When you start reading books, you will come across such broad vocabulary it blows your mind.
In 3 days of studying hard, I can come across 1000 new words, and it's not because I'm a beginner, it's because you need a vocabulary that puts JLPT1 passing level to shame.

I'm talking about words like these which I rack up in no time at all (new words today from just a quick read)

茫漠
うねり
改宗
軽蔑
淫売
業物
とやかく
筋合い
趣向
八つ裂き
祟る
見境
こちとら
息災
もがく
元凶
臨界
受肉
啓示
なぞる

when I see words like these, I can't help to think of how many words are out there. I feel like if I put everyone down in anki I'd have a 50,000 card deck right about now, but just making the cards or reviewing a beast like that seems like it'd take up 99% of my time which would turn into studying rather than reading something I enjoy.

At this point, I mark down all words I don't know and put them in a txt. At the end of the night I just go down the list and learn them really quick and maybe do it once more in the morning before deleting them and that seems to be more effective to me, I dunno. Because I don't go over them a bunch in a txt, I don't remember the word order. Learning through a txt is faster than an SRS when you are trying to memorize for the first time though, that's for sure (Just not for the long run, but a txt combo + SRS appears to be milestones faster than just SRS for vocab)

That's the kind of method I've always used, and it's worked fine for me. I do think that while SRS can be used at any level provided it's something you're interested in doing, it's better suited for people who are not yet at the level where they can really just sit down and read (as opposed to decode) a native text.

(I was a little dismayed that I didn't know most of those words out of context, although they appear to have a Christian scriptures relation so probably in context I'd be able to make a better guess. Anyone who's relying on kanji meanings to guess meanings of words should look up 息災.)

SRSing is not the only way to learn, just using lists works as well. Or you could never write down anything and just look up words again when you forget them (that's all I ever did when learning English). There are lots of methods. All have strengths and weaknesses.

I think the SRS increases how much we can learn in a short time so if anything it's even more useful when you want to learn a lot of new vocabulary but it can become too much work.

However, I don't think that learning 1000 new words in 3 days is going to be a sustainable speed for a very long time, SRS or not.

I add all words I don't know to Anki, and I only just passed 10,000 vocab cards (although I only started my vocab deck when studying for JLPT2, so it's not filled with basic stuff). You may run into many words you don't know when you start reading, but that is just because they are words more common in literature than in speech. You'll soon get to a point where you don't find that many new words to add (other than 専門用語).

Jarvik7 Wrote:I add all words I don't know to Anki, and I only just passed 10,000 vocab cards (although I only started my vocab deck when studying for JLPT2, so it's not filled with basic stuff). You may run into many words you don't know when you start reading, but that is just because they are words more common in literature than in speech. You'll soon get to a point where you don't find that many new words to add (other than 専門用語).

Exactly, this is what I do as well. A lot of people feel they have to be picky. "I don't know this word, but it doesn't seem all that common and regular, I mean, when would I use it?" and so they don't add it because they feel more common words take precedence. However, I think that just adding everything in the end is pretty much just as effective. Worrying about how common a word is will in itself add an extra moment in your study which can be boring and frustrating. And every Japanese word you learn is definitely progress, regardless.

Besides, statistically, it's impossible that you will add mostly uncommon or useless words if you add everything you don't know since common words will show up that much more often. And like Jarvik7 said in the quote above, as you add a lot of the common words, what is actually left to mine declines very rapidly.

Another good thing to keep in mind: Would a Japanese person reading the text you're reading know the word? Yeah? Then it's worth knowing for you to and thus deserves a place in your SRS.

The only words I personally skip are the ones I understand immediately from context because of kanji etc. For example, I didn't know 日焼け recently so I looked it up in a dictionary to make sure and indeed it means sunburned. This I didn't add to my SRS because there's no way I will ever read a text and not know it. Same with 樹齢.

I actually find SRS better for advanced students, because the rare words that come up usually aren't used very often (duh right). It's not uncommon for me to go many weeks before seeing a new word again, and without an SRS I wouldn't remember it.

I started SRSing at around JLPT2 level, so I too don't have many beginner vocabulary.

Grinkers Wrote:I actually find SRS better for advanced students, because the rare words that come up usually aren't used very often (duh right). It's not uncommon for me to go many weeks before seeing a new word again, and without an SRS I wouldn't remember it.

