Well, it did until about 2007. I’m not sure. Maybe I was burnt out? Maybe I just needed a break. But suddenly the cravings, the drive went away.

This is when I started learning Japanese. Japanese was my new drug. I don’t think I pursued Japanese with the lust and desire that I did with writing, but I kept up at it, and it filled my time.

Lately…. lately I feel the hunger return in me. I am still studying Japanese – although at the moment it is more of a back burner approach – I’m reading books and “studying” new words in Anki. That’s about it. I’m wanting to once again tackle the Nihongo 500 Mon / 日本語５００問 book that I talked about in my Best of 2009 article. It’s going to be school holidays and I think I just want to race through the book and see what holes I have left in my basic understanding of Japanese.

Never the less, in the past couple of days, I’ve been breathing again. I don’t know where this will take me, but I’m in the planning stages of writing a book, and the characters are beginning to really jump out at me. I am still trying to work out some WHYs, trying to add in some conflict, but I’m building a solid beginning and have some ideas about the ending. I hope I will continue to work on this one with hopefully having it finished by the end of the year.

No rush. I’m just enjoying the air. I’m breathing again.

But don’t worry. There is something better out there! And easier. Yes, easier. Even though the books are intended for older children, I have found stories aimed at around 10 year olds (guessing from the age of the main characters being around 9 to 13 years old) are actually easier.

Why are they easier?

• More kanji, less hiragana. While you may not know many kanji, it is still ten times easier to read a book with kanji than without. The good thing is that all kanji in books for 10 year olds have furigana – the only kanji I’ve seen without furigana are numbers, and if you don’t know your numbers you probably can’t read the book anyway.
• Longer and more complex stories. How is this easier for you? Well, they take more time developing the characters and setting the scene. This is good because if you can only understand the book at a surface level it is easier to follow the story along. I found my books for younger children dove right into the “action”, things happened, and then it was over. Where are books for older children, you get more of an idea of setting, there is more dialogue (which I find easier than prose having been exposed to a lot of dramas) and the story is more enticing.
• More enjoyable. This goes with longer and more complex stories. I have never been one to enjoy short stories, with few exceptions, and I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that the same is true for Japanese stories.

Another great point is the start seems exceptionally easy because it deals with introductions. While the stories for younger children went right into the action, longer stories seem to start of with a self introduction of the main character, and then early on the character meets new characters which means more introductions. I don’t know about you, but self introductions was one of the first things I learnt in Japanese, and now I’m a pro at it. A self introduction scene in a drama is a scene I understand. Same with books. It is very encouraging opening up a book and understanding it at the start. It is better for your moral for something to start easy, giving you confidence to tackle the harder stuff.

Reading improved my English. I am a big reader and I know that I have a better grasp of grammar and punctuation than most (those who don’t read) even if I leave little evidence of that on my blog! I think that lots of reading will improve my Japanese. It’s harder to get into than dramas because with drams you have so much visual guide to help you. However, the advantages over books is you can go slower, look up unknown words and thus actually understand more than you do of the quick spoken dialogues in dramas. I am excited to finally be able to read REAL Japanese and hopefully soon I’ll be able to move up the age groups and into books without furigana, eventually onto books for adults.

Look out on my blog soon for tips and techniques to get into reading real novels so you can get into it faster than what I have. Learn from my mistakes (or at least, be able to evaluate what I went through and get some ideas on how you can adapt them for yourself!)

If you are interested in my other reading adventures, check out my manga reading adventures, and more specifically reading Hana Kimi

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!

I’ve been keeping a record of my Japanese progress since the end of October 2009. It’s been a very good motivator, and also good to see where I devote my time. Or where I don’t. I may be (am) weird, but I enjoy trying to reach my goals and beat them in this very visual way.

With that said, I want to set some over all goals for the new year. So that I can kick them in the butt! Or fail miserably…

Let’s see…

GoddessCarlie’s Goals of 2010!

• Have a large passive vocabulary in Japanese and be working on turning that into an active vocabulary.

