I covered how to use Anki to master Japanese Kanji in Part 1. This part covers how to use Anki for Japanese-English (J-E) sentences. Keep working hard, because once you finish the Anki Master series, you are set with having one of the most amazing programs imaginable to make your Japanese shoot up to awesome levels in a much shorter period of time than traditional methods. Since this post and the following parts are a bit complex, I will try to organize it into question form to make it more readable.
Q: Why are you using Anki for sentences and not just vocabulary?
Because you don’t speak in words, you speak in sentences. Just because you know the words, “I”, “at”, “awesome”, “am”, and “Japanese” doesn’t mean you know how to make the sentence. Don’t tell me you’ve never met a tourist who asked you “Where train station?” Learning sentences teaches you grammar with words at the same time, without having to study grammar.
Q: Can I just use a pre-made deck of sentences I downloaded and study that way?
No. Every sentence you input builds on previous sentences. Pre-made decks aren’t built in order like this. The order that sentences are put in are based on your own personal understanding, and only you will know that. Also usually they have a lot of mistakes.
(Update: I now have some mixed feelings on pre-made decks. Check here for a pros and cons discussion.)
Q: How do I start creating my own deck if my Japanese is level 1-15 (beginner, elementary, low intermediate)?
Your first 1000 sentences should be in Japanese and English. You will want to make them count and give a good wide range of material before you switch to Japanese-Japanese (J-J). Remember how I said that sentences will build off one another. The best place I find for this type of building occurs in beginner textbooks. I recommend using Genki 1, Genki 2, and An Intermediate Approach to Intermediate Japanese in order.
You will not use the textbook like a textbook. You will merely take out sentences from the textbooks in the order of the lessons provided. Ignore all of the silly exercises, drills, and vocabulary lists. Doing these will provide you with very little return.
Since the 3 textbooks go in order, it is very easy to go add sentences that build upon one another. Your aim should be to have one new word (grammar, name, new vocabulary, city, particle, etc) in every new sentence you add. Obviously at the very beginning, it will be very difficult to have only one new word since you don’t know any words. So you will have to start with sentences where you don’t know 1-2 words. Try to avoid going above that.
Here is what a card you add should look like:
Your beginning sentences may progress in something like the following order:
Ex. Sentence 1: “こんにちは” : Hello
Ex. Sentence 2: “こんにちは、先生”: Hello teacher <– adding 1 new word
Ex. Sentence 3: ”先生は綺麗”: The teacher is beautiful <– adding 2 new words
Ex. Sentence 4: “日本は綺麗”: Japan is beautiful <– adding 1 new word
Ex. Sentence 5: “日本が好き”: I like japan <– adding 2 new words
Ex. Sentence 6: “バナナが好き”: I like bananas. <– adding 1 new word
Ex. Sentence 7: “バナナは綺麗“: Bananas are beautiful <– Bad sentence because adds no new words (exception is if you really don’t understand a word and want a few examples)
(Update: You should add audio to all your J-E cards using the easy GoogleTTS plugin. Details of installation and use found here.)
Q: I understand the idea, how do I physically do the reviews?
1. You see the sentence: 私は馬鹿です
2. Say the sentence out loud and try to understand what the sentence means. Do not translate the sentence to English in your head. Your goal is to understand the sentence, not translate it. At first English may pop into your head, but eventually it will disappear and you will just understand the sentence.
3. Writing out the sentence is optional (I usually do not)
4. Hit the answer key.
5. Check the answer against what you said.
6. Choose 1 if you messed up on the pronunciation or didn’t understand a word or the full sentence. Choose 3 if you knew the sentence.
7. When the sentence gets repeated again soon after, choose 2 regardless of whether you get it right or wrong.
Q: How much kanji go in the question part of the sentence?
As many as possible. If there is a kanji for the word, you put the word in with the kanji. The point of using Anki to learn sentences is to learn how to read natural sentences, which of course have kanji in them.
Q: In the English area, am I putting in the translation of the sentence?
