I figured it might be fun to have a thread where everyone posts their method for learning new vocab. We're all individuals here, so while the majority of us might use some of the same tools, it could be pretty interesting learning about all the little "spins" that people put on vocab acquisition.

Me? I've absolutely fallen in love with Epwing2Anki + 研究社. While my current class schedule doesn't allow me enough time to study Japanese as I'd like, I've been making up for this by keeping a vocab notebook (great for both pretending to look at notes and keeping myself sane during lectures), and then using Rikaisama in Firefox along with editpad.org to type out the words from my list and then generate cards with audio and a boatload of sentences. When I first encounter the words (I'm going through Tales of Zestiria now and recording vocab as I go), I look up the definition in Japanese with 三省堂 and 大辞林　(研究社 is the last resort when I first see a word) to clarify the sentence I'm reading at the time. While I don't know if it would be possible, I'm also considering trying to play around with Epwing2Anki to see if I can get the 三省堂 definition and the 研究社 one to show up at the same time.

As far as spacing goes, I'm using the much more thorough model suggested by Yogert (sorry, I can't remember the thread) and my Anki steps are set at: 0.5 3 15 60 180 540 1440

So far, this has majorly helped my vocab recall, and I'm definitely going to apply it to my JLPT studies once I can get back to them at the end of this semester.

What about you all? What works for you?

It's funny you mention Tales of Zestiria since I only use Anki and Tales of Vesperia to learn vocabulary. I use the online script to mine my words. I started with the skits and I'm now at skit number 76. I learn 100 words a week (20 words a day from Monday to Friday) and I just reached 1000 words (and 546 kanji, but it's not that hard to study since I did RTK before) last week. In Anki I put the word and the sentence where it comes from.

I love that method because I'm sure to learn useful vocabulary for my case (I only learn Japanese to understand RPGs, I don't want to read newspapers or speak with Japanese people).

Today I'm going to start Japanese the Manga Way to learn grammar. When I'll be done with Vesperia script (might take a long time) and JTMW, I'll start studying words in a less systematic way (as I encounter them while playing RPGs). Same for grammar points (hopefully after JTMW I'll be able to efficiently parse Japanese sentences).

Well that's my plan but I don't know how well it'll work.

I'm going through core 10k right now (at 1600+ cards right now, started on September 1st, 40 cards a day). Then I just extensively read. Sometimes I will look up words and input those words (and example sentences) in Anki, sometimes I won't. I'm going to start playing FFIV in Japanese soon, and right now I'm reading Harry Potter and Yotsubato.

sokino Wrote:I'm going through core 10k right now (at 1600+ cards right now, started on September 1st, 40 cards a day). Then I just extensively read. Sometimes I will look up words and those words (and example sentences) to Anki, sometimes I won't. I'm going to start playing FFIV in Japanese soon, and right now I'm reading Harry Potter and Yotsubato.

I'm reading Yotsubato! too, but I also just downloaded Harry Potter, and even with around 3000 words down, I can't quite get through it. Do you look up the words you don't know or do you just glaze over it?

stephenmac7 Wrote:

sokino Wrote:I'm going through core 10k right now (at 1600+ cards right now, started on September 1st, 40 cards a day). Then I just extensively read. Sometimes I will look up words and those words (and example sentences) to Anki, sometimes I won't. I'm going to start playing FFIV in Japanese soon, and right now I'm reading Harry Potter and Yotsubato.

I'm reading Yotsubato! too, but I also just downloaded Harry Potter, and even with around 3000 words down, I can't quite get through it. Do you look up the words you don't know or do you just glaze over it?

It helps that I've literally read the books in English about a dozen times now, but barring that yeah, I'll just glaze over the words I don't know a lot of the time. Or barring that I'll do a quick look up in my kindle dictionary then keep it moving. I'm a big fan of the Kato Lomb method - just extensively read what you like and you'll start picking up words and patterns (grammar) by context. If a word keeps on coming up (she recommends 3 times at the very least) and you're still not sure what it means, then you should look it up in the dictionary and really try to remember it. In that case, I might do that and take that sentence from HP and put it into Anki - or if that sentence is otherwise not suitable - take the word and look for some example sentences on google. I like this method, and I feel it really helps me get better at reading and processing the language.

Sometimes, I will intensively read a section though; as in sit there an learn every word I don't know and every grammar pattern I don't recognize but I don't do that too often - just whenever the mood strikes me.