wildweathel Wrote:Mezbup, it sounds like you're drowning in leeches. How often do you zap cards, either automatically with leech control or manually by deleting or suspending?

Using my leech settings, I expect to suspend at least 250 sentences by the time I reach the 3k sentence point. A 'no sentence left behind' approach would require more time during the learning stage and leave me with a fair number of lingering difficult items.

My experience is that words in isolation worked for me--for Esperanto. But, there's a critical difference between Esperanto and Japanese. I already knew most Esperanto grammar because it's similar to English or (failing that) Latin. Esperantists are, as a rule, very lax about usage and expect a diversity of styles. Japanese is of course different.

I may be wrong, and I hope so, but I think you're heading for a disaster. The "traditional" no-sentence approach consists of both words and grammar for a good reason: once you get beyond single-word exclamations in dictionary form, there are conventions for how words change and combine. I learn these conventions from three sources:

1) Definition.
2) Input.
3) Sentence review.

If you don't do sentences nor care to learn what transitive and intransitive mean, all of your grammar and usage eggs end up in the input basket. I see two problems here.

First, you can learn vocabulary from the exact same three sources:
1) Definitions.
2) Input.
3) Sentence review.

If you're not satisfied putting all your vocab eggs in the input basket, you must have some reasons. Don't those same reasons apply to grammar/usage?

Second, reviewing definitions instead of sentences leaves the root problem: leeches. If you're collecting hundreds of words a day, you're going to accumulate some hard-to-memorize ones that will sap your motivation and time unless you control them. Eventually, you end up in the same place now: mountains of reviews you feel you "have to do" that takes your time from the input you know you really need to do.

Solution: set your leech threshold low. If reviews take more time than you'd like, suspend failed cards rather than re-learning them.

Finally, re context dependent word recall:

Some words have multiple meanings, which you might just have to learn as multiple items. How many cards do you need to cover the range of meanings in「原稿を出す」「猫を外に出す」「車を修理に出す」「舌を出す」「旅に出る」「買い物に出掛ける」「庭に出る」「出る釘」etc, etc?

The dictionary says 「出る：……」and「出す：……」 and maybe 「出掛ける：……」. But, who cares about the dictionary? When you can't remember a word in a new context, that just means that you have a new definition to add to your mental dictionary. Whether or not the official dictionary says it's a new word is entirely beside the point.

Make your internal dictionary fit your own mind and needs--not what some lexicographer put on paper. Stop reviewing hard items. I believe you must do those two things whether you study sentences or isolated words. If not, either approach will be ineffective.

Definitely not drowning in leeches or I wouldn't be learning anything. It takes quite a bit for me to consider something a leech but when I (not anki) feels that it's a leech I suspend it. I don't really want to suspend too much because it kind of defeats the purpose of learning lots of vocab. I think some words are almost too easy to learn, those ones go into active vocab right away and others take a little more SRS'ing to even get them into passive vocab but it's really not too much trouble to get them there.

On the subject of very vague or common verb, through exposure i've noticed a lot of different uses for 出る。I'm trusting other similiar gaps will be filled the same way

harhol Wrote:First of all, I'd like to say that suspending difficult cards in order to fit in more reviews of easy cards is perhaps the worst idea I've ever heard.

mezbup Wrote:...the main barrier to understanding Japanese is vocab.

Every beginner should be required to get this tattooed on their forearm.

That's going to be my official suggestion to anyone wanting to learn Japanese。

harhol Wrote:Context is important, yes, but nowhere near as important as actually knowing the word in the first place. Vocab decks allow to you to get through thousands of reviews each week. You can only review thousands of sentences each week if you're doing i+1, which is impossible for a beginner. Grammar is so much easier to learn when all the words in a sentence are familiar.

And another added benefit of learning vocab quickly and in isolation is that native material becomes much more accessible much more quickly.

I think you've summarized the benifits nicely here. I find when　you know all the vocab in a sentence, grammar and understanding it begins to fall nicely into place.

harhol Wrote:

fightswumbrellas Wrote:In the 1.8 months I’ve been using this method:

Finished Kanji Odyssey
Finished Core 2000
Almost done with Core 6000—only have 101 vocabulary words left
+ vocabulary learned in the wild
Grand total: 7635 :]

It's a shame JLPT1 isn't in 1.2 months. You could be The One.