No. You are putting in the translation of the new word(s). You don’t want to be translating the sentence. The beginner textbooks usually give the full translation of the sentence. You use only the new words. The only exceptions are very short sentences or set phrases (ex. good morning, welcome home), and in the very beginning of using Anki for sentences, which is where you may need the full English translation as a hint. But try to avoid full sentence translations at all costs as this will only hinder your pace.
Q: How long should it should it take me to finish the 1000 sentences?
Around 1-4 months depending on your pace. If you add 30 sentences a day, it will take you around 1 month. If you add 10 sentences a day, it will take you around 3 months.
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Continued in “Using Anki to Master Japanese 3: There Can be Only One”
Photo by: Sebastien Bertrand
Great insight of your method! When I am going to eventually start the sentences, this will help lots.~~
Thks~
When you start, let me know if anything is unclear. In my head it all makes sense, but I don’t know if it 100% makes sense to other people.
I really like your writing style, it’s quite clear and makes sense. I haven’t actually studied sentences yet but from learning and very casual understanding I do get the gist of some things.
I’m currently learning Kanji (although, i’m doing non japanese keyword style atm..though i’ll be done in 20 days or so) and was wondering how to approach sentences so finding your blog is a huge help, it’s good to read!
I have a few pre-made decks that I downloaded, specifically the smart fm core 2000 + 6000 with audio and images, are they worthwhile editing for the J-J stage, or is it that genki pretty much covers all of that anyway?
I figure i’ll hear plenty of audio via immersion to get the neccessary listening for my self inputted sentences. Did I just answer my own question? As a beginner it feels like anything with audio and text is gold..
Thanks for the comment. Congrats on almost finishing the kanji. It’ll feel great once you move on to the next step.
I’m not sure exactly what is in the core 2000 + 6000, but I’d assume the Genki books cover a good amount of it.
I’m always a little skeptical about using pre-made decks, so I’d be very careful if that is the route you want to take. At most though, I would only use it for the J-E. The audio sentences may be beneficial at that stage. But once you get to J-J, your immersion environment will provide more than enough audio for you.
Remember though the type of audio that is included in those sentences. Even though they are provided by Japanese speakers, they are textbook sentences read in a textbook way. Natural audio will always surpass textbook audio.
Anyway good luck! And keep me updated on your progress.
Just to clarify, should I be focusing on adding the meaning relevant to the sentence, as opposed to the multiple meanings/conjugations. So rather than add いる, i’d add いました います etc and わかりません: I don’t understand わかりません: I don’t know, each time?
I have been doing this, but I suppose it’s no different to having a english sentence with ‘was’ or whatever, i’m trying to focus on just adding words and it’s interesting reviewing them. When I experiemented with sentences before i’d often read it with a general meaning and understand it, but get the translation wrong..anyway thanks again.
Hey Neil,
Multiple meanings: Add a sentence for each meaning. Don’t get to carried away doing this in the E-J phase, because a lot of basic words have dozens of meaning, and at the beginning levels you don’t need to know all of them.
Conjugations: Add these as separate cards until you understand how to do the conjugation. Since they all follow patterns, once you understand the pattern, only bother with 1 card for the root word.
Cheers again, although i’ve got one more..
In Genki, should I be ignoring the questions and just adding from the dialogue/useful expressions? The only hiccups i’m getting is from adding stuff with new vocab from the question sections, I know you said to ignore those but did you mean even if they have new words/grammar etc? I can read some, find out what the words mean but have no idea what it means without notes. I’m currently on 230 cards on page 130.(Unless the new words thin out throughout the book I feel like i’d be over 1000 quite a bit) I’ll run out of beginner questions eventually
Yes, using the question examples as sentences is fine. As long as the question contains one word you don’t know. But try to avoid too many repeats of the same question structure.
For example, if there are 10 identical questions using the same question format, with only one vocabulary word changing, you might not want to include all those sentences. This is because it is important to get a good amount of grammar words in addition to vocabulary before you reach the 1000 mark.
