I'm having trouble actually USING what I learn when I revise grammar and sentences on Anki. That is, I learn to read and write, but when I speak Japanese my retention rate seems a lot slower.

At the moment, I try to do "recognition" for sentences (Nihongo->Reading/Meaning), and both "recognition" and "recall" (Reading/Meaning -> Nihongo) for words. This is a compromise between doing "recall" for sentences too, which I think would slow me down too much.

I'm now toying with trying my own "speaking" variation, where I do Meaning->Japanese for set sentences I learn. I hope this will help me incorporate more variety into my speaking.

Has anyone else done this, and would anyone recommend any other methods to improve your used vocab in conversation?

I just focus my work with Anki on recognition, its perfect for it. Meaning -> Japanese is wrong on so many levels and was discussed here (and in a ton of books on the subject) that its really pointless arguing here about it.

Active vocabulary is always your smallest one in your L2 (at least if you don't live where its spoken natively). I can read quite advanced English just fine, listening is a bit worse, but my writing is mediocre and speaking is even below that. All comes down to vocabulary thats available for me when using those skills.

You want to get better at writing, write. You want to get better at speaking, speak.

Obviously that makes sense, but surely doing meaning->Japanese helps in that you're getting used to thinking about how to say things you want to say in English in Japanese, and in a more sophisticated manner?

Personally I found production sentences useful, but they are a lot of work and thus best reserved for important phrases.

thurd Wrote:I just focus my work with Anki on recognition, its perfect for it. Meaning -> Japanese is wrong on so many levels and was discussed here (and in a ton of books on the subject) that its really pointless arguing here about it.

This confuses me... I would have thought that drilling meaning -> japanese would help with speaking fluently, would it not?

Can someone post a link to a thread about this, or a hint as to what to search for to learn more?

When you speak fluently you are thinking in that language, not translating from your native language in your head. As such it's not really of any special help.

Going meaning->Japanese is also near impossible once you move beyond basic vocab because of the massive number of synonyms and similar words.

Your speaking ability (output) will lag behind your comprehension (input). This is normal, unless you're trying to learn solely from output (a terrible idea). One thing I'd suggest is that if you're speaking ability is lagging too much, it could be that you're neglecting your listening practice. How is your listening comprehension compared to reading? Listening forces you intuit the grammar at much faster speeds than reading (especially as a beginner when you're really just decoding).

thurd Wrote:You want to get better at writing, write. You want to get better at speaking, speak.

On the contrary, I think good writers and good speakers read and listen more than they write and speak, respectively. I don't think it's a coincidence that, respectively, the best writers and speakers are generally more well-read and more familiar with the nuances of the spoken language than the average writer or speaker.

As writing and speaking are bound to their cultures, it comes as no surprise that one needs to be adequately exposed to the culture which one's writing or speaking intends to address.

Of course, I don't expect anyone to automatically become a renowned writer after reading plenty of literature or an eloquent speaker after listening to countless hours of famous speeches. However, I doubt anyone can become a renowned writer or eloquent speaker without sufficient exposure to the appropriate material. There are numerous examples of people who write or speak constantly, yet their writing and speaking is substandard according to the culture-at-large (e.g. Khatz, emo teenage poets, gyaru).

Let me note that I'm not downplaying the importance of writing and speaking. No one can become a good writer or a good speaker without actually writing or speaking. However, it is also the case that no one can become a good writer or speaker by neglecting reading and listening. Adequate exposure to good writing and good speaking is necessary, but not sufficient, for one to also produce good writing and good speaking.

There is utility in learning core formulaic sequences (I mean common phrases in this context rather than collocations, idioms, etc. which I've discussed the coolness of before) at the onset of learning (perhaps as audio only, so you can mix it into your RTK study, etc.), and as @resolve mentioned these can more easily be done as what he called ‘active recall’ cards in the past so you have a more 1:1 ratio, and research supports their contribution to oral fluency, but overall you can focus on comprehensible input, spaced retrieval with Japanese text to meaning, comprehensible output, etc. and get the most and easiest benefits.

