Hi guys!

Sorry if the majority of what I am about to ask is obvious to a lot of people, but I am still quite confused as to exactly what I'm supposed to be doing with my decks, so any help would be appreciated!

For example, say I have the recently posted "Core 2k6k Optimized Japanese Vocabulary" deck. There's a lot of information contained within the cards for various stages of learning. But as far as the first time seeing a card is concerned, I don't quite know what to do!

Say I have this sentence:

今年はイタリアに旅行したい。

From early on in the deck. How do I go about "learning" this? Do I just take notes (if I want to), write down the sentence with reading, or just the vocabulary (in this case, 今年)? And then mark as passed for the first time?

Are clozed deletion cards only useful for production once you've seen a card a few times, or can you use them from the beginning?

Do I need to understand the whole sentence, or if I can read the vocab, is that enough to pass (assuming that later vocab will allow me to eventually understand the context sentence anyway)?

Sorry for the long post, but I am pretty confused and every time I start a method, I just get the feeling that I'm "doing it wrong" somehow!

Thanks in advance for any help!

I'm not sure I understand you correctly, sorry if I'm wrong. I've never used SRS.

Just a general remark.
If I were to learn from sentences, I'd get an idea about Japanese grammar first.

Visit
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid121590
and download
Hugo Japanese in Three Months PLUS
Visualizing Japanese Grammar
they are excellent for beginners.

Hi buonaparte! Thanks for the reply.

Just to clarify a bit more, I mean more specifically to do with the Core(2k, 6k, and other variant) decks that exist, and how I can use them to learn from (i.e. to learn words for the first time) and not just review words I have already seen.

For the Heisig decks, the process is pretty easy: You learn the kanji and get exposed the first time through this site or Heisig's book and by learning the stories. Then you review how well you remember the kanji through reviewing in Anki (or this site, again).

But with the Core decks, where do you get that first exposure to meaning? Is it through the cards themselves? And do you isolate vocabulary at first, and use the sentences on the answer side for reference? Or use the whole sentence on the question side? Or use cloze delete cards from the start?

Hope that makes it a bit clearer...

PS: Thanks for the link! I'm downloading now - you can't get enough of these kinds of resources, and I really appreciate all the effort you put into that thread for us all

khalhern Wrote:Say I have this sentence:

今年はイタリアに旅行したい。

From early on in the deck. How do I go about "learning" this? Do I just take notes (if I want to), write down the sentence with reading, or just the vocabulary (in this case, 今年)? And then mark as passed for the first time?

Do I need to understand the whole sentence, or if I can read the vocab, is that enough to pass (assuming that later vocab will allow me to eventually understand the context sentence anyway)?

I second what Buonaparte is writing: you can't do the core deck if you don't understand grammar first. For instance, in the sentence, 旅行したい is an inflected form of the verb 旅行する; when you attach the auxiliary -たい to the conjunctive form of a verb (する has an irregular conjunctive form), then the meaning you get is "to have the desire to...".

There are many resources for grammar; find one source you like and learn it thoroughly - either grammar monographs if you want to be effective (check the Kodansha series: Taeko Kamiya has written several extremely useful books there which can be ordered from Amazon for cheap) or textbooks, which are also excellent for that. JSL (by Jorden-Noda) is the best, but Genki (although much less comprehensive) is also popular with some people. Then you can acquire lots of vocabulary. A good, albeit expensive way, to get a headstart with both is to do the Pimsleur series of tapes. They make you drill the -たい form of several verbs in production mode, so it becomes automatic. But JSL goes ***way*** beyond Pimsleur and you can find the used books (I bought them from Amazon) for about $20 each - about ten times cheaper than the Pimsleur tapes.

As for your question concerning the meaning of "learning" a deck such as core 2k/6k, it varies depending on what your objective is. Do you want to drill reading? Then in that case, just pass cards when you can say correctly (and understand, needless to say) the sentence from the Japanese script. Do you want to drill production? In that case, put the English on the question side and say the Japanese version. You pass the card if you can say the sentence in Japanese. Be prepared to modify decks to suit your own particular needs.

