I guess the point of looking up J>J descriptions is more so that you're forced to use J to figure stuff out. It's good practice. It's not really something you need to use with SRS though.

vosmiura Wrote:I used to include full kana & translations, but since a while my sentence cards look like this:

Q: わたしの研究テーマに関連がありそうな論文はすべて集めました。
A: わたしの研究テーマに[かんれん connection;relevance]がありそうな論文はすべて集めました。

In my case the card would look like this:

Q: わたしの研究テーマに関連がありそうな論文はすべて集めました。
A: かんれん connection;relevance

I know I'll be able to read the rest of the sentence, so I don't need any repetition on the answer side. But I guess if you're doing production cards using the answer side as a question, you'd need the whole sentence...

yukamina Wrote:

vosmiura Wrote:I used to include full kana & translations, but since a while my sentence cards look like this:

Q: わたしの研究テーマに関連がありそうな論文はすべて集めました。
A: わたしの研究テーマに[かんれん connection;relevance]がありそうな論文はすべて集めました。

In my case the card would look like this:

Q: わたしの研究テーマに関連がありそうな論文はすべて集めました。
A: かんれん connection;relevance

I know I'll be able to read the rest of the sentence, so I don't need any repetition on the answer side. But I guess if you're doing production cards using the answer side as a question, you'd need the whole sentence...

You *know* you'll be able to read and remember every other reading in the sentence but you have to drill the word in question over and over again in order to remember it?

I can understand singling out specific words to determine pass and fail criteria, but saying that you know you'll be able to remember everything else seems like you're giving your memory a little too much credit. I've been studying Japanese for 5 years and I often have to fail cards because of random readings that I can't read at the second, for whatever reason. Even my girlfriend, who is Japanese, often misreads even common words at first glance.

Quote:You *know* you'll be able to read and remember every other reading in the sentence but you have to drill the word in question over and over again in order to remember it?

Of course. New words need repetition until they become second nature. Once something is second nature, the chances of forgetting it are very low - unless you happen to stop studying. I think I would no sooner forget 研究 than 水 or 花.

I usually have a good feeling for what I know well and what I don't. When something is fairly common and I've already read it correctly on plenty of other cards in my deck or elsewhere, it's unlikely I'll happen to forget it.

I include readings not only for new words but also things I know I don't know well or are easy to get wrong. If it happens that I forget something or I'm unsure and I don't include a description on the card, well s*** happens. I fail it an look it up later, but honestly I think that very rarely happens.

I've flipped cards on my anki deck more than 46,000 times and I still find myself screwing up on things I *should* know, time to time.

Taking the responsibility of reading the rest of the sentence correctly away seems akin to just dispensing with the sentences entirely and simply drilling words.

When you review, do you always check the answer side to make sure that you read every word correctly, or only the ones where you're not sure?

I always read the full sentence, and find myself more often than not, not looking at the answer side except for words I'm unsure of. Thus I found myself slowly adapting my cards to suit my review style. No use spending time to put stuff on that you don't use 99% of the time. I wouldn't say that was taking away the responsibility of reading the whole sentence, and comparing that to dispensing of sentences entirely is a great exaggeration.

What vosmiura said is the same for me.
I've been studying Japanese for a long time(not so effectively earlier on, though), but even with Korean(7ish months) and French(1 month), there are sentences I don't need to fully define. If I come across a card, and I've forgotten something on the answer side, I just look it up and add to the answer side if necessary. But that doesn't happen often.

I've dispatched with English translations of sentences at this point, but yes, I still look at the rest of the sentence and check readings I "should" already know and fail the card if I fail any of the respective readings. Otherwise I find myself getting lazy and sometimes blitzing through cards while reinforcing incorrect readings that I forgot and then made up on the fly.

Okay, I hate looking up words when reading stuff, Example: Was reading an old Haruki Murakami Novel and I had to look up 5 words on one page, I just got fed up couldn't keep reading it.

