I have a compromise method with sentence cards.

I identify and highlight specific words I want to study when I add a sentence. Adding sentences this way allows me to study in different ways according to my mood...

1. If in a hurry - just concentrate on the highlighted word.
2. If not in a hurry - study the whole sentence.

Either way all of my cards show vocabulary words in context.

nadiatims Wrote:I never bothered with sentence cards, but if you do, I'd say keep them short. Short cards = quick creation and quick reviews. That's why I stick with vocab only. I can see the benefit of very short sentences. Because they can demonstrate whether a verb is transitive or not and reinforce particle usage. However how long do you need to keep reminding yourself that direct object takes を etc?
Is this really necessary?

学校に歩いて行く。
I walk to school.

instead of just

歩いて行く
walk (somewhere)

It's not necessary, but it's definitely more useful if you're at that level. Obviously someone with 5,000 sentences wouldn't really benefit from adding something like that, but if you're still a little uneasy about basic grammar then why not solidify things at no extra cost?

This isn't the best example anyway. The main purpose of sentences is to learn words with multiple potential meanings (of which there are many) in context. "I walk to school" is just about as unambiguous as a sentence gets.

Personally I'd always recommend having a grammar deck and a vocab deck (or at least trying both), although of course neither is absolutely necessary.

@nadiatims: What do you use for vocabulary cards? Anki decks? If so, which? Or are they self-generated? If so, what are your sources? (I'm interested because I'm focusing on vocab, post-RTK.)

harhol Wrote:It's not necessary, but it's definitely more useful if you're at that level. Obviously someone with 5,000 sentences wouldn't really benefit from adding something like that, but if you're still a little uneasy about basic grammar then why not solidify things at no extra cost?

There is extra cost though. In the time it takes to make 1 sentence card, I could have reviewed 20 vocab cards. I don't know how most people are making their sentence cards, but I'm guessing it involves typing out the sentence and reading and meaning either straight into anki or into a spreadsheet or text file. Compare this to the time it takes me to produce a vocab card: 2 seconds to type the word here and hit 's' to have rikaichan output the kanji, reading and English definition to a text file. I use anki's sentence add-on to automatically display a bunch of sample sentences (taken from an online database) on the answer side only. So sentences are there to clear up the meaning if I need it but I rarely do.

@Anna B
I'm using a premade deck that included all the vocab for JLPT1-4. It was about 8000 cards. I've been deleting a lot of the cards because I already know most of the JLPT vocab and I've deleted cards I think are incorrect. But I've also been adding my own cards so the deck has swollen to over 15000 cards. I collect vocab by writing words I don't know on paper throughout the day. Then when I get home, I type the words here, use rikaichans save to file feature (press 's') and then import the text file into anki.

nadiatims Wrote:

harhol Wrote:It's not necessary, but it's definitely more useful if you're at that level. Obviously someone with 5,000 sentences wouldn't really benefit from adding something like that, but if you're still a little uneasy about basic grammar then why not solidify things at no extra cost?

There is extra cost though. In the time it takes to make 1 sentence card, I could have reviewed 20 vocab cards.

Reviewing and adding are separate issues, and you should only ever add when you've finished your reviews, so the point here is moot. The difference between adding「学校に歩いて行く」and「歩いて行く」is a matter of seconds.

nadiatims Wrote:I don't know how most people are making their sentence cards, but I'm guessing it involves typing out the sentence and reading and meaning either straight into anki or into a spreadsheet or text file. Compare this to the time it takes me to produce a vocab card: 2 seconds to type the word here and hit 's' to have rikaichan output the kanji, reading and English definition to a text file. I use anki's sentence add-on to automatically display a bunch of sample sentences (taken from an online database) on the answer side only. So sentences are there to clear up the meaning if I need it but I rarely do.

(The vocab example you gave「歩いて行く」doesn't have an entry on Rikaichan, fwiw.)

Sentence cards have a totally different purpose to vocab cards. Neither type of card is necessary but I think shunning sentence cards simply because they take longer to add is missing the point, particularly if the Tanaka Corpus is your only source for example sentences. How/when do you learn grammar?

harhol Wrote:Reviewing and adding are separate issues, and you should only ever add when you've finished your reviews, so the point here is moot. The difference between adding「学校に歩いて行く」and「歩いて行く」is a matter of seconds.