I would recommend to you to learn things in small chunks: if you do not immediately recognize words such as 今年 and 旅行, then you may want to learn words separately first, and then go on to sentences. In this case, I would recommend to keep that deck on ice for a while and just work your way through your favorite textbook.

The core 6k sentences come from Jack Halpern's dictionaries published by Kenkyuusha: they are not meant to be realistic Japanese, but just to be straightforward illustrations of a given headword's usage. If you have already the Pocket Kenkyuusha, then you will recognize these sentences in word entries and the dictionary will provide you with about 30 000 more of them. These sentences are meant to be easy. If you find them impossibly hard, that is a sure indicator that you need to increase your level prior to going through the list. Eventually as your level will increase, you will see that these sentences are rather pedestrian and simplistic with respect to grammar. But you need to take things in order.

Hi louischa,

Thanks for the reply! A lot of what you've said seems like great advise and makes a lot of sense.

With the sentence I gave, though, the vocabulary for that sentence is "今年", so should I allow myself to be distracted by the stuff I hypothetically don't know, such as the -たい form? (I know this sentence, as it happens, but it was just an early example I chose to get to grips with things).

Later on in the deck 旅行する appears, which would allow me to understand this whole sentence anyway eventually. If I used some grammar textbooks and so on such as the ones you recommend, is there really any point in using the Core2k/6k decks, if they end up seeming pedestrian anyway by the time I finish those recommended texts? What's your opinion?

Thanks again for taking the time to reply, it's some interesting advice

Edit: I guess the main source of my confusion is "Nukemarine's Guide for Beginners" says things like "Do Core2k" and so on, but doesn't explain fully what "Doing" is - there's some elaboration in the thread, but nothing specific as to what to do. The thread is aimed at beginners, so I thought there would be some way to use the steps there without having to supplement with a textbook (especially considering that the guide seems to be presented as an alternative to text-book methods). Perhaps I've just totally missed the point of the beginners guide somewhere along the line?

khalhern Wrote:Hi louischa,

With the sentence I gave, though, the vocabulary for that sentence is "今年", so should I allow myself to be distracted by the stuff I hypothetically don't know, such as the -たい form? (I know this sentence, as it happens, but it was just an early example I chose to get to grips with things).

Later on in the deck 旅行する appears, which would allow me to understand this whole sentence anyway eventually. If I used some grammar textbooks and so on such as the ones you recommend, is there really any point in using the Core2k/6k decks, if they end up seeming pedestrian anyway by the time I finish those recommended texts? What's your opinion?

Indeed, the meaning of "doing" sentences has not been explained very clearly.

I would advise you to "pass" only cards you understand 100%. If you "pass" the sentence only if you understand "今年" but not the -たい form, you would create problems for yourself later on, as you would need to revisit the sentence later, but then it would be too late, as the Anki scheduler would consider the sentence as effectively learnt, and so you would not get sufficient exposure to the new elements in the sentence.

Your first objective should be to get grammar through a textbook; in parallel browse the list of the core 6K sentences and unsuspend **only** the ones you understand 100% at the level you are at. If need be, make up your own deck of (simpler) sentences using your textbook as the source in early stages. There is no need to type all the Japanese script, though, roomaji is fine as long as you eventually abandon it as you graduate to more advanced stuff.

For me, core 6k is a great way to drill fast reading because it is highly redundant and simple, so it really helps to accelerate your rate of recognition of Japanese script - which helps in tackling native material later on. So there is an usage for the core - because you want to be able to read, not only painfully and slowly decipher a foreign script. But the core is only a very initial step.

I’ve no idea if my advice will be useful.

I can only describe how I learn languages.
I don't use SRS (Supermemo, Anki, etc).
I learn entirely on my own.
I rely on personally relevant massive input – audio + transcript + translation.
I need parallel texts with line-by-line audio (.mp3) and audio playlists (.m3u).

