I'm increasing my vocabulary using nukemarine's Core 6000 + image + audio. However, I'm having trouble memorizing them.

By default, the question card shows the English translation, an image, and clozed sentences. The answer card shows the Kanji and sentence translation and audio. I can see going from English to Kanji as being effective for Heisig, but it doesn't seem like it would work for the Core.

I changed the Question card to a Kanji in big font, nothing else, no readings, no translations, no sentences, no audio, nothing. I believe that seeing the sentence, even untranslated as cheating, giving me hints of what the Kanji is, when I should be memorizing Kanji by itself, with no help from context.

The Answer card, contains everything else: readings, translation, sentence plus translation, image and audio.

I'm still having trouble memorizing though. Katakana words are no problem, hiragana words are mainly no problem, verbs even multi-Kanji ones are reasonable. My only problem seems to be Kanji words consisting of two Kanji or more.

Any advice?

At the moment, I have close to 1000 reviews that need to be done because I flew through the first 1000 or so.

Some Anki 2 templates for your enjoyment.

It looks like javascript has been re-enabled in the recent builds, so I can inline the English in the E->J cards again. Anyway, for those interested, have a look here. I've aimed for compactness this time and just shoved everything in a box in the middle. (imgur likes compress my images even more. Ugh)

The templates:
1 - Stylesheet to put in the middle "Styling" box (shared for both templates).
2 - Reading - Front
3 - Reading - Back
4 - English Translate - Front
5 - English Translate - Back

You will also need to modify the image field. In the browser, pick the deck and go to Edit --> Find and Replace. Do this:
Find: <img src="(.*)" />
Replace with: \1
In: Sentence-Image
...and tick both boxes.

You'll notice that the front and back templates are identical, save for a CSS class in the topmost element. The way I've done it is a little unusual since the answer part is also produced in the question but simply hidden. This stops it from jumping around the screen since it's vertically centered and the center of the box changes when you add stuff to it.

The stylesheet is commented in the hope that it is easy to modify. As before, you need to change the font (in various places in the stylesheet) to one of your choosing or download VL PGothic, which is what I use. The templates also work on AnkiDroid (and I would image iOS as well, but I haven't such a device to try it on).

qwertyytrewq Wrote:I'm still having trouble memorizing though.

Are you sure your memorizing goal isn't too strict? Do you need to be able to produce a close English equivalent from the kanji?

Quote:I believe that seeing the sentence, even untranslated as cheating, giving me hints of what the Kanji is, when I should be memorizing Kanji by itself, with no help from context.

Perhaps this is misguided. I used to have the same problem with reading sentences, where I was convinced that "the sentence gives the meaning of the word away". But now that I'm reading more native material, I'm finding that it wasn't as bad as I thought. I really do pick up on those words, even if occasionally with a little extra push from a dictionary. If you were able to understand the word from the sentence, then it's not really cheating as much as it was your own brain extrapolating the meaning. While it might be easier, it's still a mental exercise focused on that word, which certainly does help you when you see it again elsewhere (as I've since discovered).

Good job on the first 1000! The difficulty picks up after 1950

Hello
First of all,i'd like to thank nukemarine for this wonderful guide!
I don't know if this is the right place of the forum to ask my question but i did not want to start a new thread so here it is.
I started using kanji damage (i used rtk up to about 600.Was no good for me.) with its deck in anki.Are there any decks with sentences following the kanji damage order?
Thanks in advance!

Hey netsplitter, I missed your post.

netsplitter Wrote:Are you sure your memorizing goal isn't too strict? Do you need to be able to produce a close English equivalent from the kanji?

Since my last post, things have changed a bit. I have now completed 2000 of the 6000 Core cards using the Kanji (front) and everything else (back) method. This is my 25th day so about 80 new cards a day. My memorization goal is quite strict: I need to memorize both the reading and the English meaning (this includes English translations of Katakana words where the Japanese meaning of the English Katakana is different from the English meaning, such as "mansion"). My reviews at the moment vary from 500 to 1000 cards (which I'm unable to cut down), but that's the cost of focusing on new cards, which is my priority. Having said that, I am pretty happy with my progress so far and I memorize most things.

This wasn't the case under Nukemarine's default card layout: English to Kanji/Readings. That's what I had trouble with.

I still do English to Kanji though: Heisig's 2200 (80% mature, between 50-100 reviews a day) + physical writing. Again, strict: If I miss even 1 stroke, the card goes straight to the "Soon" pile. That doesn't happen often but I do forget a bit of the older ones.

