Zorlee
Member
From: Oslo / Kyoto
Registered: 2009-04-22
Posts: 526
Hi everyone!
I'm currently using... pretty much all day studying Japanese.
I really dig it, and I use a very basic method:
- I find a sentence I like
- Learn it
- Enter it into Anki
While I do like this method, it takes a lot of time.
I'm doing 30 sentences a day, pretty much no matter what. That being said, it usually takes up most part of my day doing this + reviews (around 500+ a day).
What can I do to speed up this process?
I don't want to abandon sentences, because I love complete sentences.
And I don't want to work with pre-mined stuff. I've done KO2001, and to be honest - it worked great as a kick-start, but I couldn't care less about the sentences now (I do review the sentences though). I need sentences that I want to learn, only then is it fun and easy to review them (and they also stick a lot better).
Since I've got around 8500 sentences going on in Anki at the moment, I do know some words. Because of my bigger vocabulary, compared to the early stages, it takes longer for me to find sentences. And that takes up more time.
I really want to economize this sentence mining thing.
I want to enjoy media more, read more without a "where is a sentence I can mine" mindset etcetc.
Do you have any advice / suggestions?
Thank you very much!
Geir...
Last edited by Zorlee (2010 May 24, 1:04 pm)
Ryuujin27
Member
Registered: 2006-12-14
Posts: 824
Well, how about you think about it a little differently? As you said yourself, you have 8500 sentences in Anki and you know a good number of words. Due to this, it takes you longer to find vocabulary. That's a good thing! Not only that, but at the stage you are in you can pretty much just move on to reading a lot and not worrying about throwing sentences into Anki. Also, though I know you say you don't want to, you definitely don't require sentences anymore. At most a noun and particle to establish some usage for verbs, but that would be all.
Really, the only way you can speed up your SRSing would be to cut down on the SRSing at this point (or go just vocabulary). Just read more and you'll find out how easy it is to improve from there.
For example, I spent a lot of time learning vocabulary and doing the SRS thing. Then, once I was able to pick up and a book and read a bit without needing to look up a bunch of words, I would do just that. Pick up a book, read, and look up words I came across I didn't know (or not, depending on my mood and whether or not I could get it from context). Then, I would not put it into my SRS. I would just keep on reading. I found that at my higher level of understanding, far less was new for me. As such, when I came across something new I tended to remember it.
Sometimes, when I'm done reading I'll throw some words I liked into a program called Genius (a more basic flashcard program without a real SRS algorithm). I'd study these a bit and then delete them. I really only put words I really, really like into Anki.
But, if you like to collect things and thus want a gigantic sentence deck, I'm afraid to say that if you don't want pre-'mined' decks, there really is little you can do to speed it up.
ta12121
Member
From: Canada
Registered: 2009-06-02
Posts: 3190
Ryuujin27 wrote:
Well, how about you think about it a little differently? As you said yourself, you have 8500 sentences in Anki and you know a good number of words. Due to this, it takes you longer to find vocabulary. That's a good thing! Not only that, but at the stage you are in you can pretty much just move on to reading a lot and not worrying about throwing sentences into Anki. Also, though I know you say you don't want to, you definitely don't require sentences anymore. At most a noun and particle to establish some usage for verbs, but that would be all.
Really, the only way you can speed up your SRSing would be to cut down on the SRSing at this point (or go just vocabulary). Just read more and you'll find out how easy it is to improve from there.
For example, I spent a lot of time learning vocabulary and doing the SRS thing. Then, once I was able to pick up and a book and read a bit without needing to look up a bunch of words, I would do just that. Pick up a book, read, and look up words I came across I didn't know (or not, depending on my mood and whether or not I could get it from context). Then, I would not put it into my SRS. I would just keep on reading. I found that at my higher level of understanding, far less was new for me. As such, when I came across something new I tended to remember it.
Sometimes, when I'm done reading I'll throw some words I liked into a program called Genius (a more basic flashcard program without a real SRS algorithm). I'd study these a bit and then delete them. I really only put words I really, really like into Anki.
But, if you like to collect things and thus want a gigantic sentence deck, I'm afraid to say that if you don't want pre-'mined' decks, there really is little you can do to speed it up.
I agree, read more, wayyy more. The more srsing you do, the less you'll need it. Not saying it's not vital, but later on you'll just do it to maintain it.(Not forgetting terms,vocab,etc)
I've decided there is no point to learn more meanings to kanji(personally, cuz I'll just do vocab more,etc. Best to learn stuff in context. So that will definitely lead me to only maintain 3 decks in the future instead of 4.)
Last edited by ta12121 (2010 May 24, 1:45 pm)
FooSoft
Member
From: Seattle, WA
Registered: 2009-02-15
Posts: 513
Website
I know you mentioned that you like doing sentences, but I think you should still consider switching at least partly to a vocab deck 
So far it's been amazing for me. Even though I have around 600 vocab reviews a day, it only takes me about 1.5 hours or so, and the rest of the time I can spend reading. When I was doing all sentences, I could easily spend over 3 hours just doing sentence reviews (around 400-450 or so) before getting to new material 
Also, I find that I can now read for as long as I like and add any and all vocab to my deck, since they are so cheap to do (I use the sentence for context on back of the card). I hated having to stop adding after I hit around 35-40 sentences (because I knew I would be in major SRS pain the next day if I didn't).
Last edited by FooSoft (2010 May 24, 5:32 pm)
Zorlee
Member
From: Oslo / Kyoto
Registered: 2009-04-22
Posts: 526
Thank you guys!
Well, I'll definitely back off on adding cards when I move to Japan (Aug/Sep). But I want to keep up the 30-a-day until then.
Well, I guess it just takes time then. I'll be sure to get me a "just-for-fun" book!
About my grammar.. I really haven't done anything JLPT related other than the Kanzen Master 2 book, so I can't judge myself on that scale. I don't know, I look at most grammar-points as vocab, since I find almost everything I need in a monolingual dictionary. (f.ex. when I saw -てたまらない in Kanzen Master, I thought "So that's a grammar point? Oh well!")
It's usually vocab that bugs me when reading, especially novels, but if I struggle with grammar, then it's usually the very, very basic stuff. The more advanced stuff really never bothered me, but those particles and verb-conjugations still gets me today. Haha!
To go a bit off topic. Pm, you mentioned you only mine from things you have digital versions of. I do the same thing, I just don't bother mining things I have to input myself, I'm a copy/paste kind of guy.
That being said, I can't seem to find books I really want to read in a format that allows copy/pasting. I'm definitely willing to buy digital books of f.ex. 村上春樹, even though I have them in "dead-tree" format. Any sites where I can buy / download / whatever copy-pasteable books of well-known writers?