Here's an example of the layout I use - Core 2000 for simplicity's sake (actually, I use long texts - novels I like and know well in languages I already understand - not isolated sentences):
http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_m...layout.htm

This is what I do.
1. First - listening comprehension.
1a. I read a sentence in English.
1b. I click the mp3 file in L2 (language I'm learning, say Japanese). The mp3 file is looped, I don't stop listening.

I need to hear/understand:
how many words there are in the sentence I'm listening to,
what is the grammar of the sentence,
what sounds, pitch, intonation.
For this I use the Japanese sentence in kanji and in spaced hiragana, and a mouse-over pop-up dictionary if necessary. Let me stress once more: I don't stop listening.

When I understand what I'm hearing, I concentrate on kanji for a moment - I don’t stop listening, I listen and look at the sentence written in kanji, I try to identify the components (I didn't use Heisig, I learned all the classical bushu and their Japanese names).

And that's it for the time being - no speaking, no reading without listening, no writing. The parallel written texts are only there to help me with my listening, at this stage, nothing more.

Then the following sentence - the same procedure.

After some 20-30 sentences, I click .m3u (the playlist link) - I again listen to the sentences I've just listened to, in a row without stopping, I always have the parallel text ready to quickly check, in case I forget something.

I don't memorize anything - I concentrate on recognizing the meaning, words, grammar, sounds in the sentences I've just 'learnt.'

Then the following paragraph. Then the following paragraph, and so on. Until the end.

Then I start from the beginning. This time I only listen, but always have the parallel texts ready, just in case, to check, if necessary.


Then... another book - same procedure.

From time to time I listen to something new at the same level or easier and only listen to check if I understand it 'naturally' - relying only on what I've already learnt. If I do (and like it), I go on listening.


2. After reaching the stage of 'natural' listening to difficult texts, I concentrate on speaking.
2a. I listen to something I understand (meaning, words, grammar, sounds) and enjoy.
2b. I echo - I repeat after the recording.
2c. I recite from time to time - I choose some favourite pictures to create a psychological environment, and imagine why someone says something (I've just echoed) to somebody else.
2d. I sometimes read something I've just echoed, without listening this time.
2e. I sometimes write down something I've just listened to, something beautiful or interesting.

More about it here:
http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_m...ssages.htm

My technique has evolved over the years, but basically what I do with a sentence deck is this.

First, I choose a sentence where I feel like there's not a lot to learn. If there are a lot of new grammar points, kanji that I've never seen before, etc. then I feel like it's not an effective card because I fail it way too many times. I usually try to leave it at a maximum of 2 new things.
To pass the card I ask myself if I can understand the entire card. I usually create the card myself so I have a "learning phase." I didn't use Core so I don't know how it works, I used KO2001 and input all the sentences manually and now I just add cards from random sources since it's pretty easy to learn new stuff for me now. (It's easy to learn but there's still a LOT of stuff to learn, so it's still a struggle timewise.)

On the back of the card, when I first started out I had a translation of the whole sentence. As I got more advanced I would only put English definitions of the unknowns if available. For me, whether I use a Japanese/English definition doesn't matter because it drops away in the end anyway and if I know the card I don't need to look at the definition.

There should be a core deck rearranged (an i+1 deck) so that the new stuff is pretty limited with each card.

louischa Wrote:There are many resources for grammar; find one source you like and learn it thoroughly - either grammar monographs if you want to be effective (check the Kodansha series: Taeko Kamiya has written several extremely useful books there which can be ordered from Amazon for cheap) or textbooks, which are also excellent for that. JSL (by Jorden-Noda) is the best, but Genki (although much less comprehensive) is also popular with some people. Then you can acquire lots of vocabulary. A good, albeit expensive way, to get a headstart with both is to do the Pimsleur series of tapes. They make you drill the -たい form of several verbs in production mode, so it becomes automatic. But JSL goes ***way*** beyond Pimsleur and you can find the used books (I bought them from Amazon) for about $20 each - about ten times cheaper than the Pimsleur tapes.