I had to lol at this.

When I tried the sentence method before KO2001 it took me so long to get 30 sentences at that point。 It was freakin' taking all day!　I didn't have a whole lot of vocab back then and that's why it took so long, if I tried now it'd be much faster but to be honest inputting the sentences into Anki would take me too long for it to feel worth it to me.　Entering single words is quick enough I can do 30 and it doesn't take long.

On a different note, I was watching K-On and didn't have the subs for ep9... what I noticed was I was able to pick out 3x the amount of words when I had the subs on for the next episode!　I got about 4 new　words from ep 9 and 12 from ep 10.　I used to average about 4 - 5 when watching RAW anime back in the day so it seems consistent to me. Subs = x3 more effective　：）

Another extremely helpful thing you miss from sentences is reverse cards, that is going from meaning+kana -> kanji compound (or just meaning -> word). I usually add cards going in both directions, and I can say this is very beneficial from both a vocab standpoint as well as for listening comprehension.

harhol Wrote:Here are some things I have observed through personal experience with this method:

1) The grammar used in smart.fm's sentences (can't speak for KO2001) is extremely basic and of questionable use to a Tae Kim graduate. You learn context, yes, but stiff & unnatural context. And I can't recall coming across any grammar patterns in smart.fm which I hadn't seen covered in Tae Kim's guide. Since the sentences are so basic and cover grammar which you already know, it seems silly to spend hours each day reviewing them.

Agreed. The problem is that you don't graduate from Tae Kim grammar just because you've added all the sentences there. It doesn't take much exposure and review to learn a word, but getting grammar into active memory takes tons of exposure and review. Just because you have all the sentences from Tae Kim doesn't mean you're ready to drop grammar training in cards.

harhol Wrote:2) It bypasses the i+1 methodology, which is the entire foundation of the 10,000 sentence method and one of the main reasons why it has the potential to be so effective. Most of the first few hundred core 2000 sentences are i+2 or i+3, with some being as high is i+6. These sentences slow you down, frustrate you when you fail them and sap your motivation. Then, as you get further into smart.fm, you start to come across dozens of useless i+0 sentences.

True. This is where you can use the suspension method.

harhol Wrote:3) There's a good chance that you will learn certain words only in the context of a sentence and will therefore be unable to recognise them elsewhere. Maintaining an isolated vocab deck not only eliminates this problem, it also allows you to be sure that you know the standard/dictionary form of the word and not just a particular tense/usage.

I don't know, really. There's been a lot of discussion of this and I have varied experiences. Yes, sometimes you will not recognize a word in a new context. This is very seldom though. Even if I only have one sentence in my deck, I can usually recognize the word immediately in other contexts. Usually. How much this is a problem or not is up for debate.

harhol Wrote:4) In the time it takes an average person to finish studying all core 2000 sentences, they could instead have learned the core 6000 vocab in isolation. They could then start to explore native media with a vocabulary roughly three times a big.

The question is though, could they? Having just vocab isn't enough to explore native media. This goes back to the discussion on Tae Kim "graduation" before. I personally don't like Smart.FM so your whole argumentation means little to me, but I don't think it's a good assumption that finishing Tae Kim and then learning 6000 individual words is enough to be able to explore native media.

harhol Wrote:5) Above all, it is incredibly slow & tedious. I would find myself wanting to do anything but return to studying & reviewing smart.fm sentences.

This is your opinion, but might not be shared by all. A lot of people HATE vocabulary lists and the sentences and contexts are what makes it fun. I think how slow it is is also individual. Some people can boost through sentences with incredible speed while others can not.

harhol Wrote:With that in mind, here are the reasons why I believe studying vocab in isolation before commencing AJATT (the IceCream method?) would be a more useful approach:

1) Nouns. There are thousands upon thousands of daily-use nouns which you simply need to know and which don't change with context.

Hmm, from my discussions with Icecream, I got the impression that she's your direct opponent in all this. When I spoke to her on IRC, she said that context is ALWAYS extremely imporant and can NEVER be skipped. In fact, she said a sentence isn't enough context in almost every single case. Personally, I agree with you here though.

harhol Wrote:2) Reviewing vocab is quick & easy. You can burn through hundreds of reviews in an hour and thousands of reviews each week. Also, failing a word isn't nearly as demotivating as failing a sentence. Starting with smart.fm or KO2001 is like jumping into the middle of the ocean and slowly swimming toward the shore, whereas starting with vocab in isolation is like starting at the shore and swimming out into the ocean.

