I was reading this interesting AJATT post
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...ment-30827

For ppl using SRS anki or any other one in general. How effective is it to do readings-kanji(trying to remeber the kanji from memory-from the hiragana or katakana readings.)
I want to know if anyone has done this for the long-term(few months-a year maybe i guess). Is this effective in remebering the kanji from memory or should i stick with just the kanji-readings for helping me write the kanji from memory.
Personally when i'm doing the kanji-kana readings, nowadays i start writing majority of the time to get a feel for it. But recently once i read that AJATT post, it made me wonder about doing it vice versa, and to see if it is truly effective. Anyone care to share there experience on this? I want to know if it's effective in the long run, b/c this will be time-consuming. I average around 50sentences daily from kanji-kana readings. And it'll double if i do this kana-kanji. Adding up to 100. Anyhow can anyone help me out? Thanks for you're time!

I want to know if anyone has found this more effective to recall kanji from doing SRS from kana-kanji readings.

Going just from Kanji - Kana won't help you to write kanji from memory. If you want to train the specific skill of producing a written word from memory the best way to do it is to have a full sentence in kanji and the word you want to produce from memory written in kana.

It's time consuming but it works.

thanks for the reply back. I was really worrying about this skill the most. Because i'm confident that i will have good reading skills in around a year or so. And speaking will improve with immersion+practise as well as understanding. But what about writing? I'll try doing kana-kanji SRS nowadays. I want the ability to write kanji from memory+sentences. I usual do 50-100 kanji filled new sentences daily if my reviews aren't so high. But with the added effect of doing kanji-kana and kana-kanji that'll definitely add up to 100-200 sentences daily. I can easily do this in 1-2 hours so it isn't a problem to me. I just wanted to know if this is an effective way of doing kanji from memory.

It's very effective, but like mezbup said, it's also very time consuming. If you have 2 hours a day to add 200 sentences effectively, you should definitely do it, especially if you're worried.

For people like me who lack the time needed, it's better to focus on kanji-kana since it trains the most important skills. Enough exposure will teach you kana-kanji, but it's not effective, it takes a lot of time and leads to a lot of mistakes. Eventually, you will want to go kana-kanji as well, at least for the most important words.

Reviews compound so after a while adding 200 cards a day adds up to something ridiculous like 800 reviews. A lot of reading helps big time but alone isn't enough. Even learning to read takes quite a long time given the amount of vocab you've got to know.

All in all, short of doing a khatz it's going to take a long time to develop any skill to high level. Just be patient with it and get into a rhythm and you so long as your pace is just right all you gotta do is pluck away at it every day.

One thing i'm starting to notice now that my reading capability is ok is that you begin getting really familiar with the most common kanji that form roots of words or tack on to the end of others that they stick very firmly in your mind and start to make words that use them a lot easier to digest.

I've always learned new words by saying them first, and then learning to write them later. I know for a fact that most people can say or understand more words than they can reproduce themselves, so this is the approach I take at language acquisition.

Then again, my goal for Japanese isn't to become a master of kanji -- since I know that will take much longer than I may be able to give -- but rather to be articulate enough to advocate and express myself in Japanese for when I go to Japan.

It may also be that I feel at the moment that I know enough Kanji to get by or that I know enough kanji to build on what I know when I get to Japan. But I'm also more likely to have time to look stuff up in a dictionary when it comes to written material, whilst during conversation, it'll make me look like a bad listener if I keep looking for words in a dictionary.

...so yeah, I guess it all depends on what your priorities are. I am more concerned with holding a smooth conversation, but since this is reviewthekanji, many people on this forum are very concerned about being able to recognize and reproduce kanji.

Think about how often you will be needing to recognise kanji versus how often you will be needing to write them by hand. Probably about a million to one.

Yea my reading ability is getting better over time, even though readings when alot of sentences are filled with kanji and none other than kanji. But yea, the only downside to me doing around 50 sentences for kanji-kana then kana-kanji will add up to 100(i'll just use anki to duplicate it, the other way around). So that'll definitely be 100 daily. But i usual take a break if the reviews become so high. For a few days i hold off on adding any new cards and just review daily until it becomes really small. I think i'll probably need to recongize them way more than be able to write them. Most important skills will probably be understanding+reading. But speaking is important too, but I'm not too worried about that. So that leaves writing from kana-kanji production. I think i'll make a seperate deck for it, instead of adding it to my AJATT deck(contains 5200 sentences so far, been around 4.5 of doing immersion+sentences+monolingual dictionary use). It took me around 3 months to do 3007 kanji(although in my deck it contains like 3157 kanji i decided not to add anymroe, as i might as well learn more new kanji through the context of real japanese instead of an english keyword.) So what i'll do is make another deck, adding 100 daily new cards, 50 50 each kanji-kana, and kana-kanji for exact same sentences. And my other deck i'll add 50 sentences daily, so i don't overboard with the reviews(Nowadays i do write majority of my reviews unless i don't get lazy, b/c my writing skill has improved-i.e much neater and faster to write the kanji now than compared to before). So i want to train my skill of writing as well, not just reading+understanding. I'm sure everyone wants to me a master in japanase, i.e. become fluent in the language in all ways. But when it comes to the word fluent, that word get's rather annoying as the opinions on it can go everywhere possible if you know what i mean. But all in short i'll try giving this a go. Thanks for the reply back, interesting to read about you're opinions.

