanks to reading? Sometimes in anki I fail vocabs that are supposed to be common, but I encounter them only in Anki... So I was wondering how much it helps reading a lot with vocabs retention

I'm not sure your exact question, but I changed my core deck from vocabulary to sentences and my vocabulary retention has improved greatly. If you me to explain more, let me know.

I went up to 7-8k vocab until I really started reading, and my retention went up from around 73% to 86% and is rising.

so yeah, reading really helps.

I have been reading since the first day, and my retention has never fallen under 95%.

Thank you both for the answers! I mean that when I do anki reps on core vocabs, often I fail to remember readings (and sometimes meanings) from common words, like 給料 or 練習 or 成績 (ok, now I remembered them but it's only an example xD), and I'm a little worried... Maybe when I start reading I'll encounter those sort of words on the wild and after a while they'll stick better because of that? Or, in other word, it's because of me that I fail to remember those words or it's because I'm relying only on Anki?

Btw I've two decks, one for words (core10000) where I see the word in kanji (plus an example sentence that I almost never look at if not needed) and I must recall both reading and meaning, and another deck for sentences, where I read a sentence in kanji and I must be able to read and understand it. In the sentence deck I value only my understanding of the sentence as a whole, or in other word, of grammar (in a wide sense). And I have found that for words that appear in my sentence deck, I remember them way better. So maybe I must rely more on sentence while I still am not able to read (well, I read simple things but it's most things with very basic vocabs like K-ON). I know core has sentences but those are not working for me... boring, no context, too simple, allways the same things... :/

cophnia61 Wrote:Thank you both for the answers! I mean that when I do anki reps on core vocabs, often I fail to remember readings (and sometimes meanings) from common words, like 給料 or 練習 or 成績 (ok, now I remembered them but it's only an example xD), and I'm a little worried... Maybe when I start reading I'll encounter those sort of words on the wild and after a while they'll stick better because of that? Or, in other word, it's because of me that I fail to remember those words or it's because I'm relying only on Anki?

I don't think it's anki. I think it's the way our brains work. At least mine is very unpredictable. Sometimes I forget simple words and then I'm amazed that I remember a word that I wouldn't expect to remember, then tomorrow it's the opposite. I'm guessing it has something to do with priming where an earlier word or answer sets my brain on a certain pattern that makes it more or less likely that I'll remember a given word. I'm guessing further exposure will make this a lot less common of an occurrence.

cophnia61 Wrote:Btw I've two decks, one for words (core10000) where I see the word in kanji (plus an example sentence that I almost never look at if not needed) and I must recall both reading and meaning, and another deck for sentences, where I read a sentence in kanji and I must be able to read and understand it. In the sentence deck I value only my understanding of the sentence as a whole, or in other word, of grammar (in a wide sense). And I have found that for words that appear in my sentence deck, I remember them way better. So maybe I must rely more on sentence while I still am not able to read (well, I read simple things but it's most things with very basic vocabs like K-ON). I know core has sentences but those are not working for me... boring, no context, too simple, allways the same things... hmm

I know what you mean about core's sentences being boring, but are random vocabulary words less boring? I've been experimenting with studying only sentences and not adding any new vocabulary cards at all and so far I'm really digging it.

yogert909 Wrote:

cophnia61 Wrote:Thank you both for the answers! I mean that when I do anki reps on core vocabs, often I fail to remember readings (and sometimes meanings) from common words, like 給料 or 練習 or 成績 (ok, now I remembered them but it's only an example xD), and I'm a little worried... Maybe when I start reading I'll encounter those sort of words on the wild and after a while they'll stick better because of that? Or, in other word, it's because of me that I fail to remember those words or it's because I'm relying only on Anki?