This is also pretty individual. Some people might feel that failing a sentence is better because you probably just didn't get one small part of it, you understood the rest of the sentence.

harhol Wrote:3) The more vocab you know, the easier it is to study/memorize new grammar concepts. If you're attempting to understand the different subtleties of a particular expression, the last thing you want to be doing is wondering what the words either side of it mean.

I agree. But learning those grammar concepts should be done by sentences, so it's still just a postponement.

harhol Wrote:4) The more vocab you know, the easier it is to study/understand/enjoy native material and the sooner you can begin that phase of your studies.

Again, I think you're simplifying this too much. Yeah, the more vocab you know, the easier it is. But the same is true for everything else too. The more kanji you know, the easier it is. The more grammar you know, the easier it is. Vocab might be the most important, but it isn't even close to enough by itself.

harhol Wrote:Oh and here are the reasons why I believe that suspending difficult cards is a bad idea:

1) You might not need to know it right now, but you'll need to know it eventually.

Yes. Which is why you suspend them until you need to know them.

harhol Wrote:2) If you keep suspending difficult cards, you'll eventually end up with a mountain of difficult cards which you'll need to tackle all at once. Then you'll be even less likely to want to study them!

No. The point is that those cards are only hard now, they won't be later. Instead of doing difficult cards now, you do only easy cards, always.

harhol Wrote:3) A particular difficult card might be way more important/useful than a particular easy card. Yes, you may have successfully reviewed 頭寒足熱 50 times, but that's not very helpful if you've suspended words like 働く and 意見.

Important and useful words will always be easy. If you see something over and over again in different context, it gets easy. Important and useful words are used all the time. The cards you will be suspending are the obscure ones.

harhol Wrote:4) It's a cop out. "If it's difficult, I'll just skip it" is not a good mindset to have.

Who's talking about skipping? Suspension implies unsuspension. You wait with the difficult cards until they become easy, when you're more skilled. Trust me, everything you consider hard now WILL be easy. I found 自動詞 and 他動詞 impossible before, now I find it as natural as taking a piss.



Now I probably sounded way more negative than I intended too. It's just much easier to contradict single statements than to try to reply to your extremely long post as a whole. I'm not totally disagreeing with you, just pointing out the other side of the argument.

Matthew Wrote:Another extremely helpful thing you miss from sentences is reverse cards, that is going from meaning+kana -> kanji compound (or just meaning -> word). I usually add cards going in both directions, and I can say this is very beneficial from both a vocab standpoint as well as for listening comprehension.

A lot of people do this with sentences too. A lot of other people, like me, think production is pretty useless. It's a skill gained automatically, although slower.

Tobberoth Wrote:Having just vocab isn't enough to explore native media. This goes back to the discussion on Tae Kim "graduation" before [...] I don't think it's a good assumption that finishing Tae Kim and then learning 6000 individual words is enough to be able to explore native media.

While endlessly procrastinating over RTK, I would always go over to Tae Kim and reread it. Perhaps that's why those rules were so entrenched in my mind when I began smart.fm sentences. But I appreciate that there is a huge difference between simply reading Tae Kim and internalizing the basic grammar rules so that they are second nature. That's why I'm strongly in favour of sentence-based learning, but only after a solid base has been established. And when I say "native media" I don't necessarily mean TV or podcasts or video games. It can be something as simple as a child's picture book.

Tobberoth Wrote:From my discussions with Icecream, I got the impression that she's your direct opponent in all this. When I spoke to her on IRC, she said that context is ALWAYS extremely imporant and can NEVER be skipped. In fact, she said a sentence isn't enough context in almost every single case. Personally, I agree with you here though.

One annoying aspect of core 6000 is that it doesn't tell you if there is more than one interpretation/definition of a particular word. If I suspected that there was, I would always look it up in EBWin and Rikaichan before adding it to my deck. What I liked the most about core 6000 vocab was that each time I moved onto the next set of 20 words there would always be a handful of incredibly useful nouns, verbs and adjectives waiting for me. I'd think my vocabulary was getting pretty decent and then something like 新鮮 or 人工 or 賭ける would show up. I know this sounds obvious but it's amazing how many basic words there are! Anyway, thanks for taking the time to respond to my post.

