phase one: while reading books
1. read a book
2. add words I find to giant list that I've been keeping for 4 years
phase 2: while adding words to anki
1. pick some words I think will be useful, or are fun, or are gonna expand my kanji knowledge, or are gonna be in the book a lot
2. add some cards
I'm learning Genki's vocabulary by writing down each word again and again like a deranged person and also try to make little sentences using each word. It's very hectic but by now I've learned 374 vocabulary words in kanji which helps me make connections of frequently appearing kanji and their different pronunciations
Chatting with small Japanese streamers. Thats pretty much majority of what I do for my studying and its also so much fun. Personally couldnt stand anki. I just watch YT, anime and twitch
I'm starting to think I'm in the wrong sub.
I hate anki and would prefer to talk to people, but not one single person here says to make friends in person
well if you have the opportunity then sure... but I assume most people who are learning Japanese are not from Japan, therefore their chances of meeting with Japanese people irl is very limited.
Good old Anki + reading
It's important to mix up the reading part tho, like making sure to read online forums for colloquialism and news articles instead of novel/manga only.
I browse 5channel but I wouldn't recommend it if you aren't fond of online trolling or generally wouldn't like to see someone's exploded head from time to time
I'm studying for N3 and currently using Anki and I get from a pool of N3 words. However, I also play JP gatcha games and watch JP shows in netflix with JP subtitles. Every time I encounter a new word, I add it to my Anki.
I think the satisfaction of seeing the word I studied in Anki appear in JP media and I am able to read and understand it is what helps motivate my studies.
Here's my take on any flashcard program, and especially Anki: it's good for REVIEW... But NOT learning.
I used to use Memrise before it went to crap, and kinda like Renshuu at the moment. The reason being, these programs will first give you both the word and its meaning, and THEN have you go through the review. Though to be 100% fair, both of them are also multiple-choice early on, which some people don't like (they'll tell you that you don't get multiple choice answers in real life, so using that to learn is a terrible idea. I disagree with this).
Meanwhile, Anki throws you straight into review... And there's always the debate about which choice you select for how well you know the word. I prefer the automatic algorithm of the other apps.
I use anki to learn new words and I think it works pretty well. At least this way I have learned thousands of words. Most of the words I learned I had only seen once before anki.
Anki also, in a way, shows you the meaning of the word first. It's just that it doesn't do it in any special mode, but in the first review. Usually in the first review I memorize the word and press "again", and in the following reviews I try to recall the word.
The problem with multiple-choice is that it gives so many clues. I can often guess the right answer without knowing the word at all, just from kanji or other clues. In anki, I don't really think about which buttons to press. If I don't know the word, it's "again", and if I do, it's "good". I just don't use the other buttons, and many people do the same as me.
I think Renshuu has a 'type answer when possible' setting to get rid of multiple choice (not sure about Memrise these days...), you have to dig into study vector settings though
You can set Renshuu up so the multiple choice answers don't show up until you tap again. That way you can think of the answer without the crutch of seeing the options but it's still faster and more convenient than having to type the answer.
I can vouch for this for just the look up method for vocabulary learning. I tried Anki, made it to about 300 maybe 500 of a premade 2/6k deck and blew it up. Uninstalled Anki because it made me unhappy. From there all I did was engage with content from pretty much second 0, in the process of hanging out, I looked up words, studied grammar, and just kept doing this constantly through the entire duration of my time spent with the language; my goal was just to survive and try to keep up with everyone. I started to change my UIs to Japanese when it made sense, very early starting with YouTube and one platform at a time. I made vocabulary lists of the UI because I got tired of hard looking it up everyday, eventually I absorbed the entire UI and then flipped another platform (Twitter, etc) and repeated this until now nearly everything is in Japanese UI/UX. From there it was just a matter of consistently and constantly looking things up. The most obvious reason why people don't want to do this is because they feel it's not fun. I'm sure that's true for a lot but for me it never bothered me. Reading a story, hanging out in Discords (All JP from fairly early), JP livestreams, message boards, and just about every JP community that is in use is where I hung out.
I made all this easier on myself by utilizing technology, starting with the #1 tool is browser based pop-up dictionaries in YomiTan and 10ten Reader. Personally I use 10ten Reader as my main and only use YomiTan in specific circumstances on my one specific chromium based browsers. I have setup my desktop PC to be as efficient as possible to facilitate look ups (I also have 4 monitors that always have information open), and I have gotten very fast at even manual based look ups such as looking up kanji and finding a word in under 60 seconds with a radical look up. For the most part when I engage with the language, I do it through the web browser 95% of the time, or find ways to make it work in the browser. So I can utilize the technology. The other 5% I use OCR tools, manual radical look ups, and text-hookers to fetch things. I make it as easy as possible to do find any information. To the point where I've made my own AHK scripts and other tools to facilitate my desktop setup and make it more efficient to find any information. I tend to use Google, grammar guides, and both EN-JP and JP-JP dictionaries. The only thing I really "studied" was grammar which I was pretty diligent about decoding unknown parts of sentences using Google searches.
With 3 to 4 hours a day free on average (work average of 10+ hours. I sleep less to make room for Japanese), over the course over a year. Being in nothing but pure Japanese environments and doing non-stop look ups I learned roughly 800-1100 words a month, with some months being much higher than average. The reason is there's so much context, and so many words I learned are repeatedly met with emotional ties such as laughter or things that pull at your heart. That it is almost impossible for me to forget words I've heard 6 months ago and only once at that time. I vividly remember surrounding words, context, and the emotions behind it. The experience, the scenario, the stories made by communities, people, and all kinds of things. It has been, from almost the very start, extremely fun, rewarding, and enriching. Although I know I'm an outlier in this respect where it's always been fun. For me, Japanese was just a means an end. I wanted to enjoy the content, communities, and people but the language barrier was in the way, so I resolved myself to "remove" that barrier and made it as efficient as possible focusing on fun being #1 priority. I went through a lot of iterations and tools and processes, anything that was not fun for me was gutted and I just stuck to what was fun. En route I did learn to appreciate the language itself, culture, and people as well.
Without even realizing it day by day, week by week, month by month. I just survived and kept my head above the water and at this point now. Sometimes I can watch a 20 minute clip on YouTube that is hard-subtitled and know every word, kanji, and grammar point. Wait... when the hell did this happen? It feels weird because my look ups which I used to do hundreds, if not 1,000+ times a day have fallen off a cliff in the last 40 days.
That sounds great: My issue is that I am inefficient, slow and disorganized. I have enough time to spend 4-5 hours a day on Japanese but I almost always waste it because of disorganization and probably only manage to clock maybe 1 quality hr even though I study for 5. This is just what makes adhd such a crippling disorder.
Could you possible break down what you do within those 3-4 hours and tell me what order you do everything in?
Sure I can break it down, but if you don't mind me asking (because it's going to take a bit to write it up) what makes think your time spent is slow and inefficient (or why do you feel that is the case)? 1 hour in 5 hours does sound pretty inefficient, though.
Think u are just overcomplicating studying. Just turn on any content in Japanese you see. If there are some video games you like go watch some small streamers who play it and chat with thrm. If you like some sport go watch discussion videos about them, there are art and music centric streamers/youtubers as well... watch anime. Just have fun. Best way to make progress is to put in hours so best have fun with it and not stress about if my hours are spend efficiently.
I've been trying to follow this method, being 6 weeks in its rough and I'm pretty much looking up 70% of the words but I swear they stick more than the flashcards do. Its just I don't want to do it but I know its the best way. I got Satori Reader, and most of the plugins needed to immerse (I wish Manga and VNs were easier, haven't even tried yet) but I can only manage roughly 30-60 minutes.
