xanan66 Wrote:How do you guys learn through anki? just plow through it and hope some stick?

THe first 30 or 40 was easy, but now when I review like 20 and get 10 new that I don't know at all. How do I help to make them stick? review over and over or maybe start to write them down? any tip?

Are you talking about core vocab or kanji?

For kanji, visualize the character with a story (find them through this site or get the book). write it out, then review it once or twice throughout the day.

For vocab
Learn at an easy pace.. it gets easier.
Learning directly through vocab lists is kinda difficult if you don't listen to a lot of japanese.
If you have trouble remembering some vocab words, write them down and review the cards you have difficulty with. Usually, I only have to review the words I learn out of context and if I've never seen them before.

It's hard at first, but keep listening/reading japanese and the words become easier to remember.

xanan66 Wrote:How do you guys learn through anki? just plow through it and hope some stick?

That's what I did initially, but there are better ways. Some people learn them outside of anki (on paper!), or playing with anki's spacing and repetition settings to create something like a "learning mode".

If you're feeling adventurous, then by far the easiest solution is to try moving over to Anki2. It's not officially released yet, but it will be Real Soon Now™. It has a new learning mode, which should solve your problem. I've been using that for all my new vocab for over a month now, and I have to say, it's brilliant! I can't recommend it enough.

What are your learning steps, just out of curiosity?

The defaults, so 1 and 10 minute steps. I haven't felt a need to change them. Looking at the amount of time I've spent re-learning cards, I can't say I have much to gain from playing with those intervals.

Edit: on another note, those "if you studied every day" stats have convinced me to enjoy my weekends more and save those extra few cards for those exciting workdays. What a great feature!

Aspiring Wrote:

xanan66 Wrote:How do you guys learn through anki? just plow through it and hope some stick?

THe first 30 or 40 was easy, but now when I review like 20 and get 10 new that I don't know at all. How do I help to make them stick? review over and over or maybe start to write them down? any tip?

Are you talking about core vocab or kanji?

For kanji, visualize the character with a story (find them through this site or get the book). write it out, then review it once or twice throughout the day.

For vocab
Learn at an easy pace.. it gets easier.
Learning directly through vocab lists is kinda difficult if you don't listen to a lot of japanese.
If you have trouble remembering some vocab words, write them down and review the cards you have difficulty with. Usually, I only have to review the words I learn out of context and if I've never seen them before.

It's hard at first, but keep listening/reading japanese and the words become easier to remember.

Yeah I ment vocab, Yeah I did so now, wrote down the new ones on paper, and then reviewed now I know all the cards I didn't know so writing them down really helps (for me)
THx!

netsplitter Wrote:

xanan66 Wrote:How do you guys learn through anki? just plow through it and hope some stick?

That's what I did initially, but there are better ways. Some people learn them outside of anki (on paper!), or playing with anki's spacing and repetition settings to create something like a "learning mode".

If you're feeling adventurous, then by far the easiest solution is to try moving over to Anki2. It's not officially released yet, but it will be Real Soon Now™. It has a new learning mode, which should solve your problem. I've been using that for all my new vocab for over a month now, and I have to say, it's brilliant! I can't recommend it enough.

well beta is closed, any idea of when it's released?

I forgot that it's probably not trivial to set up, sorry. It's not exactly closed, but you'll have to download the right libraries and run one tool to set it up. It's likely much more work on Windows as well, if you're using that.

I don't know when it will be released, but probably not this month.

I don't remember it as being a lot of work setting up Anki2, but you do have to spend some time playing around with it. Maybe you should back up your decks from the current version so that going back won't be a problem if you have to.

You dowload the betas from here. http://ankisrs.net/download/mirror/beta/ (exe file for windows of course)

General information http://ankisrs.net/docs/dev/changes.html...in_beta_18

Ah, I didn't know there were builds available, I was just grabbing the source. Thanks for the heads-up.

thx!

I just got upp so gonna re-read the text when I get back from work, thx for sharing

When you learn new words, do you read the sentences or just listen and remember the single word?

Hyperborea Wrote:What I've been doing with the vocab to help make it stick is both a pre-view of the vocab and a review of the "leeches". For the preview, I take however many vocab I will be adding, let's say 25 new words, and I pull them out to a new deck. To pull them out give the new vocab cards a tag, say "25", and then export by tag to a new deck. Use that new deck to pre-view the new vocab words. Repeat the deck until you have got every word correct. Now, turn on the new vocab in the main deck by unsuspending them and removing the "25" tag. Delete the temporary 25 deck.

This is a lot easier with Anki 2, BTW. Anki 2 lets you create "cram" (フィルター/詰め込み) decks that, when activated, do this automatically - i.e., pull these cards out of the main deck and into your temporary study deck. You can elect to have your work with these cards count toward the cards' progress in your main deck, or instruct Anki 2 to discard this data once you're finished with the cram deck.

This is a great technique, btw. I tag all of my vocab pulled from native material so that I can periodically pull all of the vocab for a given book/ドラマ/アニメ into a cram deck for selective study.

xanan66 Wrote:How do you guys learn through anki? just plow through it and hope some stick?

THe first 30 or 40 was easy, but now when I review like 20 and get 10 new that I don't know at all. How do I help to make them stick? review over and over or maybe start to write them down? any tip?

This worked for me: Write down the word in kanji then in kana. Then write out the sentence in kanji. During this time, you're mentally connecting the meaning. In addition, add notes to Anki if needed to clarify the specific answer you want. Now, fail the card so it shows up again in 10 minutes (with Anki 2.0 just pass it).

