Wow, KMDES, you're obviously not very familiar with this forum at all. Pretty much everything he "listed" has its own thread here with a bunch of discussion going on about it all.

Quit being a little brat and search the forum yourself. Do your research, because you obviously don't understand our philosophies here.

ropsta Wrote:

Nagareboshi Wrote:Flashcards are not the A&O of learning, there are other ways, too....SRS is by no means the only thing anyone should rely on.

Has anyone said this? If they have... shame on them.

Not on here, of course, but i have seen some people stating something along those lines. That was in the time where i had to decide which SRS would be right for me and reading around the web on that topic.

ropsta Wrote:

Nagareboshi Wrote:Why would someone constantly use SRS to learn the same grammar points over and over?

You don't use it to "learn the same grammar point over and over." Intellectual comprehension of grammar is not understanding grammar. Grammar can't be drilled. By using a few variations on a grammar point in an SRS, you can test your understanding of that grammar point across a given interval of time.

I know where you are coming from. Yes, i agree, comprehension and understanding is not the same thing. Maybe i was just looking at it the wrong way.

ropsta Wrote:

Nagareboshi Wrote:If you constantly add new material, you spend more time repeating, than adding new things you could have learned in the meantime. It's just a time killer in the long run.

We don't learn thing automatically, so the 2-10 seconds it takes to review a card has benefits. Also, you don't have any evidence that suggests that the time taken to review a card is actually detrimental to the time one could spend on new material, so how'd you reach this conclusion? The only time killer, that I know of, is learning material and then forgetting it and having to learn it again.

Some things are bound to be forgotten because they are not needed any longer. Think of it this way - think back when you were in school. How much of what you learned back in the time do you still remember, and how much of what you learned do you still need today? The time consuming part, and that is fact, is adding new material. If you go the extra mile not to use pre-made material. The reviewing process is done in a jiffy so to say.

ropsta Wrote:I'm a fan of any-which-way-up-the-mountain. Let's try to stay away from baseless claims, though. There are enough blogs out there with them.

And so am I, whatever works! And i didn't want to start spreading bogus or baseless claims. I was just trying to add my thoughts, no one said, they were correct. Seeing what nest0r and others have to say about this, i was clearly in the wrong with my opinion. No harm done - don't you agree.

Asriel Wrote:Wow, KMDES, you're obviously not very familiar with this forum at all. Pretty much everything he "listed" has its own thread here with a bunch of discussion going on about it all.

Quit being a little brat and search the forum yourself. Do your research, because you obviously don't understand our philosophies here.

I find it kind of off putting that you would immediately leap to assuming that I'm a brat by giving someone a suggestion. The fact is, I have used almost all of what he listed and can find with ease on my hard-drive or what not. Also, these things on the forums tend to be scattered across various threads and buried so deep that you only can hopefully find them with the search function if you know exactly what you're looking for.

Now it begs the question of why you'd take straight to insulting me instead of considering making something that might possibly be a great help to people just starting out. And if I hadn't spent the last year mining this forum for information and I was brand new to the forum the only philosophy that you have given me is that "I'm always right, and you're always wrong. Since you're wrong, you're a lazy ignorant brat who I'm gonna insult." So what does that kind of philosophy show to people coming here expecting to hopefully find helpful people who they can learn from or maybe have a civil discussion without being insulted?

Does that make you feel like a bigger, better person?

I find it off-putting that you're aware of the tools and strategies here but still make claims that the users don't do this or can't do that, when they can, do, and have.

Other than that, apologies if I hurt your feelings. I am at my most dismissive and blunt when folks use untrue claims about phantom forum users/the forum in general in order to justify their arguments. It's a very conservative argument, I think, kind of regressive and stagnating because it rhetorically aims to repress the progress of strategies at large. Or to put it another way, inaccurate and/or disingenuous suppression of awareness of said progress is an implicit expense of this rhetoric.