Vocabulary. It feels like my biggest weakness right now. Has been for a while. And there are many problems with learning vocabulary. For instance, it never seems like a fun thing to do. The results can be rewarding, for sure, but the act itself is never fun. Right now I’m using smart.fm and I’ll continue to do that until that method becomes tedious and I’ll find a new way.
Another problem is that there isn’t really a good way that I’ve found for me to get things into my active memory. I have to come across words in several different ways before they really stick. Sometimes words are easier than others, but other times I find myself looking up words that should be easy again and again. The only thing I can do is to just keep exposing myself to the language and when the words stick they stick…
As for a specific number, well I figure as I get closer to that elusive number it wont matter so much – the number is the number I need to understand what I want to understand. However, a specific number gives me something solid to aim for, so right now I’d like to aim for a passive amount of words – 10,000. We’ll see how I go!
As for a starting point – right now I’d guess my number of words known is about 3000.

• Work on my listening skills

My listening skills have definitely improved since moving to Japan. I want to further take advantage of the situation I’m in right now and really work on my listening skills. I plan on working from books/CDs, as well as from “real” Japanese – podcasts, tv, movies, and people. I hope that by increasing my vocab and developing my listening skills I’ll be able to work my way up to understanding 99% of simple dramas like My Girl, and hopefully 75-80% of fast speaking dramas like Tokyo Dogs.
As for something quantifyable – I hope to build my listening skills up so that I can understand JLPT level 2 dialogue. I’m secretly hopeful I can exceed that but at the same time I don’t know if I am asking too much in a year or not…

• To be able to read fantasy novels for adults

It’s my favourite genre in English and I love drams like this too. I want to be able to read novels aimed at Japanese adults, even if they are only light and fluffy (hell, they are the best kinds of books!) I don’t know what else to say about this… this is one of my ultimate goals in learning Japanese and I hope that I can fulfil this wish in 2010!

As for non Japanese related goals:

• Live healthily. Live happily
• Live with no regrets. Most people regret the things they didn’t do rather than the things they did do, so do everything I get the chance to do!!

Talk about your goals in the comments area! Remember, aim high! Expect more and you never know where you may end up!

Some of you may know nanowrimo – an event which takes part in November where you attempt to write 50,000 words in a month. My goal of November was something similar, I wanted to see if I could attempt to study for 100 hours during November. The outcome is I’ll probably just be a little short of 70 hours, but I’m pretty happy with that! Next month I’m aiming for 80 hours – it might be a bit harder because it’s the holiday season but we’ll see how I go!

What follows is a long breakdown of what I’ve been up to during November!

Listening

My listening category includes watching tv/movies as well as other education specific audio. My main source was watching tv, I only include it when I am actively listening and not when I’m multi tasking or have background noise. I think when I have a larger vocabulary I will do more level specific listening to try and improve my listening skills. One TV show I do recommend to beginners is “My Girl” staring Aiba Masaki – the dialogue for the most part is spoken very slowly and simply as the main character is a young girl. Yeah, it’s a bit… but it’s easy study material!

There is one more day left in November, but it’s not like I’m going to drastically increase my study hours… With that in mind, in November I watched/listened to about 15 hours of Japanese.
December’s goal: 20 hours.

Reading

Breakdown:

• Grade 3 (primary school) short story book
• Grade 1 and 2 (primary school) short story book
• Manga
• Novel for 10-11 year old girls

Reading is a skill that I really want to improve. One of my goals of learning Japanese is to be able to understand Japanese books in their native language easily. This month I did more purchasing of books that actual reading. It’s actually a bit strange, but out of all the different types of study activities I do, I find reading the most tireing. It may be the times of day that I read – usually on the bus on the way home from work or in bed before I go to sleep, but I always find after a page I need to close my eyes and go to sleep. This is frustrating!! But I am hoping with time it wont be so taxing on my brain or I will find time to read at different times and I will see a difference.

I started out with a reader for grade 3 (primary school) Japanese children. It is actually a pretty good book for learners because it is full of short stories, all kanji have furigana and at the end of the short stories is a short little quiz on the content of the story to see if everything was understood. There are also little dictionary type meanings under some words that must be knew/unknown to most 3rd graders which was helpful! My method of going through this was to first look up any unknown words and write them down in pencil next to the word. The words in the book are big and have large spaces between the lines, so it was perfect for this. The problem is that my vocab knowledge is so low that it was hard to infer anything and had to look up a lot of words. And I found the first story a bit unsatisfying. My problem is, I think, that I don’t like short stories in English, I like getting to know the Characters and going on a journey with them… So perhaps I shouldn’t expect to like them in Japanese either…

