Let me get right to the point. I struggle to learn premade Japanese vocab decks with Anki. I would do about 5 cards a day but after about 2 months of daily Anki use, I just could not handle the 150-200~ reviews every day. My brain could just not memorize any vocab.
Some vocab stuck better than others. But words just did not stick if I didn’t have any practice with them in sentences. Even though there were sentences built into these decks. After a time of not seeing a word for a day or two, I would just forget.
I feel like my IQ is too low to learn/memorize mass vocab compared to some of you amazing people who post about in this subreddit how you learned 2000+ vocab in a few months. I really want to try to learn Japanese again. The closest thing that I found that works best for me is reading Genki and making Anki decks for each individual chapter aka doing vocab in bite-sized chunks. I saw that vocab stuck better and getting through Genki was a lot easier.
I don’t know if this is a good approach when comparing my method to other people’s “golden” method of using tae kim, studying huge premade vocab Anki decks, and doing lots of immersion.
Am I just doing something wrong or am I just not as intelligent as others?
I really want to try again and am willing to learn, even if I may take slower than others.
Hopefully, this post makes sense. Haha, I tried my best.
15 comments
This might not sound right for your post but have you considered a different way of learning instead of anki?
Some people learn through reading and searching the Kanji in a dictionary, nowadays it’s easier than the 80s.
Other way is to write and try to make a diary.
Try to have a conversation with yourself and search for whatever you don’t know.
I know the anki method is great to review what you’ve forgotten or need to keep on practicing but you look like the kind of people who are bad at cramming to do a test which is what anki does in a certain way.
You write very articulately so I don’t think you have any problems with intelligence or IQ. Don’t loose hope!
Can you read my other post and see if it helps? Especially the part about priming anki and not adding too many cards at once.
https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/vqnfl3/how_to_keep_anki_under_control/
I did the genki/anki thing rather than use pre-mades. You can still (easily) get to thousands of words that way. E.g. Genki has over 1k words/expressions for you and after that you can easily find words to add to anki all over the place.
It’s not that your not smart enough. But your initial approach of using premade with taekim cards was a bit off.
If you’ve found improvement through going through genki and adding cards chapter by chapter, than I recommend continuing that.
The one thing I should say, is have at least two cards per note. One side recognition where you see the Japanese word and give the English, and a production, where you see English and give the Japanese.
Also increase your cards to 10 new cards a day to go along with the recognition and production. That way you still only learn 5 new words, but seeing both the rec card and pro card should help you memorize it better.
Also, bury siblings during review. You can find the setting in the deck options, but make sure it says review and not bury siblings in new cards. This can decrease the amount of cards your review everyday by a significant margin.
Maybe try reducing the number of cards you review or get new each day. Mine became a bit unmanageable and I stopped new cards coming, it’s reduced to about 90 a day. When it gets really low I’ll reintroduce a low number of new cards each day.
You learned English so it seems like you have the capacity to learn mass amounts of vocabulary.
IQ tests logic problem solving, and you don’t use the same parts of your brain when learning a language and solving problems. So it doesn’t have anything to do with that.
This is nothing to do with IQ. You just need a bit more context to digest things.
Here you say this:
> I struggle to learn **premade Japanese vocab decks** with Anki
and then go on to say this:
> The closest thing that I found that works best for me is **reading Genki and making Anki decks** for each individual chapter aka doing vocab in bite-sized chunks.
so I think you’ve found the solution to your problem – make your own Anki decks!
If this is too slow for you, you could perhaps use [premade Anki decks for Genki](https://sethclydesdale.github.io/genki-study-resources/help/anki-decks/).
Give it a bit more time and you’ll be able to make noticable progress. Good luck!
First of all there is no problem of intelligence you concerning. You seem to dive in and threat problem as they come and asking for help when needed. It’s those like you that always go the furthest.
So for the problem at hand, I was in the exact same spot as you when I started anki, words would just not stick. Here is what I did.
I used a heisig/remember the kanji anki deck, form the AJATT/Refold/whatever team. You get to really learn how you do story from the component of the kanji that really sticks and helps remember meaning. In those deck you don’t learn any japanese word of prononciation, just kanji meaning to get some fondations and good habits. I did all 1000 in the deck, but doing so much was a real waste of time. Somewhere between 150 and 400 is enough to get familiar and have the kanji patterns starting to stick
Back to the learning of proper vocabulary. On premade deck no need to go further than the 200 most common words. The reason is that core vocabulary is very dependant on what you do or like. Just the basis of the basis is enough. (hand, foot, right, left, use, do, have, …). Premade deck will try to make you learn words without context, so you won’t really understand them plus you will learn a ton of words that you will not use because to far from your interests.
