Now that Heisig and Fabrice's wonderful site has convinced me of the benefits of flashcards and spaced repetition, I'm keen to make use of them as I'm taking my first baby steps with my language class and self-study.

Does anyone have some good systems working, or tips to share? I'm not asking which software to use, I'm concerned with what to write on the cards and how to structure the information.

I already had some ideas about vocabularly cards, but I'm not at all sure how to proceed with grammar cards.

[ファブリス]

How about doing both at once ? Using sample short phrases to illustrate grammar points and learn vocabulary. Somebody here had posted a link to his approach learning 10000 (!) sentence patterns, but .. noooo.. looks like its down at the moment :

http://alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/

I use the following flashcards:
1. vocabulary & grammar sample sentences; english to japanese
2. vocabulary & grammar sample sentences; kanji to english/kana
3. kanji; character to meanings/readings/sample compounds
4. kanji writing; keyword to character

Flashcards are a great way to review grammar. I also make cd's, which I consider to be the step after flashcards.

leosmith Wrote:I also make cd's, which I consider to be the step after flashcards.

What exactly do you do for your cd's? Do you record your voice saying the japanese then english?

snozle Wrote:What exactly do you do for your cd's? Do you record your voice saying the japanese then english?

English-pause-Japanese-short pause-Japanese-short pause
etc.
This is the format of a lot of "phrase book" CD's out there. It makes me much faster. Because I'm a self studier who doesn't live in Japan, I have to work harder at getting the grammar into my repertoire. CD's are a big help.

ファブリス Wrote:Somebody here had posted a link to his approach learning 10000 (!) sentence patterns, but .. noooo.. looks like its down at the moment :

http://alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/

It seems that site is running again but had all of it's old data deleted. D'oh. There's a mainpage with some background info but not much else...

Try http://www.stackz.com, it is my favorite flashcard program/dictionary program.