Anki questions

[tennisdude818]

I just wanted a topic for people to share how they study Anki.

1. How many new words each day?

2. How many categories do you use?

3. Do you make sentences for your new words or do you think it's not worth the trouble?

4. Do you separate your vocab studies from your Kanji studies, or do you just memorize the Kanji for all your new words?

5. How much time do you spend studying a new card before you click "soon" to quiz yourself on it later? This sounds like an odd question but nobody talks about it. Do you say it a few times? Do you write it down? Or do you juts glance and move on?

6. When you encounter new words, do you ALWAYS put them on Anki? Like when you're on a Japanese website, do you record every single word and/or Kanji that is new to you?

7. Finally, how much of your study time is on Anki? Most of it? Half?

[salivia_baker]

1) I don't have new words each day. I make study sessions where I learn new words - depending how good my brain works that day it can be only a few (say 5-10) or a lot (60+). And then I just stop with new cards until I have memorised the new words enough to move on. And then a new study session is in order.
I tried to learn new cards a day but it simply doesn't work for me. I think everybody has to find our for themselves how many or in what way you learn the words.

2) Do you mean how many decks or how many tags?
I have in total 8 decks (I just merged two, so actually they are 9). And tags.. I do have tagged the lessons and if it's in regular vocab or expanded vocab. but I don't really work with tas.

3) I go with what Japanesepod101 provides. That means with example sentences for some words (as they are in the expanded vocab section)

4) I started with just the words but I found it harder to memories the kanji afterwards. So I am study the kanji as well. However at this point I am only reading the kanji. for translations from English to Japanese Kana is sufficient (I use kanii writing with Furigana)

5) I just glance at it, it will be repeated soon enough and most of the time it works for memorisation. however with very hard words I stare at them and say it out loud as long as it takes until I think I might remember it.

6) no. I do that with English words (since I am not a native English speaker) but with Japanese I follow the Jpod lessons since I am still just a newbie/beginner.
I think if you are advanced enough you can do that to expand your vocabulary.

7) All No most of it. It works very well for me, however this is just a stepping stone for me. When I feel comfortable enough I also work my way through my textbook for practise. And of course use the tools you find here in the Learning Center.

Oh I might add: I do create decks from a couple of Jpod Series and because I have to type in the info I can study the words while doing that

[tennisdude818]

Thanks for the input! Earlier I didn't mean tags, I don't really use those. But anybody who wants to talk about them is welcome to do so.

[Javizy]

1. How many new words each day?

The actual daily amount is erratic, but I average 35 new cards per day, and since I have double-sided cards, that's about 16-17 new words per day.

2. How many categories do you use?

I have a vocabulary deck, a JLPT2 and JLPT1 grammar deck, and a Heisig deck.

3. Do you make sentences for your new words or do you think it's not worth the trouble?

I use definitions from goo which contain sentences (although there are a lot of useless classical Japanese ones included), and ones from the Tanaka Corpus.

4. Do you separate your vocab studies from your Kanji studies, or do you just memorize the Kanji for all your new words?

I used Heisig to learn kanji, and now I use my vocabulary deck to learn how to read them.

5. How much time do you spend studying a new card before you click "soon" to quiz yourself on it later? This sounds like an odd question but nobody talks about it. Do you say it a few times? Do you write it down? Or do you juts glance and move on?

At first I familiarise myself with the definition and examples, but when I have a good sense of the word, I just try to remember how to use it (what particle, collocations, etc). Of course, if it's a noun with a simple definition, I just skip through really quickly.

6. When you encounter new words, do you ALWAYS put them on Anki? Like when you're on a Japanese website, do you record every single word and/or Kanji that is new to you?

I never used to, but now I look up as many words as I can, since I can save them to a list which I can convert to flashcards automatically. It seemed like a waste of time looking up words before, since I'd always forget, but now as long as I look it up, I'm sure to remember it because it'll end up in Anki.

7. Finally, how much of your study time is on Anki? Most of it? Half?

Sometimes all of it. I have some workbooks I'm trying to go through, but I prioritise my reviews more than anything else. I chat a lot in Japanese on Skype, read some manga, and watch stuff on nikoniko, but I don't really consider that studying (although they're all good sources for new words).