@Nagareboshi

"The time consuming part, and that is fact, is adding new material."

I just don't see this as being the case, premade material or not. What kind of process of adding new material are you envisioning?

When I envision study entirely without the SRS, I imagine people making lists, taking notes, looking things up, writing things out, reading and re-reading, listening and re-listening, watching and re-watching, in a much more lengthy process than extracting information, such as say, using cb4960's background typing script to type out a word while watching or reading, using wrightak's rikaichan plugin to create an Anki import .txt, using subs2srs to parse through an episode or film, downloading a shared deck, whatever, and knowing that word or sentence, you'll be studying this stuff in a way that you can control to maximize how you learn best (multimodal learning by multisensory integration! The other greatest 'invention' since sliced bread), while taking advantage of the spacing effect to create an algorithmic arc for memorization that non-SRS exposure, now no longer an uncertain Sisphyean maneuver, reinforces and is reinforced by.

Just to reiterate in order to counterbalance a bit of a duality above (polarization is the entropy of argument), I do think all the strongest SRS supporters are also the most vocal about the importance of non-SRS strategies as part of a larger continuum of study.

Holly shit. You guys are crazy! Hahaha!!!

Nomad Wrote:Holly shit. You guys are crazy! Hahaha!!!

Quite so. They couldn't even have a discussion without passive aggressive insults and religious zealot-like rage posting. Much of which could of been spent studying instead of just wasting time on me or the yearlyglot guy. Because if you can get that angry over someone possibly disagreeing with you, you have some issues to work out regarding associating a tool/method as an extension of yourself. It seems strange that you would associate a time investment as who you are as a person making every disagreement with that idea a personal attack on yourself, don't you agree?

Why don't we get angry over a bunch of men kicking a plastic ball back and forth across a field for hours at a time too? That's always very productive, kind of like this argument.

And here's the beauty of it all. Because they were just insulted about their time investment, ego and attitudes, they won't even take a look at themselves or their actions and refuse to evaluate themselves against what I said and just proceed to argue and rage at me because if they admitted that they might be possibly wrong with their attitudes towards me, that would be an attack on their ego, as they can't possibly be wrong in their mind as it is a sign of weakness that is displayed to others.

KMDES Wrote:

Nomad Wrote:Holly shit. You guys are crazy! Hahaha!!!

Quite so. They couldn't even have a discussion without passive aggressive insults and religious zealot-like rage posting. Much of which could of been spent studying instead of just wasting time on me or the yearlyglot guy. Because if you can get that angry over someone possibly disagreeing with you, you have some issues to work out regarding associating a tool/method as an extension of yourself. It seems strange that you would associate a time investment as who you are as a person making every disagreement with that idea a personal attack on yourself, don't you agree?

Why don't we get angry over a bunch of men kicking a plastic ball back and forth across a field for hours at a time too? That's always very productive, kind of like this argument.

And here's the beauty of it all. Because they were just insulted about their time investment, ego and attitudes, they won't even take a look at themselves or their actions and refuse to evaluate themselves against what I said and just proceed to argue and rage at me because if they admitted that they might be possibly wrong with their attitudes towards me, that would be an attack on their ego, as they can't possibly be wrong in their mind as it is a sign of weakness that is displayed to others.

Let's take a deep breath. Okay then. What are you talking about? (This version of my comment is much better than the previous, wherein I decided you were insane and took back my apology if I hurt your feelings.)

Also, let's make sure we're clear: This thread isn't about you, you haven't said anything of substance, but you were a briefly useful example to launch into the many useful tools we have here. Sorry if I accidentally gave off the semblance of emotional involvement, it's folks like you that get worked up over nonsense, not me. What I say generally has a purpose other than whatever petty topological dynamics you're raving about.

nest0r Wrote:@Nagareboshi

"The time consuming part, and that is fact, is adding new material."

I just don't see this as being the case, premade material or not. What kind of process of adding new material are you envisioning?

