Hi guys
I've been doing Core 2000 (as a sentence deck in Anki) and completed Step 1 – 4, and I'm thinking about abandoning the AJATT's sentence method forever (dun, dun dun!). I would still do some sentences, but only for grammar, and try and just read a (hellova) lot more. I’ve read the "Goodbye Sentences" thread (http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=4602) and it seemed a lot of people were all for vocab only, but only after having done a few thousand sentences, but I want to stop NOW :S. There's a lot of background as to why I want to abandon this method, which may help you guys better understand where I’m coming from with this post, but it’s really long and I don’t know how to be succinct, so if you have time I've put it in the second post, otherwise this would have been even more tl;dr .

I want to do the rest of the Core 2000 as a vocabulary only deck, but instead of the conventional kanji --> kana, I want to try audio --> kanji + kana + example sentence if needed.
Now, if you're wondering whether I hit my head whilst smoking a joint, this was my logic (or lack thereof);
- learning individual words is faster than long sentences
- this should improve my listening
- should be able to recognize words in any sentence, not just the one from core or wherever
- writing practice

How it would work is, I would listen to the word, then right down the kanji, then check the answer to see if it's correct and the kana part would tell me if I heard it correctly. I realize already a problem with this would be words that sound the same, but have different meanings, but if that were the case I may have to give the word context by using a sentence instead.

Another thing is, I know recognition is eventually supposed to lead to production as well, but I don't know how well this works the other way round. The only example I know of is with RTK where you only go from example word --> kanji, but a lot of times when I'm reading, I forget the keyword, or it takes A WHILE to remember the keyword :S One obvious way round this is to have a recognition deck as well, but then that doubles the work -_-

Anywho, has anyone tried something like this, or is this a completely fail idea

Also, if Fabrice sees this, I have a specific question for him. As the creator of this (excellent ) site, I assume your Japanese proficiency is light years beyond mine. I saw you had on here an iVocab shuffle application with words only, no sentences. I realize you may have done it this way because words are more flexible, but I'm using this little information to jump and leap to the conclusion that you mainly learned individual words instead of sentences for your studies? Basically I'm trying to find an example of anyone who got proficient NOT using sentences. If anyone else did not use the sentence method and is fluent (or really good), I would like if you shared your experience

So I finished RTK November last year, but didn’t start sentences properly till I returned to the UK at the end of Jan (I was in Africa and internet access was RUBBISH ) but I did read some of Tae Kim’s guide. My intention was to do AJATT and sentence mine from native sources like manga. However, when you only have a couple hundred words under your belt, going through manga (or anything) and having to stop at every second word and look it up and add the sentence and blah blah blah gets very dry, very quickly. I love manga (it’s the main reason I’m learning a whole new language in the first place ) and I don’t want to turn it into work and risk despising it.
So I stopped that and started subs2srs with the Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo sample deck. I’ve never watched it before and found the story really interesting and it made me go through it quickly coz I wanted to know what would happen next. Also my extremely lazy self got relief from having to enter every single sentence. However, I ended up abandoning this too :S Reason: I felt I should learn the most common words of the language first before a bunch of slang and also even if a sentence is “cool” when I first hear it, after hearing it more than 3 times and out of context, I don’t like it anymore :S I get bored with things very, VERY quickly and always need fresh blood
So that’s what led me to Core 2000, common words and I thought “If I’m eventually going to find even the most riveting sentence boring eventually, might as well learn any random bunch of sentences.” So started Core and swept through Step 1 and 2 real quick (I think it took me like 10 days or something). Then I got to Step 3. OMG, Step 3 :S I hated it, I almost threw the towel in right there. See, I really believe in the i + 1 concept. Unfortunately, Step 3 was more i + a load of WTF :S Somehow I pushed through it, and employed better tactics for tackling Step 4 (which was easier anyway), but I think the trauma of Step 3 left a permanent mark

The problem with Core sentences is that I don’t find them…grammatically challenging enough. My grammar is baaaad, simple coz I haven’t done enough of it. If I’m going to do any sentences, I want to do something like All About Particles where I will feel like I’m getting a good grammatical base. I’m not a completely ungrateful leech though, I think Core is good for common vocabulary and even though Step 3 was hellish, I see words from it everywhere.
The problem I have with sentences in general is that I don’t pay enough attention to the individual words, so I often can’t recognise them in the wild. Whereas the words I have in my random “vocabulary dump” deck I can always recognise anywhere. I also don’t get as bored with this deck as I do the sentence deck; I kind of feel neutral towards it (if that makes any sense). Whereas even opening Anki to look at sentences decks gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach.

In short, I’ve concluded that sentences just aren’t for me. What I would like to do it just read loads of text novels and web articles and use Rikaichan to save any words I don’t know as I go along, then learn the words. Then when I read the novel/article again a few months later, it would be satisfyingly easier (in theory ). But I want to finish Core 2000 and maybe 1-2000 of Core 6000 so I feel like I’ve at least got a common base down.

Thank you to anyone who read all of this; I’m sorry for eating your time! ^_^

I tried this.

