Maybe this is a dumb question, but I just started seriously learning Japanese and am following the Refold/mass immersion approach in which Anki use is recommended from the start using pre-made decks. I have some minor experience in learning the language through dabbling with Japanese and a course at a language school that didn’t go very far, so for all intents and purposes I am a complete beginner. My question is if I am supposed to first learn the contents of the pre-made decks before drilling them in Anki or if I’m supposed to go in blind. It doesn’t seem to make much sense to me to go in blind as a complete beginner as I’ll be failing literally every card.
Apologies if I’m missing something obvious here and thanks in advance.
6 comments
Given that you’re only supposed to learn 1 vocabulary per card, and you start with i.e. 5 new cards a day, it should be completely possible to go in blind. You press fail when you don’t know i.e. the reading, which you’ll probably do every time you get a new card. But learning 5 new readings a day should be doable.
I don’t use premade decks but I think I might have something to add to this discussion anyway.
When I learn new words I make a wordlist and look at it frequently throughout the day. This is a separate thing I do besides anki.
If you are adding lets say a few new cards a day you could copy them into a wordlist, print it out or whatever, and have it near you, so you can look at it throughout the day.
This is a thing which helps me, but YMMV.
I just started 2 decks last week and went in completely blind. Some things I have known because I picked them up from class over a decade ago in high school and retained them or I’ve just heard a million times in anime. For 95% of the cards i don’t know them when they first show up and I just take a couple seconds of pronouncing it in Japanese, look at the reading, and matching it with the definition and then I hit “again”. I basically exclusively use “again” and “good” and ignore “hard” and “easy”.
New cards are always “again.” If I remember the reading/pronunciation but not the definition or remember the definition but messed up the reading for a card with kanji that is also “again.” When the card shows up and I get the reading, pronunciation, and 1 definition right I hit “good.”
You’ll get a feel for it eventually but I don’t really care to preview cards before hand since they are going to come up a dozen times anyway for me to have a chance to learn them. Some cards for whatever reason won’t stick and I’ll fail them 5-10 times or more before it sticks but again, that’s whatever. If I struggle on a card then Anki will show me more often so long as I keep being honest and hitting “again” when I mess it up.
I will say it’s very much possible to do those decks without previewing or “pre-studying” new cards beforehand. That said, there’s certainly no harm in doing either of those things if you have the time and find simply jumping straight in to be a bit much.
How would you even understand the content of the decks if you are a beginner? I find it much better to start with some basic vocabolary and little by little take a look at the grammar. By then you should able to see patterns and easily understand what you are reading.
> My question is if I am supposed to first learn the contents of the pre-made decks before drilling them in Anki or if I’m supposed to go in blind.
Your first viewing of a card is you “learning” it. You’re only supposed to “learn” (view) a small amount of new cards per day as to not overwhelm yourself with reviews later on, otherwise you’d probably have hundreds a day. How many new cards you learn a day is completely up to you, and SRS works by feeding you back cards you forget on an accelerated basis to brute force them into your head.