I'm pretty proud of this forum for being clever and diverse and open-minded, that's why it always pains me to see 'straw men' made out of oversimplifying/overgeneralizing the methods offered here. I understand it's natural to do, because thread-specific arguments often occur in these polarized feedback loops, it's easy to get a fishbowl effect...

But, there's all sorts of approaches of using sentences/vocabulary/grammar together and isolation, different ways of grading cards, designing them, that we've been covering for ages across many threads. I know I've run the gamut and tried everything under the sun. ;p Just hope you'll keep that in mind, your preferences and arguments don't need straw men to be persuasive or to be argued with. ^_^

On suspended cards: Personally these days I only suspend old cards that I designed poorly, and either redesign them or leave them as they are for reference in the Anki browser, depending on whether the content is something I think I'll encounter elsewhere or know well enough... the other cards I suspend are cards I didn't prune well in subs2srs. I could just as easily grade them or delete them, but I'm neurotic and hate loose ends, hehe. Anyway, I try to always evolve, so there's plenty of cards I look back on and just cringe.

Otherwise, I've nothing to add (edit: apparently that was a lie, lol): At the moment, in addition to sentence cards, I still do single vocab/grammar point cards, sometimes as production but mostly as recognition because I know I'll see them again, as I keep those vocab/grammar cards subordinate to an 'affective' core of native sentences. They're for 'priming', because I think priming is a huge element of reading, especially for Japanese with the cross-script (kana/kanji) interactions... For me that's absolutely necessary to ensure the maximum efficiency of a mixed logographic/phonographic system, and another reason why I like context to be kept as close as possible to each component of the language, even if you're taking an assembly line approach and also separating them in some way.

I've never been interested in i+1, I prefer i+x and just grade how I want each encounter. I think if Nukemarine were posting, he'd recommend that you don't grade the sentence, just a specific term in each sentence, perhaps highlighting them somehow. So you could amass just as many cards that way. Others like the Iversen Method, not even using the SRS much. I also tend to keep track of dictionary forms/multiple inflections in a cursory way, letting exposure do the rest, but we were just discussing that in another thread...

PS - Likewise with how we do smart.fm/KO2001, we've often discussed ways to customize sentence sources/kanji orders around what we actually want to learn, or ways to make the process more efficient, it's just a matter of what tools we actually have at the moment to try and balance a general set of common language components with specific desires/needs. Temporary virtual reference points used to design templates.

I used to have as many vocab. cards as sentence cards. IMO it was good for words you didn't know too well, where despite having a sentence that contains the word, the word still seemed pretty forgettable - if you saw it in the wild you, wouldn't know what the word means.

It most certainly did help, what I also like doing is putting an example sentence or two in the back side, if you're worried about losing context.

Squintox Wrote:I used to have as many vocab. cards as sentence cards. IMO it was good for words you didn't know too well, where despite having a sentence that contains the word, the word still seemed pretty forgettable - if you saw it in the wild you, wouldn't know what the word means.

It most certainly did help, what I also like doing is putting an example sentence or two in the back side, if you're worried about losing context.

This is what I'm doing now, started doing it after seeing this topic actually, as a supplement (and also, it's a LOT more cramable and I have a big test on saturday).

Front: Word or ideomatic phrase. Examples: 眉間 or 目がない.
Back: * English. For example: capable or shrewd person (遣り手)
* Pronunciation. I always use kanji if such exist so this is needed.
* Example: One simple short example if it's needed. For example, for 手先, I have the example: 彼の手先. It's just there to make it clear how it's used and gives some extra exposure if just the word feels weak in your head.

I'm hoping that I will be able to cram about 50 words before the test on saturday like this, which should be enough to max my score on one part of the test. After that, I might remove some of those cards, but I will probably keep most of them.

does anyone mind sharing/posting link to their decks that follows this method.

We do sentences to get context so you if you are able to context from other sources does it really matter how you initially learn the vocabulary?

