I'm not gonna lie, unless you're taking a grammar quiz or something I don't see what the big hubbub is with grammar cards.

Nagareboshi Wrote:Thank you once again, Cranks! I began adding cards to my grammar deck. The layout looks like this:

http://www.abload.de/thumb/grammarzeqv.jpg

I've made the experience with such cards having an effect on the learner that basically equals to zero. Your cards, both question and answer card, are heavily overloaded, Nagareboshi! Keep it more simple and short. It kind of looks like you just try learning the Dictionary of Basic Japanese grammar by heart using srs with Anki. That shouldn't be the purpose. I can imagine that you will "screw" yourself. Stop doing that.. Also what zachandhobbes said, I find it quite right. Checkout your mail instead. Sweets

zachandhobbes I know all the grammar points, i can use them without difficulty. It is just so that I have difficulty remembering grammar meaning when I read or hear it in native media. This approach helps me, to review them, which does not take very long. And in the end i will be able to understand a sentence, when I hear it in native media, without thinking twice.

Tori-kun I don't learn anything, i just review, the learning process is always taking place outside my SRS. If my goal was to learn all the grammar points from DoBJG, and SRS them one after the other, I would only do this in the context of learning for JLPT. While in fact all I'm doing is adding them, to have some way for not forgetting, and easily recognizing and understanding it, in the context of media.

This might not be the best way to do it, because I don't have any previous experience with this, in the context of an SRS. Unless you, or anyone else who happens to read this, knows a more efficient way let me know. I'm all ears and will give it a try if someone comes up with something different.

I have been checking my mail account, but there aren't any new mails from you. Please send it once again.

Using cloze deleted cards is fine, I would just cut down on the amount of info per card. Too much info on the front of the card will *seriously* bog things down when you get to 2-3,000 cards. Short = fast. Long = slow. Slow = frustration, from my experience.

I would also separate out the tasks: you're trying to do two different things on the same card, produce and recognize at the same time. If you flunk one of those, are you going to flunk the whole card? If so, that's going to gum up the works.

Also, you're just giving yourself the answer on the front of the card. It's not much of a challenge.

I would just do something simple that makes me figure it out on my own, but not completely vague, like:
Front: 私は彼に足を＿＿＿。（踏む）　（受身形）
Back: 私は彼に足を踏まれました。
受身形-- whatever notes I need on passive to make me happy, but keep it short.

That way, they can slip in with my other cards and just ninja attack me randomly.

If I was testing the word order in 受身形, I would put the blanks somewhere else.

Genki is full of stuff you can do like that. Just pick up the answer key and mine the exercises.

For recognition, add those separately, and stick the definition on the back. Treat it as a separate exercise, and flunk it if you can't understand it properly.

Thank you rich_f! You are absolutely correct that it is a bad idea, to give away the answer to questions in a clozed-delete field. This will be changed in the way you suggest. Let me explain why i choose this as an initial layout for my cards.

1) Cloze-delete for production I wish i could have more than one "cd" in a single sentence ...

2) The Examples Currently with English translation, which I will delete, because the sentences are simple enough.

3) The Meaning For recognition, which is, what i aim for. Understanding what a grammar point means.

4) Formation Which is not seen on the example card

If my plan was to keep this layout, I would test myself against two things:

1) the correctness of the cloze-delete field
2) the meaning of grammar

Even if i just can come up with a partially correct answer, i would grade it as hard, and move on. I think this is an approach that i have found over at AJATT. It was about RTK, not sure though, i was just reading about it because it had to do with having Kanji on the front of a card. And lots of facts on the back, reading, meaning and what have you. But this is not what i was planning to do.

Adding all the Grammar points in this way, gives me a good overall impression, of what I want to keep and what's likely to be deleted. As you suggest, it does not make sense, to have that much information on just one card. Seeing how easy it is, to create new cards and card models, only a few clicks actually i was planning on doing the following thing.

1) Creating a model called cloze-delete, having only CD sentence front / Meaning and answer on the back.

2) Pure recognition cards, having some example sentence on the front / Meaning on the back.

3) A set containing the "Grammar point" on the front, one or maybe two example sentences, and the Meaning on the flip-side of the card.

4) And finally i want to recognition cards with information taken from native media containing a sentence with whatever grammar point i want to test my knowledge about. Front Screenshot / back Grammar information.

I think in this way i will achieve my goal of not forgetting any meaning of all the grammar points i come by in native media anymore. Some might disagree with this, but it can be tough to listen to native media, trying hard to understand vocab in use, grammar in use, and the way things are going together. This is so far my only problem i have left to deal with, and of course learning lots more vocabulary, doing more in native media. It will become natural at one point, but this will still take some time for me.

zachandhobbes I guess the thing with grammar in my case is this. During the time working through Genki I + II, there were so many things to remember, conjugation of verbs, adjectives, building of sentences, translating things from E > J and so on. Now all there seems to be left doing is, to review the meaning of grammar points, until i can not only recognize things in native media, but also to understand it.

Grammar in general is something important to me, too. But i would not go the extra mile to learn grammar in isolation, that is without context such as a textbook, a blog, or other media. Others don't think much about grammar, they do sentences, or work through books preparing for JLPT. I want to work on all the necessary skills in as balanced a way as possible.

The easiest way to overcome problems with listening to native media for meaning is simple:

Listen to more native media.

Do that while adding to your vocab, and studying grammar, and you'll start to notice all of the little things you've been missing.

When I first started watching NHK, I didn't understand a whole lot, but I kept watching regardless. Now there are still quite often times where things will go sailing over my head, but I can still salvage some sort of understanding.

In general, I can follow shows like Gatten!, where before I had no chance at all. You just have to keep listening and listening and listening.

And when you study some of the stuff you're listening to-- maybe you pick up the word 肺炎 はいえん (pneumonia) from watching something about it on Gatten-- you may remember how 肺 is the lungs and 炎 is the inflammation you learned in RTK. And then stuff starts to click when they talk about it for 20 minutes solid.

That's how I picked up 塩害 (えんがい) (salt damage, I guess), which has apparently been the bane of the farmers in Tohoku who were affected by the tsunami's floodwaters. Their fields have all been damaged by the salt in the seawater... hence the 塩害 problem.

You are right, and I do that every day, hours on end. As far as vocab goes, there is not much problem. What I haven't done yet is listening while studying grammar. I do add vocabulary though, and look up words i don't know.

As far as my new grammar cards are concerned, i now have decided on the following setup. Front grammar with CD field for production. Back explanation of the Grammar point. I also use cards for recognition, containing an example sentence, with the grammar point in question highlighted. The back contains a short explanation of the grammar point.

I will see how things go. For now i will move on to AIAIJ and work my way through The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs. A good book, interesting vocabulary, and good example sentences. Not much else i can do anyway.

I'll just add that I like searching twitter for examples of grammar (although some wouldn't recommend it)

eg. search for つもりです or 食べに行く and you'll get a load of examples of how they're used.

It's twitter so I guess you have to be a little careful, but it's usually pretty obvious what is a normal sentence I think...