Well i've recently started on the sentences and have a few questions.

I don't know if its just me but maybe I'm doing something wrong as i'm entering sentences i'm finding them realy difficult to recal the next time they come up for review i know were not supposed to memorize them were suppose to understand the sentence, but for example I'll have a short sentence i've entered so i read it out and understand the sentence but the next time the sentence comes up i have no recal of the reading of a kanji so what do i do just click no that i could'nt recal the sentence or do i click hard (in anki)

but this is were it gets funny.

say i get about 8 wrong so then they show a little while after i have exactly the same problem even if its only 5 minutes after i last got it wrong i still have no recal of the reading of the kanji or what words mean in the sentence (maybe i just have the worst memory)

This does'nt happen all the time but its happening enough to frustrate me am i just worrying about nothing or should i be able to recal them after a few times seeing them? Perhaps other people that are using the sentences method can enlighten me if i have a terrible memory or if this is normal?

Although i must admit i seem to be picking things up i.e. words/grammer quicker than i ever did when I've gone through textbooks before without an SRS so maybe im worrying over nothing it just gets frustrating when some sentences pop up and for the life of me no matter how many times it pops up in 10 mins i don't remember it.

The "answer" side of your card does have the readings on it, right, so at least when you fail the card you look and see what the right answer is?

If a particular word is giving you lots of grief, try adding more sentences for it. Yahoo's Japanese dictionary has tons of high quality sentences with English translations. Go here:
http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/
enter the word you wanna look up
then scroll down to the *green* dictionary and select the entry you want.

Sometimes a word's just hard. I had a lot of trouble learning 推薦書, for instance. Don't worry too much about it. Although you could be the an exception, I think most people who study Japanese hardcore this way, have to resign themselves to never, ever seeing "Scheduled cards: 0" in their SRS.

BTW, I just wrote a totally epic article on Sentence Mining. どうぞどうぞ
http://www.glowingfaceman.com/2008/12/se...ining.html

snispilbor Wrote:The "answer" side of your card does have the readings on it, right, so at least when you fail the card you look and see what the right answer is?

If a particular word is giving you lots of grief, try adding more sentences for it. Yahoo's Japanese dictionary has tons of high quality sentences with English translations. Go here:
http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/
enter the word you wanna look up
then scroll down to the *green* dictionary and select the entry you want.

Sometimes a word's just hard. I had a lot of trouble learning 推薦書, for instance. Don't worry too much about it. Although you could be the an exception, I think most people who study Japanese hardcore this way, have to resign themselves to never, ever seeing "Scheduled cards: 0" in their SRS.

BTW, I just wrote a totally epic article on Sentence Mining. どうぞどうぞ
http://www.glowingfaceman.com/2008/12/se...ining.html

Thanks alot for that especially your article which has given me some great info, i think your right about the fact a word is just hard i.e. i have a sentence with "expressway" which just never sticks i deffinatly need to find more sentences with vocab that i find hard to learn this could be were i'm going wrong.

Would you say its best to keep failing the card untill you get it correct then select hard?

snispilbor Wrote:The "answer" side of your card does have the readings on it, right, so at least when you fail the card you look and see what the right answer is?

yeah i have the answer with the readings but when i fail the card see the reading it pops up a few mins later and i've already forgot it so fail again so i end up failing the card a few times in a row before i get it correct.

It's not the same with every sentence/vocab but with some i have real trouble

If you just add one sentence for each vocab word you're trying to learn from scratch, you're going to have problems unless you find ways to reinforce that vocab either: 1) elsewhere in your deck or 2) elsewhere in your reading outside of your deck.

I usually add 2-3 sentences, minimum.

Also, try to follow the "i+1 principle" -- don't add too much new info into each new sentence. Try to keep it to i+1, where i= the stuff you already know, and the +1 is the one new thing you're adding. You can't always do it that way, but the more new stuff you add per sentence, the more potential fail points you add.

On the back of my cards, I usually put the kanji I'm trying to recognize with a couple of spaces followed by the kana so I can isolate its pronunciation, to speed up going through the deck. I also put a full kana reading and a translation there too, but I usually don't read those unless I don't understand the card... and if I don't understand the card, I fail it.

One last thing, shorter sentences are better when you're just starting out. You don't need big giant sentences. Save those for later.

For me, in order to pass a recognition (reading) sentence, I need to be able to:
1. Read it out loud in Japanese, letter-perfect, getting all the readings right.
2. Understand it.

