looking for opinions here.
take this example of a card i just encountered.
the front says 地下鉄.
i know this word; (subway). on the reverse there is a sentence:
私は地下鉄で通勤しています。
I dont know the word 通勤 (commute). How would you grade this card?
Thanks dudes.
4 comments
Typically, people use the Core decks to learn the single target word and only use the sentence for disambiguation, to clarify the word usage. You can configure your cards to test for whatever you want, of course. But the sentences are clearly not chosen for learning purposes, given how many unknown (and advanced) words they often contain.
If you want to use a sentence deck, the Tango decks are a much better choice, because the sentences are i+1 (meaning you actually know all the other words in the sentence, except for the new target word).
I would pick easy in this case since it’s just a noun and there’s no real barrier beyond recognizing the word to understanding its use in a sentence. The sentence is just there as an example after all, the word is the point
Sentence cards show a sentence on the front. Your example is a vocab card deck.
Anyway, if you knew 地下鉄, the card gets passed. That is what you are quizzing yourself on. You are not quizzing yourself on 通勤. The sentence is on the back for some context and nothing more.
For me, either I get the entire sentence correct, or I fail it. I believe in learning sentences, not words, because that’s how we talk, in sentences. So even if I get the target word correct, but can’t remember how to read some other kanji in the sentence, it’s a fail.