All in all, you could be spending two to five minutes per NEW word. Some will be faster than others as time goes on due to kanji making it a no brainer or it's a combo word. In addition, you get writing practice which forces you to slow down.

Great to see so many reply with tips

I can't w8 to use anki 2 when it gets out now after the good words about it


Gonna start an 20 week course step 1 japanese next week, we'll be using "genki intergreated course in elementary japanese" second edition, got both the text and workbook

For anki I sorted the core2k/6k by Opt-voc-index which should sort it in the order that it is due. But anki fails in sorting it like that because it often skips numbers.

Is this my error or is this error on part of anki?

tabs256 Wrote:For anki I sorted the core2k/6k by Opt-voc-index which should sort it in the order that it is due. But anki fails in sorting it like that because it often skips numbers.

Is this my error or is this error on part of anki?

Can you be more specific about this? I'm having no issues.

Rather than letting Anki be the master who forcefeeds you vocabulary (core). I would add sentences from that Genki book you got. Be aware that the first chapters do not have kanji at all, and the rest of the book seems to avoid using a few kanji.

Also, Core seems to be J->E all the way through 6000 cards. Even "similar" languages like English and Norwegian has many words that cannot be translated from one of them to the other without causing confusion.

Stian Wrote:Rather than letting Anki be the master who forcefeeds you vocabulary (core).

Spoonfeed me vocab, please! You're not proposing I put effort into this, are you?

Stian Wrote:Core seems to be J->E all the way through 6000 cards. Even "similar" languages like English and Norwegian has many words that cannot be translated from one of them to the other without causing confusion.

I agree with this now. Earlier in the thread I spoke highly of E->J, and it was a good exercise for the first 2K, but I've learned it quickly becomes a perilous course around that point.

netsplitter Wrote:

Stian Wrote:Core seems to be J->E all the way through 6000 cards. Even "similar" languages like English and Norwegian has many words that cannot be translated from one of them to the other without causing confusion.

I agree with this now. Earlier in the thread I spoke highly of E->J, and it was a good exercise for the first 2K, but I've learned it quickly becomes a perilous course around that point.

The E->J that I've set the decks up as a default is more of a making the best out of a bad situation. There is another option, but it requires work on the student's end.

1. Using Google or Flickr, find a photo or photos that points out the meaning of the word being tested in Japanese
1a. Search using the Japanese vocabulary word and if that doesn't help, then use the English translated word to search for a picture.
2. Using MS Paint or some other graphic editor, circle or highlight parts of that picture(s) to further point out the meaning you're wanting to get across in Japanese.
3. Add that photo to the image field in your Anki deck.
4. Add notes to your caution field to further clarify (in Japanese preferably) what type of answer your looking for.
5. Change the deck so it just shows images and warnings.

Now, this is perfect for nouns, most adjectives and verbs. Abstract thoughts will be harder to get across in pictures so you may have to lean more on the caution. As a last ditch effort, you can do E->J.

Here's the thing, no one can do this for you. Aside from obvious words, a picture is not going to convey the same meaning to every person. In addition, this will add a lot more time to initial studying. Now, this is probably time well spent as the impact will be great. You're testing (reviewing) your knowledge entirely in Japanese if you pull it off. That's not translation, that's direct communication (thought from photo to answer in Japanese).

Also, the photos in Core 2k are based on the sentences, not the keyword. Don't depend on them to do this for the most part.

There's a point of diminishing returns with all this work. You may as well just be reading/watching/listening to real Japanese at that point. I understand that production is very different, but I'm happy to save that for later.

I've ditched quality for quantity; I'm approaching vocab with a breadth-first exposure model. That is, I much prefer having a weak exposure to many words stored somewhere in my brain (along with their readings) than a solid understanding of fewer words. At least that way I can probably make some educated guess of the meanings of words in the wild (from context), rather than give up because I've never even seen most of the words (which I often do).

For vocab what are the differences between kana - > kanji (the old deck you put up for this guide), and english - > kanji (the new deck you put up)?

Stian Wrote:tabs256 wrote:

For anki I sorted the core2k/6k by Opt-voc-index which should sort it in the order that it is due. But anki fails in sorting it like that because it often skips numbers.

Is this my error or is this error on part of anki?

Can you be more specific about this? I'm having no issues.

I figured a way to work around this. Thanks for trying to help though.

For the core2k6k deck, are we supposed to learn the vocab and sentences right off anki with no additional resources? I am asking this because I usually study the kanji off RTK before going on with anki.

I am completely illiterate at this point so J->J is definitely not an option. I will look into it as I become more proficient though.

Quote:For the core2k6k deck, are we supposed to learn the vocab and sentences right off anki with no additional resources? I am asking this because I usually study the kanji off RTK before going on with anki.

It should be doable, even more-so now with Anki 2 around the corner. The words will stick eventually.

Does anybody have a template for Anki 2 similar to the one netsplitter posted on page 13 of this post? Copy and pasting his template as is does not work, and i don't how to format it between the three boxes that Anki 2 uses.

I've since stopped doing the cloze deletions, so now my deck look like this in Anki 2. It's a little boring without pictures though. I'll put up the template for anyone who wants it, maybe tomorrow if I have time.

I don't think I can get the cloze templates to look like the way they did in the original deck. I was using javascript to inline the English part, and Anki 2 has javascript disabled (I don't know if it's permanent, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is).

I might try out a few things to see what I can do, but don't count on it.