I don't think it's anki. I think it's the way our brains work. At least mine is very unpredictable. Sometimes I forget simple words and then I'm amazed that I remember a word that I wouldn't expect to remember, then tomorrow it's the opposite. I'm guessing it has something to do with priming where an earlier word or answer sets my brain on a certain pattern that makes it more or less likely that I'll remember a given word. I'm guessing further exposure will make this a lot less common of an occurrence.

cophnia61 Wrote:Btw I've two decks, one for words (core10000) where I see the word in kanji (plus an example sentence that I almost never look at if not needed) and I must recall both reading and meaning, and another deck for sentences, where I read a sentence in kanji and I must be able to read and understand it. In the sentence deck I value only my understanding of the sentence as a whole, or in other word, of grammar (in a wide sense). And I have found that for words that appear in my sentence deck, I remember them way better. So maybe I must rely more on sentence while I still am not able to read (well, I read simple things but it's most things with very basic vocabs like K-ON). I know core has sentences but those are not working for me... boring, no context, too simple, allways the same things... hmm

I know what you mean about core's sentences being boring, but are random vocabulary words less boring? I've been experimenting with studying only sentences and not adding any new vocabulary cards at all and so far I'm really digging it.

Yes, but at least vocabs are faster to review, while sentences would require more time to review... so if they are not boring it's better xD I don't know what to do... Put aside my vocab deck and do sentences only, but mined by myself, so they are not boring and they are meaningful to me and pleasurable to read...? But in this way I'll have more than one element to evaluate in the sentence... if it has both new grammar points and new vocabs and I understand the former but not the latter, I must fail the sentence? And if it has more than one new vocab? Like a sentence mined from an anime? :/

EDIT:

Also I must add that when in the beginning I did sentences only, I was relying too much upon context, so I did recognize words in sentence, but when I encountered the same words in the wild I often failed to recognize them...

I don't think you need to be consistent. If you feel that you deserve to pass the card even if you missed something on it - go ahead. I had lots of cards where I had only a vague sense of the grammar, but over time inevitably more cards with the same grammar ended up there and it clicked. Same with some words.
Ideally, there should only be one new thing on each card. But if there isn't I don't think it's a big deal to prioritise one over the others.

In the long-term, I don't think relying on context is a bad thing either.

In fact I think it's pretty normal to not recognise things in the wild that you 'know' from Anki the first time or so. You're just more likely to remember it than if you didn't Anki it, and if you look up the meaning while reading it will probably 'click' a lot better/faster than if you hadn't seen it in Anki first.

cophnia61 Wrote:Yes, but at least vocabs are faster to review, while sentences would require more time to review... so if they are not boring it's better xD I don't know what to do... Put aside my vocab deck and do sentences only, but mined by myself, so they are not boring and they are meaningful to me and pleasurable to read...? But in this way I'll have more than one element to evaluate in the sentence... if it has both new grammar points and new vocabs and I understand the former but not the latter, I must fail the sentence? And if it has more than one new vocab? Like a sentence mined from an anime? :/

EDIT:

Also I must add that when in the beginning I did sentences only, I was relying too much upon context, so I did recognize words in sentence, but when I encountered the same words in the wild I often failed to recognize them...

Yes, sentences take more time to review, but they are effectively equal several vocabulary cards since they contain more then one word. They are also grammar cards as a bonus. I know what you are saying - it doesn't even make total sense to me, but I feel switching to sentences sped up my progress considerably. Since I've switched to sentences, my accuracy rate has gone from the low 80's to the mid 90's which means considerably less reviews. Less reviews allows me to add more new cards per day. I haven't done a thorough study, but I would guess that I am able to add the same number of sentence cards as I did vocabulary cards, but I feel like I am learning so much more from each card.

I know what you mean about relying too much on context that you don't truly know the word in another sentence. I worry about this too. However, even if I don't immediately know the meaning in another sentence, I feel it is a lot easier to remember the second time. By the time I've seen it in a few different sentences, I know what it means in any sentence.

I'm not sure how far you are into core, but it seems you and I took similar paths. I started out doing vocab and sentences in parallel, but after a few hundred sentences, I stopped adding sentences to focus on vocabulary. Like you, I felt the sentences were slowing me down. Then, around 2500 vocabulary, I started adding sentences again. I didn't stop studying the vocab cards that I had in circulation, but my plan was to catch my sentence cards up to the vocabulary cards and study both in parallel. I wasn't expecting the sentences to make a big difference, but after a week or two of doing sentences, my accuracy started going up and up.

