How do I go about grading the anki cards??

I've got the deck with the full audio for all the cards... it's something like 6000 cards in size. So far I fail the whole card if I can't read one part of it or if I'm not able to comprehend it. And as for the audio cards basically if I can't comprehend it i'll fail it.

Is this reasonable?

blackmacros, I would love to hear that I am wrong, if that's the case. As I said, I can only report my own experience, which is already markedly different from yours. You passed me up a long time ago, and I've been doing this since 2005! Obviously not as hardcore--sometimes as little as an hour or two a week, which is barely enough to just not forget what I've already learned. Priorities. So our situations are extremely different, and I'd be interested to see what results you will have. But unless you just feel like being a guinea pig for science, I'd recommend finding some way to practice output. There's got to be a Japanese discussion group nearby you can join to practice.

mezbup, yes that's perfectly reasonable. I assume this is troubling you, and that's why your posting? Then the problem is likely with your method for initially studying the new cards. Make sure you approach it in an i+1 manor. Look up the grammar and vocabulary words first, and make an effort to learn them before even attempting to understand the sentence. Remember, SRS is a system for reviewing and remembering, not learning. You will necessarily have a different system for learning in the first place.

@mafried. I plan (fingers crossed!) to be able to go on exchange to Japan in a years time for my 2nd semester of my 2nd year of Uni. If my speaking/writing hasn't improved naturally through immersion by around January I'll sign up for private lessons with the Nihongo teaching centre down the road, because it would be a real shame to waste my exchange opportunity by neglecting my speaking ability.

mafried Wrote:blackmacros, I would love to hear that I am wrong, if that's the case. As I said, I can only report my own experience, which is already markedly different from yours. You passed me up a long time ago, and I've been doing this since 2005! Obviously not as hardcore--sometimes as little as an hour or two a week, which is barely enough to just not forget what I've already learned. Priorities. So our situations are extremely different, and I'd be interested to see what results you will have. But unless you just feel like being a guinea pig for science, I'd recommend finding some way to practice output. There's got to be a Japanese discussion group nearby you can join to practice.

mezbup, yes that's perfectly reasonable. I assume this is troubling you, and that's why your posting? Then the problem is likely with your method for initially studying the new cards. Make sure you approach it in an i+1 manor. Look up the grammar and vocabulary words first, and make an effort to learn them before even attempting to understand the sentence. Remember, SRS is a system for reviewing and remembering, not learning. You will necessarily have a different system for learning in the first place.

Well seeing as im working through the KO2001 anki deck with audio... a new card comes up and I know most or all of the words so far at the moment. I fail it first time usually because I need to know one new word or reading so I get the answer from the back of the card and next time I either remember or don't. I suppose this is learning from the SRS but in effect its the same as learning from the E-book and then reviewing in the SRS. I'm just cutting out the middle man. It seems perfectly reasonable given that it will achieve the same thing.

mezbup Wrote:Well seeing as im working through the KO2001 anki deck with audio... a new card comes up and I know most or all of the words so far at the moment. I fail it first time usually because I need to know one new word or reading so I get the answer from the back of the card and next time I either remember or don't. I suppose this is learning from the SRS but in effect its the same as learning from the E-book and then reviewing in the SRS. I'm just cutting out the middle man. It seems perfectly reasonable given that it will achieve the same thing.

It's not where you're learning from, but how. Remember RTK, where you spent a significant amount of time on each kanji solidifying the story in your memory, and how hard it becomes for foolish beginners that neglect story creation and just plough through? Well the same thing applies to vocab, or anything else you want to learn with an SRS. You have to have a system in place for locking that memory in you mind in order to trust your SRS and get reasonable pass rates on your cards. Simply failing a card and hoping that you'll remember it next time doesn't cut it and really affects your efficiency (but unfortunately that's exactly what so many people here do...)

What I do for new vocab that I encounter is to put them in a separate deck, which has an English word as the question, and the Kanji compound and reading as the answer. (I write them down on paper before I let Anki show me the answer) I will use the Iversen method on the words before I go through them with Anki, and this seems to work pretty well. I make sure I have sentences where I can see the words in context in other decks. (f.ex. ko2001) This might be a little time consuming, but for me they stick much better when I have to "wrestle" with them, i.e. making sure I remember the writing. This also has the side effect of solidifying the readings really well.

Update:

I'm through the first 1000 cards out of 6200. 今日は休んだ。やっと。
On average so far it's only been a few hours of study a day. Whilst searching through threads about KO I saw the Anki stats of someone who finished it in a month and they had 800 cards a day over 5.2 hours. Seeing as I'm fairly happy to put in those hours every day, I'm right on track to finish it in a month.

For speed's sake I'm only doing recognition. However, I've noticed that because I can break down compounds and decode them then reconstruct them in my mind, I can remember how to write a whole lot of words without ever having done production for them! This is something I did not think would happen.

For instance, when I learn a new word I look at what kanji make it up and how it could come to mean what it does. If I have a Eureka moment when I do this then I'm almost always able to write the word from memory by hand at any given time. Bottom line? Heisig = HUGE payoff.

Another welcome side effect is it's also helping my output! Even after just the first 500 sentences I'm finding myself able to use the basic grammar correctly to express myself about various things! This is very cool because all I was expecting was to learn vocab and boost reading ability.

I can't wait to finish the whole thing and see where it gets me after that.

I'm nearly half way through now...

So far it's been fairly helpful in terms of vocab but I think the vocab is a bit too specific on the business side of things. It would be nice to see a more even spread of vocab rather than a lot of stuff about work or the economy.

The reviews are up to about 500 - 700 a day now... it's getting pretty steep and i'm looking for ways to review faster so I spend less time doing it each day. It is getting a little tedious but it has its merits.

One big improvement I've just noticed is i'm far better equipped to use a monolingual dictionary now. So that's pretty awesome.

I noticed the only reason I can learn all the new vocab in the deck so fast is that I can pick what words mean what given their kanji and the english translation of the sentence. Learning this way my brain automatically switches to english translation once i've read the entire sentence and kinda doesn't take the Japanese sentence for what it is. So even though I can comprehend it, it's not helping to switch me over to Japanese mode.

I removed the english sentence translation from the deck (have yet to add new cards like this) which will force me to actually look up the new words (monolingual) which will help with really switching into Japanese mode.

しかし、this is will slow me down immensely. Almost too much to warrant doing it despite the long term benifits, i've got a short term goal of JLPT2. If I had all the time in the world I think it'd be perfect but sadly I don't. So i'll give it a shot, if it slows me down too much then I'll go back to the english sentence translations for speeds sake.

At any rate, I'm planning on tackling KM2kyuu after KO, so I figure, blitz KO then work solidly through KM2kyuu monolingually. After KM2kyuu I'm guessing that sub2srs is my best bet and I'll use that monolingually too.

Hopefully all of this gets me there.

Nice points, Mezbup. Good to know that it wasn't a waste of time. I guess I'll continue pushing forward too!

Finishing KO and then moving on and being able to comprehend the entirely monolingual KM2 was very, very satisfying I must say.

blackmacros Wrote:Finishing KO and then moving on and being able to comprehend the entirely monolingual KM2 was very, very satisfying I must say.

Is KO+KM2 enough vocab to pass JLPT2? Or will I need like 1000 more after that?

I would say so. I've read a couple of people on this forum who passed JLPT with KO2001 vocab levels. And I've looked over the past level 2 tests and the vocab sections looked pretty easy to me. Plus KM will give you quite a bit more new vocab too.