One thing I haven’t done in a gazillion years is reviewing sentences. I think perhaps reviewing sentences has its merits but it has never worked for me. I am too focused on trying to remember unfamiliar vocabulary than the really pay attention to how the sentence is put together. In other words, I may remember the vocab and know how to read the sentence, but it doesn’t help me much with remembering/noticing what particle was used, for instance, or how to put the sentence together as a whole.

What it does do is take a lot of time.

OK, so it has never been promised that reviewing sentences in Anki passively would help with actively producing sentences (where I would need to know what particle goes there etc). However, reading and understanding sentences – I can do that by reading books. I can do that by reading manga. I can do that by reading websites, etc. I can even do that by reading textbooks. In other words, where was the source of the sentence? That’s where I can read it…

What is stopping me from reading it there? For me it is a lack of vocabulary. So, I need to work on vocab. Therefore, I review single words.

What are the advantages from reviewing sentences? Is it to check that you can understand a whole sentence, with each individual word in context? Sure. But… you can check that while you are reading the original source. If you don’t understand a sentence… why? Is it vocab? Is it grammar? Is it something else? That something is what you need to study, not all the extra information as well.

Simple Is Easy

Supermemo’s guide to formulating knowledge in learning is a great resource to look over when you are building your SRS deck. One point is that simple is easy. You learn faster with simple things because you only have to focus on one thing.

Another thing to think about is why Remembering the Kanji is such a popular method. It’s because it breaks learning the kanji down into baby steps. You learn how to write the kanji (with a simple idea of meaning) and nothing else. You then learn how to read and pronounce the kanji using other methods. By breaking down the process into small steps it is easier to climb the big mountain that is Japanese.

This is why I review vocab in my SRS.

Please share your thoughts in the comments!

All through 2008 I was experiencing burn out, mainly because I really wanted to study Japanese my own way but had to do it the University way. Now that I’m out of university, it means that I can do it my own way but no longer have the push that I absolutely have to get something done. So in a way, I can’t have it all, dammit!

So while my start to this year hasn’t been filled with as much Japanese study as I could have done, I’m making more of an effort now. Here’s some of the things I’ve been up to in Feb:

Anki, Remembering the Kanji and 2001 Kanji Odyssey

Currently I have 755 cards in my Anki deck, with 45% of the “mature” cards.

In Japanese at the moment my main aim is to be able to read. Even in English my reading and writing ability are stronger than my speaking ability. I am much more articulate in writing! I love to read, and what I really want to be able to do is read my manga collection with relative ease.

In manga, because of the relatively short dialogue, I am sure I know most of the grammar, but my biggest weaknesses are kanji and vocabulary. Eventually I want to move on to big thick novels.

I’ve decided I’m going to attack this with Remembering the Kanji and 2001 Kanji Odyssey, using Anki. What I am doing is going full speed at RtK, until I get bored of it, then I will study KO. I do reviews of both in the one Anki deck, but take turns in actively studying whatever I feel like it out of the two. I think I’m making good progress.

I don’t mind so much now about powering through RtK. Originally I wanted to just go through RtK as quickly as I could and get onto other things. It wasn’t working for me, which is why I’ve changed to this approach. With RtK, I do find it is the best way for me to learn how to write the kanji, plus a basic keyword which does come in handy when reading, as I can sometimes guess what a word is from a keyword.

However, while I really want to write the Kanji, perhaps a bigger concern for me at the moment is actually reading/knowing words. I’m really excited about KO as it provides what a lot of Kanji guides have PLUS three sentences for each Kanji. I find that when I’m using a SRS program, I do learn better with sentences vs just words. So this is great.

The first book is 555 kanji, and if I’m persistent (and don’t revert back to RtK or move on to something else… which is highly probable) I could finish it by my birthday in April easily.

If I was still in university it would still be another month away before it starts up again and before I would be actively studying. But that is no excuse now, as I’m out of university (actually… going to edufire reminds me of university, which is prob why I like it so much – all the stuff of university without assignments!!). What I need is to ship shape myself into action! I really have been slack.