Still, I felt my first foray into reading Japanese literature a bit of a failure, I went and bought some books that are full of short stories for grades one and two (at the time I was thinking my main problem was vocab and perhaps something very simple would fill me with a sense of accomplishment). So far I’ve read a couple of short stories from the grade one book, and I have to say it does make me feel good when I can read through something and understand maybe 70% of it. I can infer meaning from the pictures and sometimes there may be a sentence I don’t undertand but it doesn’t bother me. I haven’t felt the need to use a dictionary yet even if I don’t fully understand something. There is also a cute poem in the grade one book that I liked. But yes, over all the stories are… a little strange and a bit confusing because I guess they are meant for young children – it’s satisfying in that I can read but what I’m reading isn’t satisfying, I hope that makes sense!

Manga. I have been reading a book for young teen girls, a high school relationships manga. Your everyday sort of stuff, nothing remarkable about the story line. I bought this book at the wonderful Book Off when I first got to Japan and started it then but didn’t get far. This time it was nice to open the book and understand more than what I did then. I am improving!! Yay I haven’t finished it yet (reading is slow!) and again, I think I’m getting too old for the school girl stuff, I want to move onto something more my age – damn I feel old sometimes! The problem with moving on is vocab/kanji with a lack of furigana etc. So again with the yay for reading but the story isn’t grabing me type stuff. Yeah, if I was at the stage I am now half a year ago I would have been over joyed but it’s a case of the grass is always greener – but I guess in a way it is motivating me to keep going.

Next: Today I bought some books that as far as I can tell are for girls about 10-12 years old. I’m expecting them to be tough. However, I feel like I’ll be more satisfied with them. Sure, they are still for young girls, but they are fantasy stories about (I hope!) strong female characters – these are my favourite type stories to read in English so I’m hoping that they will be more staisfying. So far I read the prologue of one, it was really easy! It was the main character introducing herself (introductions are about the only thing I’m good at in Japanese!) and about her history. I did it infront of the computer to quickly look up a couple of words in the dictionary (no writing down) but for the most part it was exciting that I was reading a “real” book. We’ll see how I go as I get into the story line more. I’m sure I’ll be complaining about it at the end of next month. It’ll either be too hard to read or the story line is too simplistic or something!!!

November Hours Reading: 5 hours
December Goal: To finish a book!

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Grammar

I’ve been using:

• Kanzen Master JPLT 3 Grammar book
• JET program language course – intermediate level
• review book for beginners/JLPT 3 level

I’ve been spending my time learning/reviewing JLPT level 3 grammar, using Kanzen Master JLPT 3 grammar guide. This is a good book, mostly all in Japanese with a little bit of english to explain the grammar point. I would have to say with JLPT level grammar, about 90% I already “knew” – knew in that I had encountered it before. A lot of it, however, still isn’t firmly in my head, like giving and recieving (I don’t know why I have trouble with this!), passive and causatives. Also transitive and intransitives. Much work to be done! There were a small amount of points I hadn’t learnt before but I think these ones will be quite simple to master.

Over all I do recommend Kanzen Master JLPT 3. I have no intention of studying the JLPT at this stage, but I like the way everything has been grouped into like forms, there are example sentences that are going to be at my level and there are quizes to check if you understood. Now, some of the quizes are easy in that “Oh, I just learnt that this grammar point you need the verb to be in the “te” form, so I’ll just choose the only option that is in the “te” form, even if I have no idea what the sentence means.” – I haven’t tried the exercises yet futher in the book so I’m not sure if they get harder than this.

My method of study sofar has been just to copy out the “formula” and then to copy a couple of the example sentences. It hasn’t done much to stick I don’t think, so now and into december I plan on paying a bit more attention into and really nailing down those passive etc forms. I’m hoping to have really got a solid foundation by the end of December – enough to move onto JLPT 2 level, even if I haven’t completely mastered them.

I do have a concern that with the JLPT 2 level, because I am (I imagine) not familiar with the grammar that it will be harder for me to actually understand what the grammar points are trying to address only through example sentences. I am planning on buying Kanzen Master level 2 so I guess I’ll see if it’ll be enough or if I need to supliment it somehow.

