Why does everyone think that jlpt is some sort of government qualification? The japan foundation may have been created by order of the government, but they are not a part of the government.

I think Khatz was a big inspiriation to a lot of us in tearing down the walls of the perceived "difficulty" of learning Japanese. He introduced me to RTK and showed me that if you stick with a particular method the results eventually shine through.

We've all kind of modified our learning strategies to suit our own needs and that's a good thing (otherwise we'd be a class!). I particularly like what Heisig does in terms of learning kanji how it breaks it up into layers and you assimilate one layer at a time. I think a lot of people after doing RTK throw that approach away and pile everything back on top of everything else again and try to do everything else at once.

Really I'm trying to stick with the Japanese By Layers© approach (as much as possible) so I'm pretty much trying to learn to read completely. Basically I want a massive vocab that will enable learning to speak very simple. At such a point I imagine
I could pick up any dorama scripts and turn it into a practice conversation deck and whatnot.

IceCream Wrote:thanks yeah, that should be cool... well, i think i might change it a little to suit my method a bit more, so i can shove everything in the same deck.

Glad to hear you’re changing it around to suit your own needs and learning style.

IceCream Wrote:speaking of which, absolute props for doing that in the last 1.8 months and not wanting to kill yourself / delete the deck at some point. It must be the context sentences and modifying them how you want afterwards

lol thanks :]. Partly it's thanks to the context sentences and modifying but my sanity is mostly indebted to having keyhole tv on as often as possible; it seems to trick my brain into I’m doing something more fun than vocab reps when srsing (it also has noticeably been helping my listening so it’s a win-win scenario).

strugglebunny Wrote: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’m curious about this too, in the not-to-long-ago past that would have come in handy….(Once upon a time, I had to transfer about 300 cards from one deck to another. Luckily anki allows two decks open at once but the time it took to copy and paste all of those could have been used for bigger and better things).

Nukemarine Wrote: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).

I tried doing that but I would catch myself focusing on the other points anyway, that and the sentences seemed to become a cheat sheet for me because my brain would remember what words went along with the sentence. But, all that means is that I learn a bit differently than you. Glad you brought up this point so hopefully anyone on the fence about using sentences or vocab will see that they should try both and see what works for them.

Alright, now for a slight tangent: When learning vocab from the lists, one thing I noticed was that a few words get their kanji portions ignored. Tangorin (or a google search to see how many hits the kanji-version gets to estimate how common it is) comes in handy for figuring out if a certain words kanji has been excluded because:
1. its usually only written in kana alone (such as なかなか )
2. It’s a bikkuri word
3. or a variety of other reasons
Learning words with all their kanji [unless its one of the ‘usually written with kana’ types / the outdated kanji for that word] comes in handy because it gives you more of a mental hook for the word. On top of that, if it’s fairly common to see it with kanji then you might as well learn it in its full form rather than only the pronunciation. But most importantly, since you spent all that time learning all those rtk kanji might as well utilize them to learn new words ;] ! Why am I pointing this out? Because having a ‘broken’ vocabulary is an avoidable pain. Back during the years of failed attempts, I knew けがbut I didn’t know 怪我; I knew what蒸し暑い meant but I couldn’t pronounce it properly. If it’s a common way to see the word, then just learn it with the kanji so you don’t have to deal with the ‘relearning’ process later. That’s just my .02 cents. If you don't want to do this investigating, don't panic this is only for a small percentage of all the vocab in KO and Core.

P.S. Sorry ahead of time for any grammar errors, tried to weed any out but I'm dead tired at the moment.

It's quite easy to copy decks from one to the other, with the export and the import functions. You can export by tags, to either a datafile or an anki deck, and import it in another deck.
If you haven't tagged the right cards, you can just select all cards you want to export and add a tag to these to export them.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Why does everyone think that jlpt is some sort of government qualification? The japan foundation may have been created by order of the government, but they are not a part of the government.

They obviously have guidelines they have to follow regardless. They were created by the government for a reason.