I'm fixing to finish up KO2001 and afterward I think I'm going to try a simple one word vocab deck. My context? Reading more native "grade level" appropriate material.

activeaero Wrote:We do sentences to get context so you if you are able to context from other sources does it really matter how you initially learn the vocabulary?

I'm fixing to finish up KO2001 and afterward I think I'm going to try a simple one word vocab deck. My context? Reading more native "grade level" appropriate material.

This is the optimal approach of course, learning individual words then learning everything else from immersion. However, it isn't that simple. No normal person is going to spend hours in front of Japanese every day. Maybe Khazu did and maybe some people here do it, but the vast majority won't. That's why Anki with sentences is so common, it's the same thing but easier, although not as "perfect".

IceCream Wrote:i don't think it is the optimal approach. I am one of those people who sits in front of japanese all day, and i can honestly say, my contextful sentence deck is way more optimal than watching a load of stuff on it's own is. Its where i see the most progression, definately!

An SRS deck is always going to be repetive, you can't get away from that. The sentences you enter, you will see over and over. Add 20 sentences a day and you'll be up in 100 repeated sentences each day in no time. With real sources such as books, news, drama, forums, chats, discussions with friends, this doesn't happen. You get new contexts for everything every day. Stuff is still repeated, but in a natural sense. You see grammar structures as often as the natives do with the same exposure they do. An SRS can never be that perfect.

Like I said though, it requires hours in front of Japanese every day, and it has to be natural. Watching 5 hours of drama isn't what I'm talking about. Flipping between anime and news is definitely not it. To get it optimal, you have to get a tiny bit of everything, every day. And not only that, you need to be very fast and good. Rewatching a drama 5 times? Useless compared to watching 5 different dramas, as long as you're good enough. Reading one newspaper article for 30 minutes? Useless compared to reading 5 articles in 30 minutes.

Safe to say, it's exhausting. And it demands that you're already really good at Japanese.

It's really a bit of column A and a bit of column B to me!

I think I might add idiomatic expressions to my deck too because although they're common, SRSing them when you come across then will circumvent a LOT of effort. In saying that if you pick them up naturally the amount of Japanese you'll come across over that time will be phenomenal and we all know what that does for your learning xD

You guys are right when you say it requires experience Japanese for hours on end a day Let's say 6+? Tobberoth, it's definitely best to have a little bit of everything in your day! If all you wanna do is watch 5hrs of drama a day that's OK too, you'll wind up understanding dorama and it's situations very well after a while then you'll probably move onto other things. One thing i'm noticing anime is great for learning is situational humour. Honestly there are so many jokes in some Anime it really requires a decent command of understanding to get a lot of them!

If you don't have mountains of time then SRS'ing sentences is definitely where your efforts should lie. If you can experience an immersion environment for the most part of the day (excluding work perhaps) than your efforts should lie in exposure I think.

I really like reading real Japanese because it gives me a sense of accomplishment understanding it and it having a true purpose in my day other than "reviews". I could add every bit of context to my SRS til i'm blue in the face and it will help me learn those items better... It still wont satisfy me (but that's just me!).

Wow, all I did was sleep and go to math class and I come back to all these posts lol. Beware, wall of text ahead.

For those who don’t want to read all of this, here’s a summary of what I do since there seems to be a bit of confusion:

I use SENTENCES along with the vocab, the main thing I’m doing differently is that I’m isolating a certain word in the sentence I want to learn. SENTENCES are still on the back of my cards that I read after making sure I have the general idea of that chosen word and the pronunciation correct. So yes, I am still learning words in context . For some words like懲り懲りyou practically NEED a sentence to learn it properly.

Front: 懲り懲り
Back:こりごり
ひどく懲りて、二度と同じことはしたくない気持ちを表す語。
NO
Front: 懲り懲り
back: こりごり
ひどく懲りて、二度と同じことはしたくない気持ちを表す語。
(Hercules) 男なんてもうこりごり　あんな思いもうイヤ
YES

@pm215 Even though I’m not testing myself on the example sentences that are on the back side of my flash cards, I remember the context the word was used in so I do pick up on little details of the words. Of course, I don’t remember ALL of the little details but what I’m mainly aiming for is to become familiar with the word. Like mezbup mentioned, when you come across them in the wild you naturally become more knowledgeable about how they’re used.