I actually do own two of Taeko Kamiya's books, The Handbook of Japanese Verbs and The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs. Your advice seems pretty sound and I think I'll keep the Core deck on ice while I just enjoy reading through the books and exploring the stuff I don't know a bit more, and add anything I feel might be relevant to me to my own deck. I was hoping to utilize the order in the "Optimized" deck which reorders the sentences by 2001KO frequency order, but given what you and buonaparte have been saying, this might not be the best (or most fun!) way to do it!

Also, I don't have Pimsleur; is Assimil a decent alternative for beginners? I've worked through a few lessons and like the style, but am just curious on what you think.

buonaparte Wrote:This is what I do.

The way you do things sounds interesting - did you do much textbook-style learning before you moved onto this L-R method? Also, it seems like the Breaking into Japanese Literature book would fit nicely into this method. Is it possible to do from a completely new perspective, or is it necessary to do some textbook/grammar learning before you can embark on the L-R journey? (I'm not anti-textbook, I'm just trying to build up ideas and varied viewpoints )

kainzero Wrote:My technique has evolved over the years, but basically what I do with a sentence deck is this.

First, I choose a sentence where I feel like there's not a lot to learn. If there are a lot of new grammar points, kanji that I've never seen before, etc. then I feel like it's not an effective card because I fail it way too many times. I usually try to leave it at a maximum of 2 new things...

Thanks for the input! That sounds like a great way to use your own sentence decks, and I like your ideas for adding "i+1 cards". I guess I was thinking of decks as things you leave behind when you're done, rather than resources that grow/shrink as you progress, so thanks! This was actually really enlightening

What buonaparte referred to as "personally relevant massive input" (is there somewhere this was sourced from? Just out of curiosity :p) has made me question where the Core decks can fit into what I want to do. Though they might be organised by general frequency, that doesn't mean many of the words will necessarily appear in the texts I find "personally relevant" (such as game reviews, movie reviews, and so on)!

My plan now is something like this:
-> Do Assimil: Japanese with Ease (or similar) to get a stronger base in grammar and so on.
-> Use The Handbook of Japanese Verbs and The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs and other similar reference books to get a more in-depth understanding of specific grammar points, adding sentences I like/think will be useful to my own Anki deck, following roughly the same method that kainzero uses.
-> Once I feel comfortable, move deeper into longer texts with audio.

It's a bit rough but it's a start I guess. Did I miss anything major? :o

I don't really recommend "Breaking Into Japanese Literature" for beginners, myself. In some cases you're looking at texts that were written a hundred years ago, so the word choices are a little outdated, and some of the grammar points are not grammar points you'd see so often in contemporary literature. When you're looking at doing listening and reading, I'd say, first do the books in the "Read Real Japanese" series (which include CDs) and then you may want to think about the Tadoku series from White Rabbit Press (which include CDs, but don't include English vocabulary glosses.) It makes sense to do "Breaking Into Japanese Literature" once you're at a solid intermediate level, if you're genuinely interested in the authors who are included.

Textbooks are really efficient. A lot of people are like "study from a textbook, sound like a textbook," but you're really supposed to use the textbook to apply what you see in real life.

It's tempting to go gung-ho into natural Japanese, but you'll just keep finding yourself bogged down by things you don't know and it gets frustrating. Textbooks get frustrating too, because they're more about explaining a language point than actually communicating an idea with worth... so study both to find the balance that you need.

Essentially you want to get to the point where you can see something and even if you don't understand it, you know what you're supposed to do to learn how to understand it. After that, learning is downhill, but it's still like the downhill of Mt. Everest.

Quote:Just out of curiosity :p) has made me question where the Core decks can fit into what I want to do. Though they might be organised by general frequency, that doesn't mean many of the words will necessarily appear in the texts I find "personally relevant" (such as game reviews, movie reviews, and so on)!

You'd be surprised at what words you know that aren't common, but when they pop up you should know them. I think Aijin said something like that. Words like "pigeon." Even some of those political words that I thought would have no relevance, they could appear in things like games and what not.

