I'm planning on making a tool that can be used for automatically creating Japanese Anki sentence cards, but I'm not sure what are the different ways people go about picking example sentences to learn.

For example, I have a list of Japanese words I want to learn. Whenever I encounter a new word from a manga, I add it to a list. When I run out of new cards in my sentence deck, I select some words from the list and search Kenkyusha for example sentences and the definition. If I don't find any example sentences, I find sentences on Tatoeba. I try to pick 3 example sentences per word and I try to make sure that the only word I don't know in those sentences is the word I'm trying to learn. Then I make a sentence card for each of them.

So what's your process of adding cards to your sentence deck?

If you can detail the specific steps you take, that would be great! Also any ideas or feature suggestions for an automatic sentence card creator is welcome!

When I did sentences, I would typically just use the sentence that the word came from.

blackbrich Wrote:When I did sentences, I would typically just use the sentence that the word came from.

Cool, I suppose that works too. Are these sentences from textbooks so that they have an English translation? Or some other kind of media? Also if you don't mind me asking, what fields/information do you have on your sentence cards?

I used mainly media that I could read. So mainly manga, light novels, anime with subtitles, and visual novels.

The sentences from textbooks I used to use were from the the Dictionary of Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced Japanese Grammar.

The fields I had were, the expression (the kanji), the reading (in kana), and the meaning (just definitions of words I didn't know).

I would usually make lists of new words I encounter like you, mcho421, then copy-paste example sentences from the ALC (http://www.alc.co.jp/) or Weblio (http://www.weblio.jp/) dictionaries. Having original sentences from the text would be nicer and perhaps more meaningful, but it just takes too much time to type them out, so I would go for copy-paste instead.

chillimuffin Wrote:I would usually make lists of new words I encounter like you, mcho421, then copy-paste example sentences from the ALC (http://www.alc.co.jp/) or Weblio (http://www.weblio.jp/) dictionaries. Having original sentences from the text would be nicer and perhaps more meaningful, but it just takes too much time to type them out, so I would go for copy-paste instead.

Good to see a fellow list maker . Also interesting that both you and blackbrich want to use the original sentence from the text.

Could you tell me more about how you go about choosing the sentences from ALC and Weblio? It looks like you would get a lot of example sentences from ALC so do you have any criteria for choosing which ones you will use?

mcho421 Wrote:Could you tell me more about how you go about choosing the sentences from ALC and Weblio? It looks like you would get a lot of example sentences from ALC so do you have any criteria for choosing which ones you will use?

I choose the ones that are easy to understand, preferably not very long and look useful or interesting

Sounds like a great project mcho421. You've got a future user of your tool right here. I can't wait to see what you come up with.

When I'm reading a physical book I usually mark words that I want to add to my deck with a pencil. After I'm done reading a chapter I'll go find example sentences online (usually on jisho.org or weblio.jp) and use Rikaisama's Anki Real-Time Import feature on the word to get it into my deck. Then I copy/paste the English translation into the relevant field in Anki, and I end up with a card that has the word and the sentence on the front and the definition, the reading and the sentence translation on the back (and sometimes additional example sentences that I've copy/pasted).

The reason I use Rikaisama instead of just copy/pasting everything is that this way I automatically get the audio (someone reading the word out loud) into Anki and I only have to copy/paste the English translation of the sentence.

If I'm reading on the computer I generally just use Rikaisama's Anki Real-Time Import feature meaning that the example sentence will be the original sentence where I read the word - unless that sentence is really long and/or difficult; in that case I just find an example sentence as described above.

I'm pretty happy with my current way of doing things, but I guess I would prefer not having to manually copy/paste the English sentence into Anki. Having to pick out the most appropriate example sentence can also take a bit of time, but I guess it would be very hard to have software do that for you. Epwing2Anki can pick out the sentences automatically and those sentences are sometimes pretty ok, so I suppose it's possible (you can always change the ones that you don't like).

If you make a tool I would definitely try it out. Because even though I like my current method, I still think it's a somewhat roundabout way of doing it.

I sentence mine native media, and I like to use the sentence I found the new word in as the example sentence too. It's more colorful - I have a personal memory associated with it, and whenever I see that sentence I'll remember the context it came from. It's also a reminder that there is a very real use for this word, that it will probably come up again next chapter and I want to know it.
I guess if you aren't finding +1 sentences in your native materiel, you'd want to use a sentence lookup site so you could choose a very simple +1 sentence...but I stick to materiel mostly around my level, so it's not too hard to find a +1 sentence. Additionally, I really only add words that come up often in the native materiel, so once I've decided "Okay, I've seen 貿易 several times now, time to learn that word," I can kind of wait for an interesting, +1 sentence to come up.

Lately my process has actually been this:
1) See a word several times, and decide to add it to my sentence mine deck
2) Take a photograph of the word with my phone the next time it comes up while I'm reading or playing
3) The next morning when I'm doing anki at my desk, I go through my phone photos and send all the new words to my computer.

And my actual anki process looks like this...
1) Copy-paste the photo with the sentence in it into the anki card (this works great for video game snapshots, anime screenshots, and manga panels...it can be a little weird with books. I'd highlight the sentence in a book).
2) Re-type the sentence into the kanji expression field
3) Tab, and have the Japanese reading plugin automatically generate a reading in the reading field, so I have furigana.
4) Select the card, and hit Re-Generated Sentence Gloss for my gloss plugin, so I get the definition of all words.

No look-up required! Just snap a photo for later (no interruption to your immersion experience!), and later on simply paste the photo and re-type the sentence into anki. You'll be gifted with readings and definitions automatically.
If I don't know the reading of a word, I've been using jisho to look it up previously, but I recently discovered a great ocr that I hope will just generated readings for me from the photo. It automatically provides a definition too, which I might just copy-paste instead of using the Gloss plugin, since the Gloss plugin is a little...messy. Plus that way, I can only have the definition for the word I want to learn. I try to minimize English in my cards, and get as close to J-J as I can. Actually, maybe I should start using that J-J dictionary...

Anyway, this was long, sorry. I'm just pretty pleased with this process and all the wonderful anki plugins that make it possible. With less than 20 seconds of work, I get a card that has a screenshot with context (and for video games, anime, and manga, that means a nice colorful picture to make reviews more fun!), the sentence, the sentence with furigana, and definitions.

@yogert909
Thanks! I'd like to make sure I'm designing a tool that people would use so if you have a certain process of adding your example sentences, I'd love to hear it .

@justusperthes
Wow I've never considered audio being a part of the sentence cards! I'm really glad you shared the reason why you use Rikaisama's Anki Real-Time import feature.

@jessem
Thanks for writing so much detail! That's a really creative workflow, the context of the sentences must be very important to you. A good glossing feature and picture support seems like it would be an interesting idea to explore.