Raw memorization just made me angry at Japanese, so I got rid of it.

Two words of advice from a die-hard sentence fan (I'll start learning words in isolation when they come from a monolingual textbook with monolingual definitions, not until then):

* While you're busy being unsure of what to do next, go through Core2000/6000 very slowly. I eventually warmed up to them, and I'm now up to 25 sentences per 25-30 minutes of daily study. Unfortunately, there was a period of several weeks where I wasn't learning anything new which I'm still kinda regretful of. Even 10 new cards a day is something.

* Anki has a leech control feature. Set the threshold to 6 or less (default is 16--one leech controlled per blue moon). I try to learn the easiest 70%-90%; I find this keeps me from getting frustrated or bored, and I can always try them later.

I started with sentences, and realized the "i+too damn many new words" was a killer. BIG TIME! It can work, but not a good way to encode imop. Then I added a single vocab and tested them with three versions of each fact.

-Meaning -> kanji and pronouncing the word

-Audio ->kanji and knowing the meaning

-Kanji->pronouncing and knowing the meaning

My fields in the answer portion also have spots for dictionary definition, kana, and example sentences.

I suspended all my sentence cards that I was struggling with, and redid both my sentence deck and vocab deck by importing the sorted KO2k Core2/6k lists. Now I will be unsuspending from the vocab list each day, and 3 days later ususpend the sentence decks equivalent so I can see the word in context, and practice reading/grammar, so it's a walk in the park because I know the words. Trying to learn 2-5 new words, and be contemplating grammar etc. is not nearly as efficient (imop). By studying the vocab in isolation, you can have a smooth study in the sentence portion.

Testing the vocab the way I do has it's benefits and penalties. I could go faster and not learn to write, but I want that skill so I pay for it (time wise). But I feel like if I can read it, write it, know what it means and it's dictionary form (sentences failed me a little but there), pronounce it, and know it when I hear it -> then I'm on my way to mastering it . Then use the sentence deck, learn to apply different conjugations/ grammatical uses, see it in media and real life, learn social rules and nuances, how to use it to make authentic sounding sentences etc. -> to take it all the way (fluency!). I feel like if I am weak in any one of these areas, then I'm not where I want to be. Cross training as I do seems to be a good strategy, but an argument could be made that it is too time consuming and less efficient then other methods. I really don't know.

The audio vocab cards are kind of a pain in the ass though. Hearing a word with ZERO context is not so sweet sometimes, and I am sometimes questioning it's overall value vs effort. I fail these cards a little too often for my liking, sometimes even words I KNOW WELL (or think I know well). Also a pain are all the stupid business terms that have similar meanings....

On grammar: Just a reminder, I recently noted that someone uploaded a shared Anki deck called "8555 Japanese Sentences - from the 日本語文法辞典" (i.e. sentences from the 3 volumes of Dictionary of X Japanese Grammar). Very useful if you have copies of the books in some form or another and have found getting the sentences in those forms into Anki to be troublesome.

For grammar sentences, I would recommend mostly attending to the relevant notes/references, and for SRS'd sentences, focusing or putting in bold the key sentence constructions that represent the grammar point in each case. Likewise having such a large deck of sentences focused around grammar constructions makes it handy to simply search the deck as a 'corpus' of examples for grammar points.

The other advice is don't look at sentences from systematic grouped sources as regular sentences. Don't use Tae Kim sentences to test your vocabulary knowledge or listening ability, don't use Core sentences to test your grammar or listening ability.

Tae Kim has vocabulary words, but they're kept simple to illustrate the grammar. Core has grammar, but they're kept simple to illustrate the new word(s). Trying to get more than that from them in pointless. That's also the reason you can abandon sentences as a tool to help learn these two things later on.

Here's a suggestion: Change not just how you test the cards, but change how you test individual cards based on their difficulty (leech status) later on. If you're good at setting up the Anki at the beginning, you could even change things up based on word type.

Ex: The sorted Core decks I loaded test

"Card Name - Sentence Dictation"

Q: Vocabulary Word (kana) - Vocabulary Sentence (kana) - Vocabulary Sentence (audio)

A: Vocabulary Word (kanji) - Vocabulary Sentence (kanji) - Vocabulary Word (english) - Vocabulary Sentence (english)


Well, just switch it up so that the sentence become an answer aid and not a question aid

"Card Type Name - Vocabulary Dictation"

Q: Vocabulary word (kana) - Vocabulary word (audio)
A: Vocabulary word (kanji) - Vocabulary sentence (kanji) - Vocabulary word (english) - Vocabulary sentence (english)

A MAJORITY of you cards can be like this with no problems. The sentences and English are there to help if you DON'T know the answer, not to help you answer. This is the same reason I removed all the images, because they were making it too easy to answer the questions.

Here's the best part: Set the leech threshold at 6. When a vocabulary dictation is "leeched", the convert that card into a sentence dictation card (the option is in Anki now). You can do this even earlier if you find a vocabulary word has two or more homonyms (like 見る and 診る or 橋 and 箸).

