So I decided to start reading as much as I can since I really need to make an effort to boost my lackluster vocabulary. At first I was reading stories from on of those"Read Real Japanese" readers. I was getting frustrated and wasn't having fun anymore, so I decided to try reading manga instead. You get through it quicker giving a better sense of progress instead of staring at the same page for 20 minutes. Anyway, so I'm reading Pandora Hearts and I'm enjoying it quite a bit, however I find myself looking up several words on each page. Actually the 1st volume wasn't terribly hard, but the second volume is killing me with new words. In typical "no word left behind" fashion, I'm dumping them all into Anki, and failing nearly 90% of them.

Obviously I'm not going to retain new words right off the bat, so I'm re-reading passages hoping that reexposure will help. It helps a little, but I'm just getting swamped with just too many damn words. I'm not sure what to do and I'm afraid to keep reading because the list is just getting longer and longer. I'm using a simple vocab deck. Kanji & hiragana on the front, English dictionary entry on the back. Is this where I should think about using a sentence deck instead? It's going to take me forever to transcribe all of that. Should I just keep dumping new words in and just leave it up to Anki (and my brain) to see which ones stick?

Any helpful hints?

If you're making too many cards, only make cards for the ones that seem important. Leave the others. If you really want all the other words too, come back for them at a later time, in a multi-pass approach

I wouldn't do the all or nothing approach. In fact, that will only burn your out. In theory you'll learn a lot more that way, but you'll be suffering.

If you can stand the ambiguity that comes with slight illiteracy then keep reading:

Unlike you I'm reading books but like you I have a hard time understanding most of what I read just because of the vocab and sometimes grammar. Here's what I do; feel free to take some and leave the others.

If I can read a whole page and understand like say 70-80% or more I don't look anything up. Regardless of whether or not there were words or things I didn't know. 70% or more is passing. (but if I really want to I'll add a word, these aren't really strict rules, just guidelines)

If I read a whole page but only understood 50% I start to look stuff up, but I don't add anything to my SRS. Actually, sometimes I do, but it depends (i.e., "dude, I've seen this word like 3000 times in the past month, I should add this to anki). For me, the point of reading is comprehension, so if I can comprehend like 50% that's good enough to keep moving.

If I read a page and I understand less than 50%, basically I have no idea what I just read or I have no idea what's going on, I look up enough information to get me to the point where I can understand and get moving again. I might or might not add stuff to the SRS. It depends on how much time it took me to look stuff up or whether or not it's still too difficult or I'm not completely sure I still understand what's going on even after looking stuff up.

So basically I hardly every put more than say 1 or 2 words per Chapter in my SRS because I'm more worried about reading than studying. BUT I do a vocab deck when I "study" (i.e., when I'm not reading). So basically I do a vocab when I want to study and read when I want to read. (I add the words I look up to my vocab deck so if I am reading and need to add a word I add it to my vocab deck.)

Hope that helps in some way.

Thanks for the reply. The thing is I have a hard time judging what's important and what's not. That and there's so many synonyms (恐れる, 怖じる, 怯える) and I don't know what's 'common' and what each one infers. So I add it, hoping I remember it the next time I hear it in context so that it's meaning might be more clear.

I'm caught halfway between thinking I'm stupid and that everyone is doing exactly what I'm doing right now, and that my low level of reading comprehension is completely normal and that I just need to grin and bear it because it'll all sink in eventually.

I mean it sorta did, at least for the words that repeat several times throughout the series. Words like けいやくしゃ。

My vocabulary retention ability is a little whacked to begin with. Somehow, I'm able to remember complex but completely useless words like 開発部 and 最新情報 without even trying but I still get the days of the week messed up. Gaaahhh. Just ranting.

I suppose I don't really need to add everything to Anki. I am however saving every word I look up in a text file so at least I'll be able to remember what I couldn't understand and add it eventually add it to Anki if I see it popping up frequently.

If my memory serves me well, mezbup has been successfully using a study method that is reading-intensive and involves adding most/all unknown words to anki. I think there's a post describing this method in the study methods thread.

@OP
Are you re-reading difficult material or are you just constantly moving ahead? If the latter, then I recommend reviewing difficult material until comprehension comes smoothly.

domokun1134 Wrote:Thanks for the reply. The thing is I have a hard time judging what's important and what's not. That and there's so many synonyms (恐れる, 怖じる, 怯える) and I don't know what's 'common' and what each one infers. So I add it, hoping I remember it the next time I hear it in context so that it's meaning might be more clear.

When I'm going through a text with a lot of unknown words, I note down a word if I know I've seen it at least once before in the previous few days. Words I'm seeing for the first time get skipped. That should cut down on a lot.
Like Cranks says below, rereading is a good thing to do and helps whittle down at those words in layers until you've got all of them.

Ideas:
# Take only what's important.
# Reduce amount of reading.
# Have other things on your agenda (listening) to keep time reasonable.
# Re-read!!! Reinforce vocabulary in real context + reduce pages covered while still reading something in Japanese. (read 20, re-read 20).

# Set a daily, weekly, monthly word target and stick to it. (Don't over-learn.)

what the others said, although imo it's not really worth adding vocab from books/manga to anki until you have done some kind of 6000 most common words list like core 6000 or up to JLPT2.

I still think you should look up words in a dictionary, just not add them to anki, you will remember the common words for that specific manga without needing anki.

domokun1134 Wrote:Thanks for the reply. The thing is I have a hard time judging what's important and what's not. That and there's so many synonyms (恐れる, 怖じる, 怯える) and I don't know what's 'common' and what each one infers. So I add it, hoping I remember it the next time I hear it in context so that it's meaning might be more clear.