You’ll definitely have 1000 cards before the end of Genki 2. If you still want to continue to add sentences from the book that are left, just make sure to add them in J-J. Take the Japanese sentence, don’t use the English definition in the book, but use the Japanese definition from a dictionary.
And don’t worry, you’re doing fine. You’ll pass the beginner phase in no time.
I’ve finally finished Genki I, It did start to feel like there was a lot of fluff near the end, paticularly with sentence patterns so even adding a new word didn’t seem too worth it as it was usually followed by です, though in general I did make sure to add the useful ones. Added about 450 sentences which is actually alot less than I thought. I didn’t skip much, but past the dialogue and grammar notes there wasn’t much worth adding. (maybe an example answer from the questions)
Some stuff was and still can be difficult to remember, but I think that can be fixed with some exposure, and in some ways I do feel like i’m memorizing the word before the Kanji rather than all at once, I don’t think I could write many words I know.. (Whether that’s related to the fact I only reached 1600 of Heisig i’m not sure..but I felt I had to move forward) Occasionally i’d forget the context of the sentence too since I didn’t put many notes, or have to wait til I reviewed the card with the details on it. In general I avoided english sentences though.
Stats are looking like this:
Correct Answers
Mature cards: 0.0% (0 of 0)
Young cards: 81.2% (914 of 1126)
First-seen cards: 76.6% (330 of 431)
I’m hoping Genki II kits me out to go straight to J-J stage, since at the moment I don’t seem to be seeing or hearing much of what i’ve learnt! But of course being in an early stage of reviewing, I probably don’t know many readings by heart yet.
(Just to note I feel a bit odd talking about this what with what’s happening in Japan, just in case I appear oblivious with going on about progress)
Congrats on finishing Genki I. That should feel pretty good. Don’t worry about the writing so much. That comes more naturally with constant exposure.
Your stats are looking good. Make sure you continually do the reviews of the kanji.
Genki II should probably give you enough sentences to hit the 1000 mark. If not, “An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese”, which is really Genki III with a different title, should finish it. Either way, if you hit 1000, I’d add the sentences from this 3rd book in J-J, which should really balance out your grammar.
You’re almost halfway through the beginner/elementary levels so keep up the hard work.
I was a bit taken aback at how much ‘harder’ genki II gets, the dialogue uses grammar that isn’t introduced til later.
Some things i’ve seen multiple times and i’m not sure what they mean..though maybe that is due to the english translation of the sentence getting further away from what it actually means, thus making it harder to look up those grammar points tacked on the end of verbs or sentences.
I skipped adding dialogue for a while because it was a bit dry, but I realised that missing the vocab and extra hints of grammar which really seem needed in this since it moves so fast!
It’s defintely easier to get bogged down in minor details.
Almost up to 700 now,probably at least half way through (ignoring the questions + writing practice at the end) and am trying to add regardless of full understanding of some things.
Mature cards: 90.8% (109 of 120)
Young cards: 80.0% (2361 of 2953)
First-seen cards: 82.8% (545 of 658)
At least with building some framework, I can see why people would see SRS methods offputting if those figures are anything to go by, Japanese media is still feels out of reach except for those few simple sentences! (but it’s much easier to guess what something means)
I have a question regarding what you said as to not using too many sentences that use the same structure. I lived in Japan and went to a language school there and got up to an intermediate level or so before coming home. I’ve been looking for methods to help me in learning and so far the AJATT method seems amazing. There is one thing that concerns me about this method, but I seem unable to find an answer on. (YOUR site is SO awesome for actually breaking things down and explaining things!!!)
Ok what I want to know, for example, is that if we aren’t suppose to take sentences that are similar or explains the grammar, how would you fully understand the grammar without making mistakes. Below is an example.
Here is a simple sentence, and let’s pretend we’ve pulled it from a website or book.
私はどんなに暑くても、寝るときはクーラーを消して寝ます。
So the specific grammar point I’ll use for this example is the 暑くても.
So we know that in THIS sentence that because it’s the adjective 暑い we take off the い turn it to く and add ても.
