When I first started reading I was thinking to learn every new vocab I encounter, but the truth is that for now there are too many words I don't know, so I must be more selective and put aside some vocabs. What criterion could I follow? Until now I just unsuspended words from Core 10000 and I left out almost all vocabs not contained in it.
For the words not contained in Core 10000, I check another frequency list based on the innocent novels, and if the word is not even in the first 15000 words of this second list, then I left the word out. But this require too much work, so what could I do to check if a word is immediately useful to add in Anki?
One criterion could be to just see if the word is important in the context of the book I'm reading. If it is I'll see it many times and this will be the proof it's useful to know. But I've seen this doesn't works well for adjectives and adverbs, but sincerely I don't know how to check if the word is sufficently common to justify the need to learn it.
I know jisho has a "common" flag, but in another thread someone suggest me to not take it as a fact. So, I don't know what to do... there are reliable dictionaries I can trust?

NVM, sorry, misread your post.

If you're reading, if the word sounds like something you want to know, then add it/unsuspend it. If it keeps coming up, add it. Otherwise, leave it is probably fine.

I only add words I can't read. There are currently 2521 words in my deck.

I would just set yourself a daily limit and then add whatever you feel like adding until you reach it. imho large frequency lists aren't that useful because once you get past the really common ones (which you don't need a frequency list to identify as frequent) your personal reading habits will dictate what's frequent and what's not. Trying to guess whether a word will come up again usually isn't going to work so I think it's best not to worry about it and focus on actually reading. Obviously if you do keep seeing the same word again and again then it's worth adding but there's no need to differentiate amongst the less obvious ones.

Here's what I did back when I was actively studying and doing cards. I was reading a lot of Light Novels and there were a lot of words I didn't really know, depending on the author. I set up a system of noting down the word I didn't know, the book and the page number. I did this usually in a spreadsheet to keep it ordered and then I moved on.

If the word showed up constantly in what I was reading then I might add it straight to the deck. Later on I would go back and do an "add" phase, this was when I bulk adding words to my deck. I could look at the spreadsheet and pull words and use the sentences in the book.

If you're currently Ankiing some other source, I don't think it's important to look up anything unless you want to. Certainly there's no reason to SRS words from books if you're already SRSing some other source. 'Mining' from books always struck me as a waste of time unless books are your only source of study - other sources (core, subs2srs, whatever) are much more convenient and get you the words you need to know just as well if not better.

Anyway - what are you reading?
If you read easier material, your problem will go away.

Alternatively, only keep the interesting words and ignore boring words.

I know it's not helpful to link to hour-long videos but I found the talk by Anthony Lauder at a polyglot conference very useful, and you may too:

Here are one person's notes from the talk: http://kazemakase.ca/2013/08/04/fluent-c...-polyglot/

Lauder's summary of the research emphasizes repeated exposure to a word that is beyond the core few thousand words of the language. He suggests that after this core phase, polyglots will actively practice a subset of vocab that personally interest them (the vocab of mystery novels, or of their profession, etc.), and practice extensive reading, which, as far as I can tell, is free from the computerized distractions that you mention (looking up frequencies, making decisions about adding to Anki).

An idea that I've been thinking about is making/suggesting an enhancement to Rikaisama (maybe it already exists?) and/or your principal dictionary website: keep track of what words you look up as you look them up, and automatically tell you how often in the past you've looked up this word. Dictionary lookup is supposed to be part of intensive reading (which non-polyglots/non-language-learning-experts tend to overemphasize), but which is a key study element (along with extensive reading, speaking/writing/output, and fluency development).

I hope these comments and the summary bullet points at Landorien's blog can convince you to spend some time watching this meta-learning video (at least at 1.5 speed ).

I'm still half asleep and my first thought was to look at this thread knowing I will not be betraied

I'll definitely look at that video with much interest, and btw thank you all for the suggestions

To the user who said he adds only the words he can not read. What do you mean? Could you gently go in more detail? If I understand what you said, then this is something I was thinking to do lately...