Switched to using stardict after I heard it mentioned here the other day. Now that has streamlined the shit out of the data entry process for this deck! Look up a word, コピー、貼り付け！ I use my DS to lookup things I don't know how to read at all to get the pronunciation still although I'm finding now that I can read a far bit that my knowledge of kanji enables me to look a lot of things up by knowing some readings or related vocab. Most of the time I don't need to

Woot this deck as at 200 words already. Can't wait for it to hit 1000. Will be exciting to see my vocab actually grow a further 1000 words.

sugarlevi Wrote:It's quite easy to copy decks from one to the other, with the export and the import functions. You can export by tags, to either a datafile or an anki deck, and import it in another deck.
If you haven't tagged the right cards, you can just select all cards you want to export and add a tag to these to export them.

Thanks for pointing that out.

IceCream Wrote:does it pop up?? i couldn't get it to work at all. if you have time, please could you write instructions on how to do it?

For me it pops up but only with gibberish? I don't really care about the pop up feature as I usually search words from sources other than the computer. Tbh it's not the most user friendly program!

mezbup Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:does it pop up?? i couldn't get it to work at all. if you have time, please could you write instructions on how to do it?

For me it pops up but only with gibberish? I don't really care about the pop up feature as I usually search words from sources other than the computer. Tbh it's not the most user friendly program!

It came up for me as gibberish at first, not certain how I fixed. Messed around with fonts in the preferences, I think. Also I think some dictionaries had pictures that I couldn't get to display, so they showed up as squares or somesuch. For the pop-up, I have it set to ctrl+alt+x hotkey, enabled 'only scan while modifier key is being pressed', unchecked 'hide floating window', checked 'scan clipboard'. Makes Anki much more enjoyable, just select and copy, ctrl+alt+x, then again when I'm done.

Mezzy, do you know how to set up Misaki for Stardict? It has a path for TTS but I'm not sure whether it allows Neospeech, requires plugins, et cetera.

No idea XD. I saw that it had that kind of capability too but the effort to reward ratio doesn't seem worth it to me haha.

I'm going through and adding pretty much every word I know to my deck to try and get a tally on my current vocab working it in with the stats from JxPlugin. Anyway, I just went through all the kanji lists and added words 1 word I knew that had that kanji in it for every kanji I knew. The result? I now know I can read 1283 Kanji

The vocab is up to ~2700 but I've only done one big adding stint, there's still lots left in me to add although It should start thinning out soon.

I've read this whole thread and there are too many good points to just reply to a single user.

I've gotten to 550 something kanji on this site and it's helped me pick up more vocab than when I first started.

However I use Iknow and my progress is slow as HELL. I tried Anki and it just didn't work out for me at all.

How does one go about learning vocabuary lists separately aside from sentences? I try to imagine situations in my mind but meh.

PkmnTrainerAbram Wrote:I've read this whole thread and there are too many good points to just reply to a single user.

I've gotten to 550 something kanji on this site and it's helped me pick up more vocab than when I first started.

However I use Iknow and my progress is slow as HELL. I tried Anki and it just didn't work out for me at all.

How does one go about learning vocabuary lists separately aside from sentences? I try to imagine situations in my mind but meh.

One doesn't? At least not in the form of a vocabulary "list". The reason it's easy for me to learn vocab in isolation at this point is I understand the context I heard/read it in originally and that's the way I think of it when doing my reviews. I'm not learning words from a list but rather whatever I encounter in the wild. I'd say at about 3000 vocab it's easy to take that plunge but before that not so much.

If you we're to try and learn vocab through lists outside of any and all context you're not going to have a very fun time at all. You could however try the iverson method (sp anyone?).

At any rate if you are going to try learn from a vocab list as such i'd only recommend doing it for the first 1000 most frequent words because that'll give you some serious coverage (Anki tells me 50%).

I have no idea on how many words I actually know.

I finished Core2000 Courses 1 and 2, got about halfway on about 2-3 other lists, with my progress showing 743 studied and 403 mastered. I've finshed Berlitz's audio program, Japanese the Manga Way, and got to Chapter 16 in Introduction to Modern Japanese and 11 with another course.