BUT had we only taken this sentence, we wouldn’t know that the conjugation is different for nouns, -na adjectives, and verbs.
So then people may end up saying something weird like “犬ても” or あそぶても instead of 犬でも、or 遊んでも. (I know those don’t make sense in the above sentence but I’m just making a point)
So I’m really curious about how a person would avoid mistakes like that with only copying sentences from random places that do not explain grammar fully? Is it because having 12,000+ sentences would likely make it so that will eventually covered each conjugation?
I appreciate any input you have. If I can find a way to get around grammar and make learning Japanese fun I’d try anything! HELP! lol
Good question.
Your example sentence:
私はどんなに暑くても、寝るときはクーラーを消して寝ます。
You won’t fully understand the full grammar immediately, you’ll learn only one part of it from this sentence. As your sentences and listening time increase, you will learn the other parts of it naturally.
Since your speaking and writing come from your listening and reading, mistakes are kept low since you will have never read or heard “犬ても” or あそぶても. Grammar is always in every source you use, so just being exposed to constant materials (whether in your SRS, or through TV/movies, etc) you will figure out the patterns naturally.
You don’t need to get to 12,000 sentences to be able to cover everything. Remember, just because it isn’t in your SRS, doesn’t mean you don’t know it.
And I’m glad this site is helping you out. これからも勉強を頑張ってください！
Hey man, this is a great read as I am in this phase now.
I guess my question to you is, is any media alright with putting into Anki? I know I should have a variety of resources but for now I am using 双葉ちゃん(2chan), watching shows such as アメトーク and also finding sentences from my Japanese friends 日記 (from mixi).
Do you recommend any other types of sources?
Thanks
My main recommendation for the first 1000 sentences is usually the first 2 genki books + integrated guide to intermediate Japanese, just because it gives you a wide range of the important words/grammar that you need to know to build off on. There is nothing wrong with putting in sentences from other sources such as variety shows, mixi, or 2chan, but just make sure that you aren’t putting in things that are too specialized just yet.
For example, if you add 100 sentences about a topic on アメトーク about Ramen, it is giving you an unbalanced 1000 J-E sentences. Once you get past the 1000, you can add anything and everything you want, but those first 1000 are important to how your progress will be when you switch to J-J.
Good luck!
Sweet, thanks man.
I don’t have the Genki books, but I do have Minna no Nihongo so I will just use that.
Thank you very much for your site – simply great stuff!
I heard about the sentence method before at – of course – AJATT, but never really figured out where and how to start. Your explanation make some things quite clear at last. Just one question about what kind of sentences to add: E.g. if I today would start to enter sentences, and every sentence should contain just one unknown word, wouldn’t I have to stop at sentence number two? Because just having successfully added it doesn’t mean I really know it. I have to do my SRS to learn it before I may add new stuff? I am getting something wrong for sure. Would be happy if you could explain that a little further.
Thank you very much in advance!
Deja
You can add sentences in blocks of 10, 20, 30, or whatever. So yes, technically while you are adding sentences, you haven’t yet reviewed those sentences so you don’t “know” them yet. Just review them later and alternate back and forth between adding and reviewing. The process will work itself out.
Oh, I see! So I guess I will just start and see how everything works. Thank you for your reply – and again: Great Site! Very helpful!
I’m currently using “Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar” to start with since it’s packed with sentences.. Do you have any recommendations of what book I could jump to afterward? (I’m not sure if it covers the grammar in Genki 2).
Would this and Taekim’s guide be enough before starting J-J?
Tae kim’s guide is good. The other book I recommend is the integrated guide to intermediate Japanese.
Thanks!
Hey Adshap, quick question. Is it necessary to finish Heisig before you begin adding sentences? The reason I ask is because Heisig reviews are…well, extremely boring, and it would be nice to start reviewing sentences. At the same time though, I’d rather not get too far ahead of myself. What do you suggest?
No you definitely don’t have to wait till you are finished. I always encourage people to do it together because the one thing you want to avoid is burnout. Make sure that finishing Heisig is your priority, but add sentences as well. Good luck!
