Jisho.org Forum

I do find myself looking up words more than once so if this was easy to implement I'd love to see it too (though I guess it'd be a real pain given than the user credentials are only valid on the forum - the whole jisho would need to be hooked into it which could be time consuming).

I guess the other alternative would be the old fashioned way of keeping a list yourself ;)

Yup, that would be convenient. Now I have to use multiple dictionaries.
WaKan (http://wakan.manga.cz/) has that feature, and tangorin.com too.

Yes, that is a good idea and something I could see adding in the future.

What would make this idea even better were if it was possible to somehow link dictionary words to Anki (http://ichi2.net/anki/), so you could add words from jisho.org to your anki wordlist with a single klick. Yeah. It's probably wishfull thinking, but it would be a feature that would be so magnificent that it would possibly tear apart the very fabric that holds this world together.

Putting standalone words in Anki isn't a good idea anyway, it's much better to learn vocabulary from sentences since they give a proper context and information on how the word is used.

Posted By: Tobberoth

[p]Putting standalone words in Anki isn't a good idea anyway, it's much better to learn vocabulary from sentences since they give a proper context and information on how the word is used.[/p]

While learning sentences will give you a strong grip of grammar and usage, I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say you should never learn standalone words. If you want to learn the words for, eg, ten vegetables or twenty animals it's hardly necessary to try to find a sentence for each one. At a higher level, you can learn a lot from sentences about how words are used, but a learner might equally feel that his/her time is better spent reading extensively, rather than typing in an endless number of sentences into Anki.

In my experience of learning Japanese, memorising sentences was most successful when picking up the basic grammatical structures (in Minna no Nihongo), and somewhat less successful when cramming structures before my JLPT Level 1, because there were simply so many to learn (still, I passed anyway). However, I spent much more time learning vocabulary items and kanji largely out of context, then working out the meaning from context when I saw them in sentences.

If you want to learn vocabulary only from sentences, that might be the most successful way for you, but don't assume it's the way everybody learns best.

I'll have to chime in with Richard here. I really prefer to learn from sentances but finding the sentance and confirming that it is correct takes about 100x as much time as just adding the word I want to learn. The problem is also that it's easy to get bogged down by the sentances because chances are that they introduce to many unfamiliar kanji.

Btw, if someone happens to have an anki file with a shitload of example sentances, please send it my way. :D

Posted By: Joel

[p]I'll have to chime in with Richard here. I really prefer to learn from sentances but finding the sentance and confirming that it is correct takes about 100x as much time as just adding the word I want to learn. The problem is also that it's easy to get bogged down by the sentances because chances are that they introduce to many unfamiliar kanji.[/p][p]Btw, if someone happens to have an anki file with a shitload of example sentances, please send it my way. :D[/p]

If you own a good dictionary, that's usually crammed with great example sentences, just look up the word you want to learn and copy the sentences from there (Tanaka Corpus on this site does not apply though).

Personally, while I agree that it might take slightly longer to find good example sentences which introduce nothing new but the word, I also find it MUCH easier to remember a sentence than a single word. A word is just a sound with a semantic, a sentence is a whole context so it creates more associations in your brain. If I needed to learn 20 animals, I would probably find 20 example sentences, it would be a perfect situation to learn some new grammar. Some animal sentences with this grammar structure, some with this... perfect.

As for unfamiliar kanji, going though all of Heisigs Remembering the kanji makes sure you almost never stumble upon kanji you do not know. I've learned 1290 kanji in about 2 months and I can usually read a whole wikipedia article without a single unknown kanji popping up, I expect to recognize all Jouyou kanji before January.

As for Richards experience, I couldn't agree less. Minna no nihongo has very easy grammar, all you had to do was learn the rules and use them. As for JLPT2/JLPT1 structures and vocab, sentences are priceless. I simply copy all the example sentences from my kanzen master book and learn the grammar structures from exposure much faster than having to review the rules and exceptions constantly.

Well, perhaps I'm coming at things from a different angle because I've hardly used Anki much, but I certainly learnt a lot of basic Japanese vocabulary just from looking at vocabulary lists in, for example, Minna no Nihongo. If someone can learn the words much more quickly without a sentence, then why not save new grammar structures till later. Knowing a lot of vocabulary will help communication a lot more than knowing a lot of grammar. Of course, both would be nice but I'd say it's more important to learn a lot of vocabulary as quickly as possible, and if you could add words directly from Jisho to Anki, but not sentences, I think a lot of people would find it useful for learning early vocabulary. Please note I'm not saying that it's not necessary to know any grammar.