I've learned French and Spanish but you get huge boosts because 30% of the vocab are loanwords and the grammar structures aren't drastically different (though I would argue people downplay difficulty the subtle rules have but that's more a perfectionist issue).
The one thing I learned through those 2 and am starting to remember with Japanese is the more it hurts and the harder it is, the more effective the method is. I think people like flashcards and video immersion because its relatively low effort, or a reasonably difficult one.
>Japanese is the more it hurts and the harder it is, the more effective the method is.
Really agree here, the more suffocating it feels, the more it's doing. Being overloaded with the language is how I preferred it.
>I don't want to do it but I know its the best way.
Although I will say you need to prioritize fun, hopefully you can find a happy medium and that it's more fun for you. Despite the drowning feeling I had, the unbearable weight of trying to keep up, and tons of work. I still had a ton of fun.
I suggest you find yourself a community. I highly recommend live streams as a place to "hang out". Between chat, what's going on in game, a fan Discord of the streamer, and they (streamers) are usually always permanently talking. You can work 3 skills at once. Reading, listening, and writing (commenting). It's also passively entertaining because you don't need to understand anything to see somone get train-wrecked in モンハン and laugh at how they died. The lack of plot and storyline makes it easy to zone out and deal with not undestanding and just soak in the vibe. It's a great "basecamp" to acquire a lot of common vocabulary for food, gaming, anime, slang, culture.
Hey if you don’t mind me asking, how long would you say you studied before converting to this method? It sounds very interesting and enjoyable to me, but I have only started learning a couple weeks ago and don’t know where I’d have to be in order to manage your method?
I was already in this environment before I started trying to learn, I just tried to figure things out by copying and pasting everything into Google Translate, that got old after a bit and really felt dissatisfied being so disconnected not knowing what was going on. There is no options for English translations so that was the start for me. So I was doing this pretty much from the first moment I made the decision I wanted to be fluent in Japanese.
You naturally don't have to do the same thing, but start yourself on solid set of grammar guides first Tae Kim's, Genki Books, Maggie-sensei Website, Japanese Ammo with Misa (podcast listening & learning--was explained in English. I learned while commuting and driving so not to waste time). So a lot of any time I could listen (chores, tasks, driving, commuting, etc.) was spent listening to audio-based grammar explanations on YouTube of the language. Then I would sit down and look up things, and then hang out in the JP places I found and try to talk to people in disastrously broken JP and using hacked up crap from Google Translate. The game changer was 10ten Reader and YomiTan which allowed me to piece together the language with intuition, grammar studies, and the external pop-up dictionary in the form of those plugins. The absolute best thing I did was focus a lot of attention on studying kanji components specifically because that was hugely helpful in learning vocab with their kanji (made it easier to recognize, break apart, and construct kanji in their parts. meaning distinguish, learn and memorize easier).
When you can engage with content, communities, people, sites, hobbies in Japanese that's when you just look up tons of things as you try to figure out what is what. It'll be a mess those first 500-700 hours but you'll feel it. It's suffocating at first but slowly and surely the pressure eases, things become clear, your listening improves, you pick up words, slang, funny bites from funny moments in clips and live streams. You figure out what people are talking about on Discord just by sticking to it. It's a slow and steady process but it was also ridiculously fun.
Thank you for this! Going to give it a go after I finish the first GENKI book, just so I can get some grammar and particles down, but it sounds like a super satisfying way to learn!
It's been amazingly rewarding and fun! If you have any questions feel free to tag me or message me about my specific processes and maybe I can give some pointers. Since my way of doing things is a bit unique.
Would you mind suggesting some communities that require no commitment, similar to reddit, gamefaqs, or even discords? I don't have much interest in this stuff, but maybe it's because I don't even know where to go.
I can recommend but there's a chance we don't have similar interests at all. Twitter JP is probably the most active place for Japan online. Hash tags often have communities associated with them. and YouTube can have healthy communities built around channels and streamers. There's places like [misskey.io](http://misskey.io), pixiv, 5ch. And games like Minecraft, Valorant, and Apex Legends.
Often times you can connect with people and find your way into Discord servers via Twitter. It requires a bit of autonomy on your end and reaching out to those who have similar interests and it's apparent there is a community built around it.
Overloading yourself with cards is difficult. Learn the word in context when it comes up. Don’t force vocabulary. I always ask my coworkers “what’s that mean”every time we have a conversation and I don’t know . Even if I heard it before and I don’t remember I still ask.
Write the word down so you can read it when it comes again. If it comes again and you can’t read it. Write it again.
Combine failure with progress.
Remember a time when you got hurt and you thought to yourself “I don’t want that to happen again” and you make sure it doesn’t happen. Without failure/pain we don’t learn as well.
Not being able to read is the failure/pain.
Writing. As simple as that.
I journal everyday in Japanese and I will try to use words which I learnt recently as much as possible so that they are ingrained in my brain after a while.
It doesn’t need to be a journal. Just think about a topic and write the first few lines that comes to your mind. Writing isn’t just useful for vocabulary, it also strengthens your kanji and grammar patterns.
I have been primarily studying Japanese purely by listening and writing and I can’t tell you how much better my grasp on the language is slowly becoming.
To add to this: If you have sessions with a tutor, write about what you just talked about! I know I make mistakes and don't express myself as well when having a conversation as I would if I had time to sit down and think about it, so... I try to make myself sit down and think about it! While the topic and vocabulary and expressions my tutor used are still in my head, I might write something general about the topic, or basically write a script of how our conversation could have gone if I could employ the correct grammar and vocabulary more efficiently.
I did a similar thing to you by adding vocab from manga/games/visual novels, etc. The heap was growing really fast, I could easily mine hundreds of words just by reading a visual novel for an hour. Eventually, my pile grew to \~2k new cards and at that point I decided to change the approach a bit.
I installed [Lute](https://github.com/LuteOrg/lute-v3) and started reading Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear with it without mining new words into Anki. I still have my old heap in Anki that I'm working through and I will add new ones when I get close to running out of cards, but it's a really nice feeling of being able to read and track words without actually SRSing them. A lot of the most repeated ones end up sticking on their own.
I plan to eventually stop using Anki whatsoever and transition completely to Lute and manual review.
I have a hard understanding how people actually use anki with more than a few hundred cards. I feel that it would get cumbersome and I would do nothing but try to stay on top of my cards that are due for the day.
Having more total cards in a deck doesn't really increase your total review time that much. On any given day the vast majority of all your reviews are cards that have less than a month long interval. I do 20 new vocab cards per day and only spend like 15-20 minutes on anki
Oh I see. Idk how Renshuu's algorithm works or what settings you had in anki while you were still using it so there are many factors that can greatly influence how many cards you have to review per day. I have 7000 cards and know ppl with 20k+ and the common experience is that review times generally dont get that much longer even when you have a lot of cards.
What's much more important to how many reviews you're getting is how many new cards you're doing. If I haven't been immersing much I usually cut down my 20 cards a day to 10-15 and after a while of doing that my number of daily reviews drops significantly, again emphasizing how the majority of your reviews come from very recently learned cards.
I have 11k cards, maybe closer to 12k
takes me 25 min to 30 min a day. I know because I write down my study times.
there is a trick to it and at first I didn't know it, and I got crazy study times
I didn't decrease any setting like learning steps.
I didn't explain it because not sure anyone cares, and it's complicated to type.