Thanks so much! Can’t wait to get started
One more question- should my sentences be in the same deck as my kanji? Or should they be kept in separate decks? (Does it really matter?)
Either way is fine, but I think it is more convenient to have them in one deck. I started off as separate when I first started but merged them together.
Hi. I have just rediscovered this site as I found it at school last year but only just found it again.
I am taking maths and japanese at uni, and we are using the genki books in the first year. I am doing rembering the kanji using the kendo lazy kanji mod as it has kept me doing kanji compared the basic method. I am only up to about 500 kanji but I have a question about the j-e sentences.
Before finding this site I started mining genki up to lesson 7. However I was using japanese sentences in the definition and was doing the sentences like this: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/chinese-project-notes-8-ch-ch-changes-stuff-that-applies-to-japanese-too. And I also had the English translation in it and was finding kanji for every word that had kanji, even if it was rarely used. I hadn’t started reviewing them but I have managed to get 600 sentences already.
Now i found this articles again, I have realised that i should only do 1000 j-e sentences. However the problem is this. In class and for weekly tests, we use the vocab the is in the vocab lists. Also when I entered sentences, I also found the kanji for everyting available if it had a kanji.
I want to restart mining from genki again but I need to know the vocab aswell without making too many sentences.
Should I create sentences from the vocab lists even if there aren’t example sentences in the genki textbooks? Also, which sections should I mine from and which should I avoid so I don’t make too many j-e sentences?
Hope that made sense.
thanks
Yes, you should create sentences even if they don’t give sample ones. You can find sample ones either by using Yahoo dictionary, using a website like 知恵袋, or like someone previously suggested in a comment, using Tweets. As to which sections you mine from, this is really your personal choice. Remember, you are trying to use the 1000 J-E sentences to give you enough variety in grammar and vocabulary to get you ready for J-J.
So i should create cards from the vocab and verbs in genki lists but use the sentences from a dictionary? What about verb conjugations and their different forms? should i just do the same thing as with other j-e sentences?
Thanks
If only universies knew about anki and this method.
Sorry for continously asking questions, but how exactly should my setup be for the first 1000 English-Japanese sentences?
Should the question be the Japanese sentence (with Kanji?) and the answer the Englisch sentence or the other way around?
Thanks in advance.
I have now started taking sentences from Genki1, using the Japanese sentence as question and English as the answer.
Seemed to make sense to me, as what we are trying to achieve is to be able to understand spoken and written Japanese.
60 sentences in the first session, I will reach 1000 in no time.
Correct. The question should be the Japanese sentence with Kanji and the answer the English definitions (and/or English sentence if need be).
I needed some time to believe it myself but this method really makes a lot more sense than translating English (or any given language) into Japanese.
For once, it is good to develop a feeling and view for certain word- or particle connections and I realized I was still “thinking in English” instead of Japanese when doing it the other way around.
Also, as you said, it is way more efficient and satisfying to study complete sentences instead of just vocabularies.
Dear adshap,
I started setting up the deck, the questions containing Kanji. The reviewing however got frustrating very soon, do you really think it is possible to recognize a certain Kanji as, say, “library” just by seeing it in Anki when doing the reviews?
Give it some time. Anki is a very powerful tool that just takes a little time getting used to. Anki is to be used in conjunction with all other immersion materials (books, media, etc), so when you see the kanji for library in Anki a few times, and then you see it in a book, and on a website, and a on a TV show it will be imprinted in your brain.
Adshap,
Thank you for putting such a great resource together.
I’m on Day 1 of using Anki and I have a few noob questions about getting started/the daily process.
I believe you recommended doing 20 kanji and 10 sentences per day.
I’ve downloaded your RTK1 deck. I just went through the RTK 1 paperback book and reviewed the first 20 kanji. Then I added my first 10 sentences from Genki 1 to your Anki deck.
I hit ‘Review.’ I go through the first 20 kanji characters, and now I’m looking at kanji #21 that I haven’t studied yet from RTK.