Regarding how to score the sentences, I score it based on if I know what the sentence means. That means the grammar and all of the words in the sentence, but I don't get picky about the grammar. Granted, some of the words I don't know on their own, but from the context I know what they mean. I often look them up as I go to make sure my understanding is correct. In a nutshell, by criteria is if I read this in the wild, could I follow along or not? I feel this is good training for what is one of my main goals - reading actual Japanese. Like Aikynaro said, Once I start reading, I expect that there will be some words that I will have to learn from their context and I will have to look up some words anyway so I might as well get used to it. This isn't the main reason I'm recommending sentences, but It's good to remember what my goals are. Restarting sentences, for me, has yielded more improvement in my Japanese studies then any other thing I've done so far. But people are different, so if you want, try it for a week or two and let us know how it goes...

Thank you Akinaro and Yogert909, your answers are helping me so much in understanding what actually I need to do. The fact is that maybe I like too much to know how many words I "know", so with vocabs deck it is easier to track this data. But I feel it's slowing me down more than how much it is helping me. So I'm seriously thinking about returning to sentence deck only. Mh.. I still don't know :/ I need time to think xD

Yogert909, do you do sentence deck only now? Or you still maintain the words you did on core? And just a curiosity, is the 909 in your nick a reference to the roland tr-909?

I am maintaining the vocabulary cards that I've already studied so I haven't suspended them. I just recently caught my sentences up with the vocabulary. I'm still experimenting with how I'd like to proceed so I'm still adding some vocabulary cards. I'm unsure if I want to keep adding vocabulary or not at this point. I think I'm going to keep adding both sentences and vocabulary cards for a few more weeks and see how it goes.

Yes, actually you are the first person that asked me about the 909 but you're right. Not that I'm a musician or anything, but a lover of music. That's something that I came up with a long time ago and continue to use because I'm a creature of habit and can't be bothered with a different login every time.

yogert909 Wrote:I am maintaining the vocabulary cards that I've already studied so I haven't suspended them. I just recently caught my sentences up with the vocabulary. I'm still experimenting with how I'd like to proceed so I'm still adding some vocabulary cards. I'm unsure if I want to keep adding vocabulary or not at this point. I think I'm going to keep adding both sentences and vocabulary cards for a few more weeks and see how it goes.

Yes, actually you are the first person that asked me about the 909 but you're right. Not that I'm a musician or anything, but a lover of music. That's something that I came up with a long time ago and continue to use because I'm a creature of habit and can't be bothered with a different login every time.

When I started the core deck I did this: first I learned to read and understand a sentence in my sentence deck, then if that sentence contains new words I learned them well reading the sentence several times, and only when I feel I know the new words I unsuspend them on the vocab deck (core). This way when I reviews sentence I pass the sentence also if I fail to read one of the words/kanji in it, if I still understand the sentence as a whole, because the same word is in my vocab deck where I concentrate on the words themselves. So I am not forced to fail a sentence if I understand it but read a word the wrong way, or viceversa.

But now I'm doing the opposite: while I'm mining IAIJ, whenever a sentence contains a new word I first unsuspend the word in my vocab deck and learn the word in isolation. Only after this I unsuspend the actual sentence.

I feel the first method worked well and is a good compromise, while the second method is not working. So I could return to the first method and prioritize sentences, while I'm going to unsuspend words in core only when I already know them, just to review and track them.

What was your method when you did core? You unsuspend new words and learn them, or just unsuspend words you already know from other places (like reading or from your sentence deck)?

I love the tr-909 xD I'm not a producer but sometimes I dick around with cubase and I love to use 909 samples but I haven't a real roland xD So good nick, I like it

cophnia61 Wrote:What was your method when you did core? You unsuspend new words and learn them, or just unsuspend words you already know from other places (like reading or from your sentence deck)?

I'm just doing it in "optimized" n+1 order. Sentences and Vocab are spawned from the same deck (just 2 different card models in the same deck). No need to selectively suspend/unsuspend anything as I go.

Yea, I used to mess around with music apps back in the day but forgot about it for years. I recently got iMaschine for my phone and that's been fun to play with because it's simplicity it keeps me from getting too techy with it.

yogert909 Wrote:

cophnia61 Wrote:What was your method when you did core? You unsuspend new words and learn them, or just unsuspend words you already know from other places (like reading or from your sentence deck)?

