Sorry for the stupid question, but noone answered me on my other posts... I wonder, since I use Production for learning vocab, should I try to memorize kanji combinations? I know f.e. that kissaten is cafe, but recalling 喫茶店 is another story... And then I don't even know how common it is to use those kanji. Making both production and recogn. would duplicate my work. But it seems I could use them both for being able to write and listen...
Ok, that was more than one question. Please help!

I posted the same question a few days ago.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=2976

You're just supposed to learn them via exposure to sentence mining. So I've been told. KO2001 seems to have several high frequency compounds.

Hm, so I should do this parallel to Genki (uni course)? I really don't know where to start! I' so bad in learning jap. vocabulary. They all sound the same!

This is what I do:
Look at the word when the sentence pops up only once, then write it from memory. If you can't write it without looking back at your computer screen then fail the card.

This way you don't have to make extra production cards.

bombpersons Wrote:This is what I do:
Look at the word when the sentence pops up only once, then write it from memory. If you can't write it without looking back at your computer screen then fail the card.

This way you don't have to make extra production cards.

and do you question the reading too?

This SORT of comes automatically, it depends on the exposure. For example, if you read a lot of real Japanese or live in Japan, you're never going to forget 電車 or 食事 etc. Your exposure will be massive and when you want to write the word, you'll have no problem seeing it in your mind.

The same may or may not be true for other less common words. Just having a word in one card in an SRS, just recognition, might not be enough, probably not. I would however not worry about it because if you are only ever exposed to a word from the SRS, you will probably not need to write it. As you get good enough to read books etc, you will be exposed so often that it won't be a problem.

Overall, I wouldn't worry about it. If you're studying in class or something and need writing ability ASAP, you could do production cards. If you're doing long term studies however, I don't think you will need to.

I agree with Tobberoth. Unless production is urgent don't worry too much about it. Enough recognition will solve the problem, assuming you're don't have to start writing/speaking soon. Also, the more recognition you do the easier production becomes, so in many ways it's better to leave it for a while.

Also as Thunk pointed out, KO2001 is really good for this. The books or CD are available from coscom. On smart.FM there are list with different sentences, but the same order and vocabulary. Just search for KO2001.

well as I said, I'm in a class (only 2 lessons a week but it keeps me busy anyway T_T), and if I go to Japan it will probably be next year. In that case I have to make the 3rd test on my own. It's just quite difficult to try and study the words for a course without much listening and reading and study on your own at the same time =(.

From what I can remember, when I was at the very beginning with sentences (I had just finished RTK1), I started to build on the little I already knew.
Through passive exposure to anime I had learned a bunch of easy words. Therefore, these words were easy to associate to compounds through the kanji I had previously learned. So I started collecting sentences that contained those words, plus some more. That way I started building my vocabulary a little at a time. From that it becomes easier and easier.
Also, I started doing production when I was well past 1000 cards.

This is my experience, I don't know if it can be of help.

so don't do production to start?

cos i've just started sentancing in earnest tonight and its kicked my ass (to coin a phrase) altho this was a production/recognition deck with 50 sentances i added a week ago so ofc i disadvantaged myself a little.

so just stick with recognition until production happens by accident?

Quote:so just stick with recognition until production happens by accident?

Good way to put it, yes. First worry about reading the kanji. Once you can do that then you can worry about producing them. If you have the time why not gain them for free from just reading?

Out of interests sake, according to the KO order:
喫 --> 1231 (not covered by the books)
茶 --> 177
店 --> 192

I remember 喫茶店 from Pimsleur, well now I know the kanji

well thank god for that.. here was me emo fitting thinking im never going to figure this, and as usual its just me jumping the gun and trying to get everything 100%

walk before you run ><

on the plus side.. after 2 hours of smashing my head against my desk and getting nowhere. Deleting the production cards made a world of differance. I read and understand my whole deck with only a few mistakes. Kept reading 助手 as しゅじょ instead of じょしゅ

Going to bed a lot happy than i thought im sooo glad this topic came up. I would've been torturing myself for days otherwise.

