I also hate Anki but use it for audio sentences and custom learning steps that end with me suspending the card. Audio only on the front is hard but it feels so great when a card you were struggling with is now easy to hear and understand in real time.
Picaboo wrote:I've enjoyed reading your blog. I've given up on Anki for the time being. I simply don't enjoy it. That said, which audio deck are you using?
I agree learner materials are pretty boring, especially because I go over them a few times.
At the time I wrote that post I was using a self made deck in Flash Cards Deluxe (SRS flash card app) which has free support for Google text to speech (the newer ones). The Google voices are pretty good in general although the Korean one isn't my favorite of the bunch it's good enough that I can use it for an audio card. I'm going to check out those YouTube classes you linked. Thanks so much for the tip! These look really good.
I also hate Anki but use it for audio sentences and custom learning steps that end with me suspending the card. Audio only on the front is hard but it feels so great when a card you were struggling with is now easy to hear and understand in real time.
It is hard. I decided not to use audio cards but to go back to text + audio on side one. But getting audio cards right is much more satisfying and feels like you're really learning the word for real as opposed to the regular flash card reps I do.
kraemder wrote:It is hard. I decided not to use audio cards but to go back to text + audio on side one. But getting audio cards right is much more satisfying and feels like you're really learning the word for real as opposed to the regular flash card reps I do.
Okay thanks. I used audio cards for whole sentences, for a while, and I think it was valuable. The thought of opening up Anki feels aversive, so I stopped. Although once I get going, it's fine. I'm still unsure how I'm going to build up and become more fluent with new words. Right now I'm using physical flash cards, but only because writing sentences out is good practice.
I just finished another Japanese group lesson on iTalki. It was a small group. Me and one other student. The group lessons are advertised for B2/C1/C2. I'm B2 (or was years ago when I studied diligently..) and so I get nervous that I won't be able to keep up with the other students. But it seems the other students taking these classes are just Chinese people who have N1 because they already know kanji better than Japanese people know kanji. So this girl asked me how my Japanese got so good. She's living in Tokyo and is married to a Chinese guy so she can't do the date a Japanese man trick. My answer was simply - it takes a lot of time. And quite obviously it took me more time than it's going to take you since you're Chinese. That and living in Japan really helped. Most Japanese people I talked to wanted to speak English to me so my experience wasn't a full on immersion that I was hoping for but I still got lots of opportunities to speak Japanese over the course of two years. Since she's not in a sharehouse I don't think she gets those opportunities. I can say that since she looks Japanese, if she did live in that sharehouse the Japanese people would feel more natural speaking Japanese to her than they did with me.
Yeah. It takes time to learn a language. The only trick is to immerse - if you are doing immersion then the rest is just details and patience.
As I study my Korean I don't like that answer either. It must be the flash cards. I'm going to stick to audio flash cards.
Not a whole lot to write about this week. I continue to flip flop between audio flash cards or text + audio flash cards. I have been using HelloTalk a lot more too. I had taken a huge break but I started posting on it. It's a lot like Twitter but for language learning. Some people use Twitter for their language learning but a big difference for me is that with Twitter I can connect with other western language learners but not so much with native speakers of Korean/Japanese. But on HelloTalk I get native speakers reading my posts a lot more than native English speakers. HelloTalk has recently started group video chat. They have had group voice chat for a while. But you needed to get an invite or see a post with a link to the group chat - the app didn't just list all the group chats going on. I don't know how this video chat thing works in full but I can see several video chat rooms listed at the top of my feed. I like the Japanese rooms the best because I can mostly understand what is going on. I haven't spent very much time in the Korean rooms yet. I did poke my head in a couple but unless they were speaking English I didn't understand much.
The Japanese rooms are a lot of fun. It seems like the host has some control on how to do the room but most of them just have their video camera blown up and they talk to the camera while reading comments in that chat. If they want to they can invite someone on "stage" with them and then that person can talk too. Usually the video of the guests is a bit smaller than the host but not necessarily. These are mostly free talk rooms. Japanese people are notorious for being shy and I think that's true in general but not all are shy. There was one young Japanese woman whom I would count as one of the most outgoing people I've met. The comments are typically pretty cooker cutter - "Hello!" "I'm in ..." "What are you doing?" but she did a fantastic job of just going off on tangents reacting to the comments and literally did not stop talking for the hour plus that I was in the room with her. Ironically she said she was shy. I have heard other Japanese girls who are NOT shy also claim to be shy. I am trying to figure out why - I am guessing that since most Japanese women really are shy and in Japan it's highly encouraged to be like everyone else that they say they are shy even though they're not.
I didn't go on stage yet. But I've gotten a feel for how it works and will see if I can go on stage soon. In the Japanese rooms. If it's Korean I will continue to be a wallflower and not say anything. It's so frustrating going back and forth between these two languages. I'm so capable in Japanese and completely incapable in Korean. It reminds me of when I first started studying Japanese and at that time I was comparing Japanese to my German and had similar feelings. I decided that I would never make real progress with Japanese as long as this continued so I cut German out of my life. It really hasn't come back since. I don't recommend doing that unless you're desperate to improve a new language. It's not that I hav forgotten German although I obviously forgot at least some, but it's just not a part of who I am anymore and I don't naturally look for opportunities to use it.