I have also been “studying” haha with the JET course. Now, a lot of bad things have been said about the course, and I believe last year they redid it alll. I think it’s not so bad really… but it isn’t really what I want to do with studying, if that makes sense, I would rather prioritise and do other things. Also the first book has been easy in that I am familiar with most of the grammar covered. So what I did is I wrote out all the grammar points and an example sentence, like what I did with Kanzen Master. Then I did the review exercises near the end of the book, compared it to the answers. I did fairly well, so I just went ahead and open book test style did the test. I still have to send it in, but I am satified that the JET course gets me studying and doesn’t seem so bad. I’m scared about the Dec book though – the dreaded transitive and intransitive verbs!

Last but not least, I’ve been doing this quiz book that tests kanji, vocab and grammar for JLPT 3. I did it back in Sept/Oct and scored fairly well. I picked it up again a week ago to see if I’ve improved. Happily I have improved. This time around I’m going to focus afterwards on the things I fail to see if I can really nail my short commings.

November: 15 hours of study
December goals: Finish Kanzen Master JLPT 3.

Kanji/Vocab

Yeah… Smart.fm has turned a bit to shit in my opinion, but I actually finally started using it. They have been upgrading a lot which has been frustraiting (it usually goes down for maintenence when I want to study) and I don’t use the new study program at all, but I have been spending every night studying vocab at smart.fm.

Vocab is a huge weakness for me, so I want to make a mass effort to really get my vocab up there. My goal of November was to study 1000 words, and right now I’m just short of 1500 – I’m hoping to reach that magical number tomorrow. Already I can notice the difference through reading my manga. There are shortcomings to smart.fm but I am enjoying (for the most part!) using the “iknow” interface. Once I master some lists I plan on upping my listening skills and doing the dication – I did a couple already but I think I’ll get the most benifit from that and the brain speed aspects of smart.fm once I have “mastered” the lists.

November: 31 hours, (hopefully!) 1500 words
December goal: to get up to 3500 words studied (+2000 words)

Writing

I get a lot of “writing” practise mainly through copying out my grammar books, but in this case writing corrosponds to when I physically create my own writing. I was planing on writing at 8lang regularly, but then I decided not to. I am going to save focusing on output (writing and speaking) when I am a bit futher into my studies. That being said, the small entries that I’ve done at 8Lang have been most helpful and I think it really is a fantastic resource. In the future I hope to keep a daily type log there.

November: half an hour
Decebmer goal: I don’t really plan to focus on this in December.

What’s Missing?

One noticible aspect missing from my log is speaking. For one, I think it would be hard to measure speaking unless I was to get up and say a monologue of some kind… At any case, right now I don’t feel confident in my speaking. Sure I can give one word responses and I can ask questions at stores if I think about it first, but I am not up to the level where I can have a conversation with people. I may add this to my spreadsheet at a later date, but for now I am not so worried about speaking and have no intention of measuring it in an “hours” format. At any rate, as my vocab and listening skills increase, I have found I have been more confident to speak, in particular to my students, and that has been satisfying/enough of a measurement for me. I can feel I’m inproving and that’s the main thing!

If you can think of something else I’m missing from my studies, feel free to leave a comment! Also if you have any questions or comments on my methods I’d love to hear them from you. I feel like, right now, I’ve never been so determined to get good at Japanese, and I feel like I’ve never gone this gung-ho at studying. Let’s hope I can keep up the momentum! (but still find the time to post… eep!)

While I was in Japan I bought home.. *ahem* 75 manga. Yes, it was heavy. You can check out a crappy phone photo here. All this manga goodness was thanks to the wonders and delights that is Book Off. It may just be the most wonderful place in the whole world. It sells second hand books at an awesome price. Just don’t go there on Lady’s day and expect to come out empty handed…

Never the less, looking at my wall of manga, I thought I better get started on it properly or else I all the exercise I got carrying the things around Japan would have been for nothing. I have flicked through a few, “read” a few as well, but apart from some frustration, little has been gained. I really need to sit down and “study” these books without trying to make it into too much of a chore.

So I’ve decided to tackle Hana Kimi first.

The Good

Hana Kimi is a wise choice. I’ve read it before, although in translated English. It was also a billion years ago, so I can’t quite remember the little plot points. Of course, also, I’ve watched the TV series. So I know the basic outline of the story which will definitely help.

It’s also a story that I enjoy, which will help a lot! I think that learning to read this will be exciting as I get to finally read it in it’s native language. The book is 99% of the time better than the movie/tv show!