For example "internal hemorrage" is a word I didn't knew but I checked on the dictionary and the reading was what I thinked it is. So I already know how to read the word without need to add it to anki, and also the meaning is pretty obviou from the kanji. What you are suggesting is to not add those sort of words?

Because for languages like english I use only a dictionary to check the meaning and leave immersion to do the rest. I will never consider to use anki for languages like english. But for japanese where the reading is not immediately obvious it's way more difficult to absorb pronunciation by reading only. I check it while I read but ten seconds after it's gone. Without anki it doesn't stick.
So maybe it makes sense to just use anki to learn readings I don't know and let immersion take care of meanings like I did with english and like I would do with other "phonetic" languages.

EDIT: I'm reading zero no tsukaima, but also death note another note, which I find way more ineresting even if its grammar is still too difficult for now...

Quote:To the user who said he adds only the words he can not read. What do you mean? Could you gently go in more detail? If I understand what you said, then this is something I was thinking to do lately...

If my first guess (if I even have one) about the reading turns out to be wrong, I add the word. Or if it takes me too long to recall the reading of one (or more) of the kanji involved. I figure any word I can read will eventually stick, and at any rate, I can at least look them up quickly.

Personally, I add every word I don't know (or read incorrectly) to a list.
Someday I'll get around to learning them.

Vempele Wrote:

Quote:To the user who said he adds only the words he can not read. What do you mean? Could you gently go in more detail? If I understand what you said, then this is something I was thinking to do lately...

If my first guess (if I even have one) about the reading turns out to be wrong, I add the word. Or if it takes me too long to recall the reading of one (or more) of the kanji involved. I figure any word I can read will eventually stick, and at any rate, I can at least look them up quickly.

It sounds like a smart thing to do... I admit I like Anki but the fact is that the more I add, the more reps I'll have... And more reps means less time and especially less will to do other things in japanese...

What about words with a single kanji? You follow the same procedure? And comounds where the meaning is particularly tough to remember?

I used to copy any word I didn't know to a paper or notebook; I never reviewed them, but just writing them down helped.

Quote:What about words with a single kanji? You follow the same procedure?

Yes. Most of the words I add these days are kun'yomi (since on'yomi tend to be more regular) and therefore often single-kanji.

Quote:And compounds where the meaning is particularly tough to remember?

I actually don't SRS meanings (though I have them on the back of the card). Haven't run into problems yet.

Vempele Wrote:

Quote:What about words with a single kanji? You follow the same procedure?

Yes. Most of the words I add these days are kun'yomi (since on'yomi tend to be more regular) and therefore often single-kanji.

Quote:And compounds where the meaning is particularly tough to remember?

I actually don't SRS meanings (though I have them on the back of the card). Haven't run into problems yet.

So the same goes for hiragana words? Rhetorical question xD

Well, then I'll try this for a month and see how it goes! Thank you!

Yudantaiteki, I've tried that but it doesn't work very well for me... After months of Anki I can recognize without a doubt the usefulness of SRS, at least for me, but I know my memory isn't all that great :/ xD

cophnia61 Wrote:So the same goes for hiragana words? Rhetorical question xD

Oh right, those used to be a problem. In particular, mimetic words pretty much only started sticking once I no longer needed to look up most kanji words.

Vempele Wrote:

cophnia61 Wrote:So the same goes for hiragana words? Rhetorical question xD

Oh right, those used to be a problem. In particular, mimetic words pretty much only started sticking once I no longer needed to look up most kanji words.

I have difficulties with words like conjunctions and similar... soshite, sorede, etc.. or things like nante, nanitoka, nantonaku, nanishiro and so on... they confund me but I know with reading I'll finally learn them well, or at least I hope so xD I've tried to put them on Anki but for me it simply doesn't works for non-kanjified words