I am envisioning the lenghty process of adding material not covered on the web. Things out of books, not covered by any pre-made deck, for instance. And that is a tedious and time consuming process to create own cards, in a way, that fits the own learning style best.

nest0r Wrote:When I envision study entirely without the SRS, I imagine people making lists, taking notes, looking things up, writing things out, reading and re-reading, listening and re-listening, watching and re-watching, in a much more lengthy process than extracting information, such as say, using cb4960's background typing script to type out a word while watching or reading, using wrightak's rikaichan plugin to create an Anki import .txt, using subs2srs to parse through an episode or film, downloading a shared deck, whatever, and knowing that word or sentence, you'll be studying this stuff in a way that you can control to maximize how you learn best (multimodal learning by multisensory integration! The other greatest 'invention' since sliced bread), while taking advantage of the spacing effect to create an algorithmic arc for memorization that non-SRS exposure, now no longer an uncertain Sisphyean maneuver, reinforces and is reinforced by.

Just to reiterate in order to counterbalance a bit of a duality above (polarization is the entropy of argument), I do think all the strongest SRS supporters are also the most vocal about the importance of non-SRS strategies as part of a larger continuum of study.

I cant possibly argue against anything you are saying right there. The only thing i have been using SRS for so far is for RTK, and for that, it is great. Taking your words into consideration, I will see, how i can incorporate SRS in other parts of my future language learning process as well.

So you're saying you want to actually get back on topic and not be an asshat about everything I say? You could just say that instead of riddling all your text with veiled insults and passie agreesive BS you know.

And it's funny when you say I got worked up, when you started the argument.

Nagareboshi Wrote:I am envisioning the lenghty process of adding material not covered on the web. Things out of books, not covered by any pre-made deck, for instance. And that is a tedious and time consuming process to create own cards, in a way, that fits the own learning style best.

While going through Kanzen Master 2kyu, I read the points given in KM, read the various explanations in the Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar, and then write the example sentences from Kanzen Master in Anki. I use translations just for the sake of understanding vocabulary, but a lot of times, running through the sentences over and over gives me the innate understanding of the grammar point after I've reinforced it.
If I ever feel like I don't understand a point, I'll go through it again in the DIJG.

I feel like adding material is similar to writing notes in class. You have to review the material first before you blindly add it, and make sure you at least have a cursory understanding of it.

That's probably the reason why I don't use pre-made decks, except for the RTK deck... but even then, I had to modify it to add my own stories.

@Nagareboshi

I don't know, spacing effect aside (i.e. the length of time reviewing/memorizing, which is much less with the SRS), generating materials from scratch from non-digital sources probably takes less time for the SRS than it does for non-SRS review, if only because of all the tools developed to streamline the process due precisely to this concern. That said, no need to hypothesize about not having premade decks, cangy's 'kore' project alone, plus KO2001 and shared Anki decks such as the 8555 card sentence deck for DoJG, takes care of a surprisingly comprehensive subset of beginner–intermediate Japanese, and onward. Not to mention subs2srs and other tools for quickly generating cards. Plus there's plenty of digital resources out there: thousands of electronic books, thousands of Japanese videos and songs, scanned manga, news articles. It's all instant, easy fodder for SRS. And the best part is you need it less and less as you progress, so that you'll end up like Tobbs or Jarvik and having the SRS as a minimal supplement to your less structured day-to-day use of Japanese.

But even if all you had was paperbacks and paper flashcards, making those Leitner cards i.e. SRS would still be better than regular flashcards or notetaking and rote review. I think that's how the early spacing effect ppl must've done it back in decades past. Using interleaved, distributed practice is pretty well known and has been implemented for a while. Well, well known amidst those studying massed vs. distributed practice. ;p

KMDES Wrote:So you're saying you want to actually get back on topic and not be an asshat about everything I say? You could just say that instead of riddling all your text with veiled insults and passie agreesive BS you know.