I agree with Tobberoth that you'll eventually get it from kanji to kana, but that it's not very fast. Writing out sentences while doing reviews helps, but can be really tedious. I'd been writing out almost all of my sentences and got burned out really fast. My cards were just recognition, but I ended up writing out almost every sentence in full and then writing the furigana above every kanji. It took forever. I've decided it's more important to focus on reading for now, and that I can work on improving my writing ability later.

mezbup Wrote:If you want to train the specific skill of producing a written word from memory the best way to do it is to have a full sentence in kanji and the word you want to produce from memory written in kana.

Yeah, I totally agree. It doesn't seem to make much sense to have the front side fully in kana, especially since a lot of words that can be written with kanji often aren't, or can be written more than one way. You might also consider writing the word that should be written in kanji in a different colour.

Yea, i do agree that eventually doing kanji-kana you'll eventually be able to write alot of sentences from memory, but yea it does take a lot of time. For me i can remember lots of sentences and there kanji easily, but obviously not all of them(in my sentences deck). I guess i want to train that specific skill the most. But i do agree reading is probably more important. I can write almost any kanji i see, expect for those unusual rare ones. Today i'll start doing sentences from both kanji to kana, and kana-kanji obviously colored to distinguish when to write kanji from the kana.

It's one of those things that you change as you see fit.

You probably want to start out writing out the entire sentence, but you will outgrow that very soon just due to tedium. This can be Kanji or Kana versions.

Next, you can try writing out key portions of sentences: Grammar part such as the conjugations if that's what the sentence is for, or the word if it's for vocabulary.

Next, you can try just writing it out in your head. Perhaps write it out for real if you get it wrong.

Another variant is to type out the sentence, to get IME practice.

There's no right or wrong way. Writing takes more time, however when starting out it's very important to get to tedium to appreciate the switch to just writing key points. Same goes with typing out sentences which is a nice skill to develop as you practice.

By the way, Last year I did write out the entire sentence. Later, I've done duel cards for vocabulary Kanji to pronunciation and Kana to dictation. I changed the dictation to be just in my head (writing out only mistakes for reading and dictation cards). Now, I've suspended all my reading cards for vocabulary as I find it tedious now.

Change as you see fit, just be wary of what the trade offs are for the choice you make. It's good to develop a writing skill, but not so important that it becomes a tedium.

@nukemarine
Yea i understand what you are saying fully. I always try to visual all the kanji in my head, before writing it down on paper, as it helps better to visualize it. I understand it can become tedious if i keep writing out all sentences form my SRS anki reviews. As for typing in the IME, i find that pretty easy, but writing what i type out is a different story. As it takes alot more time to write from memory as it is to type. For the grammar points and vocab. I write out the ones i don't remember or have trouble writing to get a good feel for it and more exposure to it. I think i'll take this slowly. I'll make a separate deck and just make it kana-kanji 50 in total. So i do not burn out myself with those large amounts of reviews that tend to pile up over time. Thanks for the comment back, always good to get advice on this as this is what was the most concerning thing for my japanese learning.

Instead of making two cards (recognition and production) for each sentence, you could just make some recognition and some production. That way, you can cover more material, and also your reviews won't double. I would think it would be less boring, too. Also, this way, you can also choose to just train yourself on words you really want to be able to write/have trouble remembering how to write.

Nukemarine Wrote:Another variant is to type out the sentence, to get IME practice.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I now type out all of my sentences (both recognition and listening comprehension). I think this is still pretty beneficial, but a lot less time-consuming than writing out sentences by hand.

Yea, typing it out using the IME is definitely less time consuming. What i do when i have alot of SRS reviews to do and alot of writing practise to do. I usual take breaks when i reach half of my review pile and has almost finished them. That way once i reach my break time i just enjoy some japanese shows i usual watch and then just go back to do my reviews. Yea i'll definitely try mixing it up, so i can get a variety and definitely learn more in the long-run of doing this. So i'll do around 25-50 for kana-kanji daily if possible(when my reviews build up really high i don't add sentences for a few days). And my other deck(main deck, i'll add 50 daily, so that way i'm going at a steady pace and yet learning more, and better producing the skill of writing from memory, for particular kanji)

I have been doing kanji-kana for around 4.6 months. And i can remember alot of the kanji from memory and can reproduce sentences(not all). But obviously i haven't trained the skill to yet(kana-kanji). I noticed when i started doing it just yesterday that. I only knew how to reproduce some of the kanji from the sentence, but not all. I guess the kanji-kana does work, but it will inevitable take longer. So i want that skill to specifically grow along with other skills such as reading and understanding. But all these skills are linked to one another, so increasing certain skills will lead to better skills in other things. Such as understanding and reading will lead to good speaking.

I've been doing both kanji-to-kana and kana-to-kanji for all vocabulary cards for about 4-5 months now, and I've noticed a huge improvement in retaining new words. Doing the vocabulary cards both ways seems to have improved my recognition/reading a lot too. I'm guessing it's the fact that going from reading to kanji force you to think about all the details of the kanji much more carefully.

So, from personal experience, I'd absolutely recommend using both directions for word cards. For full sentences it might take too much time to be worth it.