For something like 訴える I’d learn at least two or three of the meanings during the first month of srsing. Once I know those, I have two options left:

1. fail it and learn the other meanings.
2. just focus on two-three meanings and ignore the rest for the time being.
The logic behind this is that some words have meanings that are used less commonly so there’s not much of a point in becoming ‘perfect’ at the word right away. Even in our native language we don’t know ALL the definitions of commonly-use words. Besides, if you stress too much over perfection it wears down on the desire to learn Japanese which in the end leads to less learning (I’ve learned this the hard way). If you end up being wrong, all you have to do is fail the card and add the other definition.

@Mezbup

Something I forgot to add is that if you plan on only having 10 minute reviews then 200-500 a day is probably something you don’t want to aim for (but from what you’ve said in your post it sounds like you plan on only adding 100 so you should be fine with that number). Daily I have about 400-800 reviews which can take as little as an hour but if there’s some I’m having difficulty or if the bulk are new vocab then it can take 4+.

@ strugglebunny, I didn’t import the sentences into Anki all I imported was the vocab themselves. Then, I would copy and paste a few of the given sentences onto the back of the vocab cards.

@ Tobberoth, I’m beginning to regret posting at 3 a.m. since I forgot to add a very important detail: I didn’t start learning Japanese this year so I’m not a total beginner. When I was 13 (currently 18) I started trying to learn Japanese (traditional method of textbook repeat) but got frustrated. For me that was the constant cycle----2 week to 1 1/2 month attempt to learn then 6+ months of leaving it alone. Thanks to this I have a familiarity of the language that a true beginner wouldn’t have but I never did progress significantly (I’d estimate I was always stuck around the jlpt 3 level).
After reading the success stories about kanji learning here, I started RTK around June, once I finished RTK I learned Vocab and RTK 3 side by side. Finished with RTK 3 now so now I’m focusing mostly on vocabulary. Before RTK I could only learn 20-50 words per day at most but thanks to the kanji hook I can learn several hundred. Getting back to the point, I haven’t been a complete beginner for a while so what I’m doing may not be the best for a total beginner. I would think that sentences (on the front side) would be a bit too much for a beginner to chew at once but this is just my opinion. Yes, they need sentences but for them to try to master every part of said sentence right at the get-go seems a bit much.

@ brandon7s Sounds like you’re close to facing the worst and most formidable beast against language learning----burn-out.

If one method leaves your eye twitching at the sight of Japanese then try another for awhile and see if it works better for you. For me, personally, the method I’m now using has worked for me but by no means does this mean it will work for you. Something that’s helped me enjoy reviews is to turn on keyhole tv while doing them (personally I can’t stand reviewing for more than half an hour without keyhole tv on).

Again, Each one of us is different though so what works for me could easily not be the best thing for you, all I can do is tell you what’s been working for me :]

@IceCream Yes, sentences overall is something that shouldn’t be ignored. Some words do need sentences to gain understanding of it such as こと which is used in ways a native English speaker wouldn’t expect. I’ve realized that which is why I have sentences on the back of my new vocab cards . Another good example is: 賞味期限切れ which can mean best if eaten by this date or woman that are ‘over the hill’. The second one I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t seen it used in the Ohitorisama context.

@ wildweathel I am not using the “traditional no sentence approach”. I do use SENTENCES. Maybe stopping reviews of hard items helped you but for me, I find it better to mix some hard items with easy ones. After several attempts (most difficult ones take about 4 to get the general idea of the meaning), I find that the hard items do mentally click. If it doesn’t click through reviewing then sometimes I come across the hard item in the wild and in that context it ‘clicks’.

harhol Wrote:It's a shame JLPT1 isn't in 1.2 months. You could be The One.

” lol. Although I have sometimes questioned my sanity during that kanji-learning period I’m not insane enough to think that’s a possibility . I’ve still got a loooong way to go.

In summary: sentences in general= good
vocab on front + sentences on back = very good

I do like the AJATT method I just don’t like the ‘need to perfectly know every tiny detail of this sentence at this very moment’ idea. I’m just using a modified version of the AJATT method that works for ME.
Disclaimer: the method I’m using could very well not work for you, everyone learns differently. Through trial and error I’ve found this to be the best method for ME. Later when I’m focusing more-so on grammar I will be using the AJATT method so I am in no way shape or form trying to say that the method is a useless one.