However I love love vocab drilling words beforehand. I can literally sit and look up 200 words from a vocab list for hours and be content

So the question, is I've finished the entire JLPT list, Where do I go now for more vocab lists of common words?

koyota Wrote:Okay, I hate looking up words when reading stuff, Example: Was reading an old Haruki Murakami Novel and I had to look up 5 words on one page, I just got fed up couldn't keep reading it.

However I love love vocab drilling words beforehand. I can literally sit and look up 200 words from a vocab list for hours and be content

So the question, is I've finished the entire JLPT list, Where do I go now for more vocab lists of common words?

Maybe if there was a program that parsed a text for you and generated a word list/frequency list? Seems like that would be the perfect tool for someone with a personality like yours. Drill the word list, then read the book

Unfortunately I have no idea whether such a tool exists. I would assume there would?

koyota Wrote:Okay, I hate looking up words when reading stuff, Example: Was reading an old Haruki Murakami Novel and I had to look up 5 words on one page, I just got fed up couldn't keep reading it.

However I love love vocab drilling words beforehand. I can literally sit and look up 200 words from a vocab list for hours and be content

So the question, is I've finished the entire JLPT list, Where do I go now for more vocab lists of common words?

Just read books without looking up words. Write the words you don't know down and ignore them, then drill them later.

blackmacros Wrote:Maybe if there was a program that parsed a text for you and generated a word list/frequency list?

I did that with the chasen parser that Jarvik7 recommended and bit of python scripting. The real problem is getting the text of what you want to read in computer format.

Tobberoth Wrote:Just read books without looking up words. Write the words you don't know down and ignore them, then drill them later.

I don't really see the advantage of doing that. If you're going to stop to write down a word, you might as well look it up and benefit from the increased understanding. Why wait until it's too late?

Codexus Wrote:I don't really see the advantage of doing that. If you're going to stop to write down a word, you might as well look it up and benefit from the increased understanding. Why wait until it's too late?

1. It takes a second to write down a word. Getting a dictionary, finding it, understanding the meaning in context etc doesn't.
2. It isn't too late. You don't need to understand every word to read a book, but you want to know how many and which words you didn't know so you learn from the experience (you usually pick up several words from context, but it's nice to keep the rest recorded).

The whole point is that looking up words when reading is extremely boring and time consuming. Reading should be reading, not studying. Writing down words is as far as you should go, the optimal solution is to not even write them down, just mark them so you can flick through the book later and find the words. Most people don't want to make their books filthy though.

It's funny, personally, I find it more annoying to write things down than to use a dictionary.

When I started reading novels in English I never wrote anything down and I think that looking up the same word a few times actually had a positive effect on my memory since I didn't want to have to look it up one more time.

With Japanese, however, I also usually write down the word unless I think it's too low-priority so that later I can include those words in my SRS.

Codexus Wrote:I did that with the chasen parser that Jarvik7 recommended and bit of python scripting. The real problem is getting the text of what you want to read in computer format.

So could you use that to make a frequency list from say subtitle files or scripts from websites like Dramanote, etc.?

I tried installing it, but I think this is all going over my head.

Codexus Wrote:It's funny, personally, I find it more annoying to write things down than to use a dictionary.

When I started reading novels in English I never wrote anything down and I think that looking up the same word a few times actually had a positive effect on my memory since I didn't want to have to look it up one more time.

With Japanese, however, I also usually write down the word unless I think it's too low-priority so that later I can include those words in my SRS.

Well, I'm guessing it's a personality thing, some people don't mind looking words up as they read things. Others, like me, just can't stand it. Doesn't matter how easy a book is; if I need to have a dictionary with me and put the book down a few times per page, I simply can't enjoy it, not matter how much I eventually understand. I usually don't even write words down, but I find it more acceptable.

If you enjoy looking words up, I would recommend some form of electronic dictionary which saves a list of words you look up. That way, you can input the words from that list and you won't have to write them.