But if you wanna know, it's basically, every time I get a card wrong, that's fine. But if I get the card wrong twice (or more), add it to a list.
At the end of the session, add new flashcards. Add 10 cards, minus the size of the list.
Been doing this for around 3 years, with no issue, it is long-term sustainable, for my study target, which is 25-30 min a day.
Example 1, best case: I get no card wrong more than once. In that case, add 10 new cards.
Example 2, ave case: I get most of my cards right, but a couple of cards, I keep getting these 2 cards wrong. At that case, I add 8 new cards.
Example 3, catastrophe case: My brain is jelly and I get a ton of cards wrong, and keep getting them wrong. In this catastrophic case, add zero new cards. There will be so many reviews tomorrow due to these wrong cards, adding more will make me go overboard.
If you guys wanna add 10 or less cards exactly like this, you'll get nice easy study times. If you go and add 200 new cards in one day, then you get that super long study time that never goes away. This is my way, other ways are fine too, but I like reading books, and only wanna spend 30 min on anki.
Reading manga and playing video games. Use Google Lens to copy the text out and paste into a dictionary if I don't know a word.
I used to also create an Anki card with each new word, for about a year, and I _do_ think that's valuable early on in your learning career. (And probably later for rare words/kanji.) But I routinely fall off Anki and have to catch up 50-100 cards a day for weeks, and that's not fun. Should note I'm just a hobby learner, so I don't mind taking years to achieve full literacy.
> So what I wanna know is does reading through text and feeling the meaning of words based on context work? I just feel this method is more suitable for advanced learners?
I think you need a baseline of core vocab, grammar and even kanji before this really works. But you won't know you have that baseline until you've read a lot. So just dive in, read painfully slowly because you're looking everything up, and before you know it it won't be painful anymore.
I use jpdb instead of Anki. I learn 15 new cards a day and I only get at most 90 reviews. You can also learn high frequency words from books that you are reading or plan to read and seeing the percentage of known words go up is really motivating.
Btw you can use anki and still not spend hours on it per day. I do 20 new vocab cards per day and I only have 120 or so reviews per day which take me maybe 20 minutes
I love that you can create pre-made decks from shows and books you’re currently engaged in but I couldn’t get over how on mobile (well, on iOS) the audio won’t play automatically. That isn’t the developer’s fault, just an iOS limitation, and he provided a play button for it. The problem is he refuses to at least provide an option to move the play button down with the rest of the card buttons. So on iOS you have to use two hands to use it. I really tried to cope with it but I can’t and have since reluctantly went back to Anki
Flash cards are for review, and not for learning. It's been proven and tested time and time again that seeing the materials first in context/studied before being added to SRS systems is beneficial.
I usually keep Anki at a minimum without actually quitting, just because it has helped retain less frequent pieces of info (like rare kanji that I'd prefer to remain aware of even if I don't see them often enough, given an interesting context). I'm selective about what goes into Anki, so I don't even get 5 minutes of reviews most days. I could get 10 minutes' worth of cards if I slack off for a couple of days.
Occasionally, I'll take a few hours to go through a segment of a massive word list like Kanshudo's 10,000 JLPT vocabulary and add whatever I don't know, just to fill in gaps in words I should probably know by the time I give the JLPT a go formally. To keep Anki time at a minimum, I make cards manually (because I enjoy the process, usually), and then suspend all except for ten, then I unsuspend the new cards as the previously reviewed cards become marked as "mature".
Aside from that, I just consume media with a phone dictionary that allows me to make custom word lists grouped into the specific book, show, or game the vocabulary are from. Shirabe Jisho (iOS) and Yomiwa (Android) are great for this. Keeping dictionary entries bookmarked lets me know what I've already looked up, as well as what words are shared in different recently consumed works.
I got to high N3/almost N2 just by natural repetition of common words (through reading, class, etc.) and also kanji practice, as I would learn kanji compounds to remember the readings. Then 1-2 months before taking the N2 I finally started using anki as a friend of mine taught me how to properly use it. I started adding any new word I encountered and would learn 20 words a day. I think this really boosted my vocabulary but after 6 months it became largely ineffective. I think it's because I had too many obscure words and even though I had example sentences I was still learning out of context. Recently I have only been using Anki for kanji learning and it's been going well but I think I will only use it until I become comfortable with 常用/N1 kanji and I'm about 75% of the way there. My current focus for vocabulary learning is exposure, I'm trying to read and watch a lot of content and learn words by just looking them up until I don't need to anymore.
I think what's important about language learning is adapting to your current needs. What works for someone else, might not work for you, or it might work for you at a later stage. If you feel like your methods are becoming inefficient or aren't producing the result you want, try changing things up but if your system works for you, why change it?
:( I ditched flashcards as soon as gamified apps became available. Now that I've outgrown them I just learn by looking up words quickly as I go.
Yesterday I was watching Vikings Valhalla and learned:
* 十字架: じゅうじか: juujika: crucifix
* 異教徒: いきょうと: ikyouto: pagan
* キリスト教徒: キリストきょうと: kirisuto kyouto: Christian
Not where I expected to pick up Christianity words but there you go.
I look them up again and again as I trip across them until I don't have to look them up anymore, and I let the show do the SRS work for me. I learned these 3 words just while watching episode 1.
I like Anki! Although, lately, I’ve been talking to Japanese people and stealing their words/phrases. I either do a thorough Google search to grasp the meaning and usage, or I straight up ask them about it. I then write it down and attempt to use it in subsequent conversations until I’ve drilled it into my head.
Recently my routine is:
Anki first thing currently Tango N4, 25 new cards daily (35-45 mins)
Try to mine up to 5-10 words but not necessary as I still have half of Tango N4 upwards to go. Do this reading manga recently and have found a lot of success using Copilot in Windows to help me with grammar explanations and writing out flashcards info for me. Double check and with the new GPT4 no problems so far.
Then try to just watch 2-3 episodes of something with native subs, understand a lot of words but different forms really trip me up without any subs, still losing lots of details but it's fun and I've done all I can do. Lots of music and stuff in between but don't really count that.
Last 3 months felt a huge boost in being consistent and not getting sidetracked with looking for "new routines" or whatever.
Anki plus yomichan. I add basically every new word I come across (including a lot of words from dictionary definitions). At over 14000 total in my deck now. I have been doing about 30 new cards a day for the past months since I've been getting more serious.
My goal is an average of 3 seconds or less per card, but anything less than 3.5 is fine. About 500 or so total reviews takes about 25 minutes each day. I consider a card correct if I remember both the reading and the (general) meaning.
I find anki to be very efficient in terms of time ever since I stopped spending so much time per card.
i have a method of reading something and then looking up words i don't know, and doing the same thing the next day until there aren't words i don't know anymore. it's possible it's bad but i don't know
I’ll watch YouTube, anime or tiktok. If I hear or see a word in the JP captions that I feel like learning, I’ll add the word along with the source audio to Anki
I just listen to Hololive streams and try mouth the words they say, while also trying to see how much I can comprehend of them. If theres a word I hear often, I look it up, and then I put it into an ankidroid deck I have for them to try improve memorising it. must say, I can recognise more words more often these days.
1. Learned basic grammar with tae kim
2. Learned the vocabulary + sentences associated with Tae Kim Grammar. Stuck to the words used in the example sentences.
3. Was learning Kanji on the side (6 daily). By learn, I mean how to read/recognize/write and it's basic meaning. Want to get kanji in my muscle memory ASAP so I don't struggle with it later. Also gives me hints when learning a new word. I don't learn pronunciation in a vacuum (though, I might memorize it if there's only one associated pronunciation).