The Core 2k/6k deck is meant as a vocabulary deck which uses English words, English sentences, cloze deleted Japanese and sometimes images to elicit a written and spoken production of the word in question. So, the ONLY information you care about in that card is the vocabulary word in its written and spoken form. Everything else on the card is there to help you get the answer you need.

I've moved away from the "AJATT 10,000 sentences" concept that was all the rage a few years ago. At that time, many of us thought to learn the entire sentence and would mark it wrong if any word was not wrong. In addition, we didn't like English->Japanese so we created Kana->Kanji. Many people still suggest this, however I'm now of the thinking this is not the best way to go as it's still recognition with only the part of knowing the writing being a production exercise.

There are a few problems though with this new layout and approach:

1. Early on, the example sentences will use more advanced grammar than is suggested you learn. At these times, lean on the translated sentences and DO NOT stress about conjugating the words. In time, you'll be getting more grammar training as part of the learning process. Soon what was was confusing becomes a useful learning aid.

2. The deck is sorted the Kanji in the vocabulary words and not from the example sentences. As such you will find advanced words in the example sentences. Again, like with grammar, lean on the translated sentences until the time that it's not necessary. As time goes on and you learn more vocabulary, this becomes less an obstacle and more of an re-enforcement opportunity.

3. All the context (translations, clozed sentences, etc) is still not enough for multiple words with the same meaning. In these cases, add a note in parenthesis by the English word telling you which answers you don't want. On top of this, the deck does have a Parts of Speech field which you can have shown on the card. I've activated mine, and have it shown to the right of the question in a small purple font.

4. The decks have errors either in the wrong photo is being shown or that the wrong portion of the sentence is cloze deleted. As I'm going through the deck from scratch, I will be picking up on these. In addition, another is going to get automate a method to find the cloze deleted and photo errors. When enough corrections are made, I'll be uploading a new deck in addition to explaining how to update your existing Anki deck with corrections.

Thanks to comments in this thread in addition to things I'm learning by restarting all my Japanese decks, I'll be updating my guide with more helpful advice. In addition, like the video series I made a while back, I'll do a similar series for using these decks at various points in your studies.

So, do people that have done the Core 2/6k recommend going from English(Front) -> Japanese(Back), or from Japanese(Front) -> English(Back)?

kainzero Wrote:Textbooks are really efficient. A lot of people are like "study from a textbook, sound like a textbook," but you're really supposed to use the textbook to apply what you see in real life.

And more so than this, one of the biggest myths I see on the Internet related to Japanese learning is the idea that there's this fixed dichotomy between "textbook Japanese" and "real Japanese", and that "real Japanese" is anything taken from materials produced for native speakers. The truth is that a lot of stuff in tv shows, songs, etc. is not used very often in actual daily-life conversations, and some of what's in a textbook is used a lot.

Fillanzea Wrote:I don't really recommend "Breaking Into Japanese Literature" for beginners, myself. In some cases you're looking at texts that were written a hundred years ago, so the word choices are a little outdated, and some of the grammar points are not grammar points you'd see so often in contemporary literature. When you're looking at doing listening and reading, I'd say, first do the books in the "Read Real Japanese" series (which include CDs) and then you may want to think about the Tadoku series from White Rabbit Press (which include CDs, but don't include English vocabulary glosses.) It makes sense to do "Breaking Into Japanese Literature" once you're at a solid intermediate level, if you're genuinely interested in the authors who are included.

Thank you for the comments! The audio for Breaking into Japanese Literature (available
here ) seems like very high quality and it's entertaining (even though I don't quite know what's going on; just listening for fun), so although I've not listened to the Read Real Japanese audio, I would not be at all surprised if it's also great quality! I also love the graded reader idea, and I'll look into them, thank you

kainzero Wrote:Essentially you want to get to the point where you can see something and even if you don't understand it, you know what you're supposed to do to learn how to understand it. After that, learning is downhill, but it's still like the downhill of Mt. Everest.

