I feel I'm at this part. I've been studying for a couple weeks using Anki (mostly grammar and kore, since I have a lot of background in the basics since I've studied on and off for years), and it just feels...awkward. I'm not sure if I'm doing things right, and I worry a lot and I'm driving my guyfriend crazy with all my worries - he keeps trying to reassure me there's no wrong way to study a language.

Right now I'm working on inputting Japanese the Manga Way and All about Particles into Anki. I'm about 115 sentences into both of them combined - 50 for AAP, about 60-65 from Manga Way. I use a variation of BlackMacros's old technique - 30 cards, add 15 new sentences (or a section), 30 cards, rinse and repeat. I alternate adding a lesson/section from each book.

I'm not sure if I'm learning anything. It feels weird. I understand the sentences when I put them in there, and generally can remember them and reinforce "oh yeah, this is this" kind of thing, but part of it is just remembering the sentence and not always the direct grammar point, though I can generally point it out.

Anyways...I guess I wanted to know, has anyone been paralyzed by uncertainty but gotten through it? I worry a lot I'm not doing it correctly, since I've never used an SRS before, and it works well for vocab but I worry about grammar.

cute. my phrase got used. Although it seems like your problem is a little different. What I meant was feeling like "i need to study everything I learned yesterday or I'll forget it -- as opposed to letting SRS take its course." Why do I think your case is different?

The thing that is curious to me is that you've noticed that it works for vocab, but you're uncertain about grammar.

So, as opposed to being uncertain about the SRS working, it seems like you're confused about how to use it for grammar, and what the best ways of doing it are. And that you seem to be memorizing the sentences and not the grammar. Read some of nest0r's posts -- they deal with a lot of things that I'm not sure I undersant 100%, but he likes to deal with this kind of thing.

My cards are usually a weird form of cloze deletion. For example:
Front:
〜としても
彼は医者であるが、小説家[...]有名である。
Back:
彼は医者であるが、小説家としても有名である。
--explanation from wherever I got it from--

This way it forces me to look at the grammar point, almost like a vocab card, and then see how it's being used in the sentence. Learning grammar is trickier than vocab, and is best to see it, and then see it in a lot of contexts. Whereas vocab is "set up better" for SRS.

The way I use it for grammar is just take a grammar point and get as many example sentences with translations as possible and stuff them in there. If you have enough examples you tend to remember the grammar point for how it modifies the sentence and not just memorize the sentences. I also find it easy enough to recognise and understand grammar I've learned that way when I see it in the wild.

In short, it definitely works for grammar. However, in order to become able to use the grammar I think you need to encounter it lots in the wild as well. Though I tend to think it's a mistake to try and learn to output something at the same time you're learning to input it anyway.

At first it seems like you're not learning. I think the reason is because you're doing very simple stuff right now and it takes a long time to understand those, and then when you look at native material it still looks impossible to comprehend.

I think that as you progress and see more material, it becomes a lot easier. You don't have to look up as many things, grammar points become easier the more you see it, words make more sense when you see them used in different contexts. Newer grammar becomes easier to comprehend.

Of course, the beginning is rough. Since you only have 115 sentences it might not seem like much is happening... but once I got to around 800-1200, my pace started picking up and it became really easy to add new cards and understand it. In addition, native material was starting to become a little bit comprehensible and I felt more comfortable lifting random sentences from websites.

To really hammer home grammar, I find it best to try and use it in practice (like on Lang-8 or something) to make sure you really get it.

Asriel Wrote: cute. my phrase got used. Although it seems like your problem is a little different. What I meant was feeling like "i need to study everything I learned yesterday or I'll forget it -- as opposed to letting SRS take its course." Why do I think your case is different?

The thing that is curious to me is that you've noticed that it works for vocab, but you're uncertain about grammar.

So, as opposed to being uncertain about the SRS working, it seems like you're confused about how to use it for grammar, and what the best ways of doing it are. And that you seem to be memorizing the sentences and not the grammar. Read some of nest0r's posts -- they deal with a lot of things that I'm not sure I undersant 100%, but he likes to deal with this kind of thing.

My cards are usually a weird form of cloze deletion. For example:
Front:
〜としても
彼は医者であるが、小説家[...]有名である。
Back:
彼は医者であるが、小説家としても有名である。
--explanation from wherever I got it from--

This way it forces me to look at the grammar point, almost like a vocab card, and then see how it's being used in the sentence. Learning grammar is trickier than vocab, and is best to see it, and then see it in a lot of contexts. Whereas vocab is "set up better" for SRS.