I’m stuck — how can I review the 10 sentences I added? And am I following the process correctly? Do I need to edit any settings in Anki to tell it how many new cards I’d like to view each day in order to hit your 20 kanji / 10 sentences per day mark?
Thanks again for your help.
Anki doesn’t currently support multiple new card queues within one deck (it will in 2.0 but that isn’t quite even in beta yet.) There are various possible workarounds; including:
・Use separate decks for kanji and sentences.
・Set selective study to only show new cards that are tagged “for-review” (or some tag you prefer) and then at the beginning or end of each day open up the browser and add the tag to 10 sentences and 20 kanji.
The advantage of the first is that it is less work and you have the option of working completely within ankiweb or ankimobile. The advantage of the second is you get the slightly more interesting review experience of having your cards mixed.
Either use any of the methods カイエン provides above, or just go through all the kanji first and then hit the sentences. But since you asked the question, you probably want variety. Unfortunately since you are adding the sentences after the kanji it is making you do the cards that were entered first (the kanji). If you decide to do separate decks while you are finishing up the kanji, I highly recommend that you merge them together once you are finished with the first round of kanji reviews.
I’m not yet at the point of really making use of your advice (yet on the early stages of learning the kanji), but there’s something that caught my eye: your “how do I do the physical reviews” images suggest you have a furigana effect going on for the readings. Is this the case? And if so would you mind explaining how to implement it?
Yes correct, the reading section automatically generates furigana instead of having to manually type this out. Please check out http://ankisrs.net/docs/JapaneseSupport.html and download the plugin.
Is it okay to use the Japanese Core 2000/6000 for sentences…? They come with audio on ANKI, and so far are very understandable to me, as a uber!beginner. Entering in cards in ANKI is really time consuming. >_<
I don’t know whether you should use those sentences or not. But I do have some thoughts that might make the alternative more appealing:
The Google TTS mass mp3 generator plugin makes it easy to get audio on any card. I really like this.
If you use an online source like Tae Kim’s grammar guide you can copy and paste, which is pretty fast.
Remember that the amount of time spent entering anything is less than the amount of time you’re going to spend reviewing it so time entering good sentences is worthwhile.
If you do decide to use the pre-made deck, you can make it better by selecting the most useful sentences from it and deleting the others, and if the answer side is a translation you can rewrite it to have the format this post describes.
I have mixed feelings on pre-made sentence decks. I’ll be writing more on this topic soon.
I don’t quite understand what sentences to choose from. I actually have Genki 1 and 2. Your example with “Teacher is beautiful -> Japan is beautiful” is simple enough but I think it could be rather difficult to find sentences that build upon each other in Genki 1.
Furthermore, say if I to entered sentences in my Anki deck and I did the reviews of them. Now, if I don’t understand a sentence or mess up the pronunciation of a kanji in it, wouldn’t I be ill-equipped when doing the next card since I was unable to did the one before it in the first place?
The sentences of course won’t build on each other quite simply as that. However, for the most part Genki sentences build on each other chapter by chapter, so it is set up very nicely for input into your Anki deck. Take every example sentence from the book that has something new in it to you (grammar or vocab). The 2 books combined should be enough to get your 1000 sentences.
If you don’t understand a sentence or mess up a pronunciation, the card will be repeated again soon, so it will balance out with the sentences that are connected to it afterwards.
I’m not sure whether this is what you’re asking or not… but to avoid something like this I put definitions on the answer side for every word that is new at the time that I make the card rather than just those words that will be new when I review it. The idea is that I want the answer side to contain everything I might possibly need to be able to understand the sentence. So I would define both 日本 and 綺麗 on the 日本は綺麗 card even though 綺麗 was on a card before that. If I ever look at the answer side and still don’t understand, I add what I need to (usually this means searching for the word in my deck to find the card that introduced it and copying and pasting.)
Partly this is fine because when I’m completely confident of my understanding (usually I am after the first few reviews; I fail the kanji readings often enough that I never get to the point of forgetting the meanings) I don’t bother to read the answer side, so this isn’t adding much reading overhead. I started doing this so that I was minimizing reading of English even in the J-E phase but it seems to work pretty well.
