Hi! For the last 5 months or so I've been studying Japanese by myself during my free time. I've gone through Genki I+II thoroughly, and luckily I was introduced to Heisig quite early on, a book which I have studied in combination with Anki, and just recently finished. (Successfully at that, thanks to many great stories on this site.) This means I am now somewhere in the middle of nowhere, between jlpt 2 and 3 in my estimation.
Anyway, I was thinking about doing An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese in conjunction with Kanji in Context.
After reading about so called "sentence mining", however, I am having some doubts about where to go next. I am a mathematician by profession, so remembering grammar rules and stringing sentences together coherent with these rules, is what I'm trained to do in a way, but it probably is not a very good way, is it? At least I don't remember ever learning any new grammar in English class at school, at least 95% of my knowledge of English, I think, came from outside sources. At first glance mining sentences didn't seem as efficient as other options, but as the Heisig method taught me, there are plenty of people out there way smarter than me, worth listening to.
I have the Kanji Odyssey 2001 Anki file, and was wondering if I should continue studying this, and if so, in what way. For example, should I mark a card as failed if I cannot read all the kanji in a given sentence? I was hoping to finish it in pretty quickly, but if I fail cards all the time it will take a lot of reviews. I think I prefer SRSing via Anki over the smart.fm Core series which doesn't seem to be very effective since I don't look up anything myself, and basically pass a lot of words that I vaguely know, and only remember once I see it in a list of 10 words, for example. After finishing KO2001 I was thinking about mining my own sentences, or whatever, once I have the most common readings down. (Btw I was surprised how many kunyomi I got for free simply by associating the Heisig keyword with its Japanese translation, at least where the keyword described a concrete object, adjective or action.)
Thanks for reading this all of this, any input is very much appreciated.

You could do natural sentence mining. By that, I mean that you can just start reading in Japanese, and then just pull out sentences that you like while you're reading and put them in Anki. You could use other sentences too, of course; kanji odyssey, dictionary example sentences, etc. I've been doing this for a while and have been enjoying some form of success.

twinzen Wrote:Hi! For the last 5 months or so I've been studying Japanese by myself during my free time. I've gone through Genki I+II thoroughly, and luckily I was introduced to Heisig quite early on, a book which I have studied in combination with Anki, and just recently finished. (Successfully at that, thanks to many great stories on this site.) This means I am now somewhere in the middle of nowhere, between jlpt 2 and 3 in my estimation.
Anyway, I was thinking about doing An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese in conjunction with Kanji in Context.
After reading about so called "sentence mining", however, I am having some doubts about where to go next. I am a mathematician by profession, so remembering grammar rules and stringing sentences together coherent with these rules, is what I'm trained to do in a way, but it probably is not a very good way, is it? At least I don't remember ever learning any new grammar in English class at school, at least 95% of my knowledge of English, I think, came from outside sources. At first glance mining sentences didn't seem as efficient as other options, but as the Heisig method taught me, there are plenty of people out there way smarter than me, worth listening to.
I have the Kanji Odyssey 2001 Anki file, and was wondering if I should continue studying this, and if so, in what way. For example, should I mark a card as failed if I cannot read all the kanji in a given sentence? I was hoping to finish it in pretty quickly, but if I fail cards all the time it will take a lot of reviews. I think I prefer SRSing via Anki over the smart.fm Core series which doesn't seem to be very effective since I don't look up anything myself, and basically pass a lot of words that I vaguely know, and only remember once I see it in a list of 10 words, for example. After finishing KO2001 I was thinking about mining my own sentences, or whatever, once I have the most common readings down. (Btw I was surprised how many kunyomi I got for free simply by associating the Heisig keyword with its Japanese translation, at least where the keyword described a concrete object, adjective or action.)
Thanks for reading this all of this, any input is very much appreciated.

I think you should go with An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, now I don't know much about this book (a quick check revealed that it's a Japanese course book) but it can function as a 'hold on', like a main thing going on, and together with that you can do 'sentence mining', SRS-ing, or smart.fm etc. I think some people are too focused on Kanjiばかり and words, but a language is made up of more than that.
I think if you're between jlpt 2 and 3 then there is still lot's to cover in terms of grammar, rules etc that sentence mining doesn't do properly (if at all). Having a main thing and spicing it up (with various SRS or else) is the way to go if you ask me

Just for fun, try this:

1. Subs2srs a Japanese drama you happen to like, but don't include any English translations (just Japanese kanji).

2. Line by line, figure out each entry. Add definitions, examples sentences, your own English translation, whatever that'll tell you what that sentence means.