Gingerninja Wrote:so don't do production to start?

cos i've just started sentancing in earnest tonight and its kicked my ass (to coin a phrase) altho this was a production/recognition deck with 50 sentances i added a week ago so ofc i disadvantaged myself a little.

so just stick with recognition until production happens by accident?

My recommendation is to do both reading and dictation, if you're doing sentence method to learn combos.

1. Write out the entire sentence at least once. There's no real reason I have to justify this, but in my mind this is a good way to make sure you've grasped all parts of the sentence.

2. Pick one word or segment of the sentence you think that sentence is there for (vocabulary most likely). Highlight or bold it (kanji for reading, kana for dictation), and this word is the only word you'll physically write down (either on paper or finger in palm) via dictation for now on. This word should also be mandatory pass/fail when it comes to the card (perfect pronunciation in reading, perfect writing in dictation, perfect context comprehension in both).

With the above, I'm not spending too much time writing as I'm just doing one word. In addition, I'm not debating whether I should fail a card or mark it an almost. It's a single point of failure per card.

Thanks everyone!
So you write down the pronounciataion and kanji?
Well my problem kind of is a toughie, since I go to that course and need to write texts. What I learned from this is, I need more exposion to learn the cards, and I might start with Recognition before doing Production.

Btw, off topic: I get a lot of tags shown that have no cards for it, anyone know why?

In my experience in both Japanese and Chinese, production ability comes for free when you learn to read kanji combos, assuming you already know the kanji they're made of.

lanval Wrote:Thanks everyone!
So you write down the pronounciataion and kanji?
Well my problem kind of is a toughie, since I go to that course and need to write texts. What I learned from this is, I need more exposion to learn the cards, and I might start with Recognition before doing Production.

Btw, off topic: I get a lot of tags shown that have no cards for it, anyone know why?

I wouldn't worry about writing the pronunciation, unless you wan't to practice your kana skills as well. Saying it is enough for me, but YMMV. Unfortunately you're constrained by time, so you don't have much choice about doing production now. If there's only specific kanji that you need to know, you could just do production for those and recognition for all the others.

Wops, I didn't mean writing, sorry, I meant as in: do you memorize the reading? From what I read so far, I guess you do. But isn't that quite hard? There will probably be more than just one word that I don't know the reading for in one sentence, being a beginner.
Just that first sentence on smart.fm (運動会で一位になったよ。 ) has two words I don't know.

Oh, and how is Denshi Jisho for getting sentences? Could just find my own that fit to Genki. Though there are a lot of new grammar and words.

lanval Wrote:Oh, and how is Denshi Jisho for getting sentences? Could just find my own that fit to Genki. Though there are a lot of new grammar and words.

The sentences at denshi jisho are taken from the Tanaka corpus.

This site explains what the Tanaka corpus is and why it should not be used when mining sentences:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/tanakacorpus.html

Lots of errors and unnatural Japanese. It's however great if you found a word and you don't know how it's used because you can quickly get tons of sentences to cross reference. You should never actually put the sentences into an SRS though.

lanval Wrote:Wops, I didn't mean writing, sorry, I meant as in: do you memorize the reading? From what I read so far, I guess you do. But isn't that quite hard? There will probably be more than just one word that I don't know the reading for in one sentence, being a beginner.
Just that first sentence on smart.fm (運動会で一位になったよ。 ) has two words I don't know.

That's how you learn the readings. I'm guessing you don't know 運動会 and 一位. But by learning that one sentence you now know that 運 is read un, 動 is read dou, 会 is read kai, 一 is read ichi and 位 is read i.

