I have read so many threads recently but I am still confused what to do. Currently, I am about half way in core2k. The layout is FRONT: word & sentence in kana. BACK:audio, word in Kanji & sentence in Kanji, translation, and more examples from tatoeba plug-in. My review is to look at the FRONT, see if I know the word, write the word down in Kanji. Then I would check the answer at the back and imitate audio reading of sentence of that word. It has been very rough however. and I wish someone here can give me advice.

To give you come background, I have studied Japanese for almost 1 year, finished Minna no Nihongo 1&2 and taught myself Genki 1&2 along the way. I am now an exchange student in Japan and have committed myself to seriously study Japanese. My university study is somewhat easy so I have plenty of time for my Japanese learning. Recently I have finished RTK in 2 months and still continue to review everyday. My retention on average is about 90% and increasing.

So here are the problems.
1. In my review, if I look at the kana word alone, I sometimes have no idea what it means. But once looking at the sentence, I can easily get the meaning and Kanji right. In this way, I feel like I don't really know the word. I just remember the meaning of each sentence quite well and know Kanji meaning. Sentence seems to stuck nicely but sadly not individual word. I doubt if would recognize those words in other context.

2. I have having trouble with transitive and intransitive verbs. I feel that my deck shows them so randomly and I find it difficult to organize my thought, which is which. The same goes for counters and category words like body parts. Although I have got them pretty well now, but that was because I used picture book and memorized them in category separately in addition to my regular deck.

I am having an idea that maybe from now on, I should just do a pure vocab deck. May be do them in category since I am comfortable with it (is there such deck available on Anki by any chance?). But again after having read many threads, people say that:
=> many verb and nouns are contextual and to use them correctly I need to know the context in which they are used. Memorizing pure vocab is just not very useful.
=> there are many words with the same pronunciation but may mean totally different.
=> I need to know which particle to use with which verb/noun.
=> doing sentence deck, I can also strengthen my grammar.

Personally I have done flashcard (English to Japanese/Kanji to English) with my Minna no Nihongo & Genki before, somewhat similar to pure vocab deck I guess. And I found them quite comfortable and effective. I could remember individual words quite well. But I have to admit that I do struggle when producing them in speaking.

So now I am at a dilemma. Please advice. My pure vocab should be from Kana to Kanji, or from English to Kana? How can I compensate for the weakness of this method? reading native materials like manga?

I feel that, for me, it is better to focus on each aspect of the language, one by one. I feel that I was very comfortable with Heisig's method and I could go very fast with it, with nice retention.

After all, I am still very new in this language and I wish someone could guide me through this. I love this language and hope that with my hard work I will be able to use this language at my will some day.

tnattawat Wrote:So here are the problems.
1. In my review, if I look at the kana word alone, I sometimes have no idea what it means. But once looking at the sentence, I can easily get the meaning and Kanji right. In this way, I feel like I don't really know the word. I just remember the meaning of each sentence quite well and know Kanji meaning. Sentence seems to stuck nicely but sadly not individual word. I doubt if would recognize those words in other context.

Have you tried kanji->kana+audio+meaning? I switched to doing both directions and seem to have better luck at the price of marginally more reviews.

tnattawat Wrote:2. I have having trouble with transitive and intransitive verbs. I feel that my deck shows them so randomly and I find it difficult to organize my thought, which is which. The same goes for counters and category words like body parts. Although I have got them pretty now, but that was because I used picture book and memorize them in category separate in addition to my regular deck.

If you're using a word list like Core, I recommend taking some control over it via (un)suspending/tagging/etc in order to get different orderings. If it makes sense to do words together due to similar readings, related meanings, etc then try it.

tnattawat Wrote:I am having an idea that maybe from now on, I should just do a pure vocab deck. May be do them in category since I am comfortable with it (is there such deck available on Anki by any chance?). But again after having read many threads, people say that:
=> many verb and nouns are contextual and I need I know the context in which they are used. Memorizing pure vocab is just not very useful.
=> there are many words with the same pronunciation but may mean totally different.
=> I need to know which particle to use with which verb/noun.
=> doing sentence deck, I can also strengthen my grammar.

A pure vocab deck is probably an awful choice for learning a complete understanding of a word, but it seems an appropriate supplement; I think the trick is leveraging it to quickly get a _rough idea_ of a large number of words (far more than you could do in equivalent time with a sentence deck) and thus enable yourself to read more native material, where you can encounter lots of real context for the words to achive that more complete understanding.