As for sentences, well, I have learnt from sentences, but not by systematically memorising them. If we're talking about context, I prefer to learn from reading paragraphs in essays, newspaper articles or novels, where my mind is engaged, rather than a string of disassociated sentences. Well, you say you read Wikipedia articles yourself, so I'm sure you can see the value. The other advantage of this is seeing words several times in several different contexts, which also helps to see how commonly different structures are used.

I'm sorry to disagree, but your original statement seemed rather sweeping. I think people learn languages in different ways, and what may work for you may not work for someone else and vice versa. For example you find it much easier to remember a sentence than a single word, but I find it much easier to learn a single word (if it's something simple I can visualise, like an animal) than a sentence.

As for Minna no Nihongo sentences perhaps it's debatable whether I was memorising a sentence or learning grammar rules when I memorised things like 'taishikan ni ikanakereba narimasen'* (I have to go to the embassy), but I was thinking of it as memorising sentences.
* or something similar

The difference in using sentences in Anki and reading paragraphs etc is that reading paragraphs is temporary. You read the paragraph once, the words you learn will probably not be remembered for long unless you read ridicoulus amounts of the same material. Sentences in Anki are constant since they are repeated when the brain needs to review the information. If you have one example sentence with a word in Anki, the word is learned and will stay learned as long as you keep using Anki. Since you learned it in a sentence, it's also very easy to transfer it to active knowlege and use in conversations. I mean, the whole thingy that i've learned over 1250 kanji in 2 months pretty much proves for me that SRS is a LOT more effective than simply reading and revieweing whenever one feels like it. As for different people learning differently, I doubt that, the brain isn't that different between humans and memory works pretty much the same in all human beings. Now, people might prefer different methods and that is of course very understandable and a big factor, but I'm quite sure than one technique, if used properly, can be a lot more efficient than another, considering all the science on the subject. Then again, if you don't like practicing a technique, there's no way it's ever going to become effective since you won't be in the mood for learning when using it.

You say it's faster to learn words from a vocabulary list than learning sentences, I don't really think so. You're supposed to use sentences where you understand the sentence except for that one word, so you spend just as long learning that one word... though I of course agree that reviewing a sentence takes a few hundreds of a second longer than reviewing one word. It takes a bit longer to find the sentences of course, but when you use a sentence method you usually don't look for sentences of words you want to know, you look for words of sentences you want to know.

Instead of deciding "I want to learn 20 animals", I read a book on animals and pick interesting sentences where I don't understand a word or two/don't recognize the grammar, so instead of just learning the animal names, I learn the whole deal: How to speak and write about animals in Japanese.

I realize that it's two completely different ways to looking at your studies, but personally I really don't think it's very useful to study vocabulary lists in such a sense, learning 20 animal names just like that seems more like Trivial Persuit knowledge than learning a language.

My post is a mixture of my own personal beliefs, my personal opinion and some "facts" from various studies and theories on learning. I hope my opinions/beliefs don't come of as "facts" too often because of this mixture.

Tobberoth, seeing how you have spent some time in Japan and already been in the situation I am in now, how do you suggest i approach picking up new words and learning to use them in actual conversations?

I recently started studying in Kyoto at a language school, and I was placed at the lower intermediate level. I got most of the basic grammar down, but at the moment I only really consider myself at intermediate level when it comes to reading and listening. When it comes to writing and talking i'm a freaking trainwreck (to be honest the rest of the class is just as bad, if not worse), and this is something that i really, really need to work more with.

However, we're constantly being bombarded with new grammar and words (for me it's probably around 1000 new words in a four week period (i've only been in japan for that long)). Obviously I can't bother to learn all those words at once, and i've pretty much come to understand that over the past few days. I actually wasted a whole saturday evening setting up a list with several hundred new words (which I think I'll never have time to go through). I'm starting to think that I maybe should ignore words that are used infrequently and instead build a list with more common words and words that are associated with the kanji we are supposed to learn. Another problem is practicing grammar, I'm starting to think that I should start taking out sample sentances for that reason alone, because I've actually had no time at all to practice grammar outside the classroom.