I'm just doing it in "optimized" n+1 order. Sentences and Vocab are spawned from the same deck (just 2 different card models in the same deck). No need to selectively suspend/unsuspend anything as I go.

Yea, I used to mess around with music apps back in the day but forgot about it for years. I recently got iMaschine for my phone and that's been fun to play with because it's simplicity it keeps me from getting too techy with it.

Sorry to stress you xD but your sentences are from core as well? Or you mine them from other sources?

PS: cool, I do the same xD when I'm bored but I'm too tired to study japanese, I open a virtual sampler and play with it xD If you don't know already, I suggest you to look at samples from "goldbaby". I have put some demo loops on my soundcloud xD

EDIT: another advantage of sentence is that they contain other words as well or, in other word, you're going to get expose to the same words more than one time, while with vocab only you see that word only one time. Yes, it's true that the real exposure to that word must be from reading native material, but to be honest for how much I'm reading now I'm not getting this exposure. But I can not read more because at my level is very tiring after some time... So a sentence deck would be more like a reading deck to practice reading, with the added advantage that you are forced to read at least your reps every day, while honestly if it was not for Anki I'd end pospone reading. Another thing I noted with my sentence deck is I'm way better with grammar and sentence pattern recognition, as well as reading in general. So it's not under discussion to abandon my sentence deck. I can feel my progress thanks to that deck. On the other hand with the core deck I feel like I'm rote memorizing random things I'm going to forget anyway until they do stick "magically", like Steve Kauffman said in one of his videos. If it was for me I'd just abandon anki to read and read, like I did with english. When I learned to read english I just started with an ebook and babylon translator, just translating every word again and again as I progressed further in reading. But with kanji based languages I feel it's not so simple because if you read and look a word you don't know, and then you continue reading, 10 seconds after you've forgotten that word. So a sentence deck might be a midway between reading and flashcards, you read but just sentence enough simple for you to read, and repetition makes easy to "relearn" the words you forget. So from now on I'm trying to go back to my sentence deck only and I'll see how it does...

cophnia61 Wrote:Sorry to stress you xD but your sentences are from core as well? Or you mine them from other sources?

No worries, I'm enjoying talking with you. Yes, my sentences are from core. I like having the parallel translations to check my understanding of the sentences. To me, core is a nice walled garden where I can learn a lot of common vocabulary and get used to grammar, pronunciation, and listening comprehension. At some point I will start filtering in some native material, but I plan to spend most of my time finishing core 6k before doing to many other things.

When you say that you mine sentences what exactly do you do? Take a news article and input it line by line? Do you put anything on the back of the card? Where are you mining sentences from? I'm planning on starting to add some nhk easy news and maybe subs2srs in the near future. More as a test at this point than to study seriously.

cophnia61 Wrote:If it was for me I'd just abandon anki to read and read, like I did with english. When I learned to read english I just started with an ebook and babylon translator, just translating every word again and again as I progressed further in reading. But with kanji based languages I feel it's not so simple because if you read and look a word you don't know, and then you continue reading, 10 seconds after you've forgotten that word. So a sentence deck might be a midway between reading and flashcards, you read but just sentence enough simple for you to read, and repetition makes easy to "relearn" the words you forget. So from now on I'm trying to go back to my sentence deck only and I'll see how it does...

Yes, I think you are right on here. I have to keep reminding myself of this. I think reading as much as possible is the key to any language. Since that is next to impossible starting out with Japanese, the next best thing we can do is figure out ways of cheating so that we can read as much as possible.

I have mined all the sentences from Genki I and II and studied them, while now I'm doing the same thing with "An integrated approach to intermediate japanese". So I've never mined native material, I've tried to do this but almost ever native material does not have a parallel translation so I can not check if I'm understanding it right :/

The fact about core sentences is that they are not working for me, like this for example:

分からない 場合 は 私 に 聞いて ください

for me this sentence does not define 場合 well enough to make it stick in my mind...

those and those examples are way better for me.