So today I flicked through the text book and I’ve been working through what has built up in anki… If I clear out my deck tonight I want to add in a few more sentences from 2001 Kanji Odyssey – I’ve decided that I can’t do RtK on it’s own, I lose steam. So instead I’ve been alternating, depending on how I feel. Sometimes I’ll add KO to my deck, sometimes I’ll add RtK.

I’ve also decided that things like textbooks, manga that I read, etc etc. I’m not adding those sentences to Anki. Instead, I’ll just read them where they are. I’ve done the “sentence” thing and I got bored of it. OK, Yes, that’s what I’m doing with KO, I feel that would be the best way for me to study that book. But for manga, I don’t want to rip it to pieces. I want to enjoy it. So, if I really want to learn something from it, I will seek out the word/whatever in a different form.

So, fingers crossed that I can push myself to and over the intermediate level of Japanese.

Well, I’m currently slogging through Remembering the Kanji. Tonight I am hoping to add about 30-40 kanji into anki, right now I am up to kanji number 709. I’m in the middle of a 130 kanji chapter which is hard going because there are so many (sometimes it is easy to confuse them when you are just solidifying them in your mind), but easy because there are so many (and thus there is lots of repetition of common elements). I’m looking forward to hopefully reaching 1000 kanji soon, about the half way mark!!!

Why this, why now? I want to keep up my language learning now that I’ve graduated from university. I want to move to the next level with my japanese but I feel like one thing is holding me back at the moment: My kanji ability. So, once again, I’m plowing through Remembering the Kanji.

My Process

Flash Cards – The Initial Creation Process

A long time ago I printed out a whole heep of flash cards for Remembering the Kanji from a fantastic website called Polar Cloud. So in a folder I have a lot of uncut kanji just waiting for me. At the moment I am in the middle of cutting out a few sheets into flash cards (cards 709 – 755 tonight).

I actually enjoy this process. While it would be horrible to cut them out all at once (the cards then would be harder to store, etc….) it is sort of fun to do a bit of cutting. You can explore these unknown kanji while you do so, perhaps already thinking up stories, but more likely going “what the hell is that?!?!”

After they are cut out, with my book in hand, I head over to Reviewing the Kanji website. Here I will look at the stories others have made up and look at the book to read Heisig’s notes.

Once I have a story I’ll do two things:-

• write the story (often a shorter version!) in pencil on the back of my flash cards. In pencil because sometimes the story needs tweeking or a complete overhall.
• put the kanji info and story into anki

Usually, like now, this happens at night time. So, after this, it’ll be bed for me!

The Learning Process

Now, what I will do is take my flash cards and have them in my pocket. Walking to the bus stop, sitting on the toilet, at lunch… there are many opportunities to go through them! Often it wont be just the new ones but ones from a couple of days ago too that I am still working to really build a foundation in my head. I do both sides of the cards, from the kanji to keyword (not really worried about getting this one right, but just more of a good look at the kanji, see what elements are in them, and how it is put together, then turning over to remind of keyword and story), and of course keyword to kanji, reading through both the keyword and the story before turning it over.

The Review Process

Then, at night, it’s back to anki. At the moment I’m getting about 200 cards to review a day. Not sure if it is going to get worse or easier, or stay around this number!!! I admit, I often get many wrong, but I find that it is the review process that helps get it in my mind. And if I am constantly getting kanji wrong, then I know I need to focus more on these particular ones.

My approach is more of a head first barge into it. I have faith that I will eventually come to perfect the kanji through other complimenting studies, right now I just want to get through this stepping stone as quickly as I can so I can move on. Although, even when I am through the book, I expect that I will continue to review in anki for quite a while!

Hi Everyone. I’ve been sick. In fact, I still feel sick, I can’t shake it! Dammit! But, today I’m feeling a lot better – mainly because this week the new Japanese drama season has begun! I’ve spent most of tonight watching lots of promotional stuff of Maou, Ikuta Toma and Ohno Satoshi’s new drama that aired last night. OMG, I’m so excited. I love tarot, and I love Ikuta.