My point is, by saving time on card creation, I can increase the number of reviews per day and therefore increase the number of new cards added per day. The difference isn't really a matter of seconds either, because I don't have to manually type the reading or the definition. I need only type the expression field, and the other fields are generated automatically thanks to rikaichan. If I'm reading online articles at home, I can create new cards just by pressing 's'. Less than a second for a new card isn't bad I'd say. And the longer the sentence, the bigger this creation time difference is going to be.
In rare cases where there isn't a rikaichan entry, I can just create the card manually.

harhol Wrote:Sentence cards have a totally different purpose to vocab cards. Neither type of card is necessary but I think shunning sentence cards simply because they take longer to add is missing the point, particularly if the Tanaka Corpus is your only source for example sentences. How/when do you learn grammar?

The simple answer is that I learn grammar by reading and listening. If there's a certain point that is bugging me though, I can just go ask someone about it or check online, or I'll just temporarily ignore it until it falls into place naturally.
Ask yourself this though. In the above example, what exactly is the grammar point you're testing? If you wanted to test particle usage, you're probably better off making cards like this:
front: 学校＿歩いていく what particle? why?
back: に indicating target of a movement verb.

or

front:AにBをCがくれる
back: C gives B to A.

But even grammar cards like this are likely to just be memorized without necessarily being understood. So after creating the card, you're not even necessarily getting anything of benefit on subsequent reviews. Grammar is learned by applying the rules you learn/discover to comprehend or create unknown sentences, not by memorizing Japanese X = English Y pairs.
This can be done by simply reading/listening/conversing. Grammar rules can be explained by a good grammar guide with a lot of different example sentences to test your comprehension on or drilled with a skilled language teacher or through translation/writing exercises. After you've seen a sentence card's answer once, that card is useless for learning grammar because getting the answer is no longer dependent on understanding the grammar point. You already know the answer. It would be like learning math by memorizing questions and answers. You learn math by applying what you know to new problems.

harhol Wrote:Sentence cards have a totally different purpose to vocab cards. Neither type of card is necessary but I think shunning sentence cards simply because they take longer to add is missing the point, particularly if the Tanaka Corpus is your only source for example sentences. How/when do you learn grammar?

That vocab cards are extremely time efficient is exactly the point! I would urge people to also use sentences along side vocab decks to learn grammar. These should be premade however, mining sentences took more time than it was worth to me and I found it clumsy in that if a word came up that I wanted to learn but I had no interest in the sentence itself... what should be done? The vocab deck solved that problem. Though, I've always kept grammar study going using the Dictionary Of Japanese Grammar deck and un-suspending what I need.

A good balance is required, especially in the beginning. Though, I have maybe 1500 or so sentences unsuspended in my DoJG deck and over 11.5k vocab in my vocab deck. So it's clear to see which requires more attentionz. Screw trying to find 11.5k sentences.

It sounds like mezbup has a pretty good system and it's what I might do if I was still learning grammar.

This forum used to be in a phase where people spent a ton of time generating study material (sentence mining etc) and little time actually studying. It's good to see that some people are realizing how unproductive it is compared to what I'll term the mass-vocab method.

I add 100-200 words to my deck per day on average (lately mostly terms for obsolete historical stuff, normally kana words in kanji, and science jargon) and have ~1000 expired cards to review per day, and it only takes about 2-3 hours with ~85% pass rate (would be higher but I fail for the slightest doubt) including making the new cards. Much of that is done on the 30min train to/from work and the rest is done at work. I don't study at home or on weekends anymore.

That method won't work so great for an absolute beginner, but I think vocab should still be focused on more than grammar in the beginning. One thing to watch out for /w rikaichan is that edict is still full of mistakes, so don't trust it blindly.

Actually if there's one thing the mass-vocab method has taught me, it's how little of the language textbooks actually cover! That and the insane amount of passive vocab actually required to understand what people would generally consider interesting conversations.

nadiatims Wrote:But even grammar cards like this are likely to just be memorized without necessarily being understood. So after creating the card, you're not even necessarily getting anything of benefit on subsequent reviews [...] After you've seen a sentence card's answer once, that card is useless for learning grammar because getting the answer is no longer dependent on understanding the grammar point. You already know the answer.

The point of SRSing snippets in addition to single words it to memorize particular grammar functions, sentence patterns & idioms, which are the basis of language. Then once you've learned them you can apply them yourself. You say you can learn grammar via "drill[s] with a skilled language teacher or through translation/writing exercises"... well 'mining' is just another way of drilling grammar rules & patterns. You can either expose yourself to those rules & patterns naturally and refer to a reference guide each time or you can be more proactive. Both methods have their pros & cons but I don't think that systematically learning the various meanings, uses & nuances of something like「と」is ever going to be a bad thing. The "What's this word..." thread is full of people trying to "dive in" AJATT-style, reading material way above their level and getting stuck on simple grammar points which they expected to just pick up intuitively but which have to be explained to them.