This is a great way to word it - and I think that learning about Anki, what resources are available, the methods that other users use, etc, just add to the skills of a learner so they're better able to "know what to do" next. Thanks for taking the time to give feedback!

kainzero Wrote:You'd be surprised at what words you know that aren't common, but when they pop up you should know them. I think Aijin said something like that. Words like "pigeon." Even some of those political words that I thought would have no relevance, they could appear in things like games and what not.

Also a good point! I find a lot of these words from manga, because a lot of manga contain mixed themes (Steampunk is an obvious example). Given what you and yudantaiteki have said, this is really made me think about how picky I should be about what I am using to learn from: I have some very good textbooks that I bought before hearing about Anki/AJATT/etc and because of my fears about unnatural Japanese I was really quick to drop them. Luckily I kept them all and it looks like they might be getting the use they deserve, finally!

yudantaiteki Wrote:And more so than this, one of the biggest myths I see on the Internet related to Japanese learning is the idea that there's this fixed dichotomy between "textbook Japanese" and "real Japanese", and that "real Japanese" is anything taken from materials produced for native speakers. The truth is that a lot of stuff in tv shows, songs, etc. is not used very often in actual daily-life conversations, and some of what's in a textbook is used a lot.

I do hear this a lot, too! It's interesting to hear that it's largely a myth. I guess there's a reason why there are similar topics in almost every textbook?

Nukemarine Wrote:1. Early on, the example sentences will use more advanced grammar than is suggested you learn. At these times, lean on the translated sentences and DO NOT stress about conjugating the words. In time, you'll be getting more grammar training as part of the learning process. Soon what was was confusing becomes a useful learning aid.

2. The deck is sorted the Kanji in the vocabulary words and not from the example sentences. As such you will find advanced words in the example sentences. Again, like with grammar, lean on the translated sentences until the time that it's not necessary. As time goes on and you learn more vocabulary, this becomes less an obstacle and more of an re-enforcement opportunity.

This makes much more sense now! That was my initial thought: That the words that were for support, i.e. the sentence on the answer side, would all be filled in later anyway as they would eventually have their own time as focus question card.

Nukemarine Wrote:3. All the context (translations, clozed sentences, etc) is still not enough for multiple words with the same meaning. In these cases, add a note in parenthesis by the English word telling you which answers you don't want. On top of this, the deck does have a Parts of Speech field which you can have shown on the card. I've activated mine, and have it shown to the right of the question in a small purple font.

Sounds like this could be useful! Thanks!

Nukemarine Wrote:4. The decks have errors either in the wrong photo is being shown or that the wrong portion of the sentence is cloze deleted. As I'm going through the deck from scratch, I will be picking up on these. In addition, another is going to get automate a method to find the cloze deleted and photo errors. When enough corrections are made, I'll be uploading a new deck in addition to explaining how to update your existing Anki deck with corrections.

It probably goes without saying, but thanks so much to you and everyone else who has contributed to giving us the best Core decks possible !

Nukemarine Wrote:Thanks to comments in this thread in addition to things I'm learning by restarting all my Japanese decks, I'll be updating my guide with more helpful advice. In addition, like the video series I made a while back, I'll do a similar series for using these decks at various points in your studies.

Much appreciated! The thread itself is pretty deep and the whole forum contains such a massive amount of information that it's hard to process sometimes! I'm glad some nooby questions could contribute in some way!

Marble101 Wrote:So, do people that have done the Core 2/6k recommend going from English(Front) -> Japanese(Back), or from Japanese(Front) -> English(Back)?

This too. :p

Marble101 Wrote:So, do people that have done the Core 2/6k recommend going from English(Front) -> Japanese(Back), or from Japanese(Front) -> English(Back)?

There are pros and cons to both. Here's my opinion on it. I'm doing English --> Japanese, with the cloze deleted Japanese sentence on the front, so you have some context to go with it. It's more of a "fill in the blanks with a word that means something like this" task than a pure English translation task (in case you have been led to believe this).