And it's funny when you say I got worked up, when you started the argument.

I think you need to settle down.

I feel like I started this, so KMDES, in order to calm you down, let me settle this, so you don't think we're just a big group of big ole meanies

From my point of view, you came in here, seemingly made assumptions about what kind of study goes on, and is promoted by this forum.

KMDES Wrote:One piece of advice I see time and time again on the forums is "Never stop SRSing the RTK1 kanji.' which of course most people do with the Heisig's English keywords

KMDES Wrote:You're rarely shown any pictures, sounds, emotions or a lot of other depictions that could be used to help learn or memorize.

Where are you getting this from, the shared decks on Anki? We've addressed issues like this a lot in this forum. The very creation of subs2srs is a testament to that.
Basically, you seemed to give off the impression that you had a misunderstanding of what goes on in these threads.

Then nest0r came in, and basically gave you a list of all the things that go on here that pretty much overturn your misconception of us (or at least, what it seemed like you thought, from my point of view). In response, you simply say:

KMDES Wrote:You probably should make that into a proper list with links and such.

Were you asking him for proof that these things are going on? Or are you simply uninformed about any of them? Either way, since these the fact that these things are going on is [i hope] common sense to a lot of people here, it seemed like you were "uninitiated" and just wanted a quick way to get pointed in the right direction.

So, you looked like a newbie who just needed to "lurk moar." By asking questions about things that seemed obvious, you looked like a "brat" who needed to learn to http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com/

I'm sorry if your intentions were different. That's how you appeared to me, and I responded accordingly now. Now, if you continue acting like you're being victimized and bringing the attention back to yourself, then you will be a brat.

Quote:plus KO2001 and shared Anki decks such as the 8555 card sentence deck for DoJG

Where is the deck for DoBJG? Where is the KO2001 deck?
I used to have the DoBJG book, before it was destroyed in a fire. I ordered it again recently but don't yet have it. I currently own the KO2001 books.

Quote:As for isolation, I don't know of very many decks that having but words, which is pretty isolated. You're rarely shown any pictures, sounds, emotions or a lot of other depictions that could be used to help learn or memorize. Of course if you're at the point where you can understand most of anything and can use a J dictionary with ease, then those isolative problems don't really make a difference.

Well the first thing is emotion. Remember the thread (sorry I don't have a link; might have been a different forum) where a guy is saying "I know the Japanese language has a lot of meaning" and then in the same opening posts asks how to say teamwork, it turns out the best way to say this is to borrow the same word from English. Think even a plain sentence has various ways to show the emotion of the speaker like ne, yo, yone, darou, and deshou. Probably many others. Native materials will have these emotion markers in their sentences and much learner focused material has them too.

I've got to order that dictionary I mentioned earlier...that seems to be key, being able to read & understand a Japanese dictionary. I don't remember if I ever had a children's dictionary when I was growing up. My parents started me on the one-volume webster's they had on hand. Probably because they were annoyed at the "what's this mean?" questions.

Do*JG can be found in the shared Anki decks. Search for "8555" and you should have 3 results, one with 6k+ downloads.

As for KO2001, I've been out of the loop -- I think you still need to send someone a picture to get access? You can also get Cangy's version of Core2k/6k can be sorted to follow KO2001, but it wouldn't be the sentences in the book.

KO2001 is still around... but it's easier to download Core 2000 from Anki's shared decks. I've been hooking a lot of friends up with it. You have to dl it in 10 parts and then just import them all into the one deck and at the end I'd suggest setting the deck up to use it how it suits you best.

KO2001 I only use as a kind of secondary corpus (unsuspending cards that contain words taken from subs2srs decks) and don't bother with the sentences (just the prosody/pronunciation and usage in context) but it's still useful: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=3283 - I umm haven't used this deck because that would be wrong.

