Hi guys, I started studying japanese a week ago now and after having done hiragana and katakana I decided to start the grammar while studying a 2k anki deck to build vocabs.
Anyway, the thing is that after a few days I started having reviews to do, but I wanted to hear ur experience to understand from the beginning if I’m doing something wrong.
Basically I noticed that during my review I can remember just a few words while many of the others I can’t (I’d say about half of them).
I feel like I’m not studying too many words per day, and my setting are good since I watched a few guides on how to use anki, so I wanted to ask if that’s normal.
Many people told me that it’s okay to not remember words at first but it’s bad to fail an easy words I studied some days before so I wanted to know ur opinion too.
I’m still a beginner tho so keep that in mind (it had been a week or less since I started this deck).
5 comments
It’s perfectly normal. You’ll forget quite a bit, especially if you aren’t finding ways outside of Anki to use the vocabulary.
The more you use the word or grammar, the quicker you’ll remember it. Things like talking to yourself or someone else, writing sentences using the new vocabulary, or labeling items in your home. Stuff like that will help you remember it. You may also need different Anki settings. Search /r/LearnJapanese or YouTube for Anki settings and you’ll see quite a few suggestions that you could try. They also have a starter guide that you might find helpful in general and a resources page.
I have never managed to get flash cards to work for me. Context matters a lot more for my memory. I’d see a word 30 times in Anki and never remember it, then hear it in a song lyric once and have it instantly memorized.
Is there another way you could study vocabulary? Maybe find a simple song and memorize the lyrics. Translate your favorite short scene from an anime or manga and read it aloud several times.
Or just overall exposure – I found I learned best by passively having Japanese media on in the background all day.
I’ve been doing anki for over a year and a bit, although it’s not my main source of learning. I will say that Anki does help in what it’s meant to do, it has helped me recognise and remember a majority of the words after this long, I also do grammar and core decks, however sometimes the grammar can be too confusing if they have too much info and doing it everyday might put you off a bit.
However, one problem I did have was that some cards weren’t showing for so long, and that’s because I think I have pressed that I had know them every time which caused them to be placed very back in the decks.
But overall i enjoy anki, however as I said it’s only really good for the purpose of remembering words so make sure you do other forms of learning.
Modify the anki settings. The default settings are not great for language learning. See:
https://tatsumoto.neocities.org/blog/how-to-review
This website also has some *fantastic* decks that will help build vocab and grammar, as well as listening and reading skills.
Anki cards have different states: New, Learning, Young, and Mature. Your stats in the “new” and “learning” phases of a card frankly don’t matter. Fail cards as often as you have to until you are sure you remember them. The important stat to watch is your pass rate on mature cards (Under “Stats” –> “Answer Buttons”). If that one is too low, you might not be learning cards well enough in their initial phases.
If you want to take any guesswork out of this, you can also consider using fsrs for Anki. It’s a bit techy to set up and calibrate, which I am sure is not for everyone, but it comes with very clear instructions and will give you whatever retention rate you want to have without you having to choose any settings.