I see that I have to split between learning vocabularies; learning context / grammar; and then I eventually decided on learning Kanji.
About vocabulary SRS, I don’t hate it, but I see that flashcard designing is problematic – avoiding translation to another language (English), and what about the sentences? Looking up (from hyperlinks in Anki) to dictionaries a lot, isn’t as good as learning from longer context, and reading a lot. Also, the latter is probably better for memorizing (although probably hazily).
Nonetheless, how would it be possible to read a lot without knowing at least some vocabularies?
Currently I don’t use SRS much, other than Wanikani, but probably I would return to it a few months later.
Just throwing my opinion in the mix, I’ve heard that reading without looking things up is a good way to learn to read fluently, if that is your goal. If your goal is to use reading as a learning tool then perhaps SRSing is the way to go, but personally I’ve wanted to read Japanese fluently as a goal for a while, and it’s the reason I started wanikani.
I (again personally) tried reading and looking up any word I didn’t know, and it made the process tedious enough that I didn’t enjoy the time I spent reading. When I instead tried to read only what I could and use context or inference to try and read things, it was a lot more enjoyable to me, and as I learn more kanji and vocab, I can start fitting more pieces of the puzzle together.
If you’re specifically interested in trying this method, I would recommend several things:
There are plenty of manga and even some books in Japanese that have furigana (hiragana for kanji pronunciation) over almost every kanji and sometimes knowing the reading even if you don't know the kanji or meaning can still be helpful
Reading something in Japanese that you're already familiar with can make the process much easier, since you're already familiar with the story. I've done this with some light novels that I've read and it's helpful
I haven't looked into this much, but a super helpful thing to do is to listen to an audiobook while reading the same book, so you have a native speaker reading the book while you follow along. A similar thing would be to watch Japanese shows with Japanese captions, as opposed to English subtitles
Another things I've done to some success is subscribe to a "manga box" where they send you manga that fit within their determined "reading levels" that are based on JLPT texts. Not saying you have to do that but I find it fun and helpful (and I enjoy my growing manga collection)
Hope that is helpful, and if you want any links to resources I’ve mentioned feel free to ask
Personally, probably the main thing I use (non wanikani) SRS for is… to give shape to the vast expanse of words, and manage that “I’m looking up all these words and I’ll just be looking them up forever ” angst.
In terms of learning and reinforcement, the reading is definitely the cake, and the SRS is just the powdered sugar on top. And with the way my personal system works, it can be on the order of years before something I encounter in a book ever comes up in my Anki deck, and I haven’t found a problem with that, so it’s not like it’s an immediate high-feedback “Pow! The word is learned!”
But I think personally I would feel a bit more stress reading if I didn’t have some kind of psychological “don’t worry! These lookups are being sent on the right track to memory town!” and mining my own words to use in Anki is the main way I get that (at first adding stuff to an anki deck when I’d looked it up 2 or 3 times, now just haphazardly adding any fun new words I encounter). Like, it’s almost the reassurance factor that’s more valuable than anything, making the truly ludicrous number of words in a language feel more manageable because I can see them get processed.
I would also say that personally “SRS takes time away from reading” is like, “making oatmeal takes time away from making dinner.” Like I guess in a vacuum, technically? But I do them in completely different times, headspaces, and contexts, in the sense that I do SRS while literally making oatmeal and watching TV in the morning.
(If you do find that “I should do SRS now” is actively pulling you away from reading however, then yeah go for the reading.)
All that said – while I was doing Wanikani I was mainly reading graded readers and textbooks and things and wasn’t doing any other SRS. Wanikani is a lot on it’s own! And although I have many more Anki cards at this point than I ever had Wanikani items, it’s just a different lighter vibe that I don’t take as seriously so the feeling of workload was never as high as peak Wanikani times.
So I think especially while doing Wanikani, opting to not go in for more SRS powdered sugar is a totally valid choice.
Box of Manga is exactly what I’m referring to, ha. I’ve definitely enjoyed it, I’d suggest reading their “About page” for all the info if you’re curious. Just a disclaimer, I have money to burn and enjoy getting a surprise of manga rather than picking it out myself. That said there may be other options for buying cheap used manga online and shipping to US (or other places, but I live in the US) and you can choose what you get.
After a certain point SRS is also probably more useful than straight reading for learning very infrequent words. It’s actually quite common to get a very high proportion of a text made of words used exactly once, which means reinforcement will be slow for those terms without external aid. For example, here’s the stats for the current reading in the VN Book Club which we’ve been doing over about a 4 month period.
There’s a reason why even in our native languages we find ourselves having to take notes, reread passages, highlight pages, make flashcards, etc. on material we’re learning. Unfortunately, this also seems to be a universal problem for language learning.
Those of us in the beginner and intermediate ranges aren’t going to want to learn every word in a text, but this kind of thing is a problem that everyone will face trying to dive into native material. Overall, I still SRS has value regardless of where an individual is in their learning path it’s just more of an issue of how one uses it. I personally prefer a more rapid fire “good enough” approach with anki style flip cards because as others put it, time is valuable. Learning common words, eg. core 2k, is going to be helpful regardless of how you do it. So I don’t really see a reason to avoid SRS unless someone finds it to be something they just don’t like doing.
