How do you put Anki vocabulary into practical use?

My Anki study is going pretty well. I’ve been working through Tobira: Gateway To Advanced Japanese by copy-writing every text into word, putting all unknown words into a personal glossary and Anki, and only advancing to the next chapter when I can read the whole text at “conversational speed” (I don’t know how to word it otherwise, sorry); rinse and repeat.

All the words from previous chapters come back in Anki over time and I generally know pretty much all of them… In Anki. I don’t know how, but I **only** seem to recognize the words in Anki. Even though I’ve learned words like 尊敬【そんけい・Respect】with ease in Anki (both ENG>JP, JP>ENG with reading + writing, so 4 cards per note), when I randomly think of a sentence I want to say out loud, all that vocabulary seems to escape my brain even though I’ve done the word in anki probably 50+ times. I was wondering **if** you guys recognize this and **how** you can circumvent/fix this issue.

My ‘temporary fix’ for now is adding a “context” button into anki besides my already existing “Hint” button (usually with Mnemonics), where I copy-paste the sentence where I first found the word,

5 comments
  1. If you’re saying you’re having trouble with output, then the answer is something that’s been repeated about a million times in this sub already: input (reading and listening) and output (writing and speaking) are completely different sets of skills.

    Long story short, you just have to keep practicing to write/speak i.e. formulate sentences yourself. Just because you are excellent in reading doesn’t necessarily reflect how good you are with writing. Use iTalki, r/writestreakJP, or whatever else that makes you output.

  2. keep a few words in mind and next time you talk to a Japanese person try to steer the conversation so you get to use those words

  3. If you want to improve your output, output more.

    Also keep in mind that total active vocabulary (ie vocabulary you can actively produce from memory, for example during a conversation) is smaller than passive vocabulary (ie vocabulary you can passively understand when prompted, for example while reading or listening).

  4. Learning how to read/listen and try to keep an ear and eye out on the vocab

  5. Four cards per note! I am recommending to delete three of them and just do one (Japanese word in the front for the card and reading and English meaning in the back)

    You will have a lot more time and energy to spend on real Japanese. Real Japanese will help you to doing output a lot more than Anki. Anki does not make you good in output. Much input and output makes you good in output.

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