I picked your quote because I've felt the way on and off. xD Especially when I first started with Anki...I learned French in high school through textbooks, so it felt like running through Walmart naked to switch to Anki, especially since I'm mining from AAP and from Manga Way.

I kind of do have a similar problem to what you mentioned - I'd say a good 85-90% of the time I hit "hard' no matter how well I know things since I'm afraid scheduling them too far out will cause me to forget it, even if the "hard' interval is 8-15 days. I've tried to be more "liberal" and schedule things farther, but I'm a paranoid individual.

Vocab is fun to do - it's like a game. Do I know it or do I not? If I do, yay! If I don't, say it out loud a couple times, read the sentence, and try again when it comes up again from the failed pile.

I'm thinking of switching to a cloze deleted grammar deck. It's gonna go a lot slower, but I'm not retaining the grammar as well as I'd like and I'm mostly picturing the sentence and reciting what it means. I think one thing I need to do is start pulling things from native sources instead of relying totally on the grammar books, since...well, the English translation is sitting there for me, so why should I bother trying too hard to pull things together?

I think I may end up being the kind of person who, to understand grammar, has to delve into it via native sources instead of SRSing examples about it. I'm importing the Pokemon White game soon, so maybe I'll find a transcript and translate that. I like the way you set yours up, though. =) It makes you look at the pattern and see how it's used.

I love the particle book, though - it's FANTASTIC. I think I'll cloze-delete that whole book and really focus on understanding WHY the particles are used where. I mostly use the Manga Way book to pull the rest together - verbs, and other things that don't depend totally on particles.

@mezbup - I do put in multiple examples. Often 3-5 sentences. But mostly what I do is memorize the sentences regardless - I see the pieces I know, put them together and go "OH! It's xyz. =D"

Also..I apologize. I ramble a lot, and I worry, so my posts are a bit lengthy. -wince- I've tried to study Japanese several times before and always given up. I'm getting a Japanese DSi and Pokemon White for Christmas, and I'm thrilled. I can read through the intro with approximately 40% comprehension of what's going on (and can get the general gist of the rest). I don't want to give up this time, and I'd like to do it the "right" way.

...unfortunately, finding the "right" way seems harder than it looks.

Edit: @kainzero - the semi-nice thing is is that I have most of the basics down - basic verb conjugation, basic adjective conjugation, etc. I can recognize those and generally know the shorter sentences off the bat as long as they match up to my vocabulary. So the AAP sentences are pretty close to perfect. I'm about halfways through my Japanese in Manga Way book, and the sentences are starting to get longer, and /that's/ what frustrates me mostly.

I'm to the point where they're getting longer and I don't have the skills yet to really parse them down into parts. I know the basics - I can understand almost all simple sentences, basic particles (most common functions), etc. But once there starts being more than one sentence, or several things going on at once? It confuses the heck out of me.

For example, a lot of the stuff I'm looking at right now deals with "to iu" and things like that - sentences within sentences. So things get jumbled and it's hard for me to parse together where to start, where to stop, etc.

Grammar-wise right now (using Tae Kim as a reference) I understand/can recognize all of the Basic and about a quarter to a third of the essential.

Maybe I'm just strange but I don't use SRS to learn ANYTHING.

I read, do example exercises, put sentences together until i KNOW a grammar point. I then use the srs to MAINTAIN knowing what I've just learnt /shrug


As long as I'm making progress learning, the srs just helps me to not forget stuff Then I don't have the problem of not feeling like I am making progress

Dustin_Calgary Wrote:Maybe I'm just strange but I don't use SRS to learn ANYTHING.

I read, do example exercises, put sentences together until i KNOW a grammar point. I then use the srs to MAINTAIN knowing what I've just learnt /shrug


As long as I'm making progress learning, the srs just helps me to not forget stuff Then I don't have the problem of not feeling like I am making progress

Sorry...by learning I mean more "retaining" anything, per se. I learn/at least see the point when I put everything in by hand...but I'm not sure if I'm going to retain/recognize the grammar point if I see it again.

The SRS can be whatever you want it to be. Dessert topping or floor wax.

You can turn it into a random test-generating machine, or a random sentence-spewing box. Or both, or something else entirely different.