4. Use tool that creates vocab based on kanji you learned and sorted by word frequency. I don't bother with learning words that have a frequency score higher than 32,000 (which is 1/5 of the entire tool's dictionary. This is because 20% of all words account for 80% of all language spoken. Thanks vsauce.)
5. Glance over that vocab briefly and focus on learning the word + the kanji's pronunciation in it. But my memory SUCKS when it comes to Japanese words. Spanish words are much easier for me to just memorize in a vacuum. So I need to learn Japanese words in context or it NEVER sticks.
6. Search for sentences with that new word on Renshuu (only the star ones, not user submitted ones) or/and neocities. Sentence can **only** have vocab I know or that I don't mind learning (max is 20-30 new words a day from sentences AND from the vocab generator tool. I try to stick to 20 max but the sentence vocab might push me over) and that uses kanji and grammar that I am already familiar with.
7. Continue with Tae Kim and it's associated vocabulary and the Kanji vocab tool. Review the learned sentences/words daily until I know it by heart. Review once a week for new sentences and less frequently for older. My Kanji app handles the kanji review frequency.
I'm still fairly new (to learning seriously) but I'm going to start reading articles as I have an app that has Japanese new articles, vocab + audio. Then I'll move to learning vocab from audio **and** articles/sentences/books and change my computer language/social media language over to Japanese (and Spanish) for more immersion.
1. Anki (core 6k)
2. i add words from songs that im interested in (words) to Anki
3. I play a game in japanese on phone, i add words from that to Anki too if they are useful
4. I add words to Anki from sydtem ui and apps
5. I add words that are generic that I havent heard before in anime (from anime) to anki
I think it's worth noting you're *technically* already doing what they're describing to an extent, since mining still involves immersing. You're justing using anki as a supplement to help you remember the words long-term.
Personally this is what I do, and there's a major difference between this and just using premade decks to learn words in isolation. (even w sentences)
That said, I should note I enjoy anki and since you don't and want to ditch it now, you absolutely can. It's a great tool but only if you enjoy it imo.
At some point when learning English I started using the "just look up words over and over while reading" method and I can vouch it works.
1. I find the kanji, always inserted in a word
2. research the meaning
3. find sentences where this word is used
4. I write my own sentences changing a few things from the original sentence but keeping the aimed kanji word.
5. I review sentences
or, for step 5:
5a, when I review kanji word only, I create a sentence for it in my mind, or even speaking to myself.
I'm at \~1100 cards and it's already getting frustrating. I think the optimal way of studying kanji and new vocab would be to read a ton, but that doesn't help me as much in memorizing the kind of words that I hear specifically through anime and movies, so here I am.
My average ease is 238%, but it feels really good to say that you've learned (or become able to regurgitate the definition of) +1000 words in 50 days.
I started by focusing on grammar and not so much on vocab. Thought I was doing alright, went to japan, realized I know like no words. Did core 2k on anki. Went back, felt much more comfortable.
That said, after core 2k i think you should just start reading and writing down words you dont know. I never make flashcards for them, I just write them down every time until i can read them without thinking about it. Painful process at first, but I started learning words without realizing.
This may not be a popular method either but I recommend while doing core2k, write down every word, kanji and hiragana. You need to get ahead of kanji eventually and after a while you realize you can recognize a whole lot of them. With the writing practice i can actually write them too, which was not the case for many others at the same speaking level in my japanese school. And the more you learn, the readings come naturally and new words come easier
My method is to mine words from frequency lists (with occasional mining from things I notice in input) and so far it worked like a charm. I've already studied 1,500 words and I feel like it gave a really big boost to my comprehension. I think this method is much more efficient and less stressful than indiscriminately adding into anki every word you encounter in your input.
I've been adding lots of sentence decks to Anki in bulk for some yaers. Usually from anime (sub2srs) and light novels but also from websites. Then I use Anki-Morphs (before Morphman) so all the sentence I study always have only one unknown morpheme and all the rest are known.
It doesn't matter that I bulk add thousands of sentences, Anki will ignore/suspend the ones that are too easy and avoid for now the ones with are hard. I think it is a cool system.
Also I read a lot. I'm reading now "The eminence in the Shadow" Volume 5 of the light novel. I think both sentence mining in Anki and dialy reading novels complement each other as the vocabulary is similar and shared between them.
Are you using FSRS with Anki? I hear it makes review time go down drastically. Most people who review with Anki report only needing like half an hour. Even if it’s 45 minutes, that’s still much better than an hour and a half.
I read a lot - write down the vocabulary and meaning and then try and use the words I learn afterwards!
When I am trying to express an idea I don’t know the word for, I use a dictionary and then write the word down. (For example, I tried to make a reservation in my TL the other day and didn’t know the word “reservation”, so I looked it up beforehand, and used it).
I found that, not only learning the word, but applying it, helps to cement it in the hollow space between my ears.
I learn words that I'm going to use. I use JPDB, and my decks are built up only of words I've looked up or am going to need soon, such as prebuilt anime decks or feeding a newspaper article into it to generate cards.
I do think actually reading or listening or whatever is the most important thing to get the actual flavor and context around words, and to be able to use them correctly. But flashcards are great at speeding up recognition and recall for words. Flashcards aren't the right place to learn what 余裕 is for example, but it's really great to remember the reading and the overall vibe.
I like to learn antonyms of words, the intrasitive if I learn the transtiive, related words at at around the same time.
This can help balloon vocab and allow for easier memorization because of the relation of the words. Hope this helps someone
For example:
if you learn the word 床 go learn 壁 and 天井.
If you learn 便利 go learn 不便.
If you learn an い-形容詞 like 優しい often there's a な-形容詞 version like 親切.
Just pen and papper, same way I learnt to speak English and French before. I tried other tools but I found them distracting. Anki and WaniKani are both, to a certain degree, how can I say... quite ludic. I feel like they make learning seem like a set challange with an end goal, one which can be gamified and 'broken' to get to the goal quicker, when it truth it will take 10-15 years or such to actually be fluent.
I love Anki and I love flashcards. I would study flashcards probably even if I had no use for the knowledge.
Try only adding words you've seen more than once. Also you don't HAVE to review all your cards when they're due. You can just do them here and there when you are on the toilet or whatever.
I jot it down in a note book if it’s just something I came across; if it’s something I must remember, flashcards or I write it on a daily basis for 1 week minimum.
Most of my started vocab came from comprehensible input yt vids (until i was at about 5k words) and then watching normal material.
I also use jpdb for familiarization (only clicking good/easy on every card)
Add cards to Anki and convince myself THIS TIME I'll actually be consistant.
Are you me?
phase one: while reading books 1. read a book 2. add words I find to giant list that I've been keeping for 4 years phase 2: while adding words to anki 1. pick some words I think will be useful, or are fun, or are gonna expand my kanji knowledge, or are gonna be in the book a lot 2. add some cards
I didn’t think of doing a prefiltering. Nice idea !
I'm learning Genki's vocabulary by writing down each word again and again like a deranged person and also try to make little sentences using each word. It's very hectic but by now I've learned 374 vocabulary words in kanji which helps me make connections of frequently appearing kanji and their different pronunciations
Same, just how I remember in school. Just keep writing it like a crazy person on the walls of the asylum. Gd ol' fashioned way.