My study technique is a complete trainwreck and allthough I've been doing fine on the tests so far I still feel like I'm building this brickhouse that will crumble under it's own weight, since I got such a big pile of words, grammar and what not that I need to go over and learn to use in real-life and not just be able to read and understand.

I don't actually think there is much academic consensus on how people learn second languages, and I think research into what works and what doesn't is still at a relatively early stage. I'm not an expert, and what I have read is more about how people learn English rather than Japanese (I used to be an EFL teacher) but the lack of consensus was/is pretty clear in my opinion.

One of the key points for me is that there are lots of different shades of knowing a word including 'knowing that you've seen it before', 'knowing it in one particular context', 'knowing it if you hear it said aloud, but not written down', 'knowing it if given a couple of seconds to rack your brains', 'being able to understand it, but not to produce it' and so on. I 'know' a lot of words now, but how well I know them varies widely. By reading I consolidate my knowledge of all the words I 'know' and also see them in new contexts, and occasionally add new words to my vocabulary.

I wouldn't recommend learning from vocabulary lists much beyond elementary level, but at that stage it's a perfectly valid method of learning. I never make lists myself, but if I have one in a book, it's good to learn from. The ones in Minna no Nihongo were all associated with conversations or texts as I remember, so I wasn't learning them completely in isolation (I didn't systematically sit down and study them either, just looking at them from time to time). However, I think picture dictionaries (or pictures of any kind) are a great way to learn elementary vocabulary, because for many people pictures are more memorable than words, and the connection is much stronger. Just because you understand a sentence doesn't mean it's easy to remember.

I think learning from sentences using Anki is a good method, by the way, and I'd recommend it to people happily, but I think there are other good methods too. I was wondering, though. As far as I remember Kanzen Master doesn't have English translations.

I guess it's clear that was an answer to Tobberoth's last post.

Posted By: Joel

[p]Tobberoth, seeing how you have spent some time in Japan and already been in the situation I am in now, how do you suggest i approach picking up new words and learning to use them in actual conversations?[/p][p]I recently started studying in Kyoto at a language school, and I was placed at the lower intermediate level. I got most of the basic grammar down, but at the moment I only really consider myself at intermediate level when it comes to reading and listening. When it comes to writing and talking i'm a freaking trainwreck (to be honest the rest of the class is just as bad, if not worse), and this is something that i really, really need to work more with.[/p][p]However, we're constantly being bombarded with new grammar and words (for me it's probably around 1000 new words in a four week period (i've only been in japan for that long)). Obviously I can't bother to learn all those words at once, and i've pretty much come to understand that over the past few days. I actually wasted a whole saturday evening setting up a list with several hundred new words (which I think I'll never have time to go through). I'm starting to think that I maybe should ignore words that are used infrequently and instead build a list with more common words and words that are associated with the kanji we are supposed to learn. Another problem is practicing grammar, I'm starting to think that I should start taking out sample sentances for that reason alone, because I've actually had no time at all to practice grammar outside the classroom.[/p][p]My study technique is a complete trainwreck and allthough I've been doing fine on the tests so far I still feel like I'm building this brickhouse that will crumble under it's own weight, since I got such a big pile of words, grammar and what not that I need to go over and learn to use in real-life and not just be able to read and understand.[/p]

Anki studies like the ones I'm mentioning are far better for people who are self-studying than people who are attending a language school (Especially a Japanese one since the tempo is often really high). My SRS studies is something I started after returning from Japan.

However, I believe you are on the right track, the main thing you have to do is realize that there's no way you can learn 1000 new words in a month no matter how you try. You have to decide what is important to know AND be able to use, what is important to regonize, and what can simply be forgotten (and learned later when you have the time). I'd say the best idea for you is to check the sentences you learn during the lessons, what is the teacher saying when she's introducing new words and grammar? What sentences are used in your textbook? Learn those, they already contain all the most important words. Read them and be sure you understand what's going on in them. Try to change them slightly, see how that sounds. Read them out loud, both for remembering and for pronounciations.

