How do you study vocabulary without throwing every new word into an Anki deck?

11 comments

1. RemindMe! 1 week

2. At the start, that’s pretty much unavoidable, I would say. Depending on the pacing, how often you are putting in new cards, it will be consuming

   I usually recommend Yotsuba since it’s a pretty simple manga to read

3. If you feel overwhelmed suspend all the cards in your anki deck, take some time off and then unsuspend all cards when you feel ready again.

4. Simple repetition works best for me. I don’t use Anki at all.. I’m too lazy for that 😅… Whenever I continue reading something, I always start again back from the beginning or atleast a few chapters back. If I don’t remember a word I just look it up quickly and move on.

5. I use a combination of digital manga I buy from bookwalker and the mazii app. Mazii has a fairly decent OCR scanner that feeds into a an app that can save the words/sentence you scanned.

   If I encounter a new word once, I won’t bother adding to anki. If I encounter it multiple times while reading that volume of manga, I’ll add it to anki.

6. I don’t mean to appeal to authority here, but what you’re doing is all you can do is what you are doing, [don’t try to memorize words](https://youtu.be/NQZYL39JEFo). Keep your anki reviews to a bearable amount and make it your daily habit so you don’t forget, and maximize your time reading, thereby increasing your exposure to new words.

   My anki approach is to only add a word if I couldn’t possibly guess both the reading and meaning given my current vocabulary; if I know both kanji from other words, I usually don’t need to add it. I have found this to be sufficiently conservative

7. Add a frequency deck to yomichan

8. Just personally, I have trashed me decks a lot when I got annoyed at reviews. I never stopped engaging with the language at a high degree so that exposure alone was my Anki, yes it’s slower with all the constant look ups but it’s not any less effective. Having the two is optimal but don’t feel like you have to be a slave to Anki. You will pick up words naturally through repeatedly look ups and exposure.

9. I don’t do every single word. When I have a textbook, I just use the core vocabulary list associated with it (or the JLPT level back when I was taking the test). I live in Japan so I also keep a list of words I encounter at work/in daily life to add.

   If you try to add every single unknown word every time you see it, I think you’ll get overwhelmed and possibly be adding words that actually aren’t needed (such as if you stumble upon a rare word in authentic materials but it isn’t a word you should worry about until you’re studying for Japanese college exams or something haha)

10. Look up every word but be picky about what you add to anki.

    Found a word multiple times and have to keep looking it up? Add it to anki. See a word once then you don’t see it again? Look it up then move on.

    Word that feels very common and you want to know? Add it to anki. Rare or uncommon word you feel like is above your level? Look it up then move on.

11. I personally did add every single word…if I didn’t remember the meaning later I would add it again…2 years later I I longer needed to use anki….nowadays I just use a Japanese->Japanese dictionary, look up a word and move on…

    but I do recognize it was very time consuming to add every word to anki…so if you don’t have the time or patience, maybe simply re-reading the same content multiple times…the key is repetition…

    I’m currently using anki for Chinese and i am approaching anki a bit different than with Japanese. If I don’t understand a word from context, I add it…if I understand it from context then I just move on