If it's a production sentence, I need to be able to:
1. Write out all of the important kanji in the sentence, stroke-order perfect. (Finger in the air is fine)
2. Understand it.

If I can't do it, I fail it. If it's hard, or if I'm slow, I hit hard. If it takes too long, I fail it. I fail taking too long to avoid "Tip of the Tongue Syndrome," which bugs the hell out of me.

Be harsh about failing up front, and keep failing it until you get it right. That's how Anki works best.

EDIT: Great article, Snispilbor.

tibul Wrote:Thanks alot for that especially your article which has given me some great info, i think your right about the fact a word is just hard i.e. i have a sentence with "expressway" which just never sticks i deffinatly need to find more sentences with vocab that i find hard to learn this could be were i'm going wrong.

Let me guess. Is the sentence this one?
高速道路を走る。("to run through the expressway")
That one from early in Tae Kim gave me so much grief as well, I ended up deleting it because it didn't seem like 高速道路 was a real word.

Well, that was a long time ago, now I'm a little more experienced at sentence mining. With these hard words it's best to split them up. Sentence mine 高速 and 道路 separately. 道路 is incredibly common, I don't think it'd be any problem. 高速 is much less common but has one sentence and some other compounds at Yahoo: http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch?enc=UTF-8...x=01426400
If you really wanna learn that word, I'd mine these sentences:
車は高速で走った
高速車線
高速料金

For additional support, you can check SpaceALC which generally has more sentences, but lower quality (sometimes there's bad japanese so watch out)
http://eow.alc.co.jp/%e9%ab%98%e9%80%9f/UTF-8/?ref=sa

Plus, as you go on you'll find that 高=こう is an extremely common reading, so from a more experienced point of view, 高速 only really presents one new reading, the 速=そく reading.

Of course, I could be wrong about the sentence and then this whole reply is pretty silly

snispilbor Wrote:Let me guess. Is the sentence this one?
高速道路を走る。("to run through the expressway")
That one from early in Tae Kim gave me so much grief as well, I ended up deleting it because it didn't seem like 高速道路 was a real word.

Yup thats the one was driving me crazy I think i'll just remove it as you say maybe later when i've improved it might turn out to be easy to remember.

I think from your replys and rich_f I'm starting to understand alot more on how i should go about mining sentences.

I have a seperate deck for kanji readings. Kanji on the frontside, reading on the back, nothing more. Saves me a lot of review time compared to when I didn't have a Kanji Compounds deck.

If a word/sentence is really annoying you, delete it.

Tibul,

If you think about it, that sentence was there to give and example on how to use "を". You can:

1. Delete the sentence
2. Substitute an easier word
3. Postpone or Suspend the sentence
4. Put a note that the sentence is about grammar and to not mark it wrong because of the word.

Since it's a grammar example sentence, number 2 or 4 works best imo. Delete a sentence only if its wrong or does nothing for you. Really should be no reason to suspend individual cards that are already in you rotation, though you know your reasons best.

Granted, when I did KO2001 before I adopted the single grammar word per sentence, I did suspend KO2001 sentences that had too many new words in it. Every 100 sentences I would go back over my suspended sentences and see if any can be put back into action. I don't recommend this approach based on my own problems with it.

For what it's worth, 高速道路 is no less uncommon in Japanese than 'highway' is in English. It's far from obscure.

Just a quick quip about sentence mining.

I watched Star Trek: First Contact today and heard the phrase "How many ships?"(船を何隻？） （ふね　を　なん・せき？）

I didn't know the kanji for せき so upon looking it up, there was a word for warship and a word for submarine somewhere in the searching. So I looked those up.

My ultimate prize was learning 魚雷　（ぎょ・らい）　"torpedo". Fish thunder = torpedo.

What I love about reading all these sentences is it so easy to get into these "layers" of explanations that come from just looking up the counter for ships. And I added 5 more sentences from the dictionary. Cool stuff.

Thank you very much for that, asianpleaser. A word I can now never forget...

That's hilarious, by the way...

As to the poster's question, I'll just echo what's been said - if it doesn't work for you, try to break it into simpler (more understandable) parts. Learn big compounds as the sum of their parts, not just one long word. If that doesn't work, delete it and move on. If it's really important, it'll come up again.

If a word is draining your precious energy, throw it away. Find a nice one that is also new for you, but it is easier to remember. Focus on new material that is enjoyable for you to learn. The "hard" stuff gets easier quickly.