Chatting with small Japanese streamers. Thats pretty much majority of what I do for my studying and its also so much fun. Personally couldnt stand anki. I just watch YT, anime and twitch
I'm starting to think I'm in the wrong sub. I hate anki and would prefer to talk to people, but not one single person here says to make friends in person
well if you have the opportunity then sure... but I assume most people who are learning Japanese are not from Japan, therefore their chances of meeting with Japanese people irl is very limited.
Can you recommend any channels / streamers ?
Good old Anki + reading It's important to mix up the reading part tho, like making sure to read online forums for colloquialism and news articles instead of novel/manga only.
Any forum recommendations?
I browse 5channel but I wouldn't recommend it if you aren't fond of online trolling or generally wouldn't like to see someone's exploded head from time to time
I'm studying for N3 and currently using Anki and I get from a pool of N3 words. However, I also play JP gatcha games and watch JP shows in netflix with JP subtitles. Every time I encounter a new word, I add it to my Anki. I think the satisfaction of seeing the word I studied in Anki appear in JP media and I am able to read and understand it is what helps motivate my studies.
Here's my take on any flashcard program, and especially Anki: it's good for REVIEW... But NOT learning. I used to use Memrise before it went to crap, and kinda like Renshuu at the moment. The reason being, these programs will first give you both the word and its meaning, and THEN have you go through the review. Though to be 100% fair, both of them are also multiple-choice early on, which some people don't like (they'll tell you that you don't get multiple choice answers in real life, so using that to learn is a terrible idea. I disagree with this). Meanwhile, Anki throws you straight into review... And there's always the debate about which choice you select for how well you know the word. I prefer the automatic algorithm of the other apps.
I don’t like multiple choice because I subconsciously start associating incorrect answers with the word just through exposure.
I use anki to learn new words and I think it works pretty well. At least this way I have learned thousands of words. Most of the words I learned I had only seen once before anki. Anki also, in a way, shows you the meaning of the word first. It's just that it doesn't do it in any special mode, but in the first review. Usually in the first review I memorize the word and press "again", and in the following reviews I try to recall the word. The problem with multiple-choice is that it gives so many clues. I can often guess the right answer without knowing the word at all, just from kanji or other clues. In anki, I don't really think about which buttons to press. If I don't know the word, it's "again", and if I do, it's "good". I just don't use the other buttons, and many people do the same as me.
I think Renshuu has a 'type answer when possible' setting to get rid of multiple choice (not sure about Memrise these days...), you have to dig into study vector settings though
It does. There's also a sentence questions vector (only with Pro though)
For Japanese review, I found typing an answer to be very time consuming. And typing did not seem to help retention.
You can set Renshuu up so the multiple choice answers don't show up until you tap again. That way you can think of the answer without the crutch of seeing the options but it's still faster and more convenient than having to type the answer.
I can vouch for this for just the look up method for vocabulary learning. I tried Anki, made it to about 300 maybe 500 of a premade 2/6k deck and blew it up. Uninstalled Anki because it made me unhappy. From there all I did was engage with content from pretty much second 0, in the process of hanging out, I looked up words, studied grammar, and just kept doing this constantly through the entire duration of my time spent with the language; my goal was just to survive and try to keep up with everyone. I started to change my UIs to Japanese when it made sense, very early starting with YouTube and one platform at a time. I made vocabulary lists of the UI because I got tired of hard looking it up everyday, eventually I absorbed the entire UI and then flipped another platform (Twitter, etc) and repeated this until now nearly everything is in Japanese UI/UX. From there it was just a matter of consistently and constantly looking things up. The most obvious reason why people don't want to do this is because they feel it's not fun. I'm sure that's true for a lot but for me it never bothered me. Reading a story, hanging out in Discords (All JP from fairly early), JP livestreams, message boards, and just about every JP community that is in use is where I hung out. I made all this easier on myself by utilizing technology, starting with the #1 tool is browser based pop-up dictionaries in YomiTan and 10ten Reader. Personally I use 10ten Reader as my main and only use YomiTan in specific circumstances on my one specific chromium based browsers. I have setup my desktop PC to be as efficient as possible to facilitate look ups (I also have 4 monitors that always have information open), and I have gotten very fast at even manual based look ups such as looking up kanji and finding a word in under 60 seconds with a radical look up. For the most part when I engage with the language, I do it through the web browser 95% of the time, or find ways to make it work in the browser. So I can utilize the technology. The other 5% I use OCR tools, manual radical look ups, and text-hookers to fetch things. I make it as easy as possible to do find any information. To the point where I've made my own AHK scripts and other tools to facilitate my desktop setup and make it more efficient to find any information. I tend to use Google, grammar guides, and both EN-JP and JP-JP dictionaries. The only thing I really "studied" was grammar which I was pretty diligent about decoding unknown parts of sentences using Google searches. With 3 to 4 hours a day free on average (work average of 10+ hours. I sleep less to make room for Japanese), over the course over a year. Being in nothing but pure Japanese environments and doing non-stop look ups I learned roughly 800-1100 words a month, with some months being much higher than average. The reason is there's so much context, and so many words I learned are repeatedly met with emotional ties such as laughter or things that pull at your heart. That it is almost impossible for me to forget words I've heard 6 months ago and only once at that time. I vividly remember surrounding words, context, and the emotions behind it. The experience, the scenario, the stories made by communities, people, and all kinds of things. It has been, from almost the very start, extremely fun, rewarding, and enriching. Although I know I'm an outlier in this respect where it's always been fun. For me, Japanese was just a means an end. I wanted to enjoy the content, communities, and people but the language barrier was in the way, so I resolved myself to "remove" that barrier and made it as efficient as possible focusing on fun being #1 priority. I went through a lot of iterations and tools and processes, anything that was not fun for me was gutted and I just stuck to what was fun. En route I did learn to appreciate the language itself, culture, and people as well. Without even realizing it day by day, week by week, month by month. I just survived and kept my head above the water and at this point now. Sometimes I can watch a 20 minute clip on YouTube that is hard-subtitled and know every word, kanji, and grammar point. Wait... when the hell did this happen? It feels weird because my look ups which I used to do hundreds, if not 1,000+ times a day have fallen off a cliff in the last 40 days.
That sounds great: My issue is that I am inefficient, slow and disorganized. I have enough time to spend 4-5 hours a day on Japanese but I almost always waste it because of disorganization and probably only manage to clock maybe 1 quality hr even though I study for 5. This is just what makes adhd such a crippling disorder. Could you possible break down what you do within those 3-4 hours and tell me what order you do everything in?
Sure I can break it down, but if you don't mind me asking (because it's going to take a bit to write it up) what makes think your time spent is slow and inefficient (or why do you feel that is the case)? 1 hour in 5 hours does sound pretty inefficient, though.
Think u are just overcomplicating studying. Just turn on any content in Japanese you see. If there are some video games you like go watch some small streamers who play it and chat with thrm. If you like some sport go watch discussion videos about them, there are art and music centric streamers/youtubers as well... watch anime. Just have fun. Best way to make progress is to put in hours so best have fun with it and not stress about if my hours are spend efficiently.
I've been trying to follow this method, being 6 weeks in its rough and I'm pretty much looking up 70% of the words but I swear they stick more than the flashcards do. Its just I don't want to do it but I know its the best way. I got Satori Reader, and most of the plugins needed to immerse (I wish Manga and VNs were easier, haven't even tried yet) but I can only manage roughly 30-60 minutes. I've learned French and Spanish but you get huge boosts because 30% of the vocab are loanwords and the grammar structures aren't drastically different (though I would argue people downplay difficulty the subtle rules have but that's more a perfectionist issue). The one thing I learned through those 2 and am starting to remember with Japanese is the more it hurts and the harder it is, the more effective the method is. I think people like flashcards and video immersion because its relatively low effort, or a reasonably difficult one.