I'm also interested in what I used to describe as call-and-response cards, imaginary conversations, etc., in the SRS, and what I now just call adjacency pairs, and this connects to Paul Nation's recommendations on using input as cues for output so you can combine those strands and practice production, and some of cb4960's tools make this easier (subs2srs and Audio Lesson Studio: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7457), but I'm waiting for the new version(s) of Anki with their new study options before I really dig into these ideas.

vileru Wrote:

thurd Wrote:You want to get better at writing, write. You want to get better at speaking, speak.

On the contrary, I think good writers and good speakers read and listen more than they write and speak, respectively. I don't think it's a coincidence that, respectively, the best writers and speakers are generally more well-read and more familiar with the nuances of the spoken language than the average writer or speaker.

As writing and speaking are bound to their cultures, it comes as no surprise that one needs to be adequately exposed to the culture which one's writing or speaking intends to address.

Of course, I don't expect anyone to automatically become a renowned writer after reading plenty of literature or an eloquent speaker after listening to countless hours of famous speeches. However, I doubt anyone can become a renowned writer or eloquent speaker without sufficient exposure to the appropriate material. There are numerous examples of people who write or speak constantly, yet their writing and speaking is substandard according to the culture-at-large (e.g. Khatz, emo teenage poets, gyaru).

Let me note that I'm not downplaying the importance of writing and speaking. No one can become a good writer or a good speaker without actually writing or speaking. However, it is also the case that no one can become a good writer or speaker by neglecting reading and listening. Adequate exposure to good writing and good speaking is necessary, but not sufficient, for one to also produce good writing and good speaking.

exactly my thoughts. Each skill completes the other, we cannot become good speakers unless we become good listeners. We can't become good writers unless we are good readers.
Plus, do heavy shadowing(follow from what you listen to, get some basic convo books,etc). Also master pronunciation, since it goes a long way once you reach he advanced levels.

stevesayskanpai Wrote:I'm having trouble actually USING what I learn when I revise grammar and sentences on Anki. That is, I learn to read and write, but when I speak Japanese my retention rate seems a lot slower.

At the moment, I try to do "recognition" for sentences (Nihongo->Reading/Meaning), and both "recognition" and "recall" (Reading/Meaning -> Nihongo) for words. This is a compromise between doing "recall" for sentences too, which I think would slow me down too much.

I'm now toying with trying my own "speaking" variation, where I do Meaning->Japanese for set sentences I learn. I hope this will help me incorporate more variety into my speaking.

Has anyone else done this, and would anyone recommend any other methods to improve your used vocab in conversation?

Oh, I never actually fully read your post the last time. For vocabulary, I mentioned this before in my card maturity reminder plugin request thread(s), but it could be useful to switch words you were doing as Recognition (or receptively, e.g. 漢字→“Chinese characters; kanji”) to Production (“Thank you”→ありがとう) once they're mature, or if they're low-frequency words, or according to some other criterion that makes the extra effort worth your while. Generally recognition word pairs are good enough and they are ideal for receptive/comprehension/input etc., but productive pairs are better for, well, producing. This meshes well with the concept of what they call transfer-appropriate processing.

Here's a paper on the topic from Stuart Webb, who has performed many studies on the topic: The Effects of Pre-learning Vocabulary on Reading Comprehension and Writing

Abstract:

This study investigates the effects of pre-learning vocabulary on reading comprehension and writing. Japanese students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) learned word pairs receptively and productively; four tests were used to measure reading comprehension, writing, and receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. The findings suggest that pre-learning FL vocabulary may be an effective method of improving reading comprehension and writing, with the direction of learning having a significant effect on a learner's ability to use or understand a word. Participants who completed the productive learning task had higher scores on the writing test and on the test of productive vocabulary knowledge, while participants who completed the receptive learning task had higher scores on the comprehension test. The study highlights the importance of the direction of learning in attaining communicative skills.