Sure, when you see 行動 in the future, you might not immediately remember that 動 is read dou, but in time you will. The more often you see the kanji and know how it's read in that situation, the more those readings get ingrained in your head. Therefor, try to get lots of different kanji in your SRS but also several words using similar kanji and you'll see that the problem goes away automatically. A month from now when you see 動 you will automatically think "dou". Or "ugoku" depending on situation.

Unfortunately the sentences weren't that well chosen (in terms of easiness), they're just the first sentence with audio that matched the pronunciation. In the case of 運動会で一位になったよ the book would have furigana for everything but 一位, so you'd just be learning the pronuciation for that, but you can still read the sentence. When you get to 運, then 運動会 would be the word without furigana. But they may use 運動会 many times before you get to any of those kanji, so you may already know it just from reading earlier sentences. The book sort of works like it's own SRS. With iKnow you can't really emulate it, but you could if you import the list into Anki, copy and paste the reading field and blank out the kanji you're trying to learn and it it to the question part of the model. Then you could refer to the reading if you don't know the kanji or ignore it if you do.

If you haven't seen it, here's what it looks like. A picture is worth a 1000 words, should have thought about that before writing an essay

travis Wrote:Unfortunately the sentences weren't that well chosen (in terms of easiness), they're just the first sentence with audio that matched the pronunciation. In the case of 運動会で一位になったよ the book would have furigana for everything but 一位, so you'd just be learning the pronuciation for that, but you can still read the sentence. When you get to 運, then 運動会 would be the word without furigana. But they may use 運動会 many times before you get to any of those kanji, so you may already know it just from reading earlier sentences. The book sort of works like it's own SRS. With iKnow you can't really emulate it, but you could if you import the list into Anki, copy and paste the reading field and blank out the kanji you're trying to learn and it it to the question part of the model. Then you could refer to the reading if you don't know the kanji or ignore it if you do.

If you haven't seen it, here's what it looks like. A picture is worth a 1000 words, should have thought about that before writing an essay

Ahaa, that is a good idea, thanks! I also just discovered that I see the pronounciation on clicking "sentences" *d'oh*
Just leaves me with the question what to do with my Genki stuff. Probably find sentences from the book.

Another question: Why not start with Japanese Core 2000? The sentences seem a lot easier to me.

lanval Wrote:Thanks everyone!
So you write down the pronounciataion and kanji?
Well my problem kind of is a toughie, since I go to that course and need to write texts. What I learned from this is, I need more exposion to learn the cards, and I might start with Recognition before doing Production.

Btw, off topic: I get a lot of tags shown that have no cards for it, anyone know why?

Well, that's the first time a sentence comes up. Plus it's only the kana pronunciation for the vocabulary word, and not the whole sentence. It's my version of "initial learning", making sure I spend enough time with it the first time through. Seeing that I'm getting 90% pass rate on my young cards, it seems to be a winning strategy. After that though, no, I don't mess with writing pronunciation unless the word itself happens to be all kana.

It's not necessary, just something I do. It reinforces my writing skills imo.

lanval Wrote:Another question: Why not start with Japanese Core 2000? The sentences seem a lot easier to me.

Core 2000 is perfectly fine and is how I plan to learn. But Kanji Odyssey's sentences are more logically ordered and you get a reference book. Not a major difference, but a difference nonetheless. Is it enough of a difference to warrant spending money? No imho... but then I'm a cheapskate.

harhol Wrote:

lanval Wrote:Another question: Why not start with Japanese Core 2000? The sentences seem a lot easier to me.

Core 2000 is perfectly fine and is how I plan to learn. But Kanji Odyssey's sentences are more logically ordered and you get a reference book. Not a major difference, but a difference nonetheless. Is it enough of a difference to warrant spending money? No imho... but then I'm a cheapskate.

I'm currently so frustrated with those sentences! There are just sooo many damn counters, combined with easy kanjis, and I can't memorize them, like why is it sometimes -nin and then -jin? I have to learn all the counters at once now? -__- someone tell me a good technique please!