Even though I didn’t do as well as I usually do at university last semester, plus I was suffering from serious burnout, I got better marks than I was expecting, which is fantastic. In regards to my quest to Remember the Kanji, I’m still at the 600 kanji mark, however I’ve been practising a lot trying to get back up to where I was before. Over the next six months I hope to keep reviewing these as well as slowly increasing the amount of kanji I know.

I haven’t been reading manga, however I’ve been going through my copies of the Japanese Graded Readers, level two. For me, the only problem I really face with them is vocab. I can understand the stories except for a word here or there. Some I can get from context, but others I read the whole story and still can’t guess the word. I want to go through them again with a dictionary.

That’s the news, you’re up to date.

I’m excited because it is not long now until I will have a weekly dose of Ikuta Toma when he co-stars with Ohno Satoshi in Maou. Which has nothing to do with the rest of the post which is about Reviewing the Kanji. After a bit of a break from studying Japanese, I am back into it with my quest to Remember the Kanji.

I’m on uni holidays now, so I would like to get as many as I can done in the next four weeks. I’m not expecting to finish, but I would like to come as close as I possibly can. I’ve done the maths, I know how much I need to do in order to get close to finishing. However, I’m not going to try and reach a certain number and put pressure on myself. I’m going to do as much as I can each day, trying not to burnout. Here’s some things I’m planning to do:

• Use the Reviewing the Kanji Website to help me come up with new stories. There are lots of example stories there that give me something to start with that I can adapt for my own use. Saves lots of time!!
• Use Anki to actually review the kanji. I just love Anki so much, it is the best flash card program that I have used so far, and I have used a few. I have written a post on how I structure my RtK deck in anki for those who are interested.
• Because I am now working more hours at work, thanks to reduced time at uni, the good news is I will have a dedicated lunch time (instead of eating on the go between work and uni – not fun). So I plan to use my lunch break for actual study. Just to go through stories that I have had trouble with and need adapting, practise writing difficult kanji etc. This will be things I can do on paper, as when I write things down on paper often I remember them better. I also recommend this Practise Page Generator for RtK keywords.

So, remembering the kanji, here I come (again)!!

]]> http://www.goddesscarlie.com/language/reviving-remembering-the-kanji/feed/ 10 http://www.goddesscarlie.com/language/carlies-japanese-progress-march-2008/ http://www.goddesscarlie.com/language/carlies-japanese-progress-march-2008/#comments Sun, 06 Apr 2008 04:31:02 +0000 GoddessCarlie http://goddesscarlie.com/?p=291 We are well into April now, so it’s time for a March 2008 update on my Japanese progress.

On the 18th of March I started up a log of how many hours I watch Japanese tv/movies. I record what I watched and whether I was watching with subs, without, or it was just on as background noise. From the 18th-30th I watched 15 hours of Japanese TV. I find that I don’t watch it for days, but when I do I watch quite a few hours. It does average out to just over an hour a day. I haven’t really been watching any of the dramas from the current/previous season so perhaps this may be a-typical.

Anki
At the end of Feburary I started a new anki file. I now work on both vocab/grammar and Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji in the same deck. I currently have 576 cards. I have an overall retention rate of 73% with 87.1% on older cards.

Japanese for Everyone
At the moment I’m working through chapter 15 of JfE. Things are moving smoothly, I’m finding that I can move through this quickly now. I don’t know, at the moment I’ve got a bit of rhythm to what I’m doing.

An Integrated Approach To Intermediate Japanese by Akira Miura and Naomi Hanaoka McGloin
I just started this and I’m planning to move through this more slowly than JfE, but I’d like to do finish the book by the end of the year. I have started chapter two, but I’d like to go back and go through chapter one more thoroughly. I recently did a review of my first impressions on this textbook if you’d like to read.

Goals For April
April is going to be a busy month for me. I’m moving house, all my major assignments at uni are coming up, and I may have to look for a new job. Oh, and it’s my birthday too However, the next season’s dramas are beginning, something to look forward to, and I plan to keep working on my Japanese at a steady pace.