Here is how I do it:
Kanji word on front.
Kana + sentence + english on back

For difficult words, I usually read the sentence after I flip the card, to help cement my understanding, otherwise I usually ignore the sentence.
The reviews go very fast.

I don't think there is much need to practice writing it out (how often do you really need to write in real life?) And audio isn't useful for much except making your reviews last longer. You can get plenty of audio practice just from watching movies and stuff.

I don't like doing sentences, because I learn the sentence and not the vocab.

Also, for instances where the word itself is ambiguous, I sometimes put the sentence on front.

overture2112 Wrote:Have you tried kanji->kana+audio+meaning? I switched to doing both directions and seem to have better luck at the price of marginally more reviews.

Zarxrax Wrote:Here is how I do it:
Kanji word on front.
Kana + sentence + english on back

The idea to go from Kanji to Kana sounds very interesting. I am doing kana to kanji now because I was thinking earlier that writing will help cementing those words into my head. But I really feel that writing takes so much time and quite discouraging.

To Zarxrax, what deck would you recommend me to use at this stage? I'm also quite new with Anki. Thank you for sharing your idea.

Zarxrax wrote:

Here is how I do it:
Kanji word on front.
Kana + sentence + english on back

Id second this. At first its just way too hard and time consuming to go from kana to kanji especially if youre trying to write them down. I figure if you know the word then youll be fine because most of your writing in Japanese will be on a computer and therefore you get the automatic kanji lookups. This is why even native Japanese and Chinese are having trouble with handwriting these days.

Over time though, going from kana to kanji gets way easier but I wouldnt rush this aspect of learning the language.

Another great way to cement the meaning of a particular word is to cloze delete it in the sentence. You could have two cards for each word. One card where its your standard vocab on the front and sentence on the back. The other would be where you have only the core sentence on the front and you cloze deleted the the word youre learning. I cant emphasis cloze deleting enough for retention. If youre not sure how to do it, its the [...] button in anki.

tnattawat Wrote:To Zarxrax, what deck would you recommend me to use at this stage? I'm also quite new with Anki. Thank you for sharing your idea.

I'm doing core6k right now. But after the first 2k, a lot of the words don't seem like they would be immediately useful to me, so I just suspend about half of the new cards that come up now, and maybe I'll get back to them later.

I'm thinking of starting a subs2srs deck soon, and see how that works for me.

Doing writing for all vocab is pretty damn 面倒くさい, and in my experience not needed even if you want to be able to write by hand. I like using a per-kanji basis rather than per-word, such as RTK with Japanese keywords, and find the exposure to be enough.

That aside...

overture2112 Wrote:A pure vocab deck is probably an awful choice for learning a complete understanding of a word, but it seems an appropriate supplement; I think the trick is leveraging it to quickly get a _rough idea_ of a large number of words (far more than you could do in equivalent time with a sentence deck) and thus enable yourself to read more native material, where you can encounter lots of real context for the words to achive that more complete understanding.

I highly approve of doing this when you have a grasp on basic grammar, because premade sentences only take you so far. They are often rather rudimentary compared to what you might find in native material, and take longer to review than vocab cards. I didn't find they helped me that much in reading, to be honest, and I doubt you'd learn every nuance of a word by SRS either way.

Also, sentence on the back side isn't a bad idea at all. Thus, TL;DR: I third Zarxrax.

Zarxrax Wrote:Here is how I do it:
Kanji word on front.
Kana + sentence + english on back

For difficult words, I usually read the sentence after I flip the card, to help cement my understanding, otherwise I usually ignore the sentence.
The reviews go very fast.

I don't think there is much need to practice writing it out (how often do you really need to write in real life?) And audio isn't useful for much except making your reviews last longer. You can get plenty of audio practice just from watching movies and stuff.

I don't like doing sentences, because I learn the sentence and not the vocab.

Also, for instances where the word itself is ambiguous, I sometimes put the sentence on front.

I do something similar to this. You get the benefits of seeing how the word is used grammatically and contextually, but on the back of the card, so it isn't given away along with the meaning of the word before you've even attempted to remember it.

It might be worth taking the time to repeat the audio out loud though. You're much more likely to remember the sentence itself, and if you're lucky you'll absorb the pitch accent, intonation, and maybe improve your general pronunciation. You'll essentially be doing SRS'd shadowing, so it easily justifies the extra time.