……..I feel like I just wrote something for English class x_x *dies*.

fightswumbrellas Wrote:Something I forgot to add is that if you plan on only having 10 minute reviews then 200-500 a day is probably something you don’t want to aim for (but from what you’ve said in your post it sounds like you plan on only adding 100 so you should be fine with that number). Daily I have about 400-800 reviews which can take as little as an hour but if there’s some I’m having difficulty or if the bulk are new vocab then it can take 4+.

4+? That's painful, I know. Yeah 100 a day is probably my upper limit but it's really down to how much I encounter in a day One could say 30 minimum, possibly 50 is a nice number and 100 is probably the most i'd do. Should realistically leave me with 30 mins of review a day which is fine.

mezbup Wrote:4+? That's painful, I know. Yeah 100 a day is probably my upper limit but it's really down to how much I encounter in a day One could say 30 minimum, possibly 50 is a nice number and 100 is probably the most i'd do. Should realistically leave me with 30 mins of review a day which is fine.

A little, but not too bad. I have tons of free time on my train ride to school and most of my classes allow laptops so I SRSing during lectures (…..what? I still listen xD. All my classes are easy except for math thanks to the magic of ratemyprofessor ). Turning on keyhole tv does wonders for getting rid of the irritation towards srsing for long periods of time too. Sounds good, hope you (and Icecream) have as much luck w/ this method as I have :].

IceCream Wrote:although... how often do you read the sentences on the back of the card? just if you forget the context, or every time? cos that would slow it down a lot, i guess...

The first few times I review a card I make myself look over the sentence. After that, I tend to remember the context well enough that a glance is all that’s needed.

Bonus effect of my new deck; I can use the JxMenu plugin with it!!! And now that I can I wish, I wish, I wish I had added all the words I learned to a vocab deck from the very beginning (still would have done the sentences!) so I could track what my vocab was exactly, what areas it's strong and weak in. That plugin is freakin amazing for people who love stats and I love stats

Something that blows me away about it is you can flip to the kanken tab and in the kanji section click the "seen" link and it comes up with all the kanji you've seen in your deck ordered by kanken level. Ok no big deal right? Except if you find out you have 10 １級 kanji in your deck and upon browsing them you recognize and can places 3/4 them in real words! That floored me. Loving this stuff.

This is a very deep discussion. I also swing a bit on whether I need sentences and where sentences should be. I think I use sentences from Core and Tanuki more as a "definition/concept confirmation" than anything else. Just fancy vocab cards, which made reviewing easier when I starting approaching decks like that. Still, I keep the sentences on the answer side right next to the vocabulary word. However, I'm now at the point where if I need to use the sentence to get context then it's likely that I mark it low or even a miss (especially for kana words like びっくり　やっぱり). This is made easier cause I alter the font size of my vocabulary word (which also uses stroke order font) to be bigger.

Any problems with I+1 in the sentences are solved with recursively adding new vocabulary as a new card should they exist in a Core or Tanuki sentence, or just adding the word as a tested item on the rare chance it does not (I only do that with Core sentences).

I feel the benefit of not getting fancy or needing new sentences for every new word. Doing subs2srs (and now vocab mining the associated Dramanote script) reveals lots of vocabulary that are not in Tanuki or Core series. Do I create cards for them? Personally, I feel that since these are becoming listening/reading aids that there's no need. I'll be coming across these new words frequently enough both with subs2srs reviews, listening and reading the material.

To help matters (or stir the pot a bit), I think it's helpful for people not to look at grammar and vocabulary sentences as sentences in the AJATT 10,000 sentences sense. Once I got out of the "Get every part of sentences right" and into the "Understand why that sentence is there: Vocabulary or Grammar point" my reviews went faster, I failed less and I added much more stuff at a faster rate. An AJATT 10,000 type sentence would come from a native narrative of some sort (magazine, manga, book, movie, show). Just that doing those type of sentences are easier when you have vocabulary and grammar type sentences as a base.

Still, it's so tempting to go for speed and not do "production" cards for vocabulary. Hearing Mezbup and Ice Cream's success (AND SPEED) in that area is just hard to ignore.

Yeah, I guess that conception of '10,000 sentences' no longer means what it used to, to some.

activeaero Wrote:does it really matter

Not really. I think we're all just curious about the idea of a perfect method and whether or not such a thing can exist. We should all write a book and see which on sells the most.

