What do you guys do for building your vocabulary specifically? I'm pretty decent with the grammar rules, I think now the only thing left is to just grind a ton of vocabulary words. Learning Kanji is great and all, but you need to actually.. you know.. know words.

Do you just read news articles and stuff? Or used spaced repetition or something? Are there any sites for this type of thing? Most ones I see are for grammar rules and how to say specific sentences. I want one that actually builds vocabulary. My favorite site for this right now is japanese recall.. it sort of made me realize I need to actually use Anki and stuff instead of just dilly daddling. I guess I could build a deck myself, rather than using some site, but I'm too lazy and I'm afraid I'd add the cards wrong or something. Are there even any other sites like that out there?

Do new REAL sites ever get made or do they just make crappy wordpress blogs nowadays? What do people here use/do? I like people's opinions. It's funner getting people's support on a forum than actually spending my time studying.

I'm in the exact same situation you are. I'd say you should suspend trying to read actual Japanese articles untill you've build atleast some vocabulary, because having to mouse over several time every sentence to get the readings for the kanji compounds can be quite frustrating. Also, just reading Japanese won't make the words stick, you'll have forgotten the readings once you get to the next paragraph. I suggest you try the core2k/6k decks under shared decks on Anki. Most of the words they teach are pretty common, atleast common enough for me to hear them all the time in most anime I watch.

Thanks for responding! So SRS IS the way to go then? That's reassuring that I'm doing it right I guess.

I've tried those premade decks before. I don't like 'em! Or rather, I don't like the concept of premade decks to begin with. Firstly you gain much by adding the card yourself, just like taking notes in class helps reinforce what you are learning. Secondly the premade decks are too large and start you with Kanji that you might not even know, I would rather start at the beginning (of the kyouiku Kanji) and learn the vocabulary by commonness of Kanji and stuff. Premade decks treat you like a rat in an experiment, you just keep getting the answer wrong until you finally learn that the answer is X. The only thing you gain from this is that you know how to answer the card correctly, I don't think it really helps you learn the word very well. Thirdly, am I just supposed to trust that the guy who made that deck added the cards correctly? And not hearing example sentences beforehand means that you are just memorizing some English meaning out of context, you really can only learn a word if you know how to use it in context! I've seen a lot of poorly made decks, that's all...

The alternative though, is making a deck yourself. Also not very fun. I've done this before for months, but it's so time consuming. I guess the best method would be, get a giant vocab list with no translations, and painstakingly, every single day, look up some more words from that list, add them to your deck, make sure you know how they are used by researching some example sentences.. etc. But that would take forever. Also I'd probably screw up a translation every now and then. Japanese recall (http://japaneserecall.com.. incidentally), sort of simplified that by doing all of that lookup/usage stuff beforehand, and presenting it to you in order. So you are still adding the cards yourself, it just doesn't take an hour a day each time.. more like a few minutes.

Anyway I was really just wondering if there were any other sites like that, I like to see all my options before picking one. I can't imagine that site is the only one that has thought to do this... though if it is I'm just gonna use that from now on, it's not like I have any complaints with it, just kind of curious if there are any other ones, or to see if you guys recommend spaced repetition at all? I definitely haven't been doing this as long as some of you I'm sure. Sorry for the wall of text.

I went through core 6000 then memorised all of the "common words" in the dictionary using SRS while looking up example sentences using a J/J dictionary (plus adding vocabulary I run into naturally)... yes it took forever and it was boring. >_> I did this in bursts though, not continuously. Obviously I did other Japanese study.

Took about 1.5 years overall.

I think the most efficient way is to find a balance between easy and interesting content that is in a format where word meanings can be gotten quickly at a glance. ie. minimise time consuming dictionary lookups. This means things like parallel texts, phrasebooks and online articles so you can use things like rikaichan (firefox) mouse over dictionary. At some point, I suggest investing in a decent electronic dictionary. It's also a good idea to carry a pad in which you can note down unknown vocabulary you encounter throughout the day and then check the meaning and add to it anki later. I personally wouldn't recommend trying to brute force memorise some set number of words before starting to read. Just start reading and don't worry so much about what you're forgetting. The commonly repeated words will start to stick very quickly. Grab those low hanging fruit and enjoy the other benefits that reading brings before trying to arbitrarily memorise x-words. Don't waste time memorising words that haven't yet proved their necessity to you. ie. words you haven't encountered in the wild. Also Don't neglect your listening practice. Try to maximise any spare time you have (commute etc) to listen to japanese content to reinforce all the new words you're learning and get yourself used to hearing them rather than just reading them.