[salivia_baker]

Thanks for the input! Earlier I didn't mean tags, I don't really use those. But anybody who wants to talk about them is welcome to do so.

I only need them when I want to look up where the word/phrase was used. it sometimes helps to listen to the lesson again orread teh pdf again after I learned the stuff. Or maybe I have questions I hadn't had before.

As for Decks (if you meant them) I have (for Japanese):
-> Kana (Hiragana + Katakana+ new Katakana)
-> All About Series + Introduction Series (togetehr in one Deck)
-> Survival Phrases Season 1
-> Survival Phrases Season 2
-> Beginner Series 1
-> Newbie Series 1

Only Kana, All About and Introduction Series are complete. I am still in the middle/beginning of the other series and add gradually cards to them.

currently I work on a Deck from my Textbook (PONS Japanisch Powerkurs) but I haven't started to study the vocab there since I want to finish another deck (maybe newbie or survivalphrases) first.

I never used to, but now I look up as many words as I can, since I can save them to a list which I can convert to flashcards automatically. It seemed like a waste of time looking up words before, since I'd always forget, but now as long as I look it up, I'm sure to remember it because it'll end up in Anki.

How do you convert a list to flashcards?

[Taurus]

1. How many new words each day?

I have a target of 20 sentences a day - I mean, I have an Excel chart that I use to keep track of how big my Anki deck is, so I can see. Some days I add more, some days less, but I'm trying to keep up with my target. I settled on 20 sentences because I think it's a fairly modest target in terms of how much new stuff I'm learning, even if it sometimes feels a lot in terms of how much time I have available to study.

2. How many categories do you use?

I have one main deck, that just consists of sentences. I started out with all the sample sentences in Minna no Nihongo; then I added all of the Kanzen Master JLPT 3 book; now I'm just adding bits from everywhere (eg. reading through the jpod101 transcripts and adding any sentences I don't understand; going through some classic short stories in parallel text; reading a book of bedtime stories that my wife gave me for Christmas; the Kanzen Master JLPT 2 book; some JET programme textbooks; the Valkyria Chronicles manga). I find that's a good mix of sources in terms of the ease with which I can add sentences, ranging from some that I just have to cut and paste to others that I have to type in and translate myself.

I used to have a pure vocab deck too, but I'm currently focusing on just one deck. Although I aim to go through the vocab deck soon and any words that I can't remember I'm going google for sentences to add to my sentence deck

3. Do you make sentences for your new words or do you think it's not worth the trouble?

I don't make any sentences; I just copy sentences from other sources.

4. Do you separate your vocab studies from your Kanji studies, or do you just memorize the Kanji for all your new words?

As above, I don't learn vocab separately. I just add sentences from several sources and hope that the grammar and vocab will take care of themselves. As for kanji, I went through Heisig before starting my sentence deck, so I have a theoretical understanding of all of the kanji anyway. I've actually neglected my Heisig mnemonics recently though, so my kanji writing skills aren't very good at the moment. I'm aiming to rectify that at the future by testing my ability to write kanji, but at the moment I just want to focus on being able to speak, hear and read.

5. How much time do you spend studying a new card before you click "soon" to quiz yourself on it later? This sounds like an odd question but nobody talks about it. Do you say it a few times? Do you write it down? Or do you juts glance and move on?

I'm not sure I understand this question. I read the sentence out loud and if I understand it I click on 'good'. If I stumble on one of the words or get a reading very slightly wrong I'll click on 'hard'. If I forget a reading or don't understand it I click on 'again'. I rarely click on 'easy'. I should probably click on it more...

EDIT: Oh, I realise what you mean now. The first time I see a new sentence I try to read it out loud. If I can't, I'll show the answer and then look at all of the readings and read it out loud, once, then click on 'again'. Then I'll keep doing that until I remember it. Sometimes, if I'm finding a sentence particularly tricky I'll come up with a quick mnemonic (eg. I found it difficult to remember 'kankyouhakai/environmental destruction' so I pictured some Korean (kankokujin) farmers laying waste to some trees by hacking them down with machetes).

6. When you encounter new words, do you ALWAYS put them on Anki? Like when you're on a Japanese website, do you record every single word and/or Kanji that is new to you?

