Hello, I recently started Core2k/6k and I'm approaching the 300 mark. It's going pretty well but I was wondering if I should start doing production now or wait till I know a lot more vocabulary. Let's say after being done with core2k.

I feel like I'm learning a lot but I guess I'm going to feel pretty stupid knowing two thousand words but not being able to output a thing... I would think it's better to simply do recognition at first in order to not lose time and start doing a bit of production afterwards...but when?

And since I'm talking about production, would you suggest going kana>kanji or using cloze deletion and thus going blank>kanji?

Thanks a lot !

The problem with production decks is after you stop being a beginner, they become difficult to study with. Going from say a definition in English to Japanese can result in multiple possible Japanese words being potentially correct.

I've been thinking about the same problem and I'm at ~3000 core cards. If there is any solution it would have to be something using cloze I think. Have the sentence and the English word and try and recall the Japanese. The other thing I will mention that many people have told me is that studying recognition will eventually lead to production with only a little more effort. So you don't have to worry too much.

Production decks are pretty a bad idea imo.

Go to lang-8 and express yourself while native japanese correct your mistakes, its a lot of fun when you feel like making some production.
I have an account there, but havent been using it too much as I wanted, but here and there I give it a try and it feels good when you type whole sentences that are marked correct by japanese ^^

I suppose if I did do a production deck, it would have the Japanese definition on one side and the Japanese word on the back.

You basically hinted at really the whole point of avoiding an E->J deck. E->J doesn't help you break the habit of using your native language all for everything. A recognition deck does this slightly by starting in Japanese and checking you grasped the semantic meaning. A J-J deck like you suggest is an even better answer though. You eventually want to get out of translating everything from English to Japanese is the main point.

jonuhey Wrote:Production decks are pretty a bad idea imo.

Go to lang-8 and express yourself while native japanese correct your mistakes, its a lot of fun when you feel like making some production.
I have an account there, but havent been using it too much as I wanted, but here and there I give it a try and it feels good when you type whole sentences that are marked correct by japanese ^^

I have to agree here but it wouldn't hurt to make such a deck. I actually believe production decks in terms of writing kanji+kana is effective, as it could enter your long-term memory (since physically writing will better enable readings for the long-term).

Hashiriya Wrote:I suppose if I did do a production deck, it would have the Japanese definition on one side and the Japanese word on the back.

that would work wonders but one must have a certain level of Japanese under there belt(in terms of reading/understanding kanji). I believe later on this will work to reach new levels(I'm playing around with these types of cards)

What I'm wondering is - why are schools so eager to practice output constantly if input is more important? Around here you don't learn words in the inu>dog order but the opposite. You have the definition and try to reproduce the Japanese definition, instead of making out the English definition from the Japanese (or in our case when we learn from finnish to english/german/swedish).

So basically what I see is that there are two different schools of thought and one of them is doing it wrong (less effectively). Unless they're both as good but that's doubtful.

It's as if schools prioritize us being able to produce the language as soon as possible, like what kids do when they're young. Granted this ceases to be effective at some point (when your native language can't translate the definitions effectively) but then you can just move to J>J translations.

I started doing Listening/Production cards when I was about 500 sentences into Core 2000. The layout of these cards were:

Front:
Audio
Cloze Delete "Compare to Expression"

Back
Audio
Expression
Reading
Meaning

Basically idea was to listen, comprehend then reproduce the exact kanji sentence heard. Not exactly production, more transcription, but it did improve my listening comprehension and writing abilities very quickly.

language schools are places where metrics of success are important, and you simply can't measure comprehension. so they want to measure your ability to output instead, but as you mention the problems are that:
1-output is not a metric of study, but rather a skill dependent upon cumulative input (which will be absurdly low if all one does is language classes) plus practice of that input...
and
2-output is not nearly as important as the ability to understand...especially as a beginner-intermediate. the things you will need to say are relatively simple but what good does that do when the response could be anything at all. khatz' great example of this is something like "what good does it do you to be able to ask for directions, when you're in Osaka and have no idea what the hell the guy is saying?"

@aphasiac: Thanks for that tip! Did it really work for you? After how many cards approximately? :D (Regards!!)

[Edit] I'm pretty busy reaching 9300 vocabulary cards in Anki, that's why I cannot make up time introducing a new way of learning so easily, but I suppose I will start when I approach the 10k mark. Wonder what to do with that hellish amount of grammar, too..

Tori-kun Wrote:@aphasiac: Thanks for that tip! Did it really work for you? After how many cards approximately? (Regards!!)

I remember they started helping almost immediately. For a lot of words and sentence patterns, I could read perfectly, but when I heard them i got this feeling "I know I know that, but i can't recall what it means". But as soon as I started listening cards, it started moving those items from passive to active memory.

9300 vocab cards is great, but from your blog is sounds like your comprehension is lagging. You should work on it asap, as continuously adding more vocab is a waste if you can't actually use it.

Where did you obtain the material for that listening deck?

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Where did you obtain the material for that listening deck?

I just used the Core deck, from the beginning, with a different card layout.

You'd think it would be easy, doing listening cards of sentences you already know, but it wasn't; Listening is a totally different skill to reading.