I've been studying Japanese for a few years now, progress is slow but steady. Main thing is I still enjoy it as a hobby. But I can't shake the feeling my Anki setup is terrible, and possibly been wasting my time for a long time.
I have 2 decks. One for vocabulary, where I add a card whenever I see a word I've never seen and want to learn. I have this set to show me 5 new cards a day (I'm a Dad with a busy job I think this is what I can handle).
The other deck is for verbs. Where I'm given a word, a verb, and the other side is a few different conjugations. Not sure how valuable this deck is for actually remembering/using verbs, but my on-the-fly conjugation skills have massively improved.
I feel like I don't actually remember anything from anki. It just doesn't feel useful. There are some that stick, but I feel that once I take a word or verb out of context, it becomes meaningless. I may remember the word, but it just sits in isolation in my brain, only to be used again when it next pops up in anki – where I'll probably get it wrong again anyway.
I see people using 5k/10k decks etc, and it's popularity has me intrigued. How does this work, learning so many words out of context? Maybe my issue is I'm mining the 'wrong' words that aren't common etc.
Does anyone have any article links to explain how best to use anki and what decks to use? Is there a better way to mine words? If you're using a 5k deck for example, what do you do with words that pop up in the wild? What are the best decks?
Sorry my thoughts aren't clear. I just know it's not working, but don't know why. Thanks for your help 🙂
by Emotional-Ant-5724
1 comment
Im only 1 year in japanese but one thing i can tell you that the 2/6k deck helped me alot with remembering words. i tried doing my own cards but i couldn’t remember them like the 2/6k deck cards. sometimes some words pop up that i cant remember and what i do is creating a short sentence with that word with chatgpt and reading it loud.