I don't. Sometimes I just read for meaning/pleasure. If I can broadly understand something, or if I'm at work, or if I can't be bothered to add sentences, I'll just read. If I don't understand something, I'll move on. Other times I'll read with the intention of learning and at those times pretty much anything I see that I don't understand goes into Anki, even if it's a sentence about preserved biscuits from Valkyria Chronicles, or something about an old-fashioned tunic from 'In a Grove'. I don't think these things will be of massive benefit to my everyday life, but it doesn't take much to add them, and they sometimes come up in surprising places.

7. Finally, how much of your study time is on Anki? Most of it? Half?

I think at the moment I'm reviewing maybe one or two hundred sentences a day, which takes between half an hour and an hour. Adding sentences takes a variable amount of time, depending on whether I'm cutting and pasting, or typing and translating.

[mjcorsme3454]

If anyone's interested, I just converted a bunch of 1級　exercises I made at www.quizlet.com　into Anki decks and have uploaded them to AnkiOnline, so anyone who wants to can download them with the Anki app.

The exercises are based on the words in 完全マスター語彙 日本語能力試験1・2級レベル. I just went through the book, made a list of words I wasn't 100% confident with, and then divided them by part of speech (ie., nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs). The English translation is based on the suggested translation from www.quizlet.com, so I can't vouch for their accuracy.

Here are the names of the decks I created.

1・2級完全マスター語彙ー名詞・漢字
1.2級完全マスター語彙の名詞・仮名
1・2級完全マスター語彙の副詞・仮名
1・2級完全マスター語彙の副詞・漢字
1・2級完全マスター語彙の動詞・仮名
1・2級完全マスター語彙の動詞・漢字
1・2級完全マスター語彙の形容詞・仮名
1・2級完全マスター語彙の形容詞・漢字


Remember that the lists are not exhaustive, since the book doesn't contain all of the words on the JLPT1, nor do my exercises use all of the words in the book - only the words I personally had difficulties with.

You will also notice I made two lists for each part of speech: one with 漢字　and one with 仮名 only. However, each list should have identical words.

You should be able to access them by opening Anki, and then go to File>Download>Shared Deck and then searching by the tag '一級' or 'JLPT1'.

I also made another vocabulary exercise to practice 訓・音　readings for JLPT1 vocabulary. The exercise is named 日本語能力試験総級の語彙の読み方練習 and can also be downloaded with the Anki app.

The exercise practices only the readings - therefore there's no English translation for any of the vocab　and there are no uk (usually kana) words. The word list includes not only individual 漢字　but also compound 漢字　words which appear on the test.

The vocab was pulled from the lists on http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/, which are based on Thierry Bézecourt's list (http://www.thbz.org). Since the 1級 is a cumulative test, I've included vocab from the other levels, and I have edited the decks so you can see multiple readings for some of the Kanji.

Let me know if you find any of these decks useful.

[geebods]

This is quite interesting for me - I'm still trying to establish what might be the most efficient way of working with Anki.

1. How many new words each day?

It really varies, I don't have any daily targets. Over the life of the deck so far, I have added 6.5 a day on average to my kanji words deck.

2. How many categories do you use?

I used to have many decks, including vocabulary, kanji words, individual kanji, example sentences, verb conjugations, adjective conjugations... But I was spending more time on Anki than was justified by the results. Plus all the input became something of a chore and I started avoiding my textbooks and JapanesePod101 because it just meant a long session of inputting new cards. Now I have three decks: kanji compounds (two sided cards, I practice recognising them and writing them), example sentences (recognition only) and katakana (a very small deck I created when I was still having trouble reading and writing katakana - I'm keeping it going for now but I tend to only have a card up on it every couple of days now)

3. Do you make sentences for your new words or do you think it's not worth the trouble?

For my kanji compounds, no, because the idea of the deck is to recognise and write individual words rather than worry too much about meaning. I have a specific deck for sentences, but I pick up the sentence as a whole, rather than to fit a word I decided I want to learn.

4. Do you separate your vocab studies from your Kanji studies, or do you just memorize the Kanji for all your new words?

I did for the first 1500 words or so. I no longer have a separate vocabulary deck as after 1500 words, for individual words it stopped being effective. Now most new words I learn because I've learned the kanji to go with them. If it's a word that is usually written in kana, it might go in if I've picked it up in a sentence somewhere, but otherwise I don't worry about learning it.