Quote:Perhaps this is misguided. I used to have the same problem with reading sentences, where I was convinced that "the sentence gives the meaning of the word away". But now that I'm reading more native material, I'm finding that it wasn't as bad as I thought. I really do pick up on those words, even if occasionally with a little extra push from a dictionary. If you were able to understand the word from the sentence, then it's not really cheating as much as it was your own brain extrapolating the meaning. While it might be easier, it's still a mental exercise focused on that word, which certainly does help you when you see it again elsewhere (as I've since discovered).

I'll see how I go so far, but if what you say is true (it gets hard after 2000), I'll add the Japanese example sentences as a training wheel.

So far, the only trouble I've had is the management/politics/business-related vocabulary.

Quote:Good job on the first 1000! The difficulty picks up after 1950

I will ganbaru as much as I can. Stats so far: Seen: 2030, Unseen: 3969

That's very good progress. Perhaps for your own sanity you should consider yielding some of that anki time for something more entertaining. (Not to sound like that jealous guy who dreams of being Anki World Champion 2012). I'm quick to drop or put on hold anki decks once I've fixated on a favourite (that would be the Core6K deck).

I've been trying to do 33 new cards a day to get that nice and well-rounded 1000 per month, but I find myself doing no anki reviews on the weekend at all, instead opting to read some manga. I might have to step up my game now since you're making me feel sucky.

I did E->J up until around 2000, so it's likely my perceived difficulty was only due to the synonyms that started showing up. The difficulty eases off fairly quickly. They get easier as you learn more since there'll be fewer surprises and a lot of the readings in compounds won't be new to you.

Good luck! I have 1946 left. You'll be done before me if you can keep up your pace!

netsplitter Wrote:That's very good progress. Perhaps for your own sanity you should consider yielding some of that anki time for something more entertaining. (Not to sound like that jealous guy who dreams of being Anki World Champion 2012). I'm quick to drop or put on hold anki decks once I've fixated on a favourite (that would be the Core6K deck).

Thanks. I prefer to build up my vocabulary beforehand though. More work done now means less looking up the dictionary later when I read native material.

netsplitter Wrote:I've been trying to do 33 new cards a day to get that nice and well-rounded 1000 per month, but I find myself doing no anki reviews on the weekend at all, instead opting to read some manga. I might have to step up my game now since you're making me feel sucky.

Haha, maybe we can have a race! (though you had a head start) I did more today: Unseen: 3814 Seen: 2184

Having said that, you're probably using Anki as it was intended: having a consistent manageable number of new cards a day, and I assume, keeping up on your reviews and spreading the future reviews out. I'm impatient though which is why I'm rushing through the new cards and have a high amount of reviews (1000-1200 at the moment). I think they're still both valid strategies but time will tell whether my lack of reviews will hurt my long term memory.

netsplitter Wrote:I did E->J up until around 2000, so it's likely my perceived difficulty was only due to the synonyms that started showing up. The difficulty eases off fairly quickly. They get easier as you learn more since there'll be fewer surprises and a lot of the readings in compounds won't be new to you.

So you're using nukemarine's Core deck and change it to J->E right? Personally, E->J isn't too useful to me which is why I changed it to J->E because I'll be doing more reading than anything else in Japanese. I guess that E->J is more useful for people who want to quickly form and produce sentences to communicate with Japanese people and maybe for those who want to write paragraphs in Japanese.

netsplitter Wrote:Good luck! I have 1946 left. You'll be done before me if you can keep up your pace!

With about 4000 left, If I do 50 or 100 a day, then I'll be finished in 40 to 80 days. I'll see you there!

This forum, and this thread specifically, contains a lot of useful information. Sometimes though, newbies may bump into terms, names etc. that are not completely clear at first sight. Could anyone help me out and explain what is meant by
"Kanzen Master Two - 100 sentences (km thread link)"?

nilfisq Wrote:This forum, and this thread specifically, contains a lot of useful information. Sometimes though, newbies may bump into terms, names etc. that are not completely clear at first sight. Could anyone help me out and explain what is meant by
"Kanzen Master Two - 100 sentences (km thread link)"?

"Kanzen Master" (完全マスター) is a set of study books for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (日本語能力試験). There's a s/s of the sentences culled from the books floating around, but it's not publicly available b/c it's copyrighted material. Hence the lack of an actual link.