So I was following the quest walkthrough (I already know 800+/- kanjis from RTK1 and some basic grammars), but now I have some problems:
It’s necessary to read the books to learn some kanji-grammatics before adding E~J sentences? (or you learn as reviewing O_o)
So far I’ve only learned the very basics with kanas, so I have problems using kanji for the sentences. Probably I’m in level 5, so I have no very clear that part. I was thinking of reading the books just to learn the vocabulary and grammars, and add the new things with kanas.
Saludos from méxico ñ_ñ
You learn the kanji at the same time while using a beginner textbook like the Genki series. You take the sentences directly from the beginner textbook and add them to anki which will teach you grammar and kanji readings at the same time.
Good luck!
You are more or less where I was a month or so ago, so here is my advice, with the caveat that I’m not that much more advanced than you are:
Try to add sentences with as many kanji as you can. Do note that in the beginning stages Genki uses less kanji than normal native text would, so you should try to replace the kana by the corresponding kanji if you can. The resource I use for this is http://www.nihongodict.com/ (more explicitly: if there is a string of kana in a sentence I suspect might correspond to kanji, I just input it into nihongodict to check if so, and if the meaning is right). You don’t need to obsess about getting every single one possible, but try to get as many as you can.
This will have a few effects: allow you to start linking readings with the kanji; make the next more natural, and even make it simply more readable, as the lack of spaces makes Japanese very hard to read without the Kanji.
Also, if your worry is that using kanji means you will fail the cards more often at the beginning, DON”T BE. Yes, having kanji you are not used too will make you fail more, but you will actually also learn more.
Finally with all that said, your main focus should still be finishing Heisig: having a few sentences to review is good for variety and for doing some work that feels more related to the actual language, but sentences themselves are much more satisfying as you start being able to recognize the kanji you see in them.
How would we put grammar and the different forms and conjugations of the verbs into the flashcards?
Until you learn the patterns, each conjugation can be its own card. For example, りんごを食べました and バナナを食べる could be 2 separate cards where the only words you don’t know are 食べました and 食べる. Grammar is added like any other card. If you don’t know に yet, have a different sentence example for every different use of に。The Yahoo dictionary usually does a great job with these examples for J-J.
Thanks for the reply. That’s fine for the beginning part, but what about later on when there are lots of different grammar like てもいい、のほうが、ないで、－しようと思っています。。etc. do you explain the grammar in the flashcards, or not because its not vocab?
Sorry if that doesn’t make any sense. I’m just unsure about what to put in the cards.
Explain the grammar in the anki cards. Treat each card with the goal of defining one item you don’t know, whether a grammar item or a vocabulary item (or something else such as Japanese names, cities, etc.)
Thanks for the reply。I’m nearly finished with genki 2 at uni, but am now going through it all again with your method, and this really clears things up. I think explaining the grammar for genki 2 would be useful for flashcards.
Thanks so much. Hopefully I will be able to finish adding an integrated approach to intermediate Japanese before the summer.
It’s unbelievable how good this site it. Good job adshap
Queeestion.
The Core2k deck has been brought up here a few times – before I found this site I’d already started getting through this deck and I’m at a bit over 700 cards now + I’m also adding sentences from Tae Kim’s. The Core sentences are fine for learning vocab, I guess, but they don’t get all that advanced in grammar, as far as I can tell, yet it’d feel kind of like a waste if I stopped now. My question is – do you think it’d be beneficial to get one of the textbooks you mentioned (perhaps not Genki I, but Genki II or the Intermediate Japanese one) and add sentences from it, or just dive into J-J after finishing Core2k and Tae Kim’s?
I know that Tae Kim’s guide gives a very good coverage of grammar, but I’ve never gone through the Core2k. I think it depends on whether you think you have gotten a somewhat good understanding of grammar after completing the two (which should usually be obtained at the 1000 J-E sentence mark).