I started SRSing at around JLPT2 level, so I too don't have many beginner vocabulary.

Same here.

I look up most of the words I don't know if it's practical to do so, but I don't Anki ones that don't seem useful. At the moment I want to reach JLPT1 level and increase my speaking ability, so I don't want to bulk up my reviews with obscure words that I'll be lucky to ever see or hear again outside of my deck.

Javizy Wrote:I look up most of the words I don't know if it's practical to do so, but I don't Anki ones that don't seem useful. At the moment I want to reach JLPT1 level and increase my speaking ability, so I don't want to bulk up my reviews with obscure words that I'll be lucky to ever see or hear again outside of my deck.

There are smarter ways of doing that. For example, get a list of the JLPT4-1 vocabulary and use it as a filter to the new words you find. That way you can enter ONLY words which are actually in those lists instead of using your own sense of what is useful and common in Japanese, which could be flawed.

Tobberoth Wrote:The only words I personally skip are the ones I understand immediately from context because of kanji etc. For example, I didn't know 日焼け recently so I looked it up in a dictionary to make sure and indeed it means sunburned. This I didn't add to my SRS because there's no way I will ever read a text and not know it. Same with 樹齢.

I used to do this, but I was struggling horribly to remember (coincidentally) 日焼け in conversation the other week. Words like this with easy to understand kanji deceivingly lead me to 'know it when you see it' syndrome.

Javizy Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:The only words I personally skip are the ones I understand immediately from context because of kanji etc. For example, I didn't know 日焼け recently so I looked it up in a dictionary to make sure and indeed it means sunburned. This I didn't add to my SRS because there's no way I will ever read a text and not know it. Same with 樹齢.

I used to do this, but I was struggling horribly to remember (coincidentally) 日焼け in conversation the other week. Words like this with easy to understand kanji deceivingly lead me to 'know it when you see it' syndrome.

I have a similar problem. I have a fairly large reading and listening vocabulary, but they seem completely independent of each other until I make the connection. There's lots of words I can listen, but not read, and visa versa. Even if I know the readings of the word when I see it, or how to write the kanji.

I find SRSing the words I can listen to a few times in text form really helps this (at least reading words I can hear), while just reading it in the wild from time to time does not.

When I was doing JLPT1/2 study I added the entire list to Anki and unsuspended the words as I came across them in my study.

The biggest worry for adding everything is for people who put WAY too much work into making their cards. You don't need pictures/audio* and you don't really need sentences unless it's hard to understand the word without it. When I'm reading or studying I just type up a list of new words in a text editor. When I have a good number of them I open the text in firefox and use rikaichan to save EDICT definitions to a csv which can be directly imported into Anki. 200 new flashcards in about 3 minutes. Everyone knows that I hate EDICT, but it's good enough for flashcard definitions. (I do of course look words up in a real dictionary when I encounter them in the text first)

*There is NO reason to be putting audio into your cards unless you are just starting Japanese study. It just increases the time you spend making the cards and makes it take longer to review. Pictures are also useless unless it's something you can't sufficiently describe with words. For example I have some vocab for pre-Heian architectural elements (from when I was studying JP art). A picture of a 千木 is a lot better than something like "decorative crossmember which holds down the roof". On the other hand you don't need a picture of a car for a card on "車".

Javizy Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:The only words I personally skip are the ones I understand immediately from context because of kanji etc. For example, I didn't know 日焼け recently so I looked it up in a dictionary to make sure and indeed it means sunburned. This I didn't add to my SRS because there's no way I will ever read a text and not know it. Same with 樹齢.

I used to do this, but I was struggling horribly to remember (coincidentally) 日焼け in conversation the other week. Words like this with easy to understand kanji deceivingly lead me to 'know it when you see it' syndrome.

You shouldn't ever expect words to enter active memory just from having them in an SRS, so adding it shouldn't make a difference, exposure and usage is what gives it to you in conversations. An SRS should mainly be used for the "know it when you see it" syndrome since that's the usefulness of it, because you will understand it in books and other media which is what gives you the actual exposure.

I have tons of words in my SRS which I can't use fluidly in a conversation just like that, because I've barely been exposed to them. If, however, said word comes up in a conversation, I can immediately start using it because I know it. And after that conversation, it will probably be stuck.

I use pictures almost exclusively for animals, specifically a certain species.