]]> http://www.goddesscarlie.com/language/carlies-japanese-progress-march-2008/feed/ 4 http://www.goddesscarlie.com/language/carlie%e2%80%99s-japanese-progress-october-2007/ http://www.goddesscarlie.com/language/carlie%e2%80%99s-japanese-progress-october-2007/#comments Sun, 04 Nov 2007 12:46:15 +0000 GoddessCarlie http://www.goddesscarlie.com/?p=1644 October, October. What a month. It went by so quickly I barely remember any of it. Coming off my mid-semester “break”, October was my last for weeks of university classes for the year. With six pieces of assessment. At least now I only have my big exam half way through this month and then I’m free until March! Except – some how I’ve felt busier since uni has finished. I blame the kanji!

Japanese For Everyone

I’ve finished chapter 12. I’ll be taking a break from this while I try to remember the kanji, hopefully getting back into it in January. Chapter 12 was a fairly easy one to get through.

Anki

Thanks to the kanji, I’ve fallen behind on my reviews with this. 289 expired cards… *cries* I have 615 cards now, up from 533 from last month. And I did review at the beginning of the month, not so much towards the end. I would like to keep this up through the kanji, how ever as things are proving I’m not sure if I can. The kanji is time consuming!

Deck statistics time!

Correct over a week: 92.5% (346 of 374)
Correct under a week: 77.3% (2061 of 2667)
Correct unseen: 85.3% (828 of 971)
Total Correct: 80.6%

If only my kanji was that good. The thing is, though, when I add a sentence to my srs, usually I understand all the grammar and it’s only to reinforce grammar and to help learn new vocabulary.

Remembering the Kanji

I have to pick up my game. Moving at the pace that I want to move out, Remembering the Kanji is time consuming. Currently I have studied 395 kanji. The problem is I’m finding it takes 3-5 reviews for most kanji before I find them in my head and I can pass them onto the next box. And the most time consuming task is actually studying the kanji, vs reviewing the kanji.

Here’s my deck as it stands right now:



After I started tracking my review results (so, from the 28th October onwards), I have averaged at 48% correct. This number goes up when I review cards in the far decks, but so far as most of my cards are in the first deck I’m getting a lot wrong. I’m expecting the numbers to sort of even out as I get further into it. I guess we’ll see. Must… Study… More…

Into The Future

I’m still hoping to finish the Remembering the Kanji book by around Christmas. I’ll have no excuse after my exam in two weeks. I’ve already got my “rewards” for finishing picked out – certain Japanese books. So, main priority: Kanji. I’ll let you know how it goes.

]]> http://www.goddesscarlie.com/language/carlie%e2%80%99s-japanese-progress-october-2007/feed/ 0 http://www.goddesscarlie.com/language/remembering-the-kanji-warm-up/ http://www.goddesscarlie.com/language/remembering-the-kanji-warm-up/#comments Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:26:55 +0000 GoddessCarlie http://www.goddesscarlie.com/?p=1639

Yesterday and today I’ve been practising studying 50 kanji/day just to see what it’s like. I’m not officially starting until November, but I want to get a bit ahead because, even though tomorrow is my last day of uni for the year, I have an exam half way through November and I’ll probably take a few days break from the Kanji to study from it. I can see now that this is going to take a lot of time, but I think I can do it. Here has been my process so far.

• Read quickly through the book, write down the kanji to get the stroke order and pay attention to the primitives that Hesig introduces, but not so much to the stories.
• Add cards to the Reviewing the Kanji website and then “test” myself on them. By this I mean go through and fail them all except for kanji I am really really familiar with, and guaranteed never to fail. By using this method, the kanji then appear in the “study” area of the site.
• This next step is the most time consuming step, but it is 100 times quicker than it could be thanks to the website. When studying a new kanji, I pick a story I like that has already been submitted by someone else (unless a story really pops up at me), and then I usually modify it a bit so it fits me better. I also write down the kanji and the story into my note book – I learn best from writing things down rather than just reading them.
• I expect my workload to build up very quickly. I believe I will be taking a kanji worksheet made by the Practice Pages Auto-Creator to work so that I can do some extra review of the new kanji I have added. As for failed kanji, my first priority will be clearing out the first and second piles. My last priority will be the last pile. I don’t think with that pile it will matter too much with the spaced repetition if I delay my review for a few days, and will probably only review those piles (when my expired cards start building up) on one of my two “catch up” days I have each week.