When living in Japan, you simply have to leave some stuff to context and immersion, you can't activly study everything they teach you (which is why I was so horrible at kanji even after passing JLPT2, I didn't have the time to reinforce everything I learned). My main recommendation above all: Get Japanese friends and speak ONLY Japanese with them. Do NOT fall back on English, stay with Japanese at all times. Try to slowly insert new grammar into your active memory by using it. If you just learned "nakereba narimasen", try using the phrase from time to time in conversation, there's no better way to make grammar and vocabulary stick than to use it.

Posted By: Richard

[p]I don't actually think there is much academic consensus on how people learn second languages, and I think research into what works and what doesn't is still at a relatively early stage. I'm not an expert, and what I have read is more about how people learn English rather than Japanese (I used to be an EFL teacher) but the lack of consensus was/is pretty clear in my opinion.[/p][p]One of the key points for me is that there are lots of different shades of knowing a word including 'knowing that you've seen it before', 'knowing it in one particular context', 'knowing it if you hear it said aloud, but not written down', 'knowing it if given a couple of seconds to rack your brains', 'being able to understand it, but not to produce it' and so on. I 'know' a lot of words now, but how well I know them varies widely. By reading I consolidate my knowledge of all the words I 'know' and also see them in new contexts, and occasionally add new words to my vocabulary.[/p][p]I wouldn't recommend learning from vocabulary lists much beyond elementary level, but at that stage it's a perfectly valid method of learning. I never make lists myself, but if I have one in a book, it's good to learn from. The ones in Minna no Nihongo were all associated with conversations or texts as I remember, so I wasn't learning them completely in isolation (I didn't systematically sit down and study them either, just looking at them from time to time). However, I think picture dictionaries (or pictures of any kind) are a great way to learn elementary vocabulary, because for many people pictures are more memorable than words, and the connection is much stronger. Just because you understand a sentence doesn't mean it's easy to remember.[/p][p]I think learning from sentences using Anki is a good method, by the way, and I'd recommend it to people happily, but I think there are other good methods too. I was wondering, though. As far as I remember Kanzen Master doesn't have English translations.[/p]

Indeed, this post I can very much agree with. When you don't have enough knowledge go understand full sentences, you have no choice but to learn words in isolation, but what I'm trying to say is that as soon as possible, one should try to add context since it adds so much to the learning process. You learn the word, you learn how it's used, you learn the variations better AND you learn the rest of the sentence as well. You get stronger associations. Using pictures when studying in isolation is great, visual memory is extremely powerful (visual memory is the main component of the Heisig method btw).

As for reinforing words you already know by reading texts, of course. But this is where Anki comes in when you do the sentence method, Anki is basically making you read just the stuff you need to read to reinforce, those words you need to know a bit better. You're selecting the sentences with stuff you don't know 100%, and Anki shows it to you when your brain is starting to forget it. Instead of having to read a full paragraph to reinforce a word or two, every sentence you get in Anki reinforces something you activly decided you need to know better. Of course, the point of the sentence method isn't to memorize sentences, that would be useless knowledge. All it is doing is making sure is that you're exposed to it enough for the meaning etc to stick. If you ever come to see one of the words of that sentence in a paragraph on wikipedia or something, you won't remember that sentence in Anki, but you will remember the word, how it's used and what it means.

I use other methods as well, but I think that everything you CAN put into SRS and everything you have enough to time to be exposed to should be learned that way. If you have 2 days to learn 10 words, SRS isn't good since the learning takes place over a week or two. As for Kanzen master, you are right that there is no English, at all. That's a good thing, when you're at the point of using 2kyuu or 1kyuu books, you shouldn't need English anymore. I personally get sentences from Kanzen master and look up the words I don't know in 国語辞書 like Sanseido or yahoo dictionarys 大辞林. Kanzen master explains the basics of how that grammar pattern works... when you have 3-4 example sentences and you understand all the words in them, with enough exposure you'll be able to use the grammar pattern in no-time.

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.

I also have some fill-in-the-blanks exercises using sentences from EDICT. At the moment I haven't converted them to Anki decks, but they are parked at my page at www.quizlet.com and anyone who's interested can do a search there for 'missed words 一級' or 'missed words　1級' . I'll try to convert them to Anki decks and upload them in the near future, and once I do I'll try to leave a notice here.

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