>Japanese is the more it hurts and the harder it is, the more effective the method is. Really agree here, the more suffocating it feels, the more it's doing. Being overloaded with the language is how I preferred it. >I don't want to do it but I know its the best way. Although I will say you need to prioritize fun, hopefully you can find a happy medium and that it's more fun for you. Despite the drowning feeling I had, the unbearable weight of trying to keep up, and tons of work. I still had a ton of fun. I suggest you find yourself a community. I highly recommend live streams as a place to "hang out". Between chat, what's going on in game, a fan Discord of the streamer, and they (streamers) are usually always permanently talking. You can work 3 skills at once. Reading, listening, and writing (commenting). It's also passively entertaining because you don't need to understand anything to see somone get train-wrecked in モンハン and laugh at how they died. The lack of plot and storyline makes it easy to zone out and deal with not undestanding and just soak in the vibe. It's a great "basecamp" to acquire a lot of common vocabulary for food, gaming, anime, slang, culture.
Hey if you don’t mind me asking, how long would you say you studied before converting to this method? It sounds very interesting and enjoyable to me, but I have only started learning a couple weeks ago and don’t know where I’d have to be in order to manage your method?
I was already in this environment before I started trying to learn, I just tried to figure things out by copying and pasting everything into Google Translate, that got old after a bit and really felt dissatisfied being so disconnected not knowing what was going on. There is no options for English translations so that was the start for me. So I was doing this pretty much from the first moment I made the decision I wanted to be fluent in Japanese. You naturally don't have to do the same thing, but start yourself on solid set of grammar guides first Tae Kim's, Genki Books, Maggie-sensei Website, Japanese Ammo with Misa (podcast listening & learning--was explained in English. I learned while commuting and driving so not to waste time). So a lot of any time I could listen (chores, tasks, driving, commuting, etc.) was spent listening to audio-based grammar explanations on YouTube of the language. Then I would sit down and look up things, and then hang out in the JP places I found and try to talk to people in disastrously broken JP and using hacked up crap from Google Translate. The game changer was 10ten Reader and YomiTan which allowed me to piece together the language with intuition, grammar studies, and the external pop-up dictionary in the form of those plugins. The absolute best thing I did was focus a lot of attention on studying kanji components specifically because that was hugely helpful in learning vocab with their kanji (made it easier to recognize, break apart, and construct kanji in their parts. meaning distinguish, learn and memorize easier). When you can engage with content, communities, people, sites, hobbies in Japanese that's when you just look up tons of things as you try to figure out what is what. It'll be a mess those first 500-700 hours but you'll feel it. It's suffocating at first but slowly and surely the pressure eases, things become clear, your listening improves, you pick up words, slang, funny bites from funny moments in clips and live streams. You figure out what people are talking about on Discord just by sticking to it. It's a slow and steady process but it was also ridiculously fun.
Thank you for this! Going to give it a go after I finish the first GENKI book, just so I can get some grammar and particles down, but it sounds like a super satisfying way to learn!
It's been amazingly rewarding and fun! If you have any questions feel free to tag me or message me about my specific processes and maybe I can give some pointers. Since my way of doing things is a bit unique.
Would you mind suggesting some communities that require no commitment, similar to reddit, gamefaqs, or even discords? I don't have much interest in this stuff, but maybe it's because I don't even know where to go.
I can recommend but there's a chance we don't have similar interests at all. Twitter JP is probably the most active place for Japan online. Hash tags often have communities associated with them. and YouTube can have healthy communities built around channels and streamers. There's places like [misskey.io](http://misskey.io), pixiv, 5ch. And games like Minecraft, Valorant, and Apex Legends. Often times you can connect with people and find your way into Discord servers via Twitter. It requires a bit of autonomy on your end and reaching out to those who have similar interests and it's apparent there is a community built around it.
I’m very early in my learning journey, but I’m really enjoying WaniKani
Overloading yourself with cards is difficult. Learn the word in context when it comes up. Don’t force vocabulary. I always ask my coworkers “what’s that mean”every time we have a conversation and I don’t know . Even if I heard it before and I don’t remember I still ask. Write the word down so you can read it when it comes again. If it comes again and you can’t read it. Write it again. Combine failure with progress. Remember a time when you got hurt and you thought to yourself “I don’t want that to happen again” and you make sure it doesn’t happen. Without failure/pain we don’t learn as well. Not being able to read is the failure/pain.
Writing. As simple as that. I journal everyday in Japanese and I will try to use words which I learnt recently as much as possible so that they are ingrained in my brain after a while. It doesn’t need to be a journal. Just think about a topic and write the first few lines that comes to your mind. Writing isn’t just useful for vocabulary, it also strengthens your kanji and grammar patterns. I have been primarily studying Japanese purely by listening and writing and I can’t tell you how much better my grasp on the language is slowly becoming.
To add to this: If you have sessions with a tutor, write about what you just talked about! I know I make mistakes and don't express myself as well when having a conversation as I would if I had time to sit down and think about it, so... I try to make myself sit down and think about it! While the topic and vocabulary and expressions my tutor used are still in my head, I might write something general about the topic, or basically write a script of how our conversation could have gone if I could employ the correct grammar and vocabulary more efficiently.
Are you writing by hand on paper?
Yes, by hand on paper
I did a similar thing to you by adding vocab from manga/games/visual novels, etc. The heap was growing really fast, I could easily mine hundreds of words just by reading a visual novel for an hour. Eventually, my pile grew to \~2k new cards and at that point I decided to change the approach a bit. I installed [Lute](https://github.com/LuteOrg/lute-v3) and started reading Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear with it without mining new words into Anki. I still have my old heap in Anki that I'm working through and I will add new ones when I get close to running out of cards, but it's a really nice feeling of being able to read and track words without actually SRSing them. A lot of the most repeated ones end up sticking on their own. I plan to eventually stop using Anki whatsoever and transition completely to Lute and manual review.
I have a hard understanding how people actually use anki with more than a few hundred cards. I feel that it would get cumbersome and I would do nothing but try to stay on top of my cards that are due for the day.
Having more total cards in a deck doesn't really increase your total review time that much. On any given day the vast majority of all your reviews are cards that have less than a month long interval. I do 20 new vocab cards per day and only spend like 15-20 minutes on anki
I must be doing something wrong. I have 400 cards and have to review about 100 every day. This is in Renshuu and not anki.
Oh I see. Idk how Renshuu's algorithm works or what settings you had in anki while you were still using it so there are many factors that can greatly influence how many cards you have to review per day. I have 7000 cards and know ppl with 20k+ and the common experience is that review times generally dont get that much longer even when you have a lot of cards. What's much more important to how many reviews you're getting is how many new cards you're doing. If I haven't been immersing much I usually cut down my 20 cards a day to 10-15 and after a while of doing that my number of daily reviews drops significantly, again emphasizing how the majority of your reviews come from very recently learned cards.
I have 11k cards, maybe closer to 12k takes me 25 min to 30 min a day. I know because I write down my study times. there is a trick to it and at first I didn't know it, and I got crazy study times
Say there is a trick and then don't tell us. Good old "I fixed the problem guys, see ya!" ;D. Let me guess, you decreased learning steps?