3. Merge lines if it helps the sentence make more sense.

4. Delete any blatantly easy lines.

5. Delete lines that are just too difficult or impossible for you to figure out.

6. Review with the question side being: Photo, Sentence, kana of sentence, audio of sentence. The answer side is all your notes that helped you figure the sentence. In addition, since you're using anki, type out the Sentence using your IME. Mark the sentence wrong if you don't understand what the sentence is saying.

7. Delete sentences that seem way too easy during reviews for whatever reasons.

Now, technically this is not sentence mining. It's pseudo translation, just without making an English sentence. What you should find is that pretty much every sentence is not "easy". You'll know every word, but as a grouped bunch they're not easy.

The benefit though, is you're translating which many say helps (going off the manga translation thread). In addition, you're using Anki so you get to retain benefits of what you gained when translating.

Anyway, try it with one episode of a series you like. After that, you should have an idea of where some weaknesses in your study happen to be: Kanji, vocabulary, grammar, maybe even listening.

Musashi Wrote:I think if you're between jlpt 2 and 3 then there is still lot's to cover in terms of grammar, rules etc that sentence mining doesn't do properly (if at all). Having a main thing and spicing it up (with various SRS or else) is the way to go if you ask me

I think sentence mining works well for grammar. Have you tried it?

vosmiura Wrote:

Musashi Wrote:I think if you're between jlpt 2 and 3 then there is still lot's to cover in terms of grammar, rules etc that sentence mining doesn't do properly (if at all). Having a main thing and spicing it up (with various SRS or else) is the way to go if you ask me

I think sentence mining works well for grammar. Have you tried it?

I haven't actually, I'm not yet convinced, though I'm using "どんな時どう使う500 essential Japanese expressions" book and basically there's also a lot of sentences in it so I guess it's kinda the same. I guess turning those sentences into SRS seem tedious and I maybe thats why I haven't tried it yet. I did create a grammar list in Anki with the grammar phrase on the question side and explanation on the other with sample sentences. I guess thats a kind of sentence mining, though I don't know if it would be better to put the sentence on the question side instead of vice versa...

Thank you all for the suggestions, they are duly noted. I like Nukemarine's suggestion and I will try to make a deck like that as I go along. For the time being I decided to get more familiar with kanji readings, since this is by far my weakest point, and this will be important to "open" the language, as it were.
I will try to complete KO2001 as quickly as possible, and work a little on grammar on the side as the KO grammar seems, so far, pretty basic. But I am wondering how I should work with this Anki deck? Should I fail every card unless I can read correctly each kanji compound, know each word and the meaning of the sentence, or is it ok as long as I know the reading of the kanji in question? (marked in blue)
I am afraid of memorizing each kanji as a pictogram, for example while I worked with Genki I ended up being able to "read" many compounds, like 勉強、宿題、写真 etc, just by recognizing the compound as a picture. Of course, after completing Heisig I am aware of the what the kanji are as I see them, but I am afraid the same problem will occur. For example, I might recognize 宿題 and 質問, but will I then automatically be able to read, or guess the pronunciation of, 問題 when I see it?
I guess what I am asking is this, do I need to study readings in isolation for each kanji, or will my brain automatically associate readings with kanji and help me remember them when I see new compounds consisting of kanji that I have seen before in other compounds that I am able to read? What is your experience?

It's automatic.

But you'll forget sometimes in unfamiliar context. It's no biggy. Reading whole words is faster and you adapt to do that, so sometimes you blank on kanji in unfamiliar contexts. But in general, everything reinforces everything else.

twinzen Wrote:I guess what I am asking is this, do I need to study readings in isolation for each kanji, or will my brain automatically associate readings with kanji and help me remember them when I see new compounds consisting of kanji that I have seen before in other compounds that I am able to read? What is your experience?