I've found that trying to learn grammar just from reading example sentences hasn't done the trick for me. I'm going to add a bunch of cloze sets one of these days.... after the JLPT though. Too late now.

The two most important things about the SRS are that you a) feed it new material and b) don't ignore it. Whittling down a 2,500-card pile of overdue cards is one of the LEAST fun things I have EVER done.

EDIT: wretched grammar.

I'm going to cloze-delete "all about particles" fer sure - it'll be the "quickest" way of getting a handle on the silly, troublesome particles.

Still not sure about Manga Way. I would cloze delete that, too, but it's more dependent on the particular sentence due to context and whatnot...for anyone that's used the book, did you just SRS the example sentences normally, or how do you do SRS grammar? Anyone? (For any book.)

Edit: Oh! I was going to say...'m a little worried about doing too much "output" vs input. Is just cloze-deleting it okay? Or should I do recognition and cloze?

nohika Wrote:Edit: @kainzero - the semi-nice thing is is that I have most of the basics down - basic verb conjugation, basic adjective conjugation, etc. I can recognize those and generally know the shorter sentences off the bat as long as they match up to my vocabulary. So the AAP sentences are pretty close to perfect. I'm about halfways through my Japanese in Manga Way book, and the sentences are starting to get longer, and /that's/ what frustrates me mostly.

I'm to the point where they're getting longer and I don't have the skills yet to really parse them down into parts. I know the basics - I can understand almost all simple sentences, basic particles (most common functions), etc. But once there starts being more than one sentence, or several things going on at once? It confuses the heck out of me.
For example, a lot of the stuff I'm looking at right now deals with "to iu" and things like that - sentences within sentences. So things get jumbled and it's hard for me to parse together where to start, where to stop, etc.

If you can understand all the grammatical parts of a long sentence, take your time and work through it... that's the only way to get better at them. I used to always panic when I saw something long with lots of てs and という and commas, but if I'd take my time and systematically identify which parts do what, it would kinda make sense. And as I get better at it, I get faster to the point where I don't have to break everything down.

I had that problem with things like 「青空を見る人は座っています。」 and it would trip me out that 青空を見る could be describing something, but experience did its job and now I can understand it easily when I see it.

kainzero Wrote:

nohika Wrote:Edit: @kainzero - the semi-nice thing is is that I have most of the basics down - basic verb conjugation, basic adjective conjugation, etc. I can recognize those and generally know the shorter sentences off the bat as long as they match up to my vocabulary. So the AAP sentences are pretty close to perfect. I'm about halfways through my Japanese in Manga Way book, and the sentences are starting to get longer, and /that's/ what frustrates me mostly.

I'm to the point where they're getting longer and I don't have the skills yet to really parse them down into parts. I know the basics - I can understand almost all simple sentences, basic particles (most common functions), etc. But once there starts being more than one sentence, or several things going on at once? It confuses the heck out of me.
For example, a lot of the stuff I'm looking at right now deals with "to iu" and things like that - sentences within sentences. So things get jumbled and it's hard for me to parse together where to start, where to stop, etc.

If you can understand all the grammatical parts of a long sentence, take your time and work through it... that's the only way to get better at them. I used to always panic when I saw something long with lots of てs and という and commas, but if I'd take my time and systematically identify which parts do what, it would kinda make sense. And as I get better at it, I get faster to the point where I don't have to break everything down.

I had that problem with things like 「青空を見る人は座っています。」 and it would trip me out that 青空を見る could be describing something, but experience did its job and now I can understand it easily when I see it.

...out of curiosity, does that sentence mean something like "the person sitting can see the blue sky." or somesuch like that? "wo" would make aozura the direct object of miru, and that clause would modify hito, and that would be who would be sitting, right?

...or something like that?

I think I'm going to get a notebook to use when I SRS sentences and "break down" the sentence every time I see it. That way I don't have to re-do everything, but it lets me practice my writing, plus helps me get used to seeing the different parts of sentences and stuff.

Phew. I feel a lot better now. I think that'll help tremendously in being able to put sentences together if I practice breaking them down every time I see them. Eventually I'll move away from it, but now, since I'm still a "beginner" (maybe upper beginner?), it's going to be the only way I learn, I think.

青空を見る人は座っています。

In this case 青空を見る modifies 人, and the whole clause is the topic, marked by は. So we're gonna talk about someone who's looking at the sky. 座っています is the rest of the sentence. So the person who's looking at the sky? That person is sitting.