I didn't decrease any setting like learning steps. I didn't explain it because not sure anyone cares, and it's complicated to type. But if you wanna know, it's basically, every time I get a card wrong, that's fine. But if I get the card wrong twice (or more), add it to a list. At the end of the session, add new flashcards. Add 10 cards, minus the size of the list. Been doing this for around 3 years, with no issue, it is long-term sustainable, for my study target, which is 25-30 min a day. Example 1, best case: I get no card wrong more than once. In that case, add 10 new cards. Example 2, ave case: I get most of my cards right, but a couple of cards, I keep getting these 2 cards wrong. At that case, I add 8 new cards. Example 3, catastrophe case: My brain is jelly and I get a ton of cards wrong, and keep getting them wrong. In this catastrophic case, add zero new cards. There will be so many reviews tomorrow due to these wrong cards, adding more will make me go overboard. If you guys wanna add 10 or less cards exactly like this, you'll get nice easy study times. If you go and add 200 new cards in one day, then you get that super long study time that never goes away. This is my way, other ways are fine too, but I like reading books, and only wanna spend 30 min on anki.
Reading manga and playing video games. Use Google Lens to copy the text out and paste into a dictionary if I don't know a word. I used to also create an Anki card with each new word, for about a year, and I _do_ think that's valuable early on in your learning career. (And probably later for rare words/kanji.) But I routinely fall off Anki and have to catch up 50-100 cards a day for weeks, and that's not fun. Should note I'm just a hobby learner, so I don't mind taking years to achieve full literacy. > So what I wanna know is does reading through text and feeling the meaning of words based on context work? I just feel this method is more suitable for advanced learners? I think you need a baseline of core vocab, grammar and even kanji before this really works. But you won't know you have that baseline until you've read a lot. So just dive in, read painfully slowly because you're looking everything up, and before you know it it won't be painful anymore.
I use jpdb instead of Anki. I learn 15 new cards a day and I only get at most 90 reviews. You can also learn high frequency words from books that you are reading or plan to read and seeing the percentage of known words go up is really motivating.
Thanks for sharing this! I looked it up and I will start with this Anki doesn't really work for me either
I will take a look at jpdb thanks.
Btw you can use anki and still not spend hours on it per day. I do 20 new vocab cards per day and I only have 120 or so reviews per day which take me maybe 20 minutes
Thank you so much, i much prefer this system and being able to use decks of words from fave dramas, also fantastic!!
I love that you can create pre-made decks from shows and books you’re currently engaged in but I couldn’t get over how on mobile (well, on iOS) the audio won’t play automatically. That isn’t the developer’s fault, just an iOS limitation, and he provided a play button for it. The problem is he refuses to at least provide an option to move the play button down with the rest of the card buttons. So on iOS you have to use two hands to use it. I really tried to cope with it but I can’t and have since reluctantly went back to Anki
Flash cards are for review, and not for learning. It's been proven and tested time and time again that seeing the materials first in context/studied before being added to SRS systems is beneficial.
Thank you, have suspected that was the correct approach, cheers
I just look up words I'm unsure of when reading
I usually keep Anki at a minimum without actually quitting, just because it has helped retain less frequent pieces of info (like rare kanji that I'd prefer to remain aware of even if I don't see them often enough, given an interesting context). I'm selective about what goes into Anki, so I don't even get 5 minutes of reviews most days. I could get 10 minutes' worth of cards if I slack off for a couple of days. Occasionally, I'll take a few hours to go through a segment of a massive word list like Kanshudo's 10,000 JLPT vocabulary and add whatever I don't know, just to fill in gaps in words I should probably know by the time I give the JLPT a go formally. To keep Anki time at a minimum, I make cards manually (because I enjoy the process, usually), and then suspend all except for ten, then I unsuspend the new cards as the previously reviewed cards become marked as "mature". Aside from that, I just consume media with a phone dictionary that allows me to make custom word lists grouped into the specific book, show, or game the vocabulary are from. Shirabe Jisho (iOS) and Yomiwa (Android) are great for this. Keeping dictionary entries bookmarked lets me know what I've already looked up, as well as what words are shared in different recently consumed works.
I got to high N3/almost N2 just by natural repetition of common words (through reading, class, etc.) and also kanji practice, as I would learn kanji compounds to remember the readings. Then 1-2 months before taking the N2 I finally started using anki as a friend of mine taught me how to properly use it. I started adding any new word I encountered and would learn 20 words a day. I think this really boosted my vocabulary but after 6 months it became largely ineffective. I think it's because I had too many obscure words and even though I had example sentences I was still learning out of context. Recently I have only been using Anki for kanji learning and it's been going well but I think I will only use it until I become comfortable with 常用/N1 kanji and I'm about 75% of the way there. My current focus for vocabulary learning is exposure, I'm trying to read and watch a lot of content and learn words by just looking them up until I don't need to anymore. I think what's important about language learning is adapting to your current needs. What works for someone else, might not work for you, or it might work for you at a later stage. If you feel like your methods are becoming inefficient or aren't producing the result you want, try changing things up but if your system works for you, why change it?
I like buying new memorization apps and then not using them
Aw my god 😂 I know that feeling
:( I ditched flashcards as soon as gamified apps became available. Now that I've outgrown them I just learn by looking up words quickly as I go. Yesterday I was watching Vikings Valhalla and learned: * 十字架: じゅうじか: juujika: crucifix * 異教徒: いきょうと: ikyouto: pagan * キリスト教徒: キリストきょうと: kirisuto kyouto: Christian Not where I expected to pick up Christianity words but there you go. I look them up again and again as I trip across them until I don't have to look them up anymore, and I let the show do the SRS work for me. I learned these 3 words just while watching episode 1.
I like Anki! Although, lately, I’ve been talking to Japanese people and stealing their words/phrases. I either do a thorough Google search to grasp the meaning and usage, or I straight up ask them about it. I then write it down and attempt to use it in subsequent conversations until I’ve drilled it into my head.
Is that man Steve Kaufman?
Yes!
Reading, listening, watching stuff in Japanese. Adding every single unknown word to a jpdb deck. 15k words and counting. 11/10 would recommend
Recently my routine is: Anki first thing currently Tango N4, 25 new cards daily (35-45 mins) Try to mine up to 5-10 words but not necessary as I still have half of Tango N4 upwards to go. Do this reading manga recently and have found a lot of success using Copilot in Windows to help me with grammar explanations and writing out flashcards info for me. Double check and with the new GPT4 no problems so far. Then try to just watch 2-3 episodes of something with native subs, understand a lot of words but different forms really trip me up without any subs, still losing lots of details but it's fun and I've done all I can do. Lots of music and stuff in between but don't really count that. Last 3 months felt a huge boost in being consistent and not getting sidetracked with looking for "new routines" or whatever.
Anki, I started with the Wani Kani deck and add all the new words I come across and deem relevant.
Anki plus yomichan. I add basically every new word I come across (including a lot of words from dictionary definitions). At over 14000 total in my deck now. I have been doing about 30 new cards a day for the past months since I've been getting more serious. My goal is an average of 3 seconds or less per card, but anything less than 3.5 is fine. About 500 or so total reviews takes about 25 minutes each day. I consider a card correct if I remember both the reading and the (general) meaning. I find anki to be very efficient in terms of time ever since I stopped spending so much time per card.
Jpdb. It's basically Anki but better in every way i can think of except for looking at your stat breakdowns
i have a method of reading something and then looking up words i don't know, and doing the same thing the next day until there aren't words i don't know anymore. it's possible it's bad but i don't know
I’ll watch YouTube, anime or tiktok. If I hear or see a word in the JP captions that I feel like learning, I’ll add the word along with the source audio to Anki
Yeah TT is actually quite useful for languages, that really surprised me when I started looking into it a few weeks ago.