Regarding time spent building your srs deck. This is precisely why I recommend just doing simple japanese word->your native language cards. This cards can be made in a few seconds (rikaichan mouse over and hit 's'). You don't need to be searching example sentences and nailing down the exact meaning in your srs, just get the words into your head first and learn their subtleties through repeated exposure in authentic content or conversations.

nadiatims Wrote:[...]This is precisely why I recommend just doing simple japanese word->your native language cards. This cards can be made in a few seconds (rikaichan mouse over and hit 's').

Using core6k and Rikaichan really boosted my reading skills that way, but I think in order to understand what's being said (listening comprehension) I at least have to be able to reproduce the word, that I perhaps even know, by myself first. A simple example, if I can say とにかく, I will understand what it means in the context of what I listen to. I wonder how I can work in future on that problem, because I am learning Japanese for (effectively with Anki for 4.5 months, with RtK 1.5 years) a long time already and there is only very slow and disappointing progress.

So some people recommend brute forcing vocab before even attempting to read.. and others recommend trying to read first and not worrying about memorizing words until you come across them while reading....

Within 30 minutes I've gotten.. absolute polar opposites for suggestions!

SRS doesn't work for me. I need a primary step before that to actually 'learn' the word. SRS would be fine for remembering them, though.

I find that iKnow.jp works well as that first step. I've tried other things and they haven't helped as much for learning vocab.

For a while I was using ReadTheKanji.com for vocab, and while it was really helping me get used to reading without furigana, I didn't learn much vocab from it.

In the end, I don't SRS, though. I find that reading books and manga is more than enough to keep most words fresh, and if it doesn't, I can use a dictionary real quick to refresh it.

tl;dr - iKnow.jp, no SRS, reading a lot.

Edit: You're getting different suggestions because everyone's different. I love reading, but trying to read before you have basic vocab is -torture-.

Tori-kun Wrote:

nadiatims Wrote:[...]This is precisely why I recommend just doing simple japanese word->your native language cards. This cards can be made in a few seconds (rikaichan mouse over and hit 's').

Using core6k and Rikaichan really boosted my reading skills that way, but I think in order to understand what's being said (listening comprehension) I at least have to be able to reproduce the word, that I perhaps even know, by myself first. A simple example, if I can say とにかく, I will understand what it means in the context of what I listen to. I wonder how I can work in future on that problem, because I am learning Japanese for (effectively with Anki for 4.5 months, with RtK 1.5 years) a long time already and there is only very slow and disappointing progress.

While speaking definitely helps, you don't need to be able to produce a word to understand it.

I have a language partner that was just remarking the other day that I understand quite a lot of what she says, but can't speak it myself. It's because I've had so much practice at one and not the other.

Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking are 4 different skills and if you want to be good at each, you need to practice each. (Handwriting would be a 5th skill, now that computers are so easy to use. I'm actually starting to practice that.)

nadiatims Wrote:I think the most efficient way is to find a balance between easy and interesting content that is in a format where word meanings can be gotten quickly at a glance. ie. minimise time consuming dictionary lookups. This means things like parallel texts, phrasebooks and online articles so you can use things like rikaichan (firefox) mouse over dictionary. At some point, I suggest investing in a decent electronic dictionary. It's also a good idea to carry a pad in which you can note down unknown vocabulary you encounter throughout the day and then check the meaning and add to it anki later. I personally wouldn't recommend trying to brute force memorise some set number of words before starting to read. Just start reading and don't worry so much about what you're forgetting. The commonly repeated words will start to stick very quickly. Grab those low hanging fruit and enjoy the other benefits that reading brings before trying to arbitrarily memorise x-words. Don't waste time memorising words that haven't yet proved their necessity to you. ie. words you haven't encountered in the wild. Also Don't neglect your listening practice. Try to maximise any spare time you have (commute etc) to listen to japanese content to reinforce all the new words you're learning and get yourself used to hearing them rather than just reading them.

