We all have our proud Anki review stories. I once sat down with 1200 cards, and didn’t move for half a day until I finished every last one of them. You smile with victory, and it becomes one of your memorable battle stories. From there on you go back to your typical hard Anki study of an hour or two a day. You sit down with … Continue reading →
Flash cards. Building your “stack.” You probably have big numbers in mind. But how many flash cards do you want to study? How many do you actually need? No one studies Japanese to have a large deck of cards. It’s a byproduct of working hard. However, one day everyone eventually gets around to asking themselves: “When is enough?” “When can I stop counting?” “When can … Continue reading →
You thought you learned a card well. You did. But when it comes up in a review, things start to unravel. You didn’t just forget one thing; you forgot three. Now, on this ordinary review, you are refreshing yourself on 3 parts of a card. This takes time and builds up frustration. All for just one card. But at least when you finish it and … Continue reading →
What is the most powerful number in learning Japanese? 0. Zero is the number you see when you’ve finished your flash card reviews for the day. The number that says to you “you’ve kicked ass today and are on track for fluency.” In the beginning, 0 is simple. You start at zero. First you add new cards. Then you have those cards to review. You … Continue reading →
You see a flash card and the timer begins. How long till victory and on to the next battle?You have 2 main decisions to make on every card: 1) Do you understand it and 2) How much time will you devote to it? The latter can be stressful because of the J-bragger: “I became fluent in 3 months without any formal studying in just 10 minutes … Continue reading →
I set a high bar here when you learn Japanese through the Jalup decks. I don’t give you the full meaning of sentences like every other Japanese learning resource does. I tell you to understand, not to translate. Well what does that mean? Aren’t they the same thing? How can you understand it without translating it first? The word “understand” is normally straightforward in most … Continue reading →
I think flash cards get a bad name. They stir up images of the old days of writing on two sides of a physical piece of paper, with vocabulary on one side, and the meaning on the other. To prepare for a test you would summon a horde of flash cards. Because of this history, when you see something like we do here by teaching Japanese solely through flash cards, … Continue reading →
Anki. We talk about it a lot here. Many people use it and swear by it. I think it’s time it gets the proper introduction it deserves. Where to begin… Anki is a popular flash card application developed in 2006. Anki comes from the Japanese word 暗記 (あんき), meaning “memorization.” The app has significantly changed over the years, but at its core, it is an SRS … Continue reading →