Oh, and I play the Japanese version of Pokemon games almost everyday if nothing else for recreation. That and Tokyo MX or well, music.

And while now directly relating to my known vocab I've been reviewing 100 of the first 500 kanji here for 2 months. I think it's time to move on or something.

I have a hard time now learning new words because I'm running into sentences where I have to learn 3-6 new words, which sucks.

I assume that the i + 1 method is basically learn one thing from every sentence and let the rest take care of itself in time? Because sure as hell am struglling with the premade sentences as a whole in iknow at this point.

i + 1 means there should be only 1 new thing in the entire sentece. IMO it's actually a bit of a pipe dream for beginners because there is so many unknowns that it's the exception rather than the norm although if you look hard enough or make extremely simple cards in the beginning of course you can do it.

I think sentences are pretty crucial for the first few thousand vocab tbh. It's unfortunate that at times sentences from KO and iKnow are i + 4 - 6 sometimes you just gotta tough it out. If that ain't working just try skipping that sentence until later on when you might have learned a few more of the items in it from other sentences.

Interestingly, after I sorted the KO2001 list according to kanji progression I've been breezing through them. They're much more i+1ish!

So I've added a vocab list deck to my routine. One reason being too many words I've "learned" in sentences I can't recall unless I think about the sentence. Today I had a perfect example (note my japanese is still very basic with BIG holes)

I'm trying to say "green", and I know I know it...I know the kanji and I learned it in a sentence. But I can't pull it out without finding it by reciting the sentence I learned it in - from a jpod101 lesson

黄色と白と緑のコントラストが素晴らしいです

-BIG PROBLEM -
And my newbie ass is finding that it happens a lot! So I think this will be a big help. At this point my vocab deck is the single words from smartfm KO2k1 lists, which I've got a head start on with my sentence only deck, so it's mostly word's I'm familiar with. I figure this will hammer 'em in, and will also give me a better hold of dictionary form, as so many words I've learned are conjugations, and my lack of grammar mastery isn't up to the challenge of really nailing the words various forms at this point. I'll also add to the deck any random words I run across.

Question - Any good recommendations for a site to get quality example sentences so I can tack them onto some of my answer fields?

How did you do that Nii87? I am using the smartfm version, not the original sentences (maybe it's already like that????)...

I fixing to finish up KO2001 book 2 and was wondering if anyone knows of a way to make a list out of the remaining KO vocab located on the CD? I figure if I've gone this far with the KO series I might as well finish out the rest of the Joyo Kanji with their frequency lists.

The vocab deck I started is going really well. Since the reviews are much faster and to the point and creating the cards is so fast, I find I add a lot more than before. Previously I added like 5 sentences a day unless I mined Kanzen master, but now I can add 30 words a day. This has also made REAL mining more effective. Before, I read a book, found a word I didn't know and copied the whole sentence by hand, or found an example sentence online. It took ages. Now I simply look words up with my DS and save to a list. When I'm done, I go to the computer and go through the list. I only add example sentences to about 50% of the cards since I remember the context/the words are simple, so it's VERY fast.

Summary: Not only do I add a lot more, it has lead me to read and mine a lot more.

Tobberoth Wrote:The vocab deck I started is going really well. Since the reviews are much faster and to the point and creating the cards is so fast, I find I add a lot more than before. Previously I added like 5 sentences a day unless I mined Kanzen master, but now I can add 30 words a day. This has also made REAL mining more effective. Before, I read a book, found a word I didn't know and copied the whole sentence by hand, or found an example sentence online. It took ages. Now I simply look words up with my DS and save to a list. When I'm done, I go to the computer and go through the list. I only add example sentences to about 50% of the cards since I remember the context/the words are simple, so it's VERY fast.

Summary: Not only do I add a lot more, it has lead me to read and mine a lot more.

Summed it up in a nutshell. I too have been adding more and inviting more Japanese into my day.

One thing I noticed is that sometimes a word will come up for review after a few days or a week and you'll have forgotten it. Of course the process for that card starts again and usually second time round you pick it up no problems. Goes to show me that in terms of pure recognition devoid of context takes a much more solid memory link and I feel that if you can recognise and pronounce a word and know its meaning in isolation, you'll never be left in the dark when you see it in the wild.

