Whether it's a good idea depends on what your goals are for your Japanese learning. Do you just want to be able to read manga, watch TV and understand people? Do you want to speak to people? Do you want to be able to write?

Practice what you hope to achieve.

Thanks for all the replies lads. To mcjon Im not quite sure I understand exactly how to reverse the cards, i tried generating the new cards, but it seems to only be able to do one at a time.

So the consensus here then would seem to be that doing english to japanese is not as effective as japanese to english, is that right?

As to the other 2 posts, seeing as im living in Japan id like to get an all around ability in the language. I was thinking along the lines, that practicing output of japanese, ie in a flashcard format for vocabulary, would help to lessen those occasions where im stumped for a word, you know those times where you know hat you know a word and its on the tip of your tongue, but you just cant get it out!!!

Actually as a follow up question, do you guys use pre made decks and if so do you have any all around recommendation?

Once agin thanks for the quick replies

For me, EN to JP is more effective than JP to EN. Recognition is way too easy. Of course production is slower, but you can communicate surprisingly well with Japanese people with even just a little vocab and grammar knowledge. For me, at the moment (living in Japan), doing that and doing it well is more important than reading and whatnot.

Edit: I think you can get around those shortcomings that Tobb described by using hints or some kind of cue for separate grammar points. Also, you don't have to be too strict with grading yourself if you don't get it perfect so long as you understand the grammar point well enough. But hey, different horses and all that...

pps. I also think using your own decks is a good idea.

Last edited by slivir (2010 May 26, 8:16 pm)

Depends on what you want, if you want to be fluent in all skills, train all skills. Reverse cards help you remember kanji from memory easily.
Basically i've learned that, if you do recongition cards a lot, your reading/understanding should develop, as long as you keep an immersion environment and reading. For writing do a lot of production cards, you'll get used to it after a while. Lastly speaking, probably the hardest skill to gain fluency (in my opinion). I guess you have to start small, and use simple vocab and then build up your way to conversational level,functional,then semi-fluent then fluent.

I remember hearing somewhere that you should wait like 800 hours(filled with immersion of course and just plain listening) before actually trying to output. It's to get used to the sounds,etc.

Last edited by ta12121 (2010 May 26, 8:44 pm)