I had a Kansai-ben lesson on iTalki. It was supposed to be a group lesson but nobody else signed up. I don't think the teacher will offer it again as a group lesson. Oddly eough she confessed to me that she was nervous about doing the lesson. I've done a couple group lessons with her already and that surprised me - I see myself as an easy student to teach when it comes to Japanese (not Korean). She had prepared a series of slides going over some expressions and culture stuff about Kansai-ben. I think she's from Osaka. She doesn't live there anymore but her husband is also from Osaka so they speak kansai-ben to each other. But she uses standard Japanese for everything else just about. About halfway through the lesson I asked her if it were possible for her to speak Kansai-ben to me throughout the lesson instead of standard Japanese and she got really uncomfortable and said that would be difficult because she's used to speaking standard Japanese with me and she only speaks Kansai-ben to her husband (and other Kansai-ben speakers I assume). She switched a little but then the standard Japanese came back and I didn't say anything about it. This reminded me of the problem I have finding Koreans to use Korean to teach me. And other teachers. It seems most people just don't want to speak to you in a language that you aren't already at least semi-fluent in.
A lot of people say my Japanese sounds fluent but I think it's terrible because I am all too aware of my shortcomings. However, I'm listening to a group chat and the host is an American living and working in Japan and maybe my Japanese sounds like his. I think he sounds really good - it's so fast and easy to understand. He's probably better than me since he's living there but maybe it's similar.
kraemder wrote:Some people use Twitter for their language learning but a big difference for me is that with Twitter I can connect with other western language learners but not so much with native speakers of Korean/Japanese.
kraemder wrote:Some people use Twitter for their language learning but a big difference for me is that with Twitter I can connect with other western language learners but not so much with native speakers of Korean/Japanese.
If I put more effort into it I think I'd get more out of it then . HelloTalk does connect me with other Japanese people interested in languages/cultural exchange though.
This week wasn't the greatest as far as language learning goes. Part of it I think is that these things just go in waves and I was a bit down this week as compared to previous weeks. However I had an issue with my iTalki lesson. The link to enter the room didn't work. Actually, it hasn't ever worked for this tutor. But before I would message her in the iTalki chat and she would send me a link to her zoom room to do the lesson. This time she didn't reply to my messages until 30 minutes after the class was supposed to start. I had another Korean lesson right after hers so I wasn't able to just do the lesson late. Looking back I think maybe if I had the old links she sent before I could maybe use those I don't know Zoom very well and if so I feel bad about that but I'm still a bit mad at her for not checking her messages. I can't help thinking the reason she didn't check her messages was that she didn't want to do the lesson. I know teachers aren't always in the mood to teach. I'm not always in the mood to learn either. Anyway, I rescheduled for Wednesday next week and I hope it works out.
I finally participated in a voice chat room on HelloTalk with one of the teachers who did a live stream before. It was kind of fun. I think she prejudged my Japanese since I'm American. Also, when you write comments on the stream, they tend to be really short because it takes longer to type out a message than to say it. Anyway, it was fun. She was only on for a little bit for her lunch break. She was free talking this time as opposed to the livestream where it was a full on Japanese lesson with textbook etc. So I got a better feel for who she is. She seemed like very stereotypical Japanese housewife. She was gossiping about her friends/neighbors just like you'd expect. It makes me wonder why women around the world all gossip a lot but men don't (or at least not as much). She's was talking about her friend's husband who eats his bento in 10 minutes (which is way faster than you should eat your bento.. you should take your time and spend about 30 minutes). I really like how HelloTalk lets you connect with real people in the country you're interested in and get a real feel for their daily lives etc.
However, to really take advantage you need to be fluent in the target language. When they speak English instead the effect really isn't the same. And my Korean is nowhere near good enough to take advantage of this. I would still be very interested in a language exchange with natives in Korean with my basic level but it would need to be done in a certain way. Face to face would be best. Even a video chat probably isn't good enough. And the other person would have to agree to use only Korean half the time - this is the part that makes it impossible for beginners.
I think I'm burning out on flash cards right now. I go in cycles and it seems I'm reaching the end of this flash card cycle. I saw a video from Refold about the Gold List method and I commented on the video saying that I think Anki is better but then I went back and edited it. I like Refold and I thought that response was a bit too short, critical, and not entirely honest if an accurate summary of my feelings at that moment. Way back before smartphones, Anki, and Flashcards Deluxe, I studied German using pen and paper. I tried paper flash cards but decided they didn't work and switched to just writing down lists of vocabulary in a note book with the german on the left and the english on the far right. This served a few purposes. As I was using a paper dictionary at the time, having a list of vocabulary or a mini dictionary of the words from the book I was reading, allowed me to lookup words on that list that I'd seen already but forgotten. I forgot almost every word I looked up pretty quickly. Looking at that list was faster than the paper dictionary although I had gotten pretty fast at that too. I also tried studying the vocabulary lists. I wasn't familiar with spaced repetition but I think even so everyone kind of intuitively knows you want to studying something a lot at first, then less and less. Well, lets just say that I forgot the words so quickly I pretty much gave up on reviewing the vocabulary lists more than once. I did review them the same day I wrote them down but not after at least not much to speak of. But if I were reading a book and saw a word and it seemed familiar I'd flip through my notes to see if I had written it down. That was very useful I think. I also think just the act of writing it down helped me focus on it a little more to help it get into my subconscious mind. But just a little - as I said, I forgot almost everything I wrote down anyway. It wasn't until it repeated over and over and over that it stuck in my head.