For now I’m trying to keep a head of the game because you will never know when life will get in the way. For the moment, I have 276 kanji in the RTK website. At the moment I’m pretty confident I know almost none of the 100 I’ve added in the past two days, which is fine right now but will suck in a week or two’s time when there will be 500 kanji I don’t know. So I really will have to be reviewing these new kanji during the day and then adding new kanji at night. Eeek! But I’m prepared to do it and I think it will be worth it in the long run… I guess we’ll see…

]]> http://www.goddesscarlie.com/language/remembering-the-kanji-warm-up/feed/ 0 http://www.goddesscarlie.com/carlies-life/carlie%e2%80%99s-remembering-the-kanji%e2%80%a6/ http://www.goddesscarlie.com/carlies-life/carlie%e2%80%99s-remembering-the-kanji%e2%80%a6/#comments Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:37:09 +0000 GoddessCarlie http://www.goddesscarlie.com/?p=1603

Well, I only have one more week of classes at uni. Then I have an exam about half way through November. But pretty much I’m done for the year! Which means, even though it’s only really the beginning of Spring, I feel like I’m now on Summer Holidays!! Which means it’s time to start executing my planned summer activities.

Step One: Study the Kanji via Hesig’s Remembering The Kanji. Intensely. My goal is to study 50/day with two days off to review the backlog of failed Kanji. I’m hoping to have all the Kanji memorised by Christmas!!

Why?

There is a lot of hoo-haa over this method. Some people swear by it. Some people think it’s a waste of time. Me? I like it. I think the key to figuring out if this is for you is to really understand the method and not to have any false ideas of it.

• It makes it easier for me when I actually learn vocab/kanji.

This may not make sense to you, but it works for me. After finishing all the Kanji, sure I wont know how to pronounce them, but all I will have to do to remedy this is to learn vocab. I have started this method before, and I found when I came to actually learning words, it was so much easier to do when I already recognised the kanji rather than when I had never seen the kanji before.

• I know the method works for me.

I’ve done this before. I was doing it at a much slower pace than I plan to do this time (my goal was around 20/week) and it was going fine. The only reason I stopped was I found I couldn’t do this method AND university. Which is why I’m doing it now.

• I can learn them all quickly.

It would take me much much longer if I was learning Kanji through vocabulary. I just want to get the method over and done with so then I can focus with building vocab with ease.

How?


50 Kanji/day five days a week. Two days to rest and catch up on reviews.

• I will be using the Reviewing the Kanji website to review my Kanji. I will try and stay away from the forums!

I have a couple of grease monkey scripts installed, one of them being the Substitute Keyword one. For kanji I already know the reading of, I’ll be changing the keyword to Hiragana/Keyword.

For example, for Kanji No. 78, “Right”, 右 – I’ll change the keyword to “みぎ ・ Right”.　
For Kanji No. 99, “Fond”, 好　- I’ll change the keyword to “す（き） ・ Fond”.

That’s my plan for now, I guess I’ll see how that goes, I can always modify my approach.

• Use the Practise Page Auto Creator.

This is an easy sheet I can print out and take to work to fill in during my lunch break. I’ll probably once a week print off about 4 pages of the latest Kanji I’m learning and just quiz myself. Good way to get myself writing out the kanji and not waste my lunch break. Eating is boring, I need to do two things at once!

• Remembering The Kanji Paper Flashcards.

I’ve already printed these off from last time I was studying this book. I’m not sure what I’ll do with this, but I guess it’ll come in handy. I could carry around a random selection in my bag or something for random review. Eh, they were fun to print out and you never know when they’ll become handy right??

So far

I reviewed the cards I have already put into the RTK website, and got about 62% correct. For most of the ones I got correct I could write them down easily, no problem. I was harsh on myself, if i got it almost correct but was stupid with one stroke or whatever, I failed it, even though sometimes in the past I would still pass that (although, the higher up in the piles they are, the harsher I judge them).

Anyway, for the next week or so I’ll be taking it a bit easy, reviewing what I’ve already gone through and maybe studying a few more… I’ll then begin hardcore at the start of November.

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