Here and (BROKEN LINK) here IceCream suggests immediately using subs2srs after RtK and a light overview (not even SRSing sentences explicitly for it) of basic grammar and skipping core2k/6k or other explicit vocab studying until after a month or so.

Since I just finished RtK1, I was wondering if anyone has actually tried this and had any success? Or, alternatively, have a good argument for/against it?

-- My reservations --
I guess my biggest reservation is whether the benefits (eg, better context, more fun, native material) outweigh the time spent (lost) on effort that would be unnecessary if just using the pre-made Tae Kim / JSPfEC and Core2k decks:

1) I assume the key is to suspend everything and then be proactive in searching the dialogue for sentences that are (at least somewhat) i+1 to unsuspend, or only testing a specific part of a sentence (eg, highlighting a vocab word) but obviously this takes far more time then just doing a sorted core2k deck in order.

2) You have to look up the readings (or rely on automatically generated ones) and potentially meanings as well if the English subs aren't very direct translations, further increasing the time to put together good cards.

3) You might end up spending more time looking up grammar than if you had just explicitly studied it more upfront.

The time spent on subs2srs outweighs the benefits it offers. In terms of efficiency, using pre-made material is the way to go. In the time it takes to make a single subs2srs card, you could have reviewed or learned several more pre-made cards. The larger your vocabulary and grammar base, the better you can understand native materials. This better understanding makes immersion much more worthwhile.

Despite what I said above, if pre-made material is boring for you, then I recommend trying subs2srs. This is its biggest selling point. It's more fun and engaging.

Anyway, it seems like you're looking for some advice on which route to take. So, I'll tell you what I'd do if I were to start all over again. After finishing RTK, I would first do Japanese the Manga Way and JSPfEC using the sentence method. At this stage, my immersion would just be almost wholly audio only in order to help me familiarize with the sounds of the language. The reason for this is that native material will be practically incomprehensible, and therefore can only help to get me used to the sounds. At any rate, after this initial stage, I would move on to the second stage: Core2k, doing vocab-only cards alongside immersion. At this point, basic sentences and basic grammar should be almost second-nature, which means that sentences in Core2k will be useless since they only review grammar you're already well-familiar with.

The basic idea of this plan above is to prepare you to be ready for vocab-only cards ASAP. Once I finished Core2k and moved on to vocab-only cards, my comprehension skyrocketed. Many others share the same experience as well. Look around the forums and you'll find plenty of stories.

Edit: corrected Japanese in Mangaland to Japanese the Manga Way.

I'm pretty arrogant and I think I've devised absolutely the best method of study ever created, but I'm too lazy to reiterate my past posts. Just sayin'.

It involves Japanese the Manga Way and the Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar (the former is now an electronic book I hear, and the latter have their sentences as a shared Anki deck), the KO2001 and Core 2k/6k decks as text-audio corpora, and whenever you watch something that has Japanese subtitles, make a deck from it (with highly constrained options enabled on subs2srs such as limiting the length of sentences and omitting non-kanji lines, etc.) and then just quickly going through and snagging 20-50 sentences from the resulting deck—as video clips, only going through the previous resources based on words you don't know or grammar you don't know from those clips. That's the simple version, and there's also different strategies for selecting media, input vs. output, non-SRS strategies, and if you hadn't finished RTK yet, how to integrate that with foundational resources like grammar and Core decks.

Blahah if you're reading this, still waiting on that magical plugin you promised!! http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid112799

I've been studying KO2001 for most of this year. Earlier this year I tried watching the drama "Tomehane" with Japanese subtitles but I was having a lot of trouble getting things to stick, or even really understanding what was going on. I realized that I liked KO2001 because I was reinforcing readings by learning a lot of kanji that had the same reading.

However, last night I tried watching it with subtitles and it was mostly easy to follow, which surprised me. A lot of the vocab that I learned through KO2001 throughout the year appeared in the subtitles and I managed to enjoy it much more. On top of that, with better context, it's easier to figure out when a word is supposed to be used.