Adding sentences really is a pain, despite it not being too hard. I usually don't type in any answer, but it's just psychologically painful. I find sentences faster to review though, so it's worth it for me.

Tobberoth Wrote:

Javizy Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:The only words I personally skip are the ones I understand immediately from context because of kanji etc. For example, I didn't know 日焼け recently so I looked it up in a dictionary to make sure and indeed it means sunburned. This I didn't add to my SRS because there's no way I will ever read a text and not know it. Same with 樹齢.

I used to do this, but I was struggling horribly to remember (coincidentally) 日焼け in conversation the other week. Words like this with easy to understand kanji deceivingly lead me to 'know it when you see it' syndrome.

You shouldn't ever expect words to enter active memory just from having them in an SRS, so adding it shouldn't make a difference, exposure and usage is what gives it to you in conversations. An SRS should mainly be used for the "know it when you see it" syndrome since that's the usefulness of it, because you will understand it in books and other media which is what gives you the actual exposure.

I have tons of words in my SRS which I can't use fluidly in a conversation just like that, because I've barely been exposed to them. If, however, said word comes up in a conversation, I can immediately start using it because I know it. And after that conversation, it will probably be stuck.

I've been using production cards as well. They're far from ideal, but I've found that it's been speeding up the process, especially since I don't have time to get the sort of exposure for it to happen 'organically'. I must have first seen 日焼け almost two years ago, so, at least in my case, it's not something I can risk.

Tobberoth Wrote:You shouldn't ever expect words to enter active memory just from having them in an SRS, so adding it shouldn't make a difference, exposure and usage is what gives it to you in conversations. An SRS should mainly be used for the "know it when you see it" syndrome since that's the usefulness of it, because you will understand it in books and other media which is what gives you the actual exposure.

I have tons of words in my SRS which I can't use fluidly in a conversation just like that, because I've barely been exposed to them. If, however, said word comes up in a conversation, I can immediately start using it because I know it. And after that conversation, it will probably be stuck.

Do you find the same is true with grammar? I think it was you that was recommending Kanzen Master grammar books for JLPT, so I was wondering how it turned out long term.

Up until very recently I was never planning on taking JLPT1, but now I'm thinking I should. I have Kanzen Master 1 grammar sitting untouched on my floor, but it seems kind of weird studying grammar I've not seen enough to understand deeply (or in some cases not at all). Of course it wouldn't be just for JLPT, so does it help when seeing that grammar in the wild?

I'm certainly guilty of spending too much time on my cards. I like having them formatted in certain way and I just waste time doing that.

I like sentences better than isolated words and I remember cards with sentences better. So sentences are useful but sometimes I get carried away because I absolutely want a sentence and lose time trying to find a good one.

No audio for me. I don't want any in my main deck, that's just annoying. I have experimented with a listening only deck but I didn't find it particularly useful.

Pictures. Only once in a while. Even if it's irrelevant, it can break the monotony of reviews to suddenly have a card with a picture. But not all the time or that wouldn't work (maybe 1 in 50). They are also very useful for things that exist only in Japan or plants (I'm terrible at knowing what even very common plants look like so a translation isn't good enough for me).

Pictures are good for animals, plants, or other things that are very hard to describe with words. You don't need a picture for every card though (one picture per kanji thread I'm looking at you).

Javizy Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:

Javizy Wrote:I used to do this, but I was struggling horribly to remember (coincidentally) 日焼け in conversation the other week. Words like this with easy to understand kanji deceivingly lead me to 'know it when you see it' syndrome.

You shouldn't ever expect words to enter active memory just from having them in an SRS, so adding it shouldn't make a difference, exposure and usage is what gives it to you in conversations. An SRS should mainly be used for the "know it when you see it" syndrome since that's the usefulness of it, because you will understand it in books and other media which is what gives you the actual exposure.

I have tons of words in my SRS which I can't use fluidly in a conversation just like that, because I've barely been exposed to them. If, however, said word comes up in a conversation, I can immediately start using it because I know it. And after that conversation, it will probably be stuck.

I've been using production cards as well. They're far from ideal, but I've found that it's been speeding up the process, especially since I don't have time to get the sort of exposure for it to happen 'organically'. I must have first seen 日焼け almost two years ago, so, at least in my case, it's not something I can risk.