Moral: using the same vocabulary deck, you can make testing easy early on then make it difficult as time and your abilities improve.

hereticalrants Wrote:I tried this.

Raw memorization just made me angry at Japanese, so I got rid of it.

So...what are you doing now; you returned to sentences?

wildweathel Wrote:Two words of advice from a die-hard sentence fan (I'll start learning words in isolation when they come from a monolingual textbook with monolingual definitions, not until then):

Man, if only I were that advanced, maybe in a few months *wishful thinking*
I wish Rikaichan had a monolingual version, that would have been awesome...
(it doesn't right? have I missed something?)

wildweathel Wrote:* While you're busy being unsure of what to do next, go through Core2000/6000 very slowly. I eventually warmed up to them, and I'm now up to 25 sentences per 25-30 minutes of daily study. Unfortunately, there was a period of several weeks where I wasn't learning anything new which I'm still kinda regretful of. Even 10 new cards a day is something.

Heh, yeah, I have anki set to spit out 10 cards a day whether I like it or not just to keep things moving. It's a small enough number that I barely notice the new cards whilst I do my other reviews. It's so easy to just give up and add nothing for days on end (this is what happened in Step 3 -_-)

wildweathel Wrote:* Anki has a leech control feature. Set the threshold to 6 or less (default is 16--one leech controlled per blue moon). I try to learn the easiest 70%-90%; I find this keeps me from getting frustrated or bored, and I can always try them later.

I did this for Step 4, learning the stuff I could handle first and anything slightly hard I left to the end; it really helped! though my leech threshold is a little higher (if it were 6, half the deck would be suspended)

TaylorSan Wrote:I started with sentences, and realized the "i+too damn many new words" was a killer. BIG TIME! It can work, but not a good way to encode imop.

You know! Especially the core ones, I've studied some Japanese in the past so I didn't completely run away in the other direction, but it makes me wonder the extent of the haemorrhage I would have had seeing that as a complete beginner.

TaylorSan Wrote:Cross training as I do seems to be a good strategy, but an argument could be made that it is too time consuming and less efficient then other methods. I really don't know.

I wouldn't say cross training is ineffective, in fact I used to have production cards for every vocab card I had and it helped remember the word a lot better, but I would have to argue that it's time consuming, especially if you're training your cards three ways! If I had your patience, I would be doing the same thing, but I don't. However, I like your idea of learning the words first then suspending the sentence cards later; I would have liked to apply this to reading, if only I had a word list of what I want to read...

TaylorSan Wrote:The audio vocab cards are kind of a pain in the ass though. Hearing a word with ZERO context is not so sweet sometimes, and I am sometimes questioning it's overall value vs effort. I fail these cards a little too often for my liking, sometimes even words I KNOW WELL (or think I know well). Also a pain are all the stupid business terms that have similar meanings....

God, I know, I hate the business terms; I swear so far there's been a dozen ways to more or less say "boss", 部長、会長、社長、上司...urgh -_-
yeah, I'm rethinking the audio vocab cards now. Ultimately I'm allergic to hard work and in order not to end up just quitting I need to make things as easy and interesting for myself as possible.

nest0r Wrote:On grammar: Just a reminder, I recently noted that someone uploaded a shared Anki deck called "8555 Japanese Sentences - from the 日本語文法辞典" (i.e. sentences from the 3 volumes of Dictionary of X Japanese Grammar). Very useful if you have copies of the books in some form or another and have found getting the sentences in those forms into Anki to be troublesome.

I have the deck but not the books, you're right, it is useful as a 'corpus', most stuff I've looked up has been in there. I may start using sentences from it if I'm not satisfied after All About Particles, but only stuff I come across in reading and definitely not all 8555 :o

Nukemarine Wrote:The other advice is don't look at sentences from systematic grouped sources as regular sentences. Don't use Tae Kim sentences to test your vocabulary knowledge or listening ability, don't use Core sentences to test your grammar or listening ability.

If only the two were combined, would have been almost perfect

I like what you've suggested; I think I'll go with it. I would be doing vocab like I want, but I won't feel like I'm throwing away sentences thus avoiding guilt, and also seeing the sentences even afterwards should help reinforce some context. Doing just the vocab should leave time to brush up on my grammar as well.
I saw the sorted core a while ago but when I clicked onto the instructions I was like "hell no am I gonna be able to get that working!". My anki skills leave a lot to be desired, but I didn't know the deck was this flexible, so I'm giving it another shot, right now in fact

Nukemarine, you said your cards are set up as

"Card Name - Sentence Dictation"

Q: Vocabulary Word (kana) - Vocabulary Sentence (kana) - Vocabulary Sentence (audio)

A: Vocabulary Word (kanji) - Vocabulary Sentence (kanji) - Vocabulary Word (english) - Vocabulary Sentence (english)

so from what I understand you are doing production only (or have you got another set up testing recognistion as well?) if this is the case, how well does the production translate to recognition? This was really the main crux of my question (though I understand that it may have got lost in the walls and walls of text)

Thank you everyone for your helpful responses