Yea, you don't need to study readings in isolation since compounds can use on-on, on-kun, or kun-kun so it's to broad. You'll get it as soon as you study your compounds. Some kanji simply have to many reading, so learning them in isolation and remembering them is quite tough, at least with compounds they provide a sort of 'grip' and whatever reading your already learned will come up and make it easier to read.

I's normal to start seeing compounds a block. There's no way you can read fast if you spend time looking at every stroke in every character.

I would also recommend using KO 2001. But you should mix it with other types of study.

I don't see seeing kanji in a block and recognizing the word it too much of a problem, I mean, that's how we read English right? I don't l o o k a t e v e r y l e t t e r i n d i v i d u a l l y and sound them out, so just keep on doing that you're doing, I think.

Thanks for your feedback everyone. I'm doing KO2001 at the moment, and since I have these days off, I try to do as much as I can before I get back to university in August. I'm being pretty hard on myself, and I keep failing cards where I don't know every kanji compound and meanings, i.e. cards where I don't totally understand everything. I'm around 10% into the deck, and I've picked up quite a few new words, and plenty of readings.
I'm really happy with this approach, because I am able to read so much more without RikaiChan, as long as I see steady incremental progress I won't burn out I don't think. I think my reading, if I keep improving at the current speed, will be fairly decent when I finish this deck sometime in October/November. Of course, I am still pretty lousy at Japanese, as soon as I read a long sentence "in the wild" I lose track somewhere in the middle because I am not able to keep track of which parts of the sentence modify which part etc, but I'm not even 6 months into this thing so I will try to be patient.
The only thing that bugs me about KO is that the grammar is so basic so I might not learn any new grammar points from it.

The last class I took used Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, by Japan Times. We went through most of the book in 1 semester. (btw, I took the class in Tokyo) To be honest, it is the best Japanese textbook I have ever seen.

The problem was that even if I managed to memorize a grammar rule it applied only under certain conditions and I ended up using it incorrectly half the time. The other problem was that I kept forgetting uncommon rules/patterns.

Anyways, that was some time ago. I have since begun using the sentence method and find that it works better than any class/textbook I have ever used.

I use Japanesepod101.com and mine their transcripts of the Intermediate (and above) level lessons. Most people overlook Jpod, but I think it's a great resource. They have a total of about 700 lessons with transcripts, and that means a lot of good sentences. Just pick your level, works great.

RTK to write and recognize kanji
KO2001/iKnow/KIC/etc to write and recognize words using kanji and kana
UBJG/Kanzen Master/Tae Kim/etc to write and recognize how words using kanji and kana are used together.

But you noted yourself, sentences in the wild are a different creature. Easy to lose track. Have words that are new, or if not new are used in new ways. Sentences in the wild have a story to them. You know sentences that came before and after those sentences. Training this was the one thing I was missing with all the above resources (RTK, Tae Kim, iKnow) in that those resources are trying to teach a specific thing. A native sentence isn't necessarily teaching anything.

This might sound weird, but when I recommended to do subs2srs and do the entire episode line by line it was to srs the entire episode.

So, say you put every line in the srs (within reason). You fail by not understanding a sentence, which trains that part of you that was getting lost in long sentences.

You begin to understand a part you thought you understood (but didn't) ex:そのより他の連中は？この仲か？ I thought meant "you see some other group here?　What's in here?" instead it means (to me at the moment) "Better than that, where's the rest of your group? In here?".

To be honest, what I'm doing on top of SRS is breaking the show into 3m30s segments, and looping on my iPod. That, with the SRS I begin to memorize the entire show, cause now when I watch it, I understand entire dialogue. If not, well, that line is coming back in you SRS and you'll likely rewatch the show again. I'm getting a lot of those "aha" moments that I used to get with new kanji, new words and new grammar. Now I'm just getting new moments through the use of learned kanji, words and grammar. Old stuff used in new ways, but completely natural.

Assuming what Khatzumoto and Mazamo are saying is true, this is another point we need to get to. If you can't recite a length of dialogue in Japanese fluidly, you'll have issues talking for a length of time fluidly. I don't really know, I'm guessing here based on only 2.5 episodes so far.

Back to the main point, yes, you are having a trade off if you do one resource over another. There's no one stop shop here. Change back and forth as you feel comfortable. The SRS will let you keep your place till you're ready to go back.