Speaking of methods, has anyone seen that Khatz is now offering a full-length $25 'movie' telling people exactly what to do? Who buys this stuff??

You're forgetting that he made a rather uninspiring trailer and then spent an entire blog post talking about why you shouldn't buy it. He's crazy.

Back on topic slightly, I've moved away from caring about the 一万文 number. It's not like I'm going to reach that point and say "well, I'm glad I've gotten here, must mean I'm perfectly fluent" or "party time, screw the SRS" or such foolishness. It's served it's purpose of illustrating how long the task is and encouraging me to develop patience, diligence, and confidence. It's too big to serve as a meaningful mid-range goal. Goal like "I'm going to study the Core 2000 for half an hour a day and suspend leeches" (my current goal) or "I'm going to add at least 30 sentences a day from native media or monolingual dictionaries and reassess my proficiency after 30 days" (my next goal: 30*30 monodic).

I thought of Khatz's video as more of a way to donate to his site than anything. I wanted to donate a little for all his crazy inspiring posts and saw the video so I figured I might as well donate AND see Khatz rant at the same time heh.

I've moved away from the sentences as well. Reviewing a word within a sentence gives the meaning away. I found that I was struggling when I encountered the words in different contexts, especially words with multiple meanings. Also, if you have a sentence with more than one word you don't know, it goes against what makes SRS so effective. Then there's the fact that you have zero production, which shits on 50% of the learning process, and is ridiculous if you ever want to be a fluent speaker.

I made a little program to generate cards with the following data. The recognition and production cards have the Japanese and English respectively as the question.

Japanese
English
Goo definition
Tanaka corpus example sentences

Seeing the word in isolation really makes you think about it. I usually try to remember some example usages (like which particle goes with it, if it can be used with する, etc). The production cards have some very obvious benefits, too.

After struggling with poor vocab for months, and no real motivation to make new sentence cards, I decided to try a vocab only deck in Anki (which I named Vocab Dump.) While I'm not grammar master (I haven't even read all of Tae Kim,) I find I have enough grammar under my belt that I can understand most sentences, and say most basic things, IF I know the definition of the words. So I'm going to try and focus on increasing my vocab for now, and rely on other sources (manga, TV shows, KO2001, whatever) to try and fill in context for now.

As it is now, since I like playing RPGs, I have the DQ9 and JRPG vocab lists from smart.fm in my vocab deck, as well as the final chapters of Genki 2 (I have to use that book for class, so I might as well get acquainted with what the book thinks is important.)

I have two questions:

1. Does anyone have any specific sources for commonly used words? I'm lazy, so preferably the easier to import into Anki, the better.

2. (Sorry for the Anki question, since it's not an Anki forum, but since I'm here..) Is there an easy way to transfer a card from one deck to another? I can't find anything, but I don't want to look like an idiot suggesting it as a feature if it's either already there, or on the back burner of things to be implemented in a later release.

strugglebunny Wrote:After struggling with poor vocab for months, and no real motivation to make new sentence cards, I decided to try a vocab only deck in Anki (which I named Vocab Dump.) While I'm not grammar master (I haven't even read all of Tae Kim,) I find I have enough grammar under my belt that I can understand most sentences, and say most basic things, IF I know the definition of the words. So I'm going to try and focus on increasing my vocab for now, and rely on other sources (manga, TV shows, KO2001, whatever) to try and fill in context for now.

As it is now, since I like playing RPGs, I have the DQ9 and JRPG vocab lists from smart.fm in my vocab deck, as well as the final chapters of Genki 2 (I have to use that book for class, so I might as well get acquainted with what the book thinks is important.)

I have two questions:

1. Does anyone have any specific sources for commonly used words? I'm lazy, so preferably the easier to import into Anki, the better.

2. (Sorry for the Anki question, since it's not an Anki forum, but since I'm here..) Is there an easy way to transfer a card from one deck to another? I can't find anything, but I don't want to look like an idiot suggesting it as a feature if it's either already there, or on the back burner of things to be implemented in a later release.

I would use the JLPT vocab lists for common words. The words on those lists are by the government considered the most important to learn, so I'd say it's a good idea to learn them.