I should clarify that I'm a strong believer in mass learning of vocab and I myself tried the vanilla 10,000 sentence method, got bored out of my mind extremely quickly and then focused on the Core 6000 before even properly learning how to conjugate to the polite form, so in no way am I saying that vocab grinding should play second fiddle: words are words and they need to be learned. However, I think SRSing various bits of grammar and particular turns of phrase is extremely useful and I don't see any obvious down side to it, so long as you don't get carried away and start mining places like 2chan. SRS is just a tool to help you remember, after all, and you can't learn a language without remembering grammar rules.

My point is that the way the sentence mining method is utilized by most members of this forum is in my mind very inefficient (this is the main point) and actually a counter productive way to learn grammar because after you've seen a sentence card's answer once, getting the answer is no longer dependent on understanding the grammar point(s). Memorizing sentence X = sentence Y (vanilla sentence method) is rote memorization at it's worst because you're ignoring the fundamental unit of language which is the word. Compare this to a good teacher who could explain some grammar points and then drill you on it by throwing unknown sentences at you to translate or questions to respond to. The latter actually trains a useful skill and requires a bit of brain work, each rep being a kind of linguistic push-up if you will. Actually using a language is an act of constantly interpreting sentences (within context) to meaning with increasing speed and accuracy. In the time it takes to see a sentence say 20 times (or however long it takes to space it to infinity) in the SRS, I could have practicing reading/hearing or producing 20 different sentences in the wild.

Jarvik7 Wrote:I add 100-200 words to my deck per day on average (lately mostly terms for obsolete historical stuff, normally kana words in kanji, and science jargon) and have ~1000 expired cards to review per day, and it only takes about 2-3 hours with ~85% pass rate (would be higher but I fail for the slightest doubt) including making the new cards. Much of that is done on the 30min train to/from work and the rest is done at work. I don't study at home or on weekends anymore.

That method won't work so great for an absolute beginner, but I think vocab should still be focused on more than grammar in the beginning. One thing to watch out for /w rikaichan is that edict is still full of mistakes, so don't trust it blindly.

How do you import new vocab words to Anki? If I'm not mistaken, your studies have gone entirely monolingual, yes? Rikaichan's ctrl-s function is available to those who do bilingual studying. Since that's not your situation, would you mind explaining how you go about efficiently adding monolingual cards?

My vocab cards are bilingual since it takes too much time to make monolingual definitions. I just consider the shaky edict definitions almost like keywords. I get all the vocab from reading real materials instead of texts/vocab lists, so I just learn the usage from that.

Also, when I add the card using rikaichan's s feature, it's from a Japanese monolingual dict that I've looked the word up on.

Jarvik7 Wrote:My vocab cards are bilingual since it takes too much time to make monolingual definitions. I just consider the shaky edict definitions almost like keywords. I get all the vocab from reading real materials instead of texts/vocab lists, so I just learn the usage from that.

Also, when I add the card using rikaichan's s feature, it's from a Japanese monolingual dict that I've looked the word up on.

Thanks for the quick reply. Rikaichan's ctrl-s feature definitely wins when it comes to efficiency. It makes me wonder if there's any monolingual projects that are comparable to WWWJDIC. If so, then the time is nigh for a monolingual Rikaichan clone.

Anyway, if you don't mind answering, could you share the name of the monolingual dictionary that you use?

A monolingual rikaichain would be a nice option to have but I don't think it's crucial. English definitions act like heisig keywords for me. They are a way of connecting new information to something strongly rooted in my memory. For me the benefit of the "mass-vocab method" as Jarvik called it, is just front loading as much information as possible into the short term memory so I can then recognize them when I see them or hear them in the wild. That's where their meaning is truly learned and observations can be made about usage. For this reason monolingual definitions aren't necessarily any better imo because while the meaning may be more accurate, they may slow down reviews.

nadiatims Wrote:after you've seen a sentence card's answer once, getting the answer is no longer dependent on understanding the grammar point(s).