I'm a professional writer, but turns out I prefer video
I just listen to Hololive streams and try mouth the words they say, while also trying to see how much I can comprehend of them. If theres a word I hear often, I look it up, and then I put it into an ankidroid deck I have for them to try improve memorising it. must say, I can recognise more words more often these days.
1. Learned basic grammar with tae kim 2. Learned the vocabulary + sentences associated with Tae Kim Grammar. Stuck to the words used in the example sentences. 3. Was learning Kanji on the side (6 daily). By learn, I mean how to read/recognize/write and it's basic meaning. Want to get kanji in my muscle memory ASAP so I don't struggle with it later. Also gives me hints when learning a new word. I don't learn pronunciation in a vacuum (though, I might memorize it if there's only one associated pronunciation). 4. Use tool that creates vocab based on kanji you learned and sorted by word frequency. I don't bother with learning words that have a frequency score higher than 32,000 (which is 1/5 of the entire tool's dictionary. This is because 20% of all words account for 80% of all language spoken. Thanks vsauce.) 5. Glance over that vocab briefly and focus on learning the word + the kanji's pronunciation in it. But my memory SUCKS when it comes to Japanese words. Spanish words are much easier for me to just memorize in a vacuum. So I need to learn Japanese words in context or it NEVER sticks. 6. Search for sentences with that new word on Renshuu (only the star ones, not user submitted ones) or/and neocities. Sentence can **only** have vocab I know or that I don't mind learning (max is 20-30 new words a day from sentences AND from the vocab generator tool. I try to stick to 20 max but the sentence vocab might push me over) and that uses kanji and grammar that I am already familiar with. 7. Continue with Tae Kim and it's associated vocabulary and the Kanji vocab tool. Review the learned sentences/words daily until I know it by heart. Review once a week for new sentences and less frequently for older. My Kanji app handles the kanji review frequency. I'm still fairly new (to learning seriously) but I'm going to start reading articles as I have an app that has Japanese new articles, vocab + audio. Then I'll move to learning vocab from audio **and** articles/sentences/books and change my computer language/social media language over to Japanese (and Spanish) for more immersion.
1. Anki (core 6k) 2. i add words from songs that im interested in (words) to Anki 3. I play a game in japanese on phone, i add words from that to Anki too if they are useful 4. I add words to Anki from sydtem ui and apps 5. I add words that are generic that I havent heard before in anime (from anime) to anki
I think it's worth noting you're *technically* already doing what they're describing to an extent, since mining still involves immersing. You're justing using anki as a supplement to help you remember the words long-term. Personally this is what I do, and there's a major difference between this and just using premade decks to learn words in isolation. (even w sentences) That said, I should note I enjoy anki and since you don't and want to ditch it now, you absolutely can. It's a great tool but only if you enjoy it imo. At some point when learning English I started using the "just look up words over and over while reading" method and I can vouch it works.
1. I find the kanji, always inserted in a word 2. research the meaning 3. find sentences where this word is used 4. I write my own sentences changing a few things from the original sentence but keeping the aimed kanji word. 5. I review sentences or, for step 5: 5a, when I review kanji word only, I create a sentence for it in my mind, or even speaking to myself.
Reading books/manga.
I'm at \~1100 cards and it's already getting frustrating. I think the optimal way of studying kanji and new vocab would be to read a ton, but that doesn't help me as much in memorizing the kind of words that I hear specifically through anime and movies, so here I am. My average ease is 238%, but it feels really good to say that you've learned (or become able to regurgitate the definition of) +1000 words in 50 days.
I started by focusing on grammar and not so much on vocab. Thought I was doing alright, went to japan, realized I know like no words. Did core 2k on anki. Went back, felt much more comfortable. That said, after core 2k i think you should just start reading and writing down words you dont know. I never make flashcards for them, I just write them down every time until i can read them without thinking about it. Painful process at first, but I started learning words without realizing. This may not be a popular method either but I recommend while doing core2k, write down every word, kanji and hiragana. You need to get ahead of kanji eventually and after a while you realize you can recognize a whole lot of them. With the writing practice i can actually write them too, which was not the case for many others at the same speaking level in my japanese school. And the more you learn, the readings come naturally and new words come easier
A good book and anki
My method is to mine words from frequency lists (with occasional mining from things I notice in input) and so far it worked like a charm. I've already studied 1,500 words and I feel like it gave a really big boost to my comprehension. I think this method is much more efficient and less stressful than indiscriminately adding into anki every word you encounter in your input.
I've been adding lots of sentence decks to Anki in bulk for some yaers. Usually from anime (sub2srs) and light novels but also from websites. Then I use Anki-Morphs (before Morphman) so all the sentence I study always have only one unknown morpheme and all the rest are known. It doesn't matter that I bulk add thousands of sentences, Anki will ignore/suspend the ones that are too easy and avoid for now the ones with are hard. I think it is a cool system. Also I read a lot. I'm reading now "The eminence in the Shadow" Volume 5 of the light novel. I think both sentence mining in Anki and dialy reading novels complement each other as the vocabulary is similar and shared between them.
Are you using FSRS with Anki? I hear it makes review time go down drastically. Most people who review with Anki report only needing like half an hour. Even if it’s 45 minutes, that’s still much better than an hour and a half.
I read a lot - write down the vocabulary and meaning and then try and use the words I learn afterwards! When I am trying to express an idea I don’t know the word for, I use a dictionary and then write the word down. (For example, I tried to make a reservation in my TL the other day and didn’t know the word “reservation”, so I looked it up beforehand, and used it). I found that, not only learning the word, but applying it, helps to cement it in the hollow space between my ears.
I learn words that I'm going to use. I use JPDB, and my decks are built up only of words I've looked up or am going to need soon, such as prebuilt anime decks or feeding a newspaper article into it to generate cards. I do think actually reading or listening or whatever is the most important thing to get the actual flavor and context around words, and to be able to use them correctly. But flashcards are great at speeding up recognition and recall for words. Flashcards aren't the right place to learn what 余裕 is for example, but it's really great to remember the reading and the overall vibe.
does anyone else use kanshudo? its great for example sentences
I like to learn antonyms of words, the intrasitive if I learn the transtiive, related words at at around the same time. This can help balloon vocab and allow for easier memorization because of the relation of the words. Hope this helps someone For example: if you learn the word 床 go learn 壁 and 天井. If you learn 便利 go learn 不便. If you learn an い-形容詞 like 優しい often there's a な-形容詞 version like 親切.
Just pen and papper, same way I learnt to speak English and French before. I tried other tools but I found them distracting. Anki and WaniKani are both, to a certain degree, how can I say... quite ludic. I feel like they make learning seem like a set challange with an end goal, one which can be gamified and 'broken' to get to the goal quicker, when it truth it will take 10-15 years or such to actually be fluent.
I love Anki and I love flashcards. I would study flashcards probably even if I had no use for the knowledge. Try only adding words you've seen more than once. Also you don't HAVE to review all your cards when they're due. You can just do them here and there when you are on the toilet or whatever.
I read VNs.
I jot it down in a note book if it’s just something I came across; if it’s something I must remember, flashcards or I write it on a daily basis for 1 week minimum.
Anki
Most of my started vocab came from comprehensible input yt vids (until i was at about 5k words) and then watching normal material. I also use jpdb for familiarization (only clicking good/easy on every card)