If you're exposed to 日焼け so seldom that you in 2 years time still can't use it in conversation, that just means you don't need to know it in conversation. Think about it. Did you ever learn "sunburned" in English in an SRS? Did you do production cards for it? No! I sure didn't in Swedish and I sure didn't in English. Instead of thinking "But it shouldn't take 2 years! I don't have that much time!" you should instead think "Interesting, it takes more than 2 years, I guess it's pretty useless to know".

The good thing about learning from exposure into active memory is that it's organic like you said, and therefore automatically the most effective. You're exposed to what you need since what you decide to expose yourself to is what decides your needs.

Personally, I don't recommend production cards to speed-up the uptaking into active memory. This is for several reasons, but one being that it's hard to make such production cards. How do you do them? Cloze deletion on a sentence? Going from tons of English synonyms? No matter how you're doing it, there's probably a backside to it, other than it taking a lot of reviewing time.

I don't do production cards because it isn't possible to do them once you have a somewhat large vocabulary. Given an English prompt you can generally come up with 10+ synonyms and not know which one it wants. Also, they take a long time to do compared to recognition, and I'd rather get my reviews done and then study new material / read.

Jarvik7 Wrote:I don't do production cards because it isn't possible to do them once you have a somewhat large vocabulary. Given an English prompt you can generally come up with 10+ synonyms and not know which one it wants. Also, they take a long time to do compared to recognition, and I'd rather get my reviews done and then study new material / read.

Same here. I do still have production cards though, just a few but still. But that's kana to kanji, not english to japanese.

That's strange... I learned 日焼け my first month or so in Japan (and first month with the language). I've found it comes up a lot in conversation with Japanese ladies as they all seem to be obsessed with avoiding it. But maybe it's also because I make fun of their parasols and driving gloves a lot...

Is production cards = cards due for review?

Yeah, 日焼け was a word I heard all the time. I went to the beach and stuff like that though

Still, I think some of you guys are underestimating some of the random words you see once in years that pop up all the time because so many of those kinds of words just exist.

Sure, you can try to note them down, but if you take your time, writing the sentences and getting them in anki and all, then good luck actually remembering the story you read...

I've also tried the rikai-chan import to anki method which is awesome, it's just that you need to choose the best-suited word to remember it by which can take time plus sorting through them all

Tobberoth Wrote:If you're exposed to 日焼け so seldom that you in 2 years time still can't use it in conversation, that just means you don't need to know it in conversation. Think about it. Did you ever learn "sunburned" in English in an SRS? Did you do production cards for it? No! I sure didn't in Swedish and I sure didn't in English. Instead of thinking "But it shouldn't take 2 years! I don't have that much time!" you should instead think "Interesting, it takes more than 2 years, I guess it's pretty useless to know".

The good thing about learning from exposure into active memory is that it's organic like you said, and therefore automatically the most effective. You're exposed to what you need since what you decide to expose yourself to is what decides your needs.

Personally, I don't recommend production cards to speed-up the uptaking into active memory. This is for several reasons, but one being that it's hard to make such production cards. How do you do them? Cloze deletion on a sentence? Going from tons of English synonyms? No matter how you're doing it, there's probably a backside to it, other than it taking a lot of reviewing time.

I agree that production cards aren't a great idea. I've been pondering about whether or not to continue them ever since I started this deck. I was just getting so frustrated with not being able to recall words that I "know". I really would like the extra free time to read though...

Assuming I scrapped the production, what single format do people think works best? At the moment, I review the word in isolation, which forces me to remember what it means and how to use it myself, rather than essentially telling me. I include the sentence(s) and J-J definition on the answer side.

I was using a deck with sentence questions at one point, but I find that they take away most of the recall process, since the sentence itself ends up becoming a (big) hint for what the word means. I found myself using the sentences as a crutch, which led to difficulty understanding the words in other contexts. There's also the issue of words like 控える and はめる - do you make 10 cards to cover all of the horribly contrasting meanings of nightmare words like this?

I'd say instead of using a txt file, if you have a mac you can use a program called "Genius" which will test you to a certain degree on vocab and other stuff if you wish. That way, you can quickly put them in there when you come across them, and when you get to 20 or 30 or something, you can review them until they are "green" then delete them all. Rinse and repeat.

This is what I'll be doing while reading from now on. I was trying to just look them up and move on, but I find I forget them 2 days later. But I've used Genius for other things to great success.