This isn't true though, unless you're misusing the method (not adhering to i+1) or have the ability to permanently memorize new information after seeing it once, in which case you shouldn't need to use Anki to remember vocab either. There are hundreds of different fiddly grammar constructions, many of which may only crop up every few weeks, months or even years. It isn't simply case of looking something up in a grammar guide, understanding it and then never needing to study it again. You could easily forget the meaning of the 「ところで」construction in a matter of hours, for instance, or how to conjugate it. And each time you forgot, you'd have to look it up again. Creating a grammar card such as this is an easy, efficient way of alleviating that potential problem:

Front:
食べたところで

Back:
even if ate...
[Vinf past ~ところで; even if X...]
lit. 'even if one supposes an action or a state in the clause has already taken place.'
► Vte も

If I successfully remember it, the intervals will turn to months very quickly. If I don't, there will be spaced reminders until I do. It's win/win. You previously said "I can see the benefit of very short sentences" so I'm not sure if we're really even disagreeing with each other here.

Ok fair enough.
However considering this is a debate about relative benefits, and efficiency I still think vocab cards win-out. We may have to disagree on this point. Try listening to or reading anything above your level and you'll see that unknown vocabulary is always the biggest barrier to comprehension. So it makes sense to focus on eliminating this barrier first. The moment you know 95% of the words being used everything pretty much becomes comprehensible input and you'll be amazed at how much the grammar falls into place without needing to be studied.

harhol Wrote:This isn't true though, unless you're misusing the method (not adhering to i+1) or have the ability to permanently memorize new information after seeing it once, in which case you shouldn't need to use Anki to remember vocab either.

This is precisely my point though. People are misusing the method. Because using sentences to learn vocab gives away the answer, and using complete sentences to teach grammar also gives away the answer imo.
By the way I don't look up the majority of the unknown words when I encounter them (this is far too slow), so I'm not not using anki to remember them. I'm using anki to pre-learn them.

nadiatims Wrote:For this reason monolingual definitions aren't necessarily any better imo because while the meaning may be more accurate, they may slow down reviews.

Good argument. One objection worth noting is that monolingual cards allow you to build a more interconnected vocabulary than bilingual cards. When you look up a word in a monolingual dictionary, it refers you to synonyms, and sometimes, antonyms. In addition, usually the word in question is explained with simpler words. Learning these things make your vocabulary more interconnected because they help you understand the relations between words. Sure, you can understand the relations between words using bilingual cards, but the process is more straightforward with monolingual cards. Of course, this would be most useful for someone who has reached a level in which they're more or less just as comfortable with monolingual cards as they are with bilingual ones.

Connecting Japanese words to English ones may stick better though because of strong associations with memories. I think it's faster to just remember 林檎 = apple, than 林檎 = バラ科の落葉高木。また、その果実。葉は卵円形. By using English, you can make a concise, concrete and meaningful connection. Anyway I think as long as you're actually using Japanese enough outside of the srs, you'll be getting plenty of word interconnection anyway. Nevertheless I can see your point and would definitely try monolingual definitions if rikaichan had that function. It could help to keep you in 日本語モード.

For nouns like 林檎, I've been using a picture for the definition - No english needed!

That sounds good in theory, but again it's not time efficient if you have to google image search each time you make a card. For simple well known things like 林檎, the word "apple" should create just as strong a connection in your mind as a picture of an apple. For obscure nouns such as plants/flowers/historical names/cultural words this would be useful, and a google image search button is a function I'd love to see integrated into anki.

That's true - It's not time efficient, but I enjoy giving my deck a personal touch so it's worth it to me (and doesn't take too much time really). It kind of makes reviewing more fun for me too.

I do like your idea of an image search button. Maybe someone out there with the skills will read this, and get inspired......

In the beginning phases it's essential to get used to J-J. Once that's done to a confident level, then having kanji to English translation. Doesn't hurt your progress. It's good to keep a balance though, because understanding J-J(native way), is vital to getting far into japanese

Im doing core 2000 without using Anki or any other SRS,and im doing pretty good(432 words),im taking a japanese course in college where we only focus on grammar so i don't need to mine sentences.my question is,is it really necessary to use an SRS along with Core 2000(it has its own little SRS)?and is vocab or sentences more useful?

When you say you are doing core 2000, and that it has it's own little SRS, I am led to believe you are doing it straight through smart.fm, correct? If you like the SRS they have built in, excellent, you don't need to use Anki if you don't want to. When I usually hear people say they go through core 2000, they are usually using a spreadsheet imported into Anki (probably the Kore one made by Cangy). The reason for this is that the reviews are all condensed into one deck, it's more customizable, portable, etc...there's certainly no need to use anki if you like their setup, but some people prefer anki... That's all

Sentences vs vocab... That's a discussion that'll continue for a long time, but I've come to think that beginners should use sentences, more advanced students can just do vocab, but it's definitely good to have a sentence for special context words.