Six Reasons to Upgrade to Anki 2

So I finally made the jump over to Anki 2.0, and it was a surprisingly easy transition. They've given us a new interface and some fancy deck options that make creating cards, doing reps, and learning much easier. So here are some reasons for why you should make the switch too...

6. Deck Size and Saving Optimized

Anki decks are now compiled into a single “collection” of cards. This means that all of the cards in all of your decks are stored in a single file, but are separated into different categories. Decks can also be placed as a subset of a larger subject, so you can make individual grammar, sentence, and vocabulary decks that will all fall into a larger Japanese deck. This allows you to focus your studying on any one deck or study the entire Japanese deck type at once.

Anki now also saves your decks automatically every five minutes or after certain tasks. This means less risk of losing the cards that you've been reviewing or adding. Along with this, deck sizes have been reduced to allow for faster loading.

5. Learn New Cards Faster

In the new version of Anki, new cards are shown at least twice before they become review cards. This means that when you first see a card and pass it, you will see it again in about ten minutes to check that you really know it. Once you've passed it a second time, it will become a review card and show up at later and later intervals. Whenever you fail a card, it becomes a “new” card again, so you'll see it a couple times before it goes back into the stack.

Anki Deck - Core 2000 Vocabulary

The Core 2000 Japanese Vocabulary deck is an amazing resource for building up knowledge of the most common Japanese words. With the release of Anki 2 this deck has become even better, because now it comes with audio and images.

It's got audio too!

The Core 2000 comes from the iKnow or Smart.fm website's vocabulary learning program. In the time since I used the site, it's become subscription-based. Their prices look quite affordable, so consider joining if you're interested.

The Core 2000 is actually broken up into ten steps of 200 words, with the most common words appearing earliest. You should only aim to do two or three steps of the Core 2000. By the time you get those under your belt, you'll be able to take on Japanese media and learn that way. There's now even a reading pack to help you start reading Japanese.

How do I get the Core 2000 deck?

You can click here to access all of the shared Anki decks on AnkiWeb, or you can go directly to the Core2000 decks using the links below.

1. Select the deck you want to download from the list.  
2. Click the download link at the bottom of the page and save the deck to your computer. 
3. Open the downloaded deck file to automatically add the cards into Anki.
4. Do not change the order of card presentation for the deck. All images and audio files are automatically loaded and stored with your deck.

Which decks should I download?

Depending on what you want in your deck, you can download the deck with images/audio or just the vocabulary. Both deck types are included below.

Decks with Images and Audio:

Japanese Core 2000 Step 01 Listening Sentence Vocab + Images

Japanese Core 2000 Step 02 Listening Sentence Vocab + Images

Japanese Core 2000 Step 03 Listening Sentence Vocab + Images

Japanese Core 2000 Step 04 Listening Sentence Vocab + Images

Japanese Core 2000 Step 05 Listening Sentence Vocab + Images

Each of these decks has 200 words, but several cards for each word. There are listening cards, sentence cards, and vocabulary cards. Learning this way will only get you so far, so I don't recommend going beyond the second or third step.

Pure Vocabulary Decks:

Core 2000 Japanese Vocabulary

This is the original deck that I recommended for Core 2000. With Anki 2 it's become possible to easily include audio and images, so it's worth trying out the newer decks if that's what you want.

An example of the pure vocab deck.

Related Articles:

• Six Reasons to Upgrade to Anki 2
• The Yotsubato! Reading Pack
• The JLPT Anki Deck
  

Downloading Decks with Anki

In order to make it easier to introduce new Anki decks without including an explicit guide to downloading for each one, I'm instead making a single guide for getting shared decks. Much of this content is from the post on Learning the Kana with Anki.

Learn the Kana with Anki

To continue from the article on learning the kana, one of the most useful tools to aid in learning and retaining knowledge of the kana is an spaced repetition system or SRS for short. My favorite SRS is a program called Anki, which is what I'll be helping you download and start using today. Anki will become your best friend for learning Japanese.

Anki Deck – JLPT Vocabulary

If you're looking for an extra source of vocabulary to add into your own deck, this JLPT deck is perfect for you. It's loaded with more than 8000 cards of pure vocab, which means you won't be running out of new words to learn any time soon. I wouldn't say that this deck is meant for intensive study, but should instead be used to add in a few extra words per day to supplement your other sources.

An example card from the JLPT Anki deck.

With the combined vocabulary deck you'll get words from all of the JLPT levels, which means a mix of very common and very rare words. Because of this, it may be better to pick and choose specific levels of cards by choosing tags to study or downloading a specific JLPT level deck.

How do I get the JLPT deck?

You can click here to access all of the shared Anki decks on AnkiWeb, or you can go directly to the JLPT decks using the links below.

1. Select the deck you want to download from the list.  
2. Click the download link at the bottom of the page and save the deck to your computer. 
3. Open the downloaded deck file to automatically add the cards into Anki.
4. Do not change the order of card presentation for the deck. All images and audio files are automatically loaded and stored with your deck.

Which decks should I download?

To get the deck with all of the levels together, click the link below:

JLPT Vocabulary for All Levels

And here is a selection of vocabulary decks for specific levels of the JLPT:
(Note: N5 is the easiest level, N1 is the most difficult.)