5. How much time do you spend studying a new card before you click "soon" to quiz yourself on it later? This sounds like an odd question but nobody talks about it. Do you say it a few times? Do you write it down? Or do you juts glance and move on?

For sentences, if there is anything unclear about them I will make sure I understand as part of setting the card up. For kanji compounds - if I've picked them up from my kanji textbook I will have already practiced them a few times using the exercises in the book.

6. When you encounter new words, do you ALWAYS put them on Anki? Like when you're on a Japanese website, do you record every single word and/or Kanji that is new to you?

I used to, as discussed above. Now I put in all the words from my kanji textbook - or if I pick up a new word that uses kanji I've already learned and I remember to do so (like last night, I picked up 夜空 from a JapanesePod101 lesson). For sentences, if something looks interesting, or I've had trouble "getting" it, I pick up sentences from JapanesePod101 lessons, or even from online chats I've had with Japanese people, and sometimes I have a mini blitz through a book with lots of example sentences, such the Kanzen Master JLPT 3 book, but I'm not religious about it.

7. Finally, how much of your study time is on Anki? Most of it? Half?

I used to spend too much of my study time on Anki: 30-45 minutes of reviews and then up to an hour of making new cards. I had less time to engage with listening to and reading with Japanese and even though I would have aced a vocabulary test if I was still at school I don't think it improved my language so much considering the time I put in. Now most days I spend 10-15 minutes on reviews and I only make new cards when I feel like it!

Anki is a really useful tool I think, especially for dealing with kanji, which is essentially a memory task. Unlike many of the posters here I haven't used Heisig, but neither have I written the characters out hundreds of times. I only write them out as many times as Anki thinks I need to, and so far this has worked!

[salivia_baker]

that is very interesting, geebods, I have a much different experience.

sure sometimes it is annoying to put in new cards. when I put them in I sometimes think I will never remember that and when I do I am so incredible happy and proud. That does motivate me that Japanese is something I can learn after all.
same goes for the vocab, I do learn more then I actually think. When I look how many cards I have memorized I can't believe it. I am still so bad in Japanese but I do mighty fine with the cards *lol*

I slowly change now how I learn in Anki. I have original decks - that are from the Jpod lessons. and when I have put all the info in the deck I merge it into my gesamt (over all) deck where I have all the information together and delete those which are not necessary. That way I have two stages. First stage is going by Jpod lesson and second optimizes my learning for myself. Besides in that gesamt deck all the infos are mixed together so that I really have to know the stuff instead of guessing.
I still do go over Kana over and over again. I know them all (my vocab is written in Kanji+furigana or Kana) but I still feel saver to go over them. especially the newer Katakana.

oh I also have toggle suspend some Kanji words. Because I am still at my first ones. So I mostly do recognition with them but slowly I work myself up to be able to recall them as well as writing. But for that I want to make a new deck (I like making new decks XD)

[pam2773]

What is Anki? I am new at this. I want to be able to make sentences that I want to remember rather than just words. How can I do this? Also, I would like words to come due for practice more often. How can I do this?

[mmmason8967]

What is Anki?

Anki is by far the most widely-used flashcard program. It's free, open source software that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. There's a free version for Android and a pay-for version for Apple iPhone and iPad. You can get it at http://ankisrs.net/.

I want to be able to make sentences that I want to remember rather than just words. How can I do this? Also, I would like words to come due for practice more often. How can I do this?

Take a look at the introduction page at http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html. That should answer most of your questions!

マイケル

[community.japanese]

pam2773-san, マイケルさん、
thank you for your kind help, マイケルsan!

pam2773-san, if you have more question, please feel free to ask us

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[mewes6190]

Pam-san,

the best thing about Anki is, that it uses the spaced repitition system. You just blindly learn some flashcards, but flashcards you know well go to a much longer hiatus between repetitions. That way, you can effectively enter the vocabulary into your long term memory, while concentrating stronger on the flashcards you haven't memorized too well yet.

Best,
Kurokuma

[community.japanese]

Thank you for your advice, Kurokuma-san

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com