^That works too.

But for new learners, a corpus with basic sentences is helpful. e..g. Core6k

*referring to OP

mmhmm


It's not an either-or situation

Hyperborea wrote:

"Why not both?"

The reason for why not is if the cost of doing both is not free. So, if creating the sentences costs you something in time that you could put to other uses (creating more vocab cards, reading time, anything). If that cost is higher than the benefit then you would be better off not doing both. In a number of cases getting the sentences is pretty much free - e.g. pre-made decks such as Core2k/6k/10k, tools such as Rikai{chan|kun|sama} - so there it really does make sense to have the sentences even if only just for disambiguating confusable words.

So something takes a little longer therefore it's better off not doing? I'm not saying either is better -I use a premade deck, read native material, and are also creating a vocabulary deck based on 俳句, which takes time to create due to archaic language and certain idiosyncratic kanji usage. An extra half an hour to an hour a day, sure, it adds up over time, but so does spending hours watching TV, etc.

I understand the desire to make the process efficient as possible, but fluency in a language is going to take years regardless. If enough of the efficient attitude towards study was transferred to the tasks of the rest of our lives, you'd probably find yourself enjoy time to be able enjoy your studies at whichever pace you liked and still progress at a faster rate than those trying to force a hour a day of study and stressing over efficiency and the most correct route.

Though I wonder where you get the values for the cost-benefit equation. If someone enjoys spending more time studying a certain way, then whatever extra time they are spending in the language does not come as a cost. Some people are happier, for example, going through Core6000 (for example), at a pace of ten words a day while others are happier to go at a rate of 60 words a day. Those at a higher rate will get through the initial review process faster, and in the same time gained a higher "benefit" in vocabulary than those at a slower pace- but that is assuming the aim is to learn words at a certain pace, or to aim for a certain goal.


You can't simply prescribe the same goals for everything, therefore a cost-benefit perspective is meaningless to those which don't care to go at a certain pace. There might be faster means to achieve something, but language learning is a individual thing, and at the end of the day all that matters is whether or not the individual is satisfying their own demands.

I use both single words and sentences on my vocab cards. My main vocab cares are like:

Font:
りんご
Hint:
僕はりんごを食べてい

Back
Apple
I am eating an apple

I find I can recognise words (and the reading) using the sentence. I was not sure if I was learning the word or just memorising a sentence, so I ended up hiding the sentence and making it a hint. I mark things as hard if I have to use the sentence.

I use grammar cards for sentence reading and I use multiple grammar decks to avoid 'memorising' the sentences. At the moment it's Genki I, Tae Kim (Basic and some Essential) , and JSPFEC. Every now and then I'll find any commonly occuring words in the sentences and make/move vocab cards for them.

Hyperborea wrote:

Do you generate native speaker audio for all of your new non-core vocab cards? Word and sentence? Why not? Is it more trouble than it's worth? Surprise, you've made a cost/benefit calculation.

I would counter that for anyone except the few people who accept the philosophy of Pragmatism as their Bible, human beings are capable of thought at a level of abstraction a little higher than just reducing every individual option to a cost/benefit calculation.

I really don't need to calculate the costs and benefits of taking the time to find a sentence (even if I could, which of course I can't, and this is where Pragmatism falls apart in general), to figure out that I should. Understanding the role of sentences in a language is more than enough for me to realize that that's something I'm gonna have to just go ahead and do.

Betelgeuzah wrote:

Why not utilize both? I don't look at the sentences if I remember the word in isolation. If I don't, I look at the sentence.

This. I would add that by also generating audio for that sentence, you can have the benefit of the sentence without ever looking at it (if you choose to play the audio in the question, and the card is a production card, of course).

Last edited by Stansfield123 (2013 March 18, 11:28 pm)

If one doesn't mind sometimes archaic grammatical patterns, or sometimes less common kanji usage, AND one enjoys poetry... one could always take a look at the randomly generated haiku page with David G. Lanoue's rather brilliant efforts in translating some 一万俳句 by 一茶. When it comes to creating a image to remember words by, well, one really cannot find too much fault in Issa- hell, even two or three wouldn't pass it off as dry:

http://haikuguy.com/issa/random.php?



but four or five might. There's no accounting for taste, as they say.