Regarding time spent building your srs deck. This is precisely why I recommend just doing simple japanese word->your native language cards. This cards can be made in a few seconds (rikaichan mouse over and hit 's'). You don't need to be searching example sentences and nailing down the exact meaning in your srs, just get the words into your head first and learn their subtleties through repeated exposure in authentic content or conversations.

I disagree, the core2k/6k words are very useful words that you will encounter quite often, especially some of the verbs. Also picking up words from reading will only happen once you get to the stage where you are familiar with most of the words you encounter in a sentence. In other words when you are at an upper intermediate level. Also the core2k provides plenty of context for words, because it shows an example sentence for each word.

wccrawford Wrote:Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking are 4 different skills and if you want to be good at each, you need to practice each. (Handwriting would be a 5th skill, now that computers are so easy to use. I'm actually starting to practice that.)

Well, currently I'm thinking of finishing the "bigger" aim of CORE6k first, then I at least have the reading part. I know my very basic vocab and will continue adding stuff I come across the net, books, manga etc. But after core6k I will focus on listening mostly. I can't work on different skills on the same time it seems. I need to "finish" one before starting with the other. (grammar is another story. I tried mixing my anki reviews with a few grammar excurses, but.. forget that)

Just slightly off topic, am I the only one who doesn't memorize readings for Kanji? I always just learn the words by themselves, and then the readings for Kanji just sort of fall into place. This has never been a problem for me. Like I can spout off every single "reading" for 生 without even needing them on my flash card for it, since I know most of the words that use it. That Kanji is read like more than five different ways in different words.. so even if I had memorized them, what good would it do, if I saw a word I didn't know that used that Kanji, I wouldn't even know which reading it was using in that word anyway. And I remember all of the different ways it's read from my other words so... yeah.

I've never seen a single other person do that though, they're always obsessed with the readings. I say just screw Onyomi and Kunyomi and whatever else, and just memorize the stroke orders and the actual vocab. Then again... I'm a beginner, so I might not know what I'm talking about... >.>

What I do is brute force a few thousand vocab, practice Japanese for a few months, repeat.

Doesn't everyone just learn the words themselves?

Core6k is waiting a -long- time to start reading. I was reading basic manga at about 500 words. Medium manga at about 1000, and light novels at about 1500. (Those estimates could be 250-500 off either direction... I don't keep score well.)

Granted, it was -hard- at those levels, but it was worth it and enjoyable. I now pick up any of those for fun when I'm bored, instead of worrying about how much I'm going to have to look up. (I'm still about 1500-2000 I think.)

In fact, I'm currently studying the Core2000 series parts 1-3 on iKnow... (Putting me about about 1000-1300 of their words.) I know things later, and skipped some before, so I'm not 100% sure where I am on their scale, but it's close enough.

Readings: I don't bother with them. I can read them for the words I've learned, but ask me the readings of individual kanji and I'll shrug. Eventually I'll probably study them because I'm a nerd, but they are definitely not necessary for basic use of the language.

@dizmox: Sounds like my cycle, but mine's more chaotic. I just burn out a lot and stop studying until I feel like it again.

Coreth Wrote:Just slightly off topic, am I the only one who doesn't memorize readings for Kanji? I always just learn the words by themselves, and then the readings for Kanji just sort of fall into place. This has never been a problem for me. Like I can spout off every single "reading" for 生 without even needing them on my flash card for it, since I know most of the words that use it. That Kanji is read like more than five different ways in different words.. so even if I had memorized them, what good would it do, if I saw a word I didn't know that used that Kanji, I wouldn't even know which reading it was using in that word anyway. And I remember all of the different ways it's read from my other words so... yeah.

I've never seen a single other person do that though, they're always obsessed with the readings. I say just screw Onyomi and Kunyomi and whatever else, and just memorize the stroke orders and the actual vocab. Then again... I'm a beginner, so I might not know what I'm talking about... >.>

No I'd say that's rather normal. What's the point in learning readings for individual kanji, it would take forever and you wouldn't gain anything at all because you still wouldn't recognize any words if you try to read.

wccrawford Wrote:Readings: I don't bother with them. I can read them for the words I've learned, but ask me the readings of individual kanji and I'll shrug. Eventually I'll probably study them because I'm a nerd, but they are definitely not necessary for basic use of the language.

