Working with single word vocab lists...

Index » The Japanese language

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Reply #1 - 2012 November 26, 11:52 pm
kodorakun Member
From: Seattle Registered: 2008-10-15 Posts: 276 Website

Hi All,

Was just curious if people had any thoughts on working with single-word vocab lists (i.e. no sentences). Recently I've been listening to podcasts and writing down words I clearly hear and want to refresh or learn. It's pretty fun, and a lot of the words I end up knowing or are pretty "simple" but I am not used to actually hearing them and so I look them up and say "doh! of course I knew that word!" -- so I guess this is kind of training my passive vocab to become a bit more active in processing and inference as far as listening to the context goes and putting things together...

Anyway, my question is does anyone have any suggestions for good practices to quickly study single word lists? I was thinking of actually doing english to japanese production (this fails pretty hard with full sentences given the nature of being able to say things in more than one way, but with single words it might not be so bad...). Or maybe cloze deleting single kanji for each compound. I dunno, just fishing for feedback if anyone has found themselves in this position.

K

Reply #2 - 2012 November 27, 3:08 am
JunePin Member
Registered: 2011-10-12 Posts: 49

I replied to your post then realize I hadn't read it properly, and was talking about something entirely different, so I deleted it, sorry about that.

Reply #3 - 2012 November 27, 6:11 am
partner55083777 Member
From: Tokyo Registered: 2008-04-23 Posts: 397

kodorakun wrote:

Was just curious if people had any thoughts on working with single-word vocab lists (i.e. no sentences).

I'm not sure if you're specifically asking about how to go about it without an SRS.  Assuming you're okay with using an SRS, I have a little info about it.

I am pretty big into using sentences.  I don't like to put words into my deck unless there is a sentence on the card using the word. (I do make exceptions for simple nouns that have direct english translations.  For instance, today I put the word 双眼鏡（そうがんきょう）[binoculars] into my deck because it's a pretty direct translation of the English word.)  However, there are a lot of people on this forum that swear by using simple vocab cards instead of sentence cards. 

So keep in mind you're in good company using a simple vocab deck.  Is there some reason you don't want to do a simple recognition deck (i.e. Japanese word -> English word)?

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Reply #4 - 2012 November 27, 5:57 pm
delta Banned
Registered: 2012-09-15 Posts: 226

I like words because they are contextless and harder to answer correctly than sentences in which you can always guess a little. I also like sentences because they are 'contextful' and let you see how the word is actually used. Both ways is the way to go.

Reply #5 - 2012 November 28, 2:22 pm
somstuff Member
Registered: 2012-06-18 Posts: 65

I do a lot of vocab this way. Right now I have decks for (1) Audio/Kana>Eng, (2) Eng>Audio/Kana, and (3) Jap>Eng/Kana. Deck 1 I do first, then 2 trailing behind, then 3; 1 is quite easy to do, and then 2 is easy to do if you already know 1, and 3 is easiest now that you can get the answer with English or Kana. When I was focusing just on vocab, I could easily do 100+ words a day (including audio recognition, production, and kanji recognition).

As others have pointed out, the main drawbacks are that there are multiple potential Japanese words for an English one, and you don't fully know how to use the word. In conversation, if I want to say "production" - I'm lost between which to say:
製造[せいぞう]
製作[せいさく]
生産[せいさん]
作製[さくせい]

I think that it's a good investment doing vocab decks, though, because now when you come across those words you easily recognize them, and with a bit of exposure, the usage of the vocab becomes more natural. Often times Japanese is hard because at first you don't know the grammar OR the vocab. But if you have the vocab, you can just use context to assume the grammar.

Production is a bit more complicated. It seems the only way I get used to a single word (like "production" up there) is by being in a conversation with someone, looking up which is the proper word to use, and doing that a few times with the same word until it becomes natural to use. This is really inefficient, and if anyone has a more systematic way to do output (usage included, not just Eng>Jap vocab), then please let me know. smile

Edit: One more thing, I don't really get why people do sentences for vocab (grammar is okay). If you have a kanji>meaning vocab deck, and then you see a kanji in the wild (wild KANJI appeared! jk), then your set because you know the kanji - you may not understand the usage of the kanji, but that's okay because that's already right in front of you. And kanji>meaning SENTENCE decks don't really do anything for your output abilities, so although you know the usage of a kanji when you see it in a sentence, you won't be able to replicate that. Lemme know if that doesn't make sense.

Last edited by somstuff (2012 November 28, 2:31 pm)

Reply #6 - 2012 December 01, 1:11 am
partner55083777 Member
From: Tokyo Registered: 2008-04-23 Posts: 397

somstuff wrote:

Edit: One more thing, I don't really get why people do sentences for vocab (grammar is okay). If you have a kanji>meaning vocab deck, and then you see a kanji in the wild (wild KANJI appeared! jk), then your set because you know the kanji - you may not understand the usage of the kanji, but that's okay because that's already right in front of you. And kanji>meaning SENTENCE decks don't really do anything for your output abilities, so although you know the usage of a kanji when you see it in a sentence, you won't be able to replicate that. Lemme know if that doesn't make sense.

One reason I do it is because of the huge difference between Japanese and English.  Just knowing the English definition of a Japanese word doesn't give me enough to figure out what a Japanese word means in a sentence when I see it in the wild.  It's totally possible that I'm just dumb, but it's at least what I have to do.

Also, in my case, kanji->meaning sentence decks do help with my output.  While they probably wouldn't help as much as a production deck, they do help with knowing how to use a Japanese word.  It's more than just remembering a definition of a word, it's remembering the "feel" of a word.  The "feel" of how it's used. 

I personally only do kanji->meaning vocab decks with simple nouns that basically translate directly from Japanese to English.


Edit: One thing that I've started doing is adding Japanese definitions to my cards.  This helps a little with getting the "feel" for a word, since most Japanese definitions "explain" what a word means instead of just giving a translation.  With a Japanese definition, english translation, and example sentence on a card, it's really easy to get a good "feeling" for what a word means and how to use it.  The same can't be said for just Japanese->English translation.

(Also, keep in mind that our goals and reasons for studying/using an SRS maybe completely different, so it might not make sense for us to be arguing/disagreeing.  I guess when we are giving advice or personal experience, we should say what our end goals are, and why our study methods are well suited for those end goals.)

Last edited by partner55083777 (2012 December 01, 1:19 am)

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