After this you mine from your immersion. be sure to use yomichan to feed your anki automagically so you also have word prononciation [https://learnjapanese.moe/yomichan/](https://learnjapanese.moe/yomichan/)
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As a rule of thumb, on the long run you should have around 10 times more reviews than new words per day. If you have more, diminish the number of new word per day and take the time to find a more efficient way to remember (sound, adding pictures, story around components of the kanji,…)
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For easing into immersion, these two resources are insanely good :
Simple videos in simple japanese but eveything is explaing with drawing. (japanese subtitles optionnal)
[https://www.youtube.com/c/ComprehensibleJapanese/videos](https://www.youtube.com/c/ComprehensibleJapanese/videos)
)(podcast by teppei, in easy slow japanse, to listen as often as possible. While cleaning the dishes, walking, or whatever
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbsmSVzhiwvA8VNMAW_cuDqujRQULBjFd](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbsmSVzhiwvA8VNMAW_cuDqujRQULBjFd)
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Whatever you choose to do, try to keep anki at less than an hour per day and try to enjoy as much japanese content as you can. At the end of the day, words stick because you hear them a lot. I couldn’t for the life of me differentiate 使う(use) and 作る(make), both meaning and prononciation, I could only after hearing it a lot and then returning to it after. The time banging my head against anki was just waisted, the better solution was just to mark it as leech, as I can always come back to it later when it will be easier.
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And as very last advice, try as many thing as you can along the way, ditch what is slow, keep what is fast. This work on anything that you won’t get injuried, japanese included 🙂
I’ve noticed that some people learn differently. For example, sometimes people struggle when vocabulary comes from a single source. At the same time when it’s several sources, they learn it very fast, because for them it looks like words are actually important. So it’s a kind of inner gate, does it often appears? Then it’s worth to remember.
It also worth simply to check what works better, there are different ways to learn. You can try to add writing, listening, or you can try to change completely and check something new.
I was about to ask a very similar question. I’ve set anki to do 5 new cards a day and it’s becoming super frustrating as so many words just aren’t sticking. I have no idea how people are doing a dozen+ words a day.
I don’t think it’s an intelligence thing; I’m not super smart but I’m definitely not dumb. I think people just learn differently and *hopefully* we’ll figure out what works best for us.
You mentioned you had more success making your own deck. I think I’ll give that a go too and see if I get better results.
You absolutely have the capacity to learn, the problem seems to be the method. I would just try something else / a different course / a different system. I could write many paragraphs going over this but no one would want to see that. Just look up other resources online, I went through many different courses and systems not only in Japanese but other languages and other studies because sometimes things just don’t “work” for an individual. There’s established learners that don’t even use SRS at all, let alone Anki, so don’t feel like it’s the “only” way. Also keep in mind many people like to exaggerate and are overconfident in their abilities. I’m not a fan of comparing oneself to others to begin with, but especially not with Japanese learning in particular.
How much kanji do you know? I found that knowing kanji helps a ton with vocab. And also after hearing/studying japanese for a while, you kinda get used to it and pick up things faster. In your beginning stage of learning japanese, you are basically learning how to learn. This is the phase where you’re not even getting the kinks out, you’re probably building kinks as you learn. Best advice: just stick to it
Anki is not for learning. It is for testing recall of learned data.
You have to learn things first.
I have this trouble too. I just can’t pick up words from Anki. Not anymore anyway.
So I just ditched it.
Edit: It’s OK to use something else, regardless of why Anki isn’t working for you. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and no amount of force will make it work. Take it from me. 🙂 There are plenty of alternatives out there that might work better for you!
I swear by Anki.
And by that I mean, whenever I hear someone explain their Japanese ability in terms of Anki cards, I automatically say ‘oh for fucks sake’.
Don’t put too much stock in all this stuff about ‘2000+ vocab in a month’, those claims fall to tatters the moment you ask them to actually use that vocab in context, i.e. *where it matters*.
Anki is as the name implies, it’s a style of 暗記 or ‘rote memorisation’. The problem is, rote memorisation isn’t worth the spit expelled when saying it. It is by far one of the worst methods of learning alongside AJATT (a.k.a. ‘immersion’) and RTK. You’re learning vocab outside of context, which deprives you both of hooks to aid memorisation, and any ability to notice nuance.
If Anki isn’t working for you, sure, you could put it down to an intelligence problem. I don’t know you, so I can’t rule it out. But it could just as likely be a simple situation that rote memorisation doesn’t work for you. This isn’t unusual and isn’t an intelligence problem, it just means you get bored with repetition, which is true for smart people. If anything, the repetitive nature of rote makes it more suited for a lower IQ.
Now, the solution depends on where you are, both physically and in terms of Japanese learning. If you’re physically in Japan, go socialise. Hell, go to a bar. You will learn more in an hour in a bar than in months of anki. If you’re not, find a language school with native Japanese speakers and try a couple of lessons. One of the big problems with rote et al is that they don’t give much feedback, so you have no basis for whether you’re doing right or wrong. That feedback will help you out massively.
In terms of where you are in Japanese learning, once you get to a decent enough level, reading will help you with the advanced stuff. No need to get overly complex, stick with basic stuff at a basic level, read momotarou or some other fairy tales, then work yourself up to stuff like ‘Ningen Shikkaku’. A personal recommendation of mine, once you have some confidence, is to pick up a collection of stories from Mori Ougai, preferably one that includes ‘Takasebune’ and ‘Saigo no Ikku’. These stories are short, fascinating, and not overly complex, and reading them will give you a sense of how Japanese *flows*, how people *think*, and not just how this set of kanji is read and one of it’s meanings.
I’ve written too much here, so TL;DR: scrap Anki, find a way to talk to and get feedback from actual Japanese people, and once you can, pick up a book.