Kuma01 Wrote:No I'd say that's rather normal. What's the point in learning readings for individual kanji, it would take forever and you wouldn't gain anything at all because you still wouldn't recognize any words if you try to read.

Thank god, you're the first people to agree with me about that. You might think it's normal or whatever, but most people on forums yell at me and tell me to memorize readings. Then they leave me in the wake of their 60,000 post aura and leave. How can I disagree when they have that many posts?

dizmox Wrote:Doesn't everyone just learn the words themselves?

You would think right? I always see conflicting views on whether you should memorize Kanji, their readings, sentences, grammar, or vocab first or if ever. Vocab is usually the least emphasized with sites, it's like they have no idea where to begin teaching it so they focus on something else instead to try and make it "fun" for you.

Some sites treat Kanji like they're words by themselves, some just treat them as symbols used in words. Some sites say you need to learn readings of Kanji as if you'll be able to speak Japanese if you memorize all the readings, some say screw the readings and just memorize the words. It's so annoying and confusing.. talking on forums helps clear the confusion for me sometimes though. Getting people's general views on stuff. I've gotten a lot of replies already.. this is definitely the forum I'm sticking with from now on. I've tried others and they usually just yell at me.

wccrawford Wrote:Readings: I don't bother with them. I can read them for the words I've learned, but ask me the readings of individual kanji and I'll shrug.

and @Coreth: If you want to know a person who struggled almost two years with readings of even easy compounds, here you go. That's me. Finally I won over them. Using Anki and SRS daily (!) and consequently, turning it into a habit, it's seriously only a matter of time. RtK2 did help me in the beginning. It sensitised me sort of for the world of on yomi at least.

can't stress it enough... vocab is everything.

learn 1000 a month (35 a day) and in 1 year your speaking hits a good level... 2 years of that and boom. That's Japanese. 3 years of it... native level.

mezbup Wrote:can't stress it enough... vocab is everything.

learn 1000 a month (35 a day) and in 1 year your speaking hits a good level... 2 years of that and boom. That's Japanese. 3 years of it... native level.

Well I agree that when you're a beginner getting some useful vocab first is the best use of your time. But I only believe in SrSing up to a certain point. When I get to a level where I'm able to comprehend most things I'll stop using the SrS for vocab and I'll just read a lot instead.

mezbup Wrote:can't stress it enough... vocab is everything.

learn 1000 a month (35 a day) and in 1 year your speaking hits a good level... 2 years of that and boom. That's Japanese. 3 years of it... native level.

35 a day!? Jesus. I usually do like 5. My deck gets too many cards even at that rate sometimes. I have to stop and let it get down to under 200 and stuff. Then again I always write the backside (Either Kanji or Kana, depending on what I'm qued with) so it takes probably 5x longer for me to do a card than someone who doesn't write them.

Also that 5 is 10 cards since I make a front and a back (A Kanji side and a Kana side, with the opposite and the meaning on the back). So for 35 that's like 70 cards a day added to an Anki. I would not be able to do that many cards, the reviews would start getting insane. Maybe I just suck at learning languages, idk.

Also I make my own deck so.. it takes me a long time to add the cards each day. Looking up example sentences and context for 35 words every day sounds like hell.. I would definitely not be remembering them as well as now, my brain isn't that good.

mezbup Wrote:can't stress it enough... vocab is everything.

learn 1000 a month (35 a day) and in 1 year your speaking hits a good level... 2 years of that and boom. That's Japanese. 3 years of it... native level.

this. But get you're vocab from reading/listening and conversations so you:
a). learn words that are useful to you.
b). develop your comprehension, grammar intuition, knowledge of how words are used and so on.
c). Actually use what you're learning. You're learning the language to use it right...?
d). Realise how non-crucial SRS actually is, and realise just how much can be learned easily outside of the SRS. I think anyone who actually reaches a high level has to eventually realise this. The amount of subtle knowledge/exceptions/peculiarities you pick up for free just by actually using the language and sticking with it could fill a million example sentences.

Coreth Wrote:I've tried those premade decks before. I don't like 'em! Or rather, I don't like the concept of premade decks to begin with.

Subs 2 SRS.