I think what you're doing here is the last stage of Japanese "learning" and after that it should be "self sufficient". In your native language the world is your SRS and ideally with Japanese it should be the same.

I don't know every word in my native language I just know "enough" for my current needs and don't see the point in learning new ones (that I'll probably never use) just for learning purposes. Thats why I say ditch sentences, vocabulary decks etc. as fast as possible and just enjoy Japanese, I know I will

TaylorSan Wrote:How did you do that Nii87? I am using the smartfm version, not the original sentences (maybe it's already like that????)...

SmartFM/KO2001 original sentences don't do it already.

Here is the thread I got the information from:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=4371

I've been recommending it to as many people as I can. I'm getting good results from it and I'm surprised more people aren't using it!

Interesting! I quit sentences a while ago for reasons similar to what people in this thread have said. Instead, I use....LingQ. I know. It sounds so lame. But it's nice because the focus is on reading and vocabulary acquisition. I already got all the grammar I really need while doing sentences months ago, so it's nice to be able to focus on reading and pure vocabulary acquisition <-- IMO, by far the most difficult and lengthy part of language learning.

igordesu Wrote:Interesting! I quit sentences a while ago for reasons similar to what people in this thread have said. Instead, I use....LingQ. I know. It sounds so lame. But it's nice because the focus is on reading and vocabulary acquisition. I already got all the grammar I really need while doing sentences months ago, so it's nice to be able to focus on reading and pure vocabulary acquisition <-- IMO, by far the most difficult and lengthy part of language learning.

I really like the concept of LingQ, personally. I still find it a tad clunky and unwieldy, and there isn't a whole lot of Japanese text up there (yet), but I love how it keeps track of how many words I "know" and makes it easy to make note of ones I've marked. I also really admire Steve Kaufmann and his approach to language acquisition.

Interesting thread, especially since this is a subject I've been mentally debating for a while now. Personally, I've never been the biggest fan of reviewing sentences in my SRS, despite the obvious (and substantial) benefits. I'm of the school of thought that SRS use should be kept to a bare minimum, and mainly for things such as RTK and more infrequent, obscure vocabulary that one isn't as likely to run into often enough to memorize (though even that is arguable, as I run into plenty of words in my native language of English that I don't encounter frequently enough to memorize, and I get by... usually!). Furthermore, I always found reviewing sentences incredibly boring, especially when mined from the lifeless clutches of a J-J dictionary (or Smart.fm, or 2001KO). Boredom is the mind killer as far as I'm concerned, so I've decided to ditch (for the most part) my sentence reviews. To date, I've probably deleted somewhere around 3,000 to 4,000 sentences.

Instead, I'm reviewing words and tidbits in isolation, like my dear ol' ma told me never to do. Quick, easy, simple, no need to dig through dictionaries and sentence search engines (though that is a handy site) for a suitable sentence, no need to bore myself with school or office related terms that make me want to punt a toddler. This also seems to be a lot more comfortable for memorizing longer and more obscure words, whereas trying to do so via sentence reviewing could result in headaches - but that's just me.
The key here is twofold: One, that I'm not succumbing to perfectionism and inputting every single new word I come across. This is probably an obvious approach to most of you, but the perfectionists among us likely know exactly what I'm talking about... My vocab reviews usually don't take more than 30 minutes daily, and I like to keep a limit of one hour on my non-RTK SRS reviewing whenever possible.
And two, above all else, I'm getting the vast majority of my exposure through reading (manga, literature, websites, video games...) and listening (TV, podcasts, music, etc). Again, probably the most obvious approach, but I've made the mistake of relying too heavily on the temptation of the ever-convenient, ever-present canned sentences such as those from Smart.fm and 2001KO, while largely neglecting the need for exposure via (the far, far more abundant) native materials.

Different strokes for different folks, indeed. It's also quite possible that, a month or two from now, I'll have decided that my "method" sucks. However, as effective as reviewing sentences may be, I don't believe that it's the end-all-be-all method of language learning.