And even when sentences from core are good enough, they are just a pain to do for me... like 彼はｘです and the like... at least in jisho and other dictionaries there is much more variety and it feels more like reading than a torture... In other words with core sentences I feel like I'm doing something against my willpower... Obviously the best would be to take sentences from native material, in fact the words I know better are those I read from things like song lyrics or posts in idol's blogs, or the words I learned studying the sentences I mined from Genki... While the words I do directly from Core doesn't stick most of the time, or they stick but I feel it's a forcing of my memory in a way that is unnatural, while I would prefer to just absorb the language and get used to it like I did with english, enjoying what I was reading :/

EDIT:

An example from a native source:

"夜が明けるにはまだ間がある時刻で、雨が薄板葺《うすいたぶ》きの屋根を打つ音が、闇《やみ》の中に絶《た》え間なく響《ひび》いている。"

I feel I understand this but without a translation I'm not sure so I cannot put it on srs :/

Another example:

"抜けるような青空をバックに、才人《さいと》の顔をまじまじと覗《のぞき》き込んでいる女の子が言った。"

This is a little too convoluted for me but I think with the help of a parallel translation I would understand it and that would make it possible for me to use this sentence as a learning tool.

Maybe I might use graded readers? Or maybe books that have a translation, and just read both in parallel? Manga could be good for this but you can not copy-paste from them :/

I feel deprexed today because of this sort of thinkings

I have only done Core and Tae Kim so far so I guess I don't know what I'm missing with Genki and AIAIJ. I should probably check out AIAIJ though.

cophina61 Wrote:The fact about core sentences is that they are not working for me, like this for example:

分からない 場合 は 私 に 聞いて ください

for me this sentence does not define 場合 well enough to make it stick in my mind...

those and those examples are way better for me.

What do you like about the links you posted? There are a lot of examples, but the sentences seem just as good/bad as core. How about these: この場合、保険が適用されますか。or なお、雨の場合は中止です。Both sentences are part of core 6k, although the second sentence won't show up until around #5000. Do you find that you have a lot of these words that you can't remember? I have some that don't get memorized easily. I just usually let them go and if I don't run into it in another sentence or two, maybe it's not that popular of a word after all. But usually I just end up learning it eventually without too much trouble. I ran into one today that I remember having so much trouble with that I didn't even think it was the same sentence because I understood it perfectly.

I've been meaning to check out some graded readers, but so far I haven't. Have you checked out totoeba? They they are all about parallel sentences. The Japanese sentences are based on the tanaka corpus which is available for download. There's also tools that align parallel texts, so if you can find translations, you can align them. I haven't used that either, but maybe you find it helpful.

But basically, I'm putting most of this off until I get most of the way through Core 6k. I think it's the quickest way for me to get my vocabulary up enough to be able to read most general native materials.

Ok, so I was doing Core the wrong way. It just doesn't work as well if I suspend cards in casual order. The fact is I was paying not enough attention to sentences because they contains words I don't know. From now on I'll try to do it in n+1 order and I'm sure it will works better. Maybe when I finish with IAIJ I'll devote all my time to do Core as fast as possible and then start reading and from there I'll do my own sentence cards, but for now this Core thing is too useful to be discarded. I've already done my core reps for today, but reading the whole sentence and listening to the audio for it, and I feel it was way less boring than just grind vocabs only. It was feeling like something not correlate to language itself, while with sentences the words make more sense and it doesn't feel like a memory quiz for nerds xD
Thank you yogert909 for having shared your experience, thanks to it I've understood something apparently expected but that I had failed to grasp, that is how to use that core deck xD

Cophnia, seeing that it was me to suggest you Zero no tsukaima, and that you have quoted a sentence from the first page saying that it's still too convoluted, I fell somewhat responsable. So, as an apology, here's the english translation of the novel: http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index...._Full_Text

Moregon Wrote:Cophnia, seeing that it was me to suggest you Zero no tsukaima, and that you have quoted a sentence from the first page saying that it's still too convoluted, I fell somewhat responsable. So, as an apology, here's the english translation of the novel: http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index...._Full_Text

Moregon ahahaha thank you!! This is priceless to me xD I was searching it without success, maybe you read my mind xD

Man, do you know other links like this for other novels? Maybe if it's not the only novel translation we can find on the internet, we could open a thread to collect that sort of links. I think to have a translation adds much in terms of didactic value, isn't it so?

EDIT: wow that website contains so many translations! *_*