Still, I feel like that's the complete package. I don't feel like one is better than the other but that you should use both to gain a greater understanding. I feel the same way with grammar; you need both context and an explicit understanding to really understand it. Furthermore, having listening/visual and reading practice at the same time feels much more beneficial than doing them separately.

In the end, I guess I'm saying that you should do both, although in the beginning I'd focus on studying basic grammar and vocabulary... otherwise, even basic dramas might be too overwhelming. After watching Tomehane with subs and feeling confident about my Japanese skill, I tried watching Keizoku 2: SPEC with Japanese subtitles and felt completely lost again. =)

vileru Wrote:The time spent on subs2srs outweighs the benefits it offers. In terms of efficiency, using pre-made material is the way to go. In the time it takes to make a single subs2srs card, you could have reviewed or learned several more pre-made cards. The larger your vocabulary and grammar base, the better you can understand native materials. This better understanding makes immersion much more worthwhile.

I must completely disagree with your very first sentence. And while the rest has good logic IF AND ONLY IF you are doing IMMERSION. I might still argue that subs2srs or something like it should be given priority while a vocab deck should be secondary. The time spent on subs2srs is in many ways better than any vocab deck could ever be since you have
1) audio
2) vocab (i.e., new words that one has to look up)
3) subs [probably both in Japanese and English if we really want to take advantage of the program] which will help you when you are trying to figure out grammar, verb conjugations, context, etc, etc.
4) at least some interest in the material rather than a word list thereby helping motivation.

BUT of course we need to have a separate/combined vocab deck to help us progress much faster when using something like subs2srs. However if we are trying to find a one deck solution for simplicities sake then a subs2srs deck wins just by having sooooo much more benefits.


But overture; it's going to be really really hard to find a sentence and break it down when you are first starting out. I mean really really hard. の　for example has so many functions that you really need to have a good understanding of grammar or else you are going to get a kind of vague understanding of a sentence that you find in the deck rather than a real, solid grasp of the meaning.

So my humble suggestion, given that you are going to use subs2srs as your main tool.

get a good grammar book or books. Study one section, say ~ません as invitation, and really get a good understanding of it. Then head over to your subs2srs deck and search out the grammar point that you just studied. Find all the cards that use that grammar and unsuspend them. Try to figure them out. If they are too hard, suspend them immediately. If you need to look up more words, do it and add them to the deck. This way, you are primarily working on grammar but using a drama/anime whatever to learn it while also picking up vocabulary.

If you have time or want to progress a bit faster, start a vocab deck on the side. I recommend the "every JLPT vocab word list" or whatever it's called in the shared decks and also add the "Example sentence plug-ing" It's amazing.

Hope that helps!

vileru Wrote:The time spent on subs2srs outweighs the benefits it offers. In terms of efficiency, using pre-made material is the way to go. In the time it takes to make a single subs2srs card, you could have reviewed or learned several more pre-made cards.

It takes about 5 minutes to set up subs2srs and then import the output into anki, I don't know what you're making a big deal about.

Using subs2srs with K-ON helped me big time in getting between beginner and intermediate stages, but you should have a better understanding of the grammar before going through with it. If you don't know the grammar then parsing the sentences will be very time consuming, frustrating, and mistake prone. I recommend you try it anyways and see if it's too hard or not. Using the English subtitles is also good to be sure you're on the right track.

One of the reasons I advocate subs2srs early on is after doing an hour long show, you pretty much have the perfect listening (and usually reading) companion. Training your listening with comprehensible and enjoyable audio early on cannot be overstated. Heck, I think my guide has doing a subs2srs after basic grammar and maybe 400 basic vocab words for that very reason.

As for the original question, it's a matter of trade-offs. With basic vocab in your pocket, you then only have to worry how they're being used in the dramas. Same goes with grammar and kanji. Not a deal breaker, not the best, not the worst, just a trade off on which is more difficult cause you did it first.

I have got to used this software soon. I gotta wait until my new additions of srs cards finishes and implement this into my studies.