@ gaiaslastlaugh: thanks a lot!

qwertyytrewq Wrote:Haha, maybe we can have a race!

Sure, although my head start is a little unfair. (*cough* it doesn't count until your reviews reach 0)

qwertyytrewq Wrote:I'm impatient though which is why I'm rushing through the new cards and have a high amount of reviews (1000-1200 at the moment). I think they're still both valid strategies but time will tell whether my lack of reviews will hurt my long term memory.

Ah, I see what you're doing now. That's an interesting approach. Hopefully it works out for you. This is where I would recommend using the sentences because then you get to practice words you're still learning as they appear in the sentences of other cards. In fact, what I do now when a new card appears that contains additional unknown vocab in its sentence is I mark the card and move on. When I get home, I find marked cards, then unsuspend cards that contain that additional unknown word (or the kanji that make up that word if it's difficult). So I'm actually reviewing a lot of vocab out of order just to take advantage of having a sentence or two that uses a new word while I'm still learning it as the keyword in another card. It's a synergistic effect.

I've also found a good way to make my weekends more productive. Thanks to the brilliance of Anki 2, I created a sub-deck that contains all the katakana words. I can now avoid doing those on weekdays and save them for the weekend. I figured since a lot of them are nearly English equivalents, I can still make easy progress without the stress of actually thinking.

Progress ahoy!

netsplitter Wrote:Ah, I see what you're doing now. That's an interesting approach. Hopefully it works out for you. This is where I would recommend using the sentences because then you get to practice words you're still learning as they appear in the sentences of other cards.

Actually, I got an idea from someone else in this forum so I changed my card layout: On the front of the card, I have the Kanji in big font, and at the bottom of the card, way at the bottom, I have the untranslated sentence.

The catch is: the sentence doesn't show up unless I flick the screen (I'm using Ankidroid). It's like Kanji and furigana, you can't help moving your eyes and "cheat".

Also, I've noticed that for me, vocabulary falls mainly into two categories:

1) Ones that are easy to remember the first time you see it, or
2) Ones that are still forgettable, even if you see it 5 times.

So I don't think my approach (rushing through new cards) is without merit.

netsplitter Wrote:I've also found a good way to make my weekends more productive. Thanks to the brilliance of Anki 2, I created a sub-deck that contains all the katakana words. I can now avoid doing those on weekdays and save them for the weekend. I figured since a lot of them are nearly English equivalents, I can still make easy progress without the stress of actually thinking.

Yeah, katakana vocabulary with close English equivalents is an easy "Very Easy", they're a god-send.

I'm still using Anki 1. I'll have to download Anki 2 and see what the fuss is about. What new things did you like about it? Hopefully it's compatible with Ankidroid.

Edit: Not quite there yet, I'll hold off on Anki 2 for now.

netsplitter Wrote:Progress ahoy!

Seen: 2347
Unseen: 3652

I do all my reviews on AnkiDroid. There are betas for AnkiDroid 2 which are compatible with Anki 2.

I love the new learning mode more than anything else. The way it re-schedules failed cards seems to be a big improvement if my stats are anything to go by. Sub-decks are handy. It's also much faster than previous versions (especially for mobile devices). There are many downsides though. I think it's much too complex now and the desktop client's UI is a disaster, which I'm sure will drive many people away. Reading the manual will help you a lot, but I'm sure most people will give up before they even try. Oh well.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:Actually, I got an idea from someone else in this forum so I changed my card layout: On the front of the card, I have the Kanji in big font, and at the bottom of the card, way at the bottom, I have the untranslated sentence.

The catch is: the sentence doesn't show up unless I flick the screen (I'm using Ankidroid). It's like Kanji and furigana, you can't help moving your eyes and "cheat".

How do you make use of the sentence? For example, do you check it if you couldn't guess the Kanji meaning? Or you see the Kanji then the sentence then attempt to answer? Thanks in advance!

netsplitter Wrote:I do all my reviews on AnkiDroid. There are betas for AnkiDroid 2 which are compatible with Anki 2.

I love the new learning mode more than anything else. The way it re-schedules failed cards seems to be a big improvement if my stats are anything to go by. Sub-decks are handy. It's also much faster than previous versions (especially for mobile devices). There are many downsides though. I think it's much too complex now and the desktop client's UI is a disaster, which I'm sure will drive many people away. Reading the manual will help you a lot, but I'm sure most people will give up before they even try. Oh well.