The Bad

Today, when I got up to where Nakatsu is introduced I remembered that in the manga he has an Kansai dialect. Which, I guess, will be good in helping me learn the Kansai dialect, but will also be very tricky! We’ll see how I go…

The length is another bad thing. I got the new super awesome deluxe edition which has three or four books in the one. So while manga are usually short, sweet, and to the point, this one is a whopping 368 pages. I might not come out the other side (if I make it through at all) alive!

Another bad thing is all the casual language. Yes, I know my だ from my です, but I guess I’m talking about more colloquial language that I can’t find in my dictionary. It’s something that will hopefully become easier as I learn through context – from lots of encounters both in manga and in other sources – but the first time I encounter them is always a bit baffling. I do like to read aloud though, and sometimes through reading aloud I realise I do know the word from having heard it in dramas.

The Method

The method is rather simple. I am confident that I will have encountered most grammar points before, so I am hopeful that I will be able to work out most sentences. What I will need to do is learn to recognise new kanji and to learn new words.

I am literally just going through this with a pencil and a dictionary. I am reading through, and when I don’t know a word I will look it up and pencil in an English translation near the Japanese word. Some times I need to look up almost every word in ever bubble. Other times I only have one word a page. I am hoping as I go through more and more I’ll have to rely on the dictionary less and less. But for now I don’t know enough words to gain the meaning most times through context.

I have no plans to add any of this to an SRS program or study it in any other form but to just read read read. I hope I don’t get too bored with it, but if I do, I will no doubt move onto something else and you’ll be able to read about it here! But for now, I am just going through and reading. After I have done a section I go back and read it with excitement. I am breaking down complex sentences, translating it into English to make some meaning from it. I know from past experience so far that the more exposure I have, suddenly I can just read things and understand it in Japanese. I am hoping this too will get easier the more I do!

I have noticed already, only a few pages into it, that words I didn’t know before are being repeated, so it is already acting like a natural SRS program in some sense. I am making no effort to memorize or learn the new words/kanji. I am just reading, checking an English translation, and moving on. I hope to learn them through exposure, both here in this manga and in other contexts.

In the future, if I read through and realise I don’t need my note there any more for a particular word, I will erase my pencil scribbles. I can always look it up again if I forget (kind of like failing a card in SRS!).

This is my study method at the moment and it is a lot of fun

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.

That being said, I tried to maintain my Japanese study, even if I didn’t want to touch a lot of what I had to do with a ten foot pole. Some of my activities included the following:

• Manga Reading.

I’ve been reading manga for the first time in Japanese, and I enjoyed it a lot. It was a huge motivation booster, being able to read it, even if I couldn’t understand all of the words, I could understand the story as a whole. My next step will be to go back through it and look up the words that I didn’t understand.

• Anki

Last month I had 619 cards in my Anki deck. Now I have 441. I totally changed my focus in Anki from sentences to mainly Heisig with some vocab thrown in.

However, again, I have barely touched Anki in May. I plan on deleting all the vocab words from Anki and then just using it for Heisig for the time being.

• Drama Watching

In April I watched about 26 hours of Japanese tv. This month it was down, mainly due to it being the end of the university semester. I watched a total of 15 hours and 37 mins.

In May I really focused on listening and understanding. I tried to repeat out loud sentences. I am finding that I can understand more and more, with, again, vocabulary seeming to be the biggest problem I am having.

• Vocabulary

I am experimenting with many vocabulary acquiring methods at the moment. I’ll talk more about this as I explore more about this

Overall, not the best month, but not the worst month. For June, I’d love to focus a lot of Heisig and vocabulary building, as well as keeping up watching lots of TV for enjoyment and to practise my listening/speaking skills.

After about one year of studying Japanese, I tried. And surprised myself – I could do it!

Two Reasons Why Reading Manga Is Easy

• The Sentences are very short, to fit in the little dialogue bubble. So for the most part, someone with even a small amount of grammar knowledge will be able to read the sentences.
• There are pictures to help with meaning. Even you go through a page without understanding a word, often you can guess what was going on. Or you will later.

  For instance, in Sugar x Life, there was a page where she was watching TV and I thought she was thinking back on the two guys she just met. Well, she was, but it wasn’t til she ran into the boys again that I realised the boys had been on the TV at the time she was thinking about them, and they were singers/idols.