I started the Core 2k/6k deck having already learned a few thousand words from KO and a couple other books. For those, I used anki decks that had complete Japanese sentences on the front. The biggest problem I had was seeing these words that I "knew" in the wild and still have their meaning (or even reading) completely elude me. The problem with those decks is that (familiarity with) the sentence gave the meaning away. It was a very passive exercise of "oh, it's that sentence again" rather than actually trying to read and understand. Even worse, the characters gave the reading or meaning away, but usually only one of the two. Trying to read real Japanese meant looking up words I was supposed to know, which is as good as not knowing them at all.

Another problem I found was that I was learning words by the shape of the compound that they appeared in and paying very little attention to characters themselves (you'd be surprised how much you can get away with while doing this). This was true for very common words (I wrote 共友 instead of 友達, for example, and an embarrassing one to admit).

Going from English --> Japanese is solving all of those problems (I'm not even up to 2K yet, but it's clearly working well for me so far).

The downside to this? It's significantly slower (especially if you're writing the characters) and you have to specify which word you're not looking for (it's not as terrible as it sounds). I also don't think it will work very well for a complete beginner. I'm approaching this with the advantage of having the exposure to a lot of common words, and therefore common characters and readings, which admittedly makes it much easier. A suggestion, but not a recommendation, is to do both, but use different resources for one and the other so you don't die of boredom. You could say that reading "real" material is the same as doing this, but you don't really get such a controlled introduction of vocabulary outside of anki and textbooks (which is where the advice of collecting your own, personal, real-worldly-acquired sentences comes from).

Ultimately, try both and see what works for you is the best advice I can give you.

Marble101 Wrote:So, do people that have done the Core 2/6k recommend going from English(Front) -> Japanese(Back), or from Japanese(Front) -> English(Back)?

Original recommendation (like from 5 years ago) was go Japanese Kana (Front) -> Japanese Kanji (Back). I did most of my Japanese sentences this way.

My recommendation NOW is: Lots of Context (English word, Japanese clozed sentence, English sentence, parts of speech, image, similar answer) -> Japanese word (back).

The first time you learn a new card: Write down the word in kanji, write down its kana pronunciation. Write down the entire example Japanese sentence. Be comfortable mimicking the audio pronunciation. Set Anki default to review the card again in 10 minutes (optional or you can use the default).

Each review: Before you see the answer, write down the Kanji word. Try to pronounce the Japanese sentence using the proper conjugation. Look at the answer and only mark the card wrong if you got the writing or base pronunciation wrong (not how it's used in the sentence).

On misses: If you find you keep missing an answer because you were thinking it was an equally valid answer, edit the question by putting what the word is not. For example: "Car (not じどうしゃ)". Use the kana pronunciation so as you don't give yourself a hint to the real answer from the kanji form of word.

This is not easier. It is harder and will take beginners much longer to go through the deck. However, the payoff will be better recall of Japanese since you have to know how to write and pronounce the answer. Netsplitter gave a good example that I also experienced of what happens when you go kana to kanji.

So you mean, let's say the work was 魚 (sakana).
The card would be something like:

Front:

___(Fish) を 食べる

Back:

魚 (sakana)

Marble101 Wrote:So you mean, let's say the work was 魚 (sakana).
The card would be something like:

Front:

___(Fish) を 食べる

Back:

魚 (sakana)

Well, it'd look more like

(Front)
Fish (not つる); noun
肉と（　）とどちらが好きですか。
Which do you prefer, meat or fish?
(photo of fish)

(Back)
さかな
魚
にく と さかな と どちら が すき です か
肉 と 魚 と どちら が 好き ですか。
(audio of word and sentence)

Now the "(not つる)" in the example is not something I would not add in reality as it's obvious they're asking for fish the noun and not the verb "to fish". However, if there was a case that a word I personally thought fit then I'd tell myself not to pick that. In addition, the kana would be furigana via Anki.

Even given all this context, it's possible it's still too hard for the beginner student. Now, as the feedback has been positive thus far, it might be a non-issue. No need creating solutions to problems that don't exist.

Yes, that's the general idea. It's almost like doing RTK again but with actual words that fit into real sentences this time.