Unfortunately, the majority of words one will come across are words one needs to know to one day become fluent, so that's why I add everything new I come across to my SRS.

A few new words per page seems about right if you're wanting to improve your vocabulary.

domokun1134 Wrote:My vocabulary retention ability is a little whacked to begin with. Somehow, I'm able to remember complex but completely useless words like 開発部 and 最新情報 without even trying but I still get the days of the week messed up.

These are just compounds of very common, important words. 開発部 = 開発+部, 最新情報 = 最新+情報. You definitely should be learning them!

What's your vocabulary at now?

Dude: Don't Panic.

Everything is going amazingly well for you and you don't even realize it.

You are READING JAPANESE and ENJOYING IT! How can that not be awesome?

On top of that, you're finding tons of words to learn from ACTUAL LITERATURE instead of words someone else told you to learn.

You don't -have- to learn any of them. You can pick and choose whichever ones you want.

I'm just slightly past you (I read easy light novels now as well as manga) and it is awesome.

Just keep going and don't worry about drowning: You can't drown in paper. Any perceived drowning is because you are forcing yourself to feel that way.

Guy goes to the doctor and says, "Doctor, it hurts when I touch my elbow." Doctor says, "Stop touching your elbow."

It doesn't have to hurt. Stop making it.

vileru Wrote:@OP
Are you re-reading difficult material or are you just constantly moving ahead? If the latter, then I recommend reviewing difficult material until comprehension comes smoothly.

Well I'm not so much re-reading difficult material specifically, rather I'm just re-reading the last 10 or 15 pages from wherever I left off whenever I start reading again, whether that be the next night or several nights later as it often is.

dizmox Wrote:What's your vocabulary at now?

I'm not sure. It's difficult to measure. My self-made anki deck has about 550 words in it but I wouldn't go by that alone as I've only been using Anki for a year or so (I've been studying for about 2.5 years).

wccrawford Wrote:Dude: Don't Panic.

~takes a deep breath~ okay I'm cool.

wccrawford Wrote:Everything is going amazingly well for you and you don't even realize it.

You are READING JAPANESE and ENJOYING IT! How can that not be awesome?

Yeah it is awesome. I keep forgetting to stop and realize exactly what I'm doing and how awesome it is.

wccrawford Wrote:On top of that, you're finding tons of words to learn from ACTUAL LITERATURE instead of words someone else told you to learn.

You don't -have- to learn any of them. You can pick and choose whichever ones you want.

I'm just slightly past you (I read easy light novels now as well as manga) and it is awesome.

Just keep going and don't worry about drowning: You can't drown in paper. Any perceived drowning is because you are forcing yourself to feel that way.

Guy goes to the doctor and says, "Doctor, it hurts when I touch my elbow." Doctor says, "Stop touching your elbow."

It doesn't have to hurt. Stop making it.

Thanks for the confidence boost.

これから頑張ってみる。

My personal solution is the following: I've finished core6k so those SRS reviews are decreasing every day, and now I have a new deck for my own words and sentences which I basically add to via Yomichan. The catch is I set the number of new cards reviewed each day to 6. It seems really small -- it IS a small amount, but the glory is it keeps my SRS time down and allows me to spend more time reading native material. When reading with Yomichan it's really easy to add cards, so I just add whatever I think needs adding and set my new card review order to random.

Currently I think I have about 200 new cards waiting in line -- that's a lot but I'm fine with it. I did core6k afterall, so that had 6k words waiting in line! I feel like with this approach I get to mark all words I want to for SRS study and eventually will get to them, yet at the same time I can focus on what I want to: reading native material. I'm also guessing that if I drastically increase the volume of native material I get through on a daily basis that I will be learning a lot that SRSing simply won't be able to get at. So my advice to you would be to think about what you want to prioritize: reading a large amount of native material, or reading a smaller amount and spending the additional time diligently SRSing every new word in order as you come across them.

And finally, at 6 words a day I'll be guaranteeing at least 2K words to be formally SRS'ed, whereas I'm certain a lot of other vocab and material will come across via osmosis.

Me personally, I don't like single word Japanese --> English translation cards. I did a few of those in my KO2001 deck which was otherwise all sentences, and I have a lot of trouble remembering it in isolation like that and I'm always forgetting it. At the very least, I'd grab pieces of sentences. Instead of 掃除 i'd have 部屋を掃除する instead. I also don't like having furigana for Kanji, but that's up to you. =)

Lastly, just limit the amount of new cards you study a day, but continue to add cards to the deck. You'll get to it eventually and it'll be easier as you learn more.

domokun1134 Wrote:Thanks for the reply. The thing is I have a hard time judging what's important and what's not. That and there's so many synonyms (恐れる, 怖じる, 怯える) and I don't know what's 'common' and what each one infers.

For synonyms, EDICT has a handy '(P)' marker for popular (roughly, top 20,000) words. It's not always accurate but if you have EDICT to hand it's an easy thing to factor into whether you want to put a word into Anki. (In this example, only 恐れる gets a (P) tag.) Another useful rule of thumb is "do I already know a word for roughly this meaning? If so, don't worry about this new one".

Quote:I suppose I don't really need to add everything to Anki.

Exactly. Sure, in some sense all these words are "required for fluency"; but getting there is a long journey, and you'll have more fun on the way if your not-yet-sufficient vocabulary is mostly common words rather than "all the words from these two books" or "all the words beginning あ い う え or お" :-) So pick a number of words a day/week you're happy with and don't worry about the rest; you'll encounter the others again eventually anyway. I like to pick words where the phrase/sentence they're used in seems usefully representative; where the word seems like it would be handy; or where I'm sure I've seen the word before and just can't quite remember it.