My philosophy on flashcard design is that you’re only trying to get to “I know roughly what this word is and how to read it”, so the usual EDICT English definition is fine. More subtle and precise understanding is going to come from seeing it in the wild, not from the SRS. I also value “I didn’t have to do any work beyond (at most) identifying the word I want to add a card for” very highly, which means pre-made decks, or something like jpdb’s setup, or some custom automated card creation system. This also means somebody else has made the various choices about the card format for me already, so I don’t worry much about it.
Seeing people’s comments, both here and among my friends, about how they’re able to pick up most of their vocabulary simply by reading without doing SRS/flashcards, always makes me kind of jealous. Blessed with both an extremely poor working memory and awful focus, I’m the kind of person who can see a word about 5 or 6 times in a short span of time and somehow still not manage to learn it-- I usually need some kind of deliberate, focused attempt to learn it and at that point I figure, hey, might as well just make a flashcard
I dread making flashcards and I dread doing my reviews but when I see the efficacy in actual reading I sigh and keep going…
That being said, someone as mentally scattered as me has still been able to memorize a number of words without SRS through reading so I’m sure it’ll be even more effective for you. And I don’t think it needs to be said but learning vocab is obviously only one facet of learning that reading can help with. Becoming used to natural usage of grammar, learning how to utilize context to derive meaning, getting familiarized with words you think you ‘learned’ with SRS but will still fail to recognize in real situations are just some of the benefits that doing consistent reading will provide you with. If you’re sick of SRS but still want to try reading as a learning tool then yeah, I absolutely think it’s still worthwhile.
I think it depends a bit on how often you are reading.
My usual method is that I read without SRSing, and I pick up a lot of vocabulary that way. But I read every day, so I see common words frequently and it ends up working kind of like a natural SRS.
If you are only reading occasionally/only in very small amounts it might not be as easy to remember things without the help of an SRS - but even so, its not going to hurt! I find I learn much better when I’m enjoying myself, and I enjoy reading a lot more than I enjoy flashcards!
I do occasionally add words to an SRS, but only if I look up a word and feel like its going to be rare that I encounter it naturally in the media I am consuming, but feel like it would be useful to me personally. Like vocabulary that relates to my job or hobbies.
You have any recommendations? Used to use Google translate, but it requires a bubble on screen at all times now. Also, prefer a dictionary over a direct (possibly inaccurate) translation.
Update: Just found kaku for Android. Seems to be pretty decent.
It sounds like they’re referring to to browser extensions like Yomichan (popular, highly configurable, accepts multiple dictionaries. Tofugu review) or Rikaikun (More of a beginner-friendly, preconfigured setup. Tofugu review)
Pretty sure you know this, but figured some of the newer folks won’t.
Edit: Also, I think Kindle and similar ereaders have digital dictionary options.
I’m ok with you disagreeing, but this is a very weird reason to me. Seeing more words does not mean learning more words. In the wild, you’re seeing words like 私、なる、する and a whole buncha simple grammar. SRS is a focused collection consisting of words you’re highly likely to need reinforcement for. Reading is not. Realistically, I’m going to come across more words I need reinforcement for in 10 minutes of srs than 10 minutes of reading.
They’re two very different activities that focus on two different skills to be built.
I know SRS are very popular and many people make good progress with them. It’s just not something that works great with me. I use an SRS from time to time but it’s essentially when I don’t have enough brain power to do anything else and the main benefit I find is that I don’t feel guilty about not studying.
Because SRS takes time that you could spend reading more and seeing more words in the wild.
What I mean by that is that when people state that SRS + reading is superior to just reading they don’t control for time spent.
1h reading + 20 minutes SRS might give better results than 1 hour reading. But that’s comparing 1 hour vs 1h 20 minutes of study.
I’d rather use the other 20 minutes to manually look up every word I don’t know in a dictionary or re read a page I have read the day before (which is itself a form of SRS) than doing flashcards.
That’s… just not true. I personally think you’re wrong about this all around but I don’t know if there’s a whole lot of objective evidence here so I’m not going to make a big deal out of a disagreement there. But what you said is not what we’re saying. For all the reasons already stated in this thread I definitely think 80 minutes of a well-balanced combination of SRS and reading is better than 80 minutes of only reading. Especially when sensibly making decks (preparing for words you are going to see by pre-learning or mining a word that will be repeated the first time) actively makes the reading itself better. Fewer pauses to look up/figure out a word and more mental space when you already have a hook to it to pay more attention to how it’s being used. The two feed off each other and it’s pretty easy for me to tell how much better I usually remember words that I’ve mined.
Apologies if this has already been suggested but I actually do a combined version of looking up and not SRSing, but saving the words to potentially SRS later.
I use the Android app Takoboto to look up unknown words when reading, and for each lookup, I add it to a list with the source’s title (e.x. I currently have lists for manga “Skip Beat,” “Yona of the Dawn,” and “Ace of Diamond” and for the switch game “Pokemon Snap” as well as some others). Whenever I go to add a new lookup to a word list, the app will show which lists the word was already added to. If I notice the same word appearing in a number of lists (which means I have looked it up multiple times before and it appeared in other sources) then I will add it to the “favorites” list which serves as my “probably should learn this” list that I periodically add to an SRS system.
Takoboto I think can also directly export to Ankidroid if you like Anki. I find Anki limiting and so manually create the SRS flashcards when I feel like it.
” angst.