Betelgeuzah wrote:

It should be a continuation of 6k, no?

The Core2k and later expanded to the core6k are the 6000 "most common words" in Japanese. Knowing them will allow you to read a fair amount of material; though I've never heard what your comprehension rate of a newspaper would be with it.

The core10k was an extra 4000 words added on to the core6k that, as I understand it, are derived from the common frequency words from the EDICT. Many of the 4k after 6k, are probably good to know but not likely to be on the JLPT1. I just just checked some online vocab lists for the 1kyuu for some of those words posted by mmhorii, like おなら　and 衝動 and don't see them on the 1kyuu.

I would say after you get done with the core6k, start reading actual Japanese material (books, newspapers, forums). Add words from those sources because it means you are more likely to see those than maybe some obscure word that only ever shows up in novels.

衝動 isn't a very rare word, nor are any of the other ones. If you look at JLPT 1 prep books, they include much more obscure words. Whether they're really necessary, I don't know.

Other methods that haven't been mentioned in this thread. Learning with Texts I know some people are having some luck with for Japanese. However I haven't tried it myself yet. Benny has a video explaining what it does. I know it requires a bit of extra setup for languages without spaces.

Or you also you have Subs2SRS doubled with the Morphology plugin. The Morphology plugin will keep a database of words you have told it you know, and rate sentences based on how many words are in it that you do not know.

How do you guys handle leeches? I just got one, and I think few more are on the way. The readings of a few kanji are way too similar and I get confused.

I think that I'll just let it be and restudy it once I have a better grasp of the readings in the compound so that I only need to memorize the meaning.

Wow, that sounds great! How can you order your new cards to show up like that though?

Betelgeuzah wrote:

Wow, that sounds great! How can you order your new cards to show up like that though?

That's really easy. Just suspend all cards you haven't learned yet. Then unsuspend the cards you want to learn. You can find cards with the kanji you want to focus on easily by searching for the kanji in the browser.

Here you can find a list of commands for searching the browser effectively:

http://ankisrs.net/docs/Browser.html

That's just the way I do it and remembering readings became a lot easier after I started doing that. I think the major advantage is that it provides a more linear learning curve.

What I also try not to do is learning cards with more than one unfamiliar kanji reading. For example I won't add a word that consists of three kanji to my deck, if I'm not already familiar with at least two of the three readings.

A major disadvantage was that I was learning less common words before learning the more common ones.

Yeah, just try different things and find out what works best for you.

apirx wrote:

Betelgeuzah wrote:

Wow, that sounds great! How can you order your new cards to show up like that though?

That's really easy. Just suspend all cards you haven't learned yet. Then unsuspend the cards you want to learn. You can find cards with the kanji you want to focus on easily by searching for the kanji in the browser.

Here you can find a list of commands for searching the browser effectively:

http://ankisrs.net/docs/Browser.html

That's just the way I do it and remembering readings became a lot easier after I started doing that. I think the major advantage is that it provides a more linear learning curve.

What I also try not to do is learning cards with more than one unfamiliar kanji reading. For example I won't add a word that consists of three kanji to my deck, if I'm not already familiar with at least two of the three readings.

A major disadvantage was that I was learning less common words before learning the more common ones.

A key thing to note is, if you see it from a native-source, then it's most likely common(well depending on the material your are getting the vocabulary but most of the time it's a good rule of thumb to follow).

overture2112 wrote:

Betelgeuzah wrote:

Core's listening examples are almost unbearable. Some of the speakers are annoying beyond belief with their nasal/spluttering voices.

Then again some speakers sound pretty funny. I guess I'll just have to deal with it.

I highly suggest subs2srs'ing a show you like instead of doing Core, particularly if you don't like the audio.

I really want to do this, sooo bad. But I struggle to find Japanese subs

Mainly after subs for Steins;Gate, Code Geass, Ghost in Shell SAC (both sets), Madoka Magika.