I've talked about this in this journal in the past already. Sorry if you read it. Anyway, so I compared these lists I made a bit to the Gold List method. I think it's pretty similar but also different in important ways. The Gold List method would have you go back to review each list every 2 weeks and write down 80% of those words again or something to help you remember them. I clearly didn't do that. I briefly tried the Gold List method as per the YouTube video from the author of the method but I think after the first 2 weeks or my first review session I failed to remember any of the words and just stopped it right there. If I remembered a word it was because it also found its way into my SRS app. Now if I were to not just look at the list of words but study them intensively every two weeks that might get better results but then again maybe not and that's not what the author of the method was intending and it's not something I want to do. I think he was just a rare language prodigy and the people who like this method are doing good immersion and using or being exposed to the words they're writing down way more than just once every two weeks. Just my speculation though.
So I'm burning out on my SRS cards. Basically, I get bored of reviewing old words. I'm more interested in reviewing new words. They feel more interesting and relevant. The whole premise of SRS is to review material forever and ahmen so that you don't forget them though. It kind of works but I'm getting burned out on it so basically it's not going to work for me at least not the normal way. The idea behind Anki or any SRS is that it will always test you right before you are about to forget it. This is just theory however. It does not work that way for me in real life. I will always forget about 90% (roughly) of all the words I enter in the app. It's just a question of when. Some words I get right several times before failing them and other words I struggle with day in and day out. I don't track my percent right ratio in Anki but I guess people want at least 85% if not 90% or 95%. I think I'm more in the high 80's looking at this number but that's really misleading. Most of the words as I mentioned I am going to forget or have forgotten and just don't know it yet. They're not in my long term memory - they're in some sort of mid term memory instead. Of course this helps increase the chance that they will get into my long term memory but it's also a LOT of work. Is it worth it? If I enjoy doing the flash card reps then maybe it is. But as I keep adding to my deck it will keep taking up more and more time. Basically I'm going to burn out eventually and then later start a new deck from scratch. That's how it always goes for me. I'm not like
I'm thinking of trying a couple things. One is to do the vocabulary book like I did with German. I did this with Korean actually a year or two ago and didn't keep it up. There were two reasons. One reason was that.. I forgot all the words I wrote down eventually. I would review them intensely for a couple of days and then a week later I'd forget them. Almost all of them. This was very disappointing although not surprising. When I did this with German the same thing happened. I just kept immersing and writing them down anyway since it did help to look up words faster than the dictionary as I stated previously. And I didn't have the app option either. And I didn't have an electronic or popup dictionary in the app like I do now which kind of makes this unnecessary. Only kind of though.
As I'm writing this I am thinking of options. Anki is very flexible and I could set the steps up to go something like 15 minutes, 1 day, 3 days, 30 days. But I am thinking I wouldn't want to review them after 30 days probably unless I were in a reviewing mood and not the mood I'm in right now. Several years ago I recall another blogger saying how she never reviewed old vocabulary in Anki just the new vocabulary because it was boring. I totally agreed with her but at the same time I felt that this explained why she didn't make progress year after year. I was better about forcing myself to keep reviewing anyway - signing up for the JLPT every year was good motivation - but my progress was also slow and not fast like Japanese immersion YouTubers. I don't think my Japanese immersion was very productive due to lack of comprehension until after I had lived in Japan for at least a year. But the brute force of SRS did keep me moving forward if slowly at least.
So I'm thinking of giving the vocabulary notebook a try again. But YouTubers like Livakivi make me think it would be a mistake to stop SRS. Here's another great video from him reviewing 3 Japanese tutors on iTalki. It's a paid promotion I think but I also think everything he says is very honest. And it's fun to see him speaking Japanese after doing almost 100% immersion study without output (with a few exceptions mostly for progress videos).
Just setup a swipe right on anki to suspend the card. (Not delete you might want it later) and then just suspend cards your bored with, you don't think you'll need, or your pretty sure you know. Do that for a couple of weeks and prune the hell out of your deck. If the word is important or common then you will see it again. If not who cares? I am sure you don't know every word in your native language and you probably get by ok.
After a month or so you can filter on suspended cards and create a new deck, or just delete them. No need for death by SRS. Don't let anki become a torture machine!
. HelloTalk does connect me with other Japanese people interested in languages/cultural exchange though.