Two Reasons Why It Is Hard To Read Manga (For Me)

Others might not have these problems, but here is what was hard for me when reading manga for the first time.

• Kanji. While knowing kanji isn’t necessary because – at least in the manga I’m reading so far – they have furigana. So I know how to pronounce words, and sometimes I even learn a new kanji from knowing the word before. But often I think “If only I knew just a basic meaning about the kanji – even just an English key word from Heisig – then I would have an idea of the word’s meaning. Building slowly on my previous knowledge I’d be able to get more of an idea of meaning plus I’d probably be more likely to remember the word/kanji next time I encounter it.
• Vocab. I simply don’t know enough words. At the moment I am working on vocab building exercises. The more words I know the easier it will be to infer meaning of unknown words, especially with the aid of pictures.

 

So get reading some manga now! You may be surprised in how much you understand. It’s a huge confidence booster. And if you give it a go and find you can’t understand, do not worry. Just put the book down, and then try again in a month. You’ll have something fun to aim for!


]]> http://www.goddesscarlie.com/language/reading-manga-for-japanese-language-learning/feed/ 5 http://www.goddesscarlie.com/language/how-should-you-structure-your-flash-card-deck/ http://www.goddesscarlie.com/language/how-should-you-structure-your-flash-card-deck/#comments Sun, 18 May 2008 04:44:02 +0000 GoddessCarlie http://goddesscarlie.com/?p=527 In my post Divide and Conquer – a Vocab Post, Atreya asked the question:

I am quite confused about the method by which I should structure my Anki Deck. By method I mean, how does one create the cards in Anki?

Now, the short answer is, of course: Any way you want.

But that doesn’t help those who may be a little lost in how to structure flash cards in their deck. The best way to structure your deck is a individual thing, and with trial and error you will find the best way that works for you. In this post I’ll show you the best way that works for me.

My program of choice is Anki, and so many examples are taken from Anki, however, I’m sure most, if not all, can be structured into any flash card system.


What Is The Purpose Of Your Deck?

To start, I think this is the most important question to ask when structuring your deck. In other words, what are your aims, what do you want to achieve by using a flash card program (or, *gasp* a paper based system). Here are some ideas:

To learn vocabulary
To help produce Japanese sentences
To practise translation
As a main study aid in learning Japanese (i.e. primary method of learning the language, for instance AJATT method)

My Purpose #1 – To Help Learn Grammar Structures

My original purpose in using a flash card program was to internalise grammar structures that I was learning. My primary focus was on grammar recognition.

Production and Recognition

Production (in the flash card-based system) took too much of my time that I could use on other activities for learning Japanese. I also actively used Japanese in ways that felt more normal and natural to me – I had a workbook where I responded to questions in my own words, and I kept a diary. Both these made more sense to me than trying to replicate someone else’s words. That’s like trying to do a speech with someone else’s script.

I use Recognition cards only in Anki.

In Anki you can change what kinds of cards are produced (Recognition/Production) in the model properties from the edit menu. What kind of cards you want produced is dependant on your purpose and what other activities you are doing in your study.

Japanese Ability

At the beginning, at least it is for me, impossible to eliminate English.. In fact, it makes more sense for me to use what I already know. Sure, something may not have a direct equivalent in English, but at least English will give you a starting point so that as you become more familiar with the language and see the word used in a different contexts, you will learn the nuances of the word and wont even think about the English equivalent.

Here is an example of how my cards were structured at the very beginning of my Japanese studies:

Front Side: うちにかえって、電話をします。
Flip Side: うちにかえって、でんわをします。
I’m going to go home and make a telephone call.

(from Japanese for Everyone, lesson 7)

I would use kanji that I knew or was learning.
Anki automatically puts in the readings/kana section, which is nice.
I would type out the translation directly from my text book.
This uses the default “Japanese” structure within Anki.

I would put in sentences after learning the grammar point. Anki helped reinforce these grammar points while practising new kanji and vocabulary. My method of reviewing was dependant on time as well as my motivation levels for the session.

If I was short on time, or wanted to get through the deck as quickly as possible, I would only read the sentence in my head, and if I knew all readings and understood everything I would pass the card.
If I had a bit more time, I would read out the sentence aloud.
For an ultimate study session, I would read aloud and write down the sentence. This way I also practised writing the kanji instead of just recognising it.