I've been avoiding Anki 2 and Ankidroid 2 until now, but your post encouraged me to try it, thanks!

undead_saif Wrote:I've been avoiding Anki 2 and Ankidroid 2 until now, but your post encouraged me to try it, thanks!

Hope you enjoy it. Sub-decks and learning sets are very cool new features.

I've been using iKnow! instead of the core deck for core 6000. iKnow! is basically production based/close deletion by default. I'm near the end (at 5300 words now) and producing words from the english/close deletion has gotten real tough. I believe in production because I think that is the way to go to fully memorize the words but I understand why people switch to recognition mode. I'll guess I'll try to perservere and finish it up. When I go to Core 10000, I may rethink my methodology.

undead_saif Wrote:How do you make use of the sentence? For example, do you check it if you couldn't guess the Kanji meaning? Or you see the Kanji then the sentence then attempt to answer? Thanks in advance!

Well, before even reading sentences, I assume you have studied at least basic grammar so you know what Japanese sentences are like.

You might be different but my way of thinking is that if you want to really be good at reading Japanese, you have to understand Kanji vocabulary and other vocabulary by itself, and not just within a sentence. If you read manga or watch anime, characters don't always use fully fleshed out sentences. Sometimes they have very short and abrupt speech, so you don't get the benefit of sentences there.

Firstly, if you're looking at a new vocabulary, look at the vocabulary, the meaning, the reading and the translated English sentence. The sentence is helpful for seeing what the vocabulary looks like when used in a sentence and where. Press "Soon/Again".

The second time it pops up, what I do is look at the vocabulary. Do I know the meaning? And do I know the reading? If yes, good.

If I fail to do both, I'll scroll down to the Japanese sentence. Try to read the untranslated sentence. Does the sentence give any hints to what the meaning is? What about the reading? Here's a very simple hypothetical example.

Let's say the word you don't understand is: 真っ黒

Let's say you know what 真っ is because you've seen it several times. Since you've seen it several times, you know the reading: まっ. Since you know 真っ, it means that the second kanji is a color. But you don't know which color. It could be blue, red, black or white.

So you check the example sentence:空は真っ黒になったら、夕飯を食べました。

The first thing you see is: 空は真っ黒になったら、

You know that 空 is sky. There are blue skies, red skies, and black skies, but I've never heard of white ones (usually). The sky might be covered white with clouds, but it's the clouds that are white, not the sky. Anyway, your multiple choice question goes from 4 to 3.

Then you see 夕飯を食べました。

You know that 夕飯 means dinner. I don't know about you, but I usually eat dinner at night. What color is the sky at night? Your multiple choice question now goes from 3 to 1: black.

That is what I mean when I say that the sentence gives you hints on what the vocabulary you are stuck on, is. Of course, this is the hypothetical best case scenario I made up for the purpose of explaining what I mean. I'm sure my sentence is grammatically incorrect somehow.

So basically, the example sentence is a double-edged sword. It helps you to understand the Kanji when used in context, but if you need the sentence to understand the meaning of the Kanji, then you haven't really memorized it, in my opinion.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:If I fail to do both, I'll scroll down to the Japanese sentence. Try to read the untranslated sentence. Does the sentence give any hints to what the meaning is? What about the reading?...

Then what? If the sentence gives away the meaning or reading you failed to recall, what would you mark the card with? Hard (assuming later after first review)?

qwertyytrewq Wrote:So basically, the example sentence is a double-edged sword. It helps you to understand the Kanji when used in context, but if you need the sentence to understand the meaning of the Kanji, then you haven't really memorized it, in my opinion.

I somewhat agree with that, that's why I'm interested in understanding the layout you're using!

undead_saif Wrote:Then what? If the sentence gives away the meaning or reading you failed to recall, what would you mark the card with? Hard (assuming later after first review)?

That's up to you decide because you decide on your own strictness on whether you got the Kanji or not and also the options you set up in your Anki, for example, the amount of Fail/Soon cards. Also Anki2 has some changes so things might be different there too.

If you completely fail a card the second time you see it, then study the Answer card in detail, press Soon/Fail, and try again the next time it pops up (the same day or the next day).

qwertyytrewq Wrote:I somewhat agree with that, that's why I'm interested in understanding the layout you're using!

Well, I'm pretty strict so the question side only has the vocabulary (big font) with the untranslated example sentence without furigana (small font) as backup/immersion purposes.