Cangy's is best I think for Core: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5091

I believe the ebooks of DoJG are all OCR'd but the Japanese text has extra spaces, so you can, when you want to read explanations in the opposite direction (starting with sentences from 8555 sentence deck with is tagged with respective DoJG volumes) you can search the .pdfs for English words from the translated example sentences or make sure to add extra spaces or something when ctrl+f-ing the Japanese example sentences.

Personally I'm not using the kore decks, I'm using something "zort" made (you know who you are, "zort" ;p).

No one has really satisfactorily answered my question as to why sentence cards are really necessary 99% of the time. Say you're trying to learn grammar. Why not simply make a card like this:
front: 〜について
back: about ~
Basically just treat it as a vocab card. Creation time, a couple of seconds? This is basically vocab anyway, but is typically presented as a grammar point in textbooks and so on.

another example for verb conjugation:
front: *past plain form* 買う
back:　買った　（かった）

Again, short and to the point. Creation time, a couple of seconds. No unnecessary hints.
What is the point of taking the time to type out a whole sentence? I don't understand this rush for context and multi-sensory stimulation mumbo-jumbo. You're doing more of a linguistic push-up in a sense if you can get the answer sans any hints. And if you want a rich contextual simulation of real language use, why not just read a book or listen to something?
Also the idea of mining sources for 'interesting sentences' to srs is dumb in my opinion. The fastest way to improve your level is instead to just add things you don't know. Eg, just add all or some of the words you find that you don't understand to your srs with the intention of learning them. That way next time you encounter them you'll know them and you will have increased your comprehension. People should stop caring so much about forgetting what they already know and instead focus on what they don't yet know in order to level-up. This way you can increase your ease of listening and reading, and once you've achieved a comfortable level and speed of comprehension you need not worry about forgetting words just like in your native language. Forgetting too much already learned information just means you aren't using it enough (encountering it in different contexts) or it just isn't that useful for you to know. Your brain is just culling what it deems unnecessary knowledge. If you want your brain to treat it as useful turn it into necessary knowledge by upping the ante, and increasing the volume and/or difficulty of reading and listening content.
If you want sentence cards (for vocab for example), that actually train a useful skill, the sentence would need to taken from a random source (google or wikipedia search for example). This way it would test your comprehension of the word in a new context, and simulate real reading. This is an example of a function that could be added to anki that could actually be useful.
Front: A random sentence from google or wikipedia to be displayed on the front of the card, with the vocabulary item tested highlighted in red.
Back: word definition.

While I'm on the topic of improving anki's functionality, I think it would be cool if cards could be edited within the testing window without having to hit the edit button. This way it would be faster to edit incorrect cards, add and delete hints/mnemonics etc as needed.
Another cool feature would be a google image search button, for understanding obscure plants/animals/foods and historical or cultural terms etc.

For grammar, sentences are best because you can see the effect the grammar has on the sentence as a whole. Though, don't go out of your way to create the cards yourself. For grammar there are plenty of resources already. DoJG is fantastic. Just search for what you want and unsuspend it as necessary.

kainzero, i too prefer to add my own things - in my own way - so i can overcome any shortcomings of the original material and make it a better fit to my own learning style. I did that with most of Genki, too. I could have lived with the shortcomings of the original material, but in the long run - it was better i was processing it the way i needed it. While others are complaining about the flaws and shortcomings on Amazon.

nest0r, thanks for your invaluable insights! I was not aware of the all the tools that exist that make adding material a fast process. Reviewing indeed is just a matter of seconds, i knew that all along. What i will do is reading through the material linked here. It seems i do have to learn alot more about SRS and how powerful this is as a tool. I was failing to see that up to now.

nadiatims Wrote:The fastest way to improve your level is instead to just add things you don't know. Eg, just add all or some of the words you find that you don't understand to your srs with the intention of learning them.

That would contradict the whole point of using an SRS in my opinion. You don't use it to learn new things. You use it to reinforce things you have already learned spaced over time. My argument was similar, because i did not know it any better:

Why would someone constantly use SRS to learn the same grammar points over and over?