Progressing in Ability

As I progressed it became apparent that English translation wasn’t necessary. For simpler sentences, or ones I was very familiar with, I knew what they meant in Japanese. For more difficult sentences or ones I was not 100% familiar with, I often would have to break them down into smaller chunks and translated them in my head into English in order to understand, however, at the end I either understood in Japanese or I didn’t. The translation, written down as an answer in Anki, again wasn’t necessary.

However, I wasn’t ready to go all Japanese – Japanese, as I didn’t know enough vocabulary and I was still learning the most basic words. So some English was still necessary, but not a translation. My cards were structured like this:

Front Side: このごろは遊ぶためにアルバイトをする学生も多いそうだ。

Flip Side: このごろはあそぶためにアルバイトをするがくせいもおおいそうだ。

V(plain, non past)ために = “in order to”

遊ぶ　- to play, make a visit

(From An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, chapter 4)

Again, anki automatically makes the kana version.
I put the grammar point I am studying as a reference in case I have forgotten and can’t quite work out what is going on.
At the end I put definitions of unknown words or words I have trouble with.
To review, I use the same method as previously.
I don’t try and memorise anything, I am only trying to understand. So I am not memorising grammar points at all, the information is just there for if I don’t understand a sentence. If I don’t understand something, it helps me to break it down into grammar terms/points, but when actively using the language I don’t think “grammar” at all.

My Purpose #2 – To Learn The Kanji Via Heisig’s Method

Another goal of mine is to learn all the kanji via the Heisig method. Many use the Reviewing the Kanji website, and I recommend it very much. I still use it for sentence creation and visit the wonderful community there. However, I have decided to use Anki for reviewing the kanji as I like the option of more than just “yes” or “no” when advancing cards, and I like reviewing everything all at once.

For learning the kanji, I just use the Heisig model deck that is automatically in Anki.

In Heisig, I use the “production” method – that is, I am producing the Kanji from the Heisig keyword given. I have also slightly modified some entries – if i know the word the Kanji is in, then I often have both Heisig’s keyword and the kana in the front side. For example:

Front Side: およ（ぐ）・Swim
Flip Side: 泳ぐ
*Story*
*amount of strokes, and what chapter the kanji is from*

There is also a link to the Reviewing the Kanji webpage for that kanji.

My Purpose #3 – To Learn Vocab

Recently, I decided to learn vocabulary out of context. I decided that I needed to learn a lot of words quickly so that when reading and hearing authentic Japanese sources I would be reinforcing my learnings instead of hearing/seeing words I don’t know. Again the focus here was on recognition – this would be a simple exercise of learning new vocabulary for me to use elsewhere.

I used Anki’s “Japanese” model and modified it slightly – I added an extra, non essential field for sentences – so that if I had time I would also be able to review a sentence containing the word, but if I did not have time it did not matter.

In this case, the card is structured like:

Front Side: 思考する
Flip Side: しこうする
to think, consider
*sample sentence*

Where To Get Sentences/Material To Review From

Another thing to consider is where you will get your sample sentences and material from. Again, to answer this you will have to consider your purpose.

When reviewing grammar, I used sentences from my text book. I prefer to read sentences from books actually in books – I see no reason to add these into anki as I can just enjoy them straight from the source. Same with quotes from movies and websites – I would rather enjoy these in their original form, reinforcing grammar of course but not actively or consciously so. This is why I used textbook sources only.

For Heisig, obviously I used Heisig’s order of kanji as a source.

For vocab, I am pulling these from everywhere, including books I am reading and shows I am watching. If I want to get the word deeper into my head I will add it to anki, and later test my “knowledge” by reading or watching the source text again.

Why I Decided Not To Share My Anki File

Before I end this post, I just want to write a short note about why I have decided not to share my Anki file. The biggest reason is I don’t see how anyone will benifit from it. It is helpful to see how other people structure their decks, which is why I wrote this post. However, for the actual content, I see it being little use to people unless they have the same level of knowledge that I have.

I also think there is value in creating your own deck from your own sources. The material you put into your flash card file should be relevant to you. Adding it in yourself will aid you with learning it.

Your Turn

Share your own thoughts on structuring your flash card deck. What is your purpose for using a flash card program? Do you use production methods, fill in the blank methods, or other? Where do you get your material from to review (textbooks, manga, other?) I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas, as mine are always evolving.

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