Hey,

I decided to pick up my game in order to ignore what's going on outside and see if I can increase my reading skills with the lights about to start going on schedules.

One thing I've read a lot on, but don't understand how it is practically accomplished is 'srsing sentences.' I have spent quite a long time familiarizing myself with compounds, and I think I have a fair grasp on over 2100 readings though compounds/names. However, it leaves me thinking I need to do more. I also read through the news daily in iDict+, followed by moving all unknown words to my Anki deck later.

That being said, am I missing something helpful in srsing full sentences?
How do you actually study them?
Should I test based on relative meaning clarity, reading, or both?

Any thoughts or insights would be greatly appreciated. I tried to find some other posts on the forum, but the little I could gather was muddled and left me still wondering.

Cheers

I SRS sentences in Anki. There's some pros and cons to it.

As for the general process... in the beginning, using KO2001
Front: Sentence
Back: English Translation of the entire sentence
Judgment: I attempt to read the sentence. If I can read it in one pass, I give it an "Easy" or "Very Easy." Very Easy would be something braindead easy, that I don't have to think much about it. It's rare that I give that. If I have to stop and think about a reading or a definition, but I eventually get it, I still pass the card on Good. If I fail a reading or a definition, I fail the card.

As your Japanese gets better, the back of the card should have less and less English. Instead of translating the whole sentence, you might just have different parts of the sentence translated, or explained. Recently, there have been a lot of cards of mine with no English.

Pros:
Contextual learning
-You get to see how a word is used and in what context. Very helpful. I tried cutting and pasting English definitions of words alone, but they never seemed to help and encountering the word in another context would still confuse me.
-You get to see what words are also used with that word. You'll see 車 and 家　associated with 購入 and make the connection.

Cons:
Difficulty jumping from context
-I'll see a few words from mature cards in SRS in a different context like a newspaper and have trouble defining it, because I've used context to define that word. Without that context I might struggle to find the definition in my head when I encounter it elsewhere.

I usual add small sentences to my deck, for quick review/additions.
I'm currently in the process of experimenting using mass sentence context. Want to experiment(i.e. make my reading skills more fast/smoother/understand more context easily)

You could download the Harry Potter Anki deck and give it a shot. I prefer it to vocabulary only decks. I learn vocabulary, grammar, and real usage of the words that way.

bertoni Wrote:You could download the Harry Potter Anki deck and give it a shot. I prefer it to vocabulary only decks. I learn vocabulary, grammar, and real usage of the words that way.

Context rules

I do sentences for grammar learning. Most of mine are from whatever grammar source I'm learning from - in this case, DOxJG (currently the basic one). I burn out on sentences quickly, so I try and not use them for everything otherwise I'd give up.

I'm currently using Yomichan, and as I get better I'll start adding sentences, but for now, I just do my vocab with word/definition so I don't burn out.

nohika Wrote:I do sentences for grammar learning. Most of mine are from whatever grammar source I'm learning from - in this case, DOxJG (currently the basic one). I burn out on sentences quickly, so I try and not use them for everything otherwise I'd give up.

I'm currently using Yomichan, and as I get better I'll start adding sentences, but for now, I just do my vocab with word/definition so I don't burn out.

add them at a slow pace then, 5-10 per day. You shouldn't feel any burnout that way. I only add 10 new sentences per day now.

ta12121 Wrote:

nohika Wrote:I do sentences for grammar learning. Most of mine are from whatever grammar source I'm learning from - in this case, DOxJG (currently the basic one). I burn out on sentences quickly, so I try and not use them for everything otherwise I'd give up.

I'm currently using Yomichan, and as I get better I'll start adding sentences, but for now, I just do my vocab with word/definition so I don't burn out.

add them at a slow pace then, 5-10 per day. You shouldn't feel any burnout that way. I only add 10 new sentences per day now.

I do 10 new grammar sentences a day and 20 new vocab, no matter how many I grabbed from Yomichan. Sometimes it's frustrating if I'm tired, but it's not really that bad. I do them in small, time-boxed bunches, the limits depending on how I feel at the time, too. Sometimes I do 45 reps, sometimes only 10.

It's quite nice.

Try lots of different stuff, see what you like. Everybody does something different, as you can see.

I like:

-short sentences;
-interesting sentences from stuff I like if possible; search texts of favorite LNs for vocab;
-avoiding the KO sentences, because they usually violate the short/interesting rule and i+1... and i+4 or 5 sometimes;
-following the KO order and vocab suggestions;
-doing production (with *lots* of caveats, but long story short, it works for me-- I know it's not for everyone, and a lot of people hate it to death--that's fine. I want to be able to remember how to write the damn things with an actual pen.);
-doing Cloze deletion sentences (grab the Genki answer book and workbook, go to town on those fill-in-the-blank exercises; avoid multiple choice; make it true FitB. Or some other grammar exercise books, depending on what you need.)

Something like that.

The other deck you could try would be Core6000 or the like, actually. It should be easy to reconfigure the deck to put up the sentence rather than the vocabulary word. I'm going to do that soon. The Harry Potter deck isn't all that specific to Harry Potter. Some of it doesn't come from the novels at all, and I think most of it is fairly general use. Just a comment in case you don't want to read Harry Potter in Japanese.