The best thing about Anki is its flexibility. You can pretty much use it on any platform. I just hooked up my laptop to my HDTV, and used my gamepad to answer a bunch of flashcards. It's not too hard to do with the right peripherals and software. (And it's downright comfy.)

rich_f Wrote:青空を見る人は座っています。

In this case 青空を見る modifies 人, and the whole clause is the topic, marked by は. So we're gonna talk about someone who's looking at the sky. 座っています is the rest of the sentence. So the person who's looking at the sky? That person is sitting.

The best thing about Anki is its flexibility. You can pretty much use it on any platform. I just hooked up my laptop to my HDTV, and used my gamepad to answer a bunch of flashcards. It's not too hard to do with the right peripherals and software. (And it's downright comfy.)

So basically the person who is looking at the sky is sitting. I have to say that AAP is helping me "break down" the clauses by using the particles, a lot more than Manga Way has. =/ But I need to learn potential/causative/whatever conjugations somehow, plus there's other stuff that's not particle-based. So that's why I do both.

Thanks. =) I'll learn eventually.

nohika Wrote:he keeps trying to reassure me there's no wrong way to study a language.

Your friend is right. Since I tend to get carried away and write essays for my posts; I'll just say what many others have posted in the short 2 years I've been a part of this wonderful JP-learning community.

Almost everyone has their own way of learning, and almost everyone will post a different strategy that they use to learn something. Read others' opinions. Try out different approaches, find what works for YOU. It might be a mixture of others's learning styles, or it might be none of them. It might even be going to JP class in college and saying screw Anki and SRS'ing. The major point is: always remember everyday you learn something new, or go to class, or do homework, or do your reviews, you're making progress. I used to get discouraged too (I still do, actually) and think about how little I've learned in 2 years of self-study.

Even recently, I've haven't added a single card to anything in 2-3 weeks due to working and school fulltime. I've even slipped on my RTK and Anki reviews in the past 2 weeks. But even still, I've caught back up on my reviews and thought about what I've learned in 2 years. Even if I've only finished RTK and added maybe 1000 cards total into Anki (vocab and Ko2001 sentences), it's progress. I know compared to many of the amazing people on this website, it's horrible progress. It is in all reality, but it doesn't mean I'm not proud of what I've done so far.

My point I guess: Don't ever think the small amount you're learning is worthless. Even if you only add 1 kanji or 1 word or 1 sentence a day, you're still making progress. ^^

My personal experience:

-I too felt that way. Koohii users kept telling to use anki to learn japanese, and after a few tries I finally got regular (but at a slow place).

-I'm loving it. Not to learn grammar but to review grammar.

-I use it to review grammar and learn new vocabulary.

-It is really, really useful for vocabulary learning. Just the other day I put some 30 new words into anki (JLPT). I happen to have that list printed and yesterday was going through it and noticed that all that new vocabulary I added a few weeks ago (haven't added stuff for the past 2 weeks due to tests) was already in my memory. It was an awesome feeling

-Other thing. Even though I haven't tried to learn new grammar though Anki, I think it really is usefull consolidating grammar points you don't understand, at least that happened a few times.

-Just keep going.



追伸
Thank you everyone for telling me the same a few months ago. My only regret is not having enough time to SRS even more.

About methods, this is my belief over the years: Even a mediocre method will yield spectacular results with persistence, as long as you are able to stick to it. (That is, you enjoy it, or you get results that keep you motivated enough to stick to it.)

Corollary: if you hate the method, then change the method. No matter how theoretically spectacular the method is supposed to be; no matter how many people weep openly over how it changed their lives; if it is as exciting to you as having your septic tank pumped into your living room, then dump it. You won't make progress for long, and you could eventually equate the language with the method and quit.

But don't be afraid to experiment. That's how you find out all of this stuff in the first place. You learn a lot from that, too.

For me to learn grammar I used lots of different methods; textbooks, workbooks, anki, reference books, writing... I personally would not have learnt well with only reference, 'exposure' and anki. Some peeps seem to tho.

Thanks, guys. =) It really helps.

I think I'm going to try sitting down with a notebook during reviews. Mostly the smaller sentences I can understand right off the bat, but for longer ones (I only have a couple right now) I get intimidated and panic, so most of the time I flunk them.