While I wouldn't say core6k is too boring to do, it's certainly not as fun as subs2srs nor as effective; I find myself able to trivially remember new words and expressions when they're delievered by my favorite characters from my favorite shows whereas sometimes I struggle with core.

Also, if you're anything like me, the words in core6k are _far_ from optimal for the actual media you want to understand.

Coreth Wrote:I guess the best method would be, get a giant vocab list with no translations, and painstakingly, every single day, look up some more words from that list, add them to your deck, make sure you know how they are used by researching some example sentences.. etc. But that would take forever.

That sounds like mindless work that should be done by a computer.

I recently made a plugin for the very purpose of solving the problems presented in this thread that lets you turn any subs2srs deck into something better than core or other premade/standard decks (http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7486); if there's something core can do that you can't replicate with subs2srs + the morph plugin, tell me.

If you have particular books, shows, articles, etc in mind, feed them into the plugin and create a DB with all the words you don't know (eg, make a db for each source, union them, then subtract a db with all the words you know). Then create a DB from that which only has nouns and verbs (there's a parts of speech blacklist) so you can focus on the most important subset of those words for getting the basic gist of what's being said (people often quote that knowing a verb is like knowing 10x other words as far as understanding the basic gist of a sentence goes).

Once you have this database of words you want to learn, you can use the plugin to match them against sentences in your deck (1:1 matchings and it finds the most matchings), tag all the facts that have a word (morpheme) from that DB, or whatever. Once you find a list of sentence you want to learn them from, use the vocabRank feature + the Reset Creation Times plugin to get anki to present the new cards according to the expected ease of understanding the word in terms of kanji and readings you've already learned.

Coreth Wrote:Looking up example sentences and context for 35 words every day sounds like hell.. I would definitely not be remembering them as well as now, my brain isn't that good.

Example sentences and context comes for free with subs2srs. Gloss lookups of the sentence is free with my Glossing plugin.

In the end my cards look like:

{{Image}}
{{SentenceAudio}}
{{SentenceMeaning-2}}
{{SentenceMeaning-1}}
{{SentenceExpression}}
{{unknown words to focus on}}
{{SentenceMeaning+1}}
{{SentenceMeaning+2}}

i+{{iPlusN}} VR {{vocabRank}} {{matchedMorpheme for this sentence}}
----------
{{SentenceReading}}

{{SentenceMeaning-2}}
{{SentenceMeaning-1}}
{{SentenceMeaning}}
{{SentenceMeaning+1}}
{{SentenceMeaning+2}}

{{SentenceGloss}}

I think about a topic I want to discuss in Japanese and then make word lists with pictures on my iPad, with Microsoft Office, etc.

For example, they're starting the shut down process of a nuclear power plant in Japan that currently provides me with electricity. This is in response to the tsunami from the earthquake that disabled the Fukushima power plant. So now I have a list like this by my desk with pictures.

余震・地震・プレート・避難所・洪水・火事・火災・原発・全面停止・程度・放射能・漏れる・原爆・酸素・窒素

Also, I recently had a conversation about the solar system and I forgot how to say "comet" and "Pluto". Now there's a different list with all space bodies, their pictures, and descriptions in Japanese on the table in the living room.

I found this better than SRSing. But as was said earlier, each person has their own approach.

theasianpleaser Wrote:Now there's a different list with all space bodies, their pictures, and descriptions in Japanese on the table in the living room.

I found this better than SRSing.

If you mean better than using Anki, then that very well may be true, but I doubt it wouldn't be more effective to look at the information on your table in your living room at increasing intervals- in fact I'm almost certain that you'll naturally do this over time and eventually take it off your table once the interval grows large enough (you'll probably attribute this to it's boredom or the fact that's it's become trivial).

Computer software isn't the only way to apply spaced repetition and the basic techniques still apply very well even with a very casual/implicit approach to the spacing algorithm.

Coreth Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:can't stress it enough... vocab is everything.

learn 1000 a month (35 a day) and in 1 year your speaking hits a good level... 2 years of that and boom. That's Japanese. 3 years of it... native level.

35 a day!? Jesus.

I'm all over the place



It does get easy once you've learnt a few thousand though.

Quote:I have to stop and let it get down to under 200 and stuff.

You're getting 200 reviews a day from adding 5 a day? That... shouldn't happen :S