The deck has a lot of useful fields in it, so you can tailor it to suit your needs. For example, I made a fancy template that livens up the grindadventure a little bit.

The conjugations can be a little tricky (even more so if you're a complete beginner), but like Nukemarine, I don't grade myself on those (it's just an optional side-quest).

Nukemarine Wrote:The first time you learn a new card: Write down the word in kanji, write down its kana pronunciation. Write down the entire example Japanese sentence. Be comfortable mimicking the audio pronunciation. Set Anki default to review the card again in 10 minutes (optional or you can use the default).

Each review: Before you see the answer, write down the Kanji word. Try to pronounce the Japanese sentence using the proper conjugation. Look at the answer and only mark the card wrong if you got the writing or base pronunciation wrong (not how it's used in the sentence).

On misses: If you find you keep missing an answer because you were thinking it was an equally valid answer, edit the question by putting what the word is not. For example: "Car (not じどうしゃ)". Use the kana pronunciation so as you don't give yourself a hint to the real answer from the kanji form of word.

This is a much clearer explanation, so thank you for that! I had been doing something similar, but was stressing about exactly what I should be learning. Repeating the audio is fun, too, which always helps.

Nukemarine Wrote:(Front)
Fish (not つる); noun
肉と（　）とどちらが好きですか。
Which do you prefer, meat or fish?
(photo of fish)

(Back)
さかな
魚
にく と さかな と どちら が すき です か
肉 と 魚 と どちら が 好き ですか。
(audio of word and sentence)

Sorry to keep nit-picking, and I guess people can do what they feel works best for them, but: Do you personally put audio on the question side? Or do you have a "listening production" deck as well as a "reading production" deck (i.e. using audio and trying to write the individual vocab, or using a clozed delete sentence but trying to pick out which word is missing just by listening, something like that)? Thanks for this card template!

netsplitter Wrote:The deck has a lot of useful fields in it, so you can tailor it to suit your needs. For example, I made a fancy template that livens up the grindadventure a little bit.

I've been using your template for a while now and I really like it It took a bit of tweaking to get it to look how I liked but that was pretty easy to do because of how you did it. Cheers! It's really interesting that you're getting so much mileage out of Eng -> Jap considering all the stuff you hear about Jap -> Eng or even monolingual studying!

khalhern Wrote:It's really interesting that you're getting so much mileage out of Eng -> Jap considering all the stuff you hear about Jap -> Eng or even monolingual studying!

It shouldn't be a surprise that active recall helps you remember things better (although I'll patiently await all the responses telling me why I'm wrong).

I don't think that that kind of advice (avoiding English) is wrong, but it's either misplaced or misinterpreted. English (or your L1 of choice) is how you reason about the world; it serves as a stand-in for worldly concepts that you are already familiar with. It would be a terrible waste to forego its use in aiding your understanding.

I say it's misplaced because I believe it does apply at a certain level. Right now, I'm a beginner. I don't care what kind of discussion a 相談 might refer to. I'll figure the nuances out with exposure later on, and that job is made much easier if I can read it, write it, and think "oh, something about discussing/consulting/talking over is going on" when I see it.

The key is to use English as a crutch. The idea that directly translating English to a Japanese equivalent being a very bad idea still holds, and it's not what we're doing here.

I honestly wish I could go monolingual, but I really don't understand much of anything to do that just yet.

I use cloze delete for JLPT, but I question it's applicability to language development because I'm not sure that our brains chunk language like that.

The reason why I use complete understanding for sentences is because I figure that if any Japanese person can read those sentences, I should be able to as well. And if there's not a lot to learn (i+1) then it shouldn't be too difficult either.

netsplitter Wrote:The problem with those decks is that (familiarity with) the sentence gave the meaning away. It was a very passive exercise of "oh, it's that sentence again" rather than actually trying to read and understand.

If I see the same word in a context and I can't recall the meaning of the word, if I have time I add the sentence to my vocabulary deck. Sometimes multiple sentences with the word just helps a lot.

But yea, this is just stuff that works for me so feel free to experiment.