So I'm going to sit down, write out the sentence with spaces between what /I/ think are words/particles, identify what is what, what's it doing, and figure out the sentence from there.

I think eventually I'll have enough experience to do it mentally without having to write it down, but for now, it'll help me learn how to parse the sentence down into pieces and how to rebuild it up to understand it. I think eventually once I get more confident with the language this step will be unnecessary, but I gotta start somewhere, right?

Edit: Also, I'm going to cloze-delete my Particles deck - I've only used it for two days and it's already helped a huge amount. I looked at the sentence kainzero put up and could tell what was modifying what based on the particle and where it was placed. Japanese the Manga Way I'm mostly going to focus on comprehending/understanding and breaking things down, so I won't cloze-delete that. Instead, I'll break each sentence down into pieces to get used to it.

Phew. For once, my confidence is back. I can beat this sucker and play Pokemon! (Yes, I am a nerd. I am. I promise. But I want to learn Japanese for more reasons than Pokemon; Pokemon is just the one arriving soonest.)

It's my opinion that learning grammar passively is really difficult to do, and takes longer than necessary.
I love anki for vocab, but it just hasn't done much for me in terms of grammar. I think mainly because the intervals just increase too fast, and grammar is a more "abstract" concept than vocabulary.
My recommendation is when you learn a new grammar point, use it. Firstly, try to read lots of example sentences so you can be sure that you fully understand it.
Then, make your own sentences. Make lots of sentences. Have someone check them to make sure they are right. This part can be kind of critical, because if you end up making your sentences incorrectly, then it means you didn't really understand the grammar point, even though you thought you did. With grammar, its really easy to THINK you understand something even if you don't.
Anyways, once you are sure that you really understand it, its important to keep using it. Make up new sentences every now and then. Find a Japanese person to talk to or write to, and make sure to use that grammar sometimes.

That doesn't mean that grammar cant have its place in your srs reviews as well. Use whatever works for you.

nohika Wrote:...I'm going to cloze-delete my Particles deck...Japanese the Manga Way I'm...

Perhaps you're already using it, but I thought I should mention there's a premade All About Particles deck/spreadsheet, as it may save you a lot of time and effort. It's not cloze deleted, but just clozing the existing deck would certainly be faster than transcribing it from scratch as well.

Also, did you end up making a group project for Japanese the Manga Way or are you doing it solo?

overture2112 Wrote:

nohika Wrote:...I'm going to cloze-delete my Particles deck...Japanese the Manga Way I'm...

Perhaps you're already using it, but I thought I should mention there's a premade All About Particles deck/spreadsheet, as it may save you a lot of time and effort. It's not cloze deleted, but just clozing the existing deck would certainly be faster than transcribing it from scratch as well.

Also, did you end up making a group project for Japanese the Manga Way or are you doing it solo?

I like making the cards since I feel I internalize it more. =/ Particles have always tripped me up, so typing the cards up, typing each explanation, etc, feels like I "get" it more. Silly, but it's fun.

I ended up doing Manga Way solo since a lot of the sentences I'm not using since I already "get them" or they bore me to tears. I'd be willing to do a group project if anyone wanted to, but I have finals coming up soon (two weeks) and stuff so I'd be slow.

EDIT: So I figured I'd let you guys know what I'm doing. I'm keeping my current decks, but SLOWING DOWN. I've done about 50 reviews so far today for grammar and it's taken me around 35 minutes to do so, which is a lot slower than normal (normally I can bust out a couple hundred in an hour).

I'm taking time, slowing down, and really analyzing the sentences and how they go together. I actually feel like I'm starting to internalize some things, and "parsing" together the longer sentences is getting easier as long as I know the vocabulary.

I think I'll speed up on the shorter sentences, but keep breaking things down on the longer ones.

Thanks for your encouragement. =) I feel like I can do this. YAY! Japanese and reviews are FUN again.

rich_f Wrote:青空を見る人は座っています。

In this case 青空を見る modifies 人, and the whole clause is the topic, marked by は. So we're gonna talk about someone who's looking at the sky. 座っています is the rest of the sentence. So the person who's looking at the sky? That person is sitting.

Just jumping in with a stupid beginner question here because I've been wondering about this. But if it's the "person who's looking at the sky" then I'm wondering why 見ている isn't used? Is it that only the last verb in the sentence needs to be in ている form (in this case 座っています)?

Thanks!