Finding sentences for words

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Reply #1 - 2013 March 03, 3:00 pm
loverkanji Member
Registered: 2007-11-12 Posts: 112

I think it is easier to remember vocabulary if it's used in a sentence but the problem is that sometimes it's hard to find a sentence that is not too advanced. What do you guys use to find sentences for your anki reviews ?

Reply #2 - 2013 March 03, 3:10 pm
overture2112 Member
From: New York Registered: 2010-05-16 Posts: 400

loverkanji wrote:

I think it is easier to remember vocabulary if it's used in a sentence but the problem is that sometimes it's hard to find a sentence that is not too advanced. What do you guys use to find sentences for your anki reviews ?

1) Get all the sentences from a show/movie with subs2srs
2) Sort sentences according to difficulty with MorphMan
3) Do k+1 sentences (ie. 1 unknown word) when learning vocab or k+0/m+0 (all words known/mature) sentences to practice comprehension

Last edited by overture2112 (2013 March 03, 3:10 pm)

Reply #3 - 2013 March 03, 3:19 pm
Aspiring Member
From: San Diego Registered: 2012-08-13 Posts: 307

I use subs2srs & core [plus] ordered by k+1.


Core 6k has audio and basic sentences.

You could make multiple cards for one sentence.
Say there are 3 words you don't understand, bold or isolate one word in each card and include the sentence.
This can be done quickly through yomichan.

Last edited by Aspiring (2013 March 03, 3:20 pm)

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Reply #4 - 2013 March 03, 3:20 pm
TwoMoreCharacters Member
From: Sweden Registered: 2010-07-10 Posts: 480

Choosing what words to study and then finding sentences for them are tedious.

But I've searched lone words on Twitter sometimes, I think I got pretty good contexts. It takes a while to find a post that's ok, but for common words there's no shortage of them!

Reply #5 - 2013 March 03, 3:44 pm
loverkanji Member
Registered: 2007-11-12 Posts: 112

The thing is that let's say I read an article or a novel, every word I don't know I put it into anki, but I found that it's just easier when I add a sentence that uses this word.
Yeah I follow the n+1 rule but as I said it's sometimes hard to find a sentence that is n+1 and so I have to add a sentence with more than one new word, and we all know how frustratingly hard it gets.

Reply #6 - 2013 March 03, 3:46 pm
stratzvyda Member
From: Austin USA Registered: 2012-04-04 Posts: 20

When i was starting out i used http://45web.net/1pctop.htm a lot.  Lots of simple sentences next to pictures of various games.  Now i mostly use the japanese weekly world news, because I enjoy weird things like that, and drama transcripts like people have been saying.

For bilingual sentences if you aren't comfortable going full mono yet check out http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/ they have a bunch of sample sentences for various words, just put the word in the box in japanese then click on 英和 for their japanese-english stuff.  And it's a good monolingual dictionary as well, which is a good thing to get comfortable using.

Reply #7 - 2013 March 03, 3:48 pm
Stian Member
From: England Registered: 2012-06-21 Posts: 426

Yahoo!辞書 (The 和英 often has some decent examples)
Tatoeba (some obvious translations, but still allright)
ALC.co.jp (the English is a bit fishy but we're not here for the English, are we?)

These are the sources I use if I can't use the sentence I originally found the word in. Apart from that, subs2srs [monolingually is best imo] is also quite good. smile

(Also, some video games, for instance the Zelda games often use short and easily understandable sentences, but beware of some strange terms.)

Reply #8 - 2013 March 03, 4:11 pm
loverkanji Member
Registered: 2007-11-12 Posts: 112

Speaking of games, most of the words I take are from visual novels.

Reply #9 - 2013 March 03, 6:08 pm
overture2112 Member
From: New York Registered: 2010-05-16 Posts: 400

loverkanji wrote:

Speaking of games, most of the words I take are from visual novels.

Even better, use ITH to take full sentences from the game and make those into cards. Then of those, only study new cards as they become k+1.

Reply #10 - 2013 March 03, 7:01 pm
loverkanji Member
Registered: 2007-11-12 Posts: 112

What do you mean 'as they become k+1' ?

Reply #11 - 2013 March 03, 8:24 pm
Splatted Member
From: England Registered: 2010-10-02 Posts: 776

K+1 = known + 1 = a sentence with only one new word

The Morphology anki plugin (made by overture) allows you to sort your sentences based on what you know.  (i.e have studied in anki)

Reply #12 - 2013 March 04, 4:16 am
Stansfield123 Member
From: Europe Registered: 2011-04-17 Posts: 799

loverkanji wrote:

I think it is easier to remember vocabulary if it's used in a sentence but the problem is that sometimes it's hard to find a sentence that is not too advanced. What do you guys use to find sentences for your anki reviews ?

You're absolutely right. It's easier to remember, and it helps associate the word with its meaning directly, rather than its closest English equivalent. I don't think it's tedious, it takes me less than 2 minutes to find and add a sentence (even though I also replace the word with its reading, and then put that reading in parentheses and bold it). Well worth the effort to learn the words you want to learn instead of a pre-made deck.

I just use Yahoo Japan's dictionary
http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch?enc=UTF- … 8B&oq=
This is set for Japanese-English sentences, but you can set it to give you other kinds of results as well (there are six different options, 和英 [わえ(n)Japanese-English] is the one I selected). Last option gives you everything (it's a mess, i wouldn't use it).

and Denshi Jisho's example sentences:
http://jisho.org/sentences/ (very straight forward, but the sentences aren't as good -it's only my second option, rarely use it)

They both have simple example sentences. I have other sites bookmarked http://ejje.weblio.jp/content/%E5%85%BC … 8%E3%82%8B (this one includes the Yahoo results, but gives you more on top of it), but I don't use them. If I can't find an example sentence in the first two, I just give up on the word. Also, there are instances in which the example sentence contains a second unknown word. In that case, so long as the meaning of the word can be deduced from context, I just place the reading of that word into the question, and use the sentence anyway. Otherwise, I again drop the word. It's a bad idea to use a sentence you don't easily understand.

Right now, I'm also using this site: http://www.renshuu.org/index.php?page=c … t_id=31477 (the words are in fact in Kanji, but you can't see them unless you register and set your account to display all the Jouyou Kanji - they're not trying to be douches, the site just treats non-registered users as beginners, who don't know any Kanji).

It has pre-made vocab lists with a ton of example sentences. There's an advantage in that you can save the page as .txt, and then use Yomichan to feed the example sentence, word, word reading, and word translation straight into Anki, all with one click). The disadvantage is that it's pre-made lists. (In my case that's OK, because the list I linked to is a wordlist for a short story I plan on reading.)

Last edited by Stansfield123 (2013 March 04, 4:37 am)

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