The answer card basically has everything complete and translated with readings including audio.

As I said in a previous post in this thread, if anyone has better ideas for card layouts, I'm all ears.

Thanks for the comprehensive replies! That definitely makes sense, I'll make sure I try that layout soon!

I'm wondering if anyone has the original Core2K6K decks that they can send to me? I only have the first 2000 or so, from beginner to lower intermediate. I don't have any of the remaining upper intermediate decks.

I believe these were the original decks that were available when you clicked on Download in the Anki window and searched for "Core2K6K" and they were divided into titles such as "Beginner," "Basic," "Lower Intermediate 1," "Lower Intermediate 2," and so on. But they were recently removed from GoogleDocs. I hope someone knows which ones I am referring to.

The ones that are currently there are not the same ones. I downloaded these ones and tried to import them into my main Core deck but the formating is completely different and it will change the template.

It would be great if someone could help me, or inform me as to how to correctly import different models without altering the original template.

Thank you

I think I know exactly what you are talking about. I found this in Anki Shared deck. Did they have these descriptions:

Quote:Title: Japanese Core 2000 Step 01 Listening Sentence Vocab + Images
Tags: Smart.fm Japanese Audio Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana jpg
...
Here’s the first Step of our Japanese Core 200 Series
...
Covers items ranked #1-200 (Beginner Level)

All the way to

Quote:Title: Japanese Core 2000 Step 10 Listening Sentence Vocab + Images
Tags: Smart.fm Japanese Audio Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana jpg
...
Congratulations, you’ve reached the last step!
...
Covers items ranked #1800-2000 (Lower Intermediate Level)

If this was the correct sequence of Anki decks, then you can easily find the 6k version by searching "Japanese Core 6000".

anonymosse Wrote:The ones that are currently there are not the same ones. I downloaded these ones and tried to import them into my main Core deck but the formating is completely different and it will change the template.

The current core2k/6k spreadsheet is optimized and the format is completely different from other core decks I've seen. It has clozed delete and has KO index so you can review in that order if you wanted to.

I also found old spreadsheets for Core 2k and Core 6k. Hope this helps!

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=2326&page=1

I have the ones you're talking about but I'm not home yet I'll send them later. Pm an email address and pm me again tomorrow if I forget to send them tonight. I'm pretty busy today. Err I have a compiled version of them already so I don't know if that conflicts but I'll give you what I can.

RawrPk Wrote:I think I know exactly what you are talking about. I found this in Anki Shared deck. Did they have these descriptions:

If this was the correct sequence of Anki decks, then you can easily find the 6k version by searching "Japanese Core 6000".

anonymosse Wrote:The ones that are currently there are not the same ones. I downloaded these ones and tried to import them into my main Core deck but the formating is completely different and it will change the template.

The current core2k/6k spreadsheet is optimized and the format is completely different from other core decks I've seen. It has clozed delete and has KO index so you can review in that order if you wanted to.

I also found old spreadsheets for Core 2k and Core 6k. Hope this helps!

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=2326&page=1

I know my descriptions are quite ambigious but bear with me.

Hmmm. On the shared Anki Decks, I don't believe those are the ones that I am looking for. These ones have "Listening sentences vocab + images." The ones I am thinking of, did not have images or audio. They did have clozed sentences though. If I recall correctly, they were more or less divided into sections almost exactly as what NukeMarine has on the very first page of this thread. I believe they were divided into 500 each, and in total, they came to 6000 facts. I know they were taken off quite recently because Googledocs changed their copyright policy.

RawrPk, thanks for your post. I'll have to look more into that link you provided to see if it has the ones I'm looking for.

The only reason I'm looking for these certain decks is because when I tried to import those other shared Core decks into my main Core deck, my entire deck changed models. I don't know how to merge templates into one, and it was too much of a pain to manually fix each card.

NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:I have the ones you're talking about but I'm not home yet I'll send them later. Pm an email address and pm me again tomorrow if I forget to send them tonight. I'm pretty busy today. Err I have a compiled version of them already so I don't know if that conflicts but I'll give you what I can.

NoSleepTilFluent, thanks for your help. These are the decks I was looking for.

Thanks for this post Nukemarine. The deck for the grammar guide is so damn useful. Those numbers/days at the start of optimized core are damn annoying though when you just finished RTK, so I just suspended them, I can learn the other words fine for some reason.. will cram the suspended ones separately..