So I've been using the iKnow app for core 2000 so far. I'm only 45% through part 1 of the series. And it seems to be working fairly well, but I'm wondering what the consensus was on here on which would be more beneficial to use?

I have an anki deck all set up. It goes from Japanese word in Kanji to the word in Kana + the corresponding sentence for that word, and it's english translation.

I wasn't sure if maybe I should switch over and start using this anki deck. Maybe it would be a little more efficient then the iKnow app. It can take anywhere from 4-10 minutes to study 10 items on the Iknow app and I usually do at least 50 a day up to 100 if I'm in the groove.

Just looking to see what people on here think is the better way to study.

I had the same question, and ultimately I chose Anki. Iknow is ok, but it's slow, and reviews are spaced in a suboptimal way. E.g., reviews for easy words are too frequent, and reviews for hard ones are too infrequent. Plus it just takes too long. I do like the dictation app, though.

There are premade anki decks that use core2000; check em out! And good luck.

I guess I just feel more like I'm doing work when I do anki. I'm not really sure what it is. Although vocab is pretty painless to do in Anki. And I already have a core 2000 + core 6000 deck set up so I could just go ahead and give it a try.

Although is Japanese word in Kanji > kana + translation + corresponding sentence a decent way to go about it? It's just the way the deck that I downloaded was set up, and I wanted a deck with all of Core 2k + 6k. But I'm not really sure if it's the right way to do things.

I prefer Anki for a bunch of reasons. Some include, changing the model and going from kanji-kana, to kana-kanji.

As far as core2000/6000. I have a spreadsheet with a few sentence packs (including core), one pack/deck on each sheet. When I want to add a sentence I do a search of entire worksheet and add the ones I like manually.

Arch, when I started with iKnow, I also thought it was more fun than Anki. But it gets old after a while, and you start to wish you didn't have to answer 5 questions about a word you already know well. Conversely, I started getting frustrated that it would give me a hard word and then not grill me again on it for a week. Also, once I had five iKnow sets going, occasionally I'd get hit with a ton of reviews all at once, half of which again were for easy words I already know. With Anki, I can push those off for 3 months or so.

That's not to say that the content of Core2000 isn't awesome -- I love it, especially the audio. But Anki lets me take advantage of that content in the way I choose. I personally prize quick review, and my main goal is to read. So I just want two types of cards. (1) Kanji (or kana if no kanji) on the question side, and kana and audio/picture on the "answer" side. Those cards are quick quick quick to review, which I love. (2) Japanese sentence with audio on the question side; kana and picture on the answer side. Those are slightly slower, but the Core2000 audio files are so good that it's worth the added time, for me.

Actually, the deck you downloaded sounds pretty close to ideal to me. Er, which deck was it, lol? I might want to try it.

iKnow adds several other types of review that, while useful, aren't priorities for me: typing out the kana (helpful but slow); choosing a translation from multiple-choice list (too easy); choosing the kana from a multiple-choice list (also too easy). And again, the SRS of iKnow is just way too inexact for my taste. Plus, it just gets tiresome after a while.

Well the problem with the deck I downloaded is it doesn't have Japanese sentence with audio on the question side; kana and picture on the answer side

It only has Kanji (or kana if no kanji) on the question side, and kana and audio/picture on the "answer" side.

There aren't pictures either, but it does have audio for the sentences. I downloaded the audio from another source though. I think Cangys post about them closing the public API.

I'm thinking of maybe using the decks on Anki that go step by step through the core series. Those look pretty good. As far as I can tell those decks have 5 types of questions though. Because I downloaded part 1 and it had 1000 items for what should be 200 words. I've only seen 3 types of questions so far.

Personally, I like those "individual step" decks too. If you don't like the five different formats, you can browse the cards, select those matching a particular format, and suspend them. (Or, I suppose, delete them?) That's what I did when I experimented with those decks. I suspended all but two types. (1) Kanji alone, with kana/audio on answer; and (2) Sentence, with kana/audio as answer. The only trouble is that there are 20 or so of those step-decks, but you can manage that by merging new ones as you finish up with old ones. Me, I want to get them onto my iPad, so I'm still pondering how to arrange them. I might download five, merge them, and then move them onto my iPad, for starters. (I've already done steps 1-5 to death on iKnow, so I'm thinking I'll start with 6-10.)

How do you go about merging decks? I've yet to figure that out? I think I may just go with the step decks.

I'm thinking of just keeping all those question types in there and just going at the pace of 100 a day. 10 days per core step, and all the different question types should drill in the word pretty well. Doesn't seem to much like over doing it, because it's so fast. I feel like I could do all 1000 in a day lol.

You could try keeping all five question types. I did that for deck 6, which I started before my PC blew up, and it seemed to be moving along quickly. The nice thing about Anki is that you can boot easy questions far off into the future after just a couple of reviews.

As for merger, I actually haven't tried it yet either. Quoth the Anki FAQ:

Quote:Use File>Import to import another deck into the current deck.

http://ichi2.net/anki/wiki/FrequentlyAsk...or_many.3F

Apparently the merger process also mergers your two media folders into one. But yeah, if I were you, I'd first try a single "step" deck for a few days and see how you like it.