Ultimate JLPT N5 Vocabulary Deck
Ultimate JLPT N4 Vocabulary Deck
JLPT N1 Vocab
  
I browsed through the N3 and N2 decks and couldn't find any that had all of the parts needed for an effective deck, so I've skipped those levels.

Give these decks a try if you're looking for some extra vocab to study, but don't forget to immerse in real Japanese! If you haven't started reading yet, check out this page to learn how to get started.

Related Articles:

• Six Reasons to Upgrade to Anki 2
• The Yotsubato! Reading Pack
• The Core 2000 Anki Deck

The Secret of Language Learning is Retention!

All too often I hear of people that start on these grand adventures into learning Japanese. They think that the secret to learning is to gather as much information in as little time as possible and shove it into their brain. While learning a lot in a short time is certainly going to get results, the true key to language acquisition is retention and repetition.

The first big steps of learning Japanese are the kanji and the kana. The kana shouldn't take too long to get down, but if you don't keep reviewing them in some way you will quickly forget them. Think back to when you first learned the alphabet. I remember sitting in class and spending ages going over a single letter and learning how to write it. Then we'd have all kinds of practice sheets (on that crappy newsprint paper) to keep practicing in class and at home. Then we'd get reading practice to recognize them. We were constantly reviewing those same letters – because if we didn't we'd forget them in a fraction of the time it took to learn them.

I went back to an elementary school just last week and hung around in a first grade classroom for a couple hours. I saw some of their homework, and wow. Those kids couldn't write for crap. They'd been working at that alphabet for over a year and they still had backwards J's and G's and I don't even know what some of the letters were supposed to be. While there is a (slight) difference between children and adults, the fact remains that even after a year of studying they were still reviewing and studying those same basic concepts. They were still doing those little newsprint worksheets and working to improve their ability to write the letters. As people learning Japanese, we have become children again. We need to keep doing our “worksheets” in order to remember.

Obviously what goes for kana is even more evident in kanji. You have a few thousand characters to learn and remember – don't think you can learn them once and be done. Learning the kanji means being able to recognize them years after you first saw them. This doesn't mean that you're going to be spending the rest of your life doing kanji worksheets, but it DOES mean that you have to maintain what you know!

So what does all of this mean for how you should study? How do you know when and how often to review things? The best answer to that question is use Anki or any other SRS to manage your reviews for you! If it wasn't for Anki, I don't think I could have ever learned Japanese. There is simply so much to learn and so much to remember, that keeping track of it all would be too much. But with Anki you can load in new information and learn it for the first time, and then never have to worry about when to review it – Anki will do it for you. 

Related Articles:

• Tool Pack Part 1
• Tool Pack Part 2   
• Never Stop Reviewing
• Remember the Reason for the Journey 
• Working Small, Getting Started
• Keep Japanese Close

Tool Pack - Part 1

There is a very important element of this learning method that I have not stressed or even really mentioned up to this point – that this learning method is intended as a way to learn Japanese entirely on your own and by your own power. This means that you will be taking the role of both teacher and student, and in order to really pull off both roles you're going to need some tools at your disposal. I'm going to post some tools that I have found to be extremely useful in learning Japanese (some of which can be applied for uses other than Japanese as well).

Anki – This is the greatest tool in the arsenal. It's essentially a flash-card or quizzing program that utilizes a special spacing system for the “cards” or “questions.” This system which uses spaced repetitions is often called an SRS (spaced repetition system) and it makes retaining knowledge much easier. You are presented with a question or sentence, which you then attempt to answer before “flipping” the card. You then score yourself on your response – if you did poorly on the question then you will see it again soon, if you could answer the question easily then you will see the question again after a longer period of time. This system will make the things you know appear less and less often, while making the things you do not know appear more and more often (until you know them, and then they appear less). Watch the tutorial videos on the Anki website to better understand how to use the program. I will also make a more detailed post later on.

Smart.fm – This website is really great for starting out. I've already linked to the Smart.fm hiragana and katakana courses in my post about learning the kana, but there are many other great courses available for your use. In particular, the Smart.fm Core 2000 course is a great way to begin building your vocabulary. The course uses a quizzing system to introduce and ensure retention of the words presented. No matter what, do NOT use the romaji mode on ANY Smart.fm course – learning romaji will do you absolutely no good. Just do the recommended number of questions (or whatever is comfortable for you) per day and let your vocabulary begin to expand. Try to begin recognizing kanji as well.

EDIT: Since writing this post, Smart.fm has become a subscription service at the URL iknow.jp

Dictionaries – I actually have quite a few dictionaries that I use, so I'll be posting multiple. When it comes time to begin building vocabulary and finding example sentences, you'll probably want to use multiple as well. However, for the beginning steps a single dictionary should do the trick. Initially you're going to want to use the Japanese to English dictionaries, but as your vocabulary builds you should eventually switch to using Japanese monolingual dictionaries (most of the sites have both).

Yahoo! Japan's Dictionary (Japanese monolingual is the top section, the Japanese to English dictionary entry is usually the third down)

goo Dictionary (Japanese monolingual is the top section, the Japanese to English dictionary entry is usually the third down)

ALC (This one is really more for example sentences)

Looking for the second installment? Here's the second part of the series!

Related Articles:

• Tool Pack 2
• Learn Kana with Anki
• Anki Deck - JLPT Vocabulary
• A Chance for Output
• The Ultimate Portable Dictionary