To cite another voice in here:

kainzero Wrote:You have to review the material first before you blindly add it, and make sure you at least have a cursory understanding of it.

Again, i could be wrong, if so, just tell me.

流れ星 Wrote:kainzero wrote:
You have to review the material first before you blindly add it, and make sure you at least have a cursory understanding of it.

Again, i could be wrong, if so, just tell me.

You are wrong.
I can and do learn new things in the srs. I add words precisely because I don't know them. I read/listen and speak throughout the day, and write down unknown words and phrases in a notepad. I figure if a japanese person probably knows what they mean, then I should too. Then I add them in bulk via rikaichan 's' button when I get home. I don't know the meaning of the word until I encounter it the first time in the srs. A small minority of words I fail a lot, but even those I learn eventually and I believe the words are learned better because there are no additional hints (sentences) that give away the meaning. If I was starting a new language, I would likely do the same for grammar cards, making extremely short grammar points with no extra extraneous points (basically treating them as vocabulary points). This isn't what I did for Japanese grammar though. I learned the basics from grammar books but everything beyond around 3Kyuu level (JLPT), I picked up from exposure. I'm expecting to pass the N1 with no problems this December. I think I could have passed in July but I forgot to send away my application form. Not that JLPT is the be-all end all, but it gives some idea of my level. Also despite all my flash carding, I still think the majority of my vocabulary and definitely grammar has been picked up incidentally through exposure.

I too definately learn stuff through my SRS. Saying you can't learn new stuff through an SRS is like saying you can't learn stuff through a text book. You have to see something for the FIRST time at SOME point. Whether that's when you crack open a text book or open up a an srs deck is irrelevant. Mostly the first time I hear something or see something is in the wild, then I look it up in the dic or ask the person i'm talking to... after that it goes in the SRS. But there's been times where the first time i've seen stuff is in the SRS itself. Still worked just the same.

mezbup Wrote:I too definately learn stuff through my SRS. Saying you can't learn new stuff through an SRS is like saying you can't learn stuff through a text book. You have to see something for the FIRST time at SOME point. Whether that's when you crack open a text book or open up a an srs deck is irrelevant. Mostly the first time I hear something or see something is in the wild, then I look it up in the dic or ask the person i'm talking to... after that it goes in the SRS. But there's been times where the first time i've seen stuff is in the SRS itself. Still worked just the same.

Indeed, the same happens to me in all kinds of knowledge, not just language learning. The SRS is a very convenient way of storing all you intend to learn in the next hours or even days. I throw stuff in bulk and then refine, split or even scrap many of the cards. It's a very fast and convenient way, at least for me.

nadiatims Wrote:I can and do learn new things in the srs. I add words precisely because I don't know them. I read/listen and speak throughout the day, and write down unknown words and phrases in a notepad. I figure if a japanese person probably knows what they mean, then I should too. Then I add them in bulk via rikaichan 's' button when I get home. I don't know the meaning of the word until I encounter it the first time in the srs. A small minority of words I fail a lot, but even those I learn eventually and I believe the words are learned better because there are no additional hints (sentences) that give away the meaning.

With vocabulary, for me it means reading the definition for a second before adding it. As long as you once knew what it was, it should be fine. Sure, you can brute force it by failing the card 2 or 3 times at first in Anki, but for me I find that things stick much better after I reviewed it for a few seconds.

As for grammar, I used to rely on KO2001 for grammar and just SRSing the sentences... but there would be several points where I just really didn't get the nuances, so looking it up in DoJG helped a lot. I'd look at the grammar point for a few minutes, try to understand it, and then every time I saw the sentence in SRS or in native material, it was easier to understand.

However, that's just what I do... and I'd say I'm probably in between N3 and N4 level right now. I feel that as your level increases, the way you're going to review will change a lot. Perhaps your level is more advanced than mine, so your methods are more efficient for that level.