I keep seeing people on the forums say that in addition to Genki I and II and Wanikani they also use this extra program called Anki to help memorize words. So I just Googled it and downloaded the program and I don’t really understand how it is different from any other flash card program. Also do you manually enter the vocabulary (and kanji?) into a deck you create yourself, because that seems very tedious…
Anyway I am trying to understand why this is considered such a useful tool in the Japanese learning community.
ethanny2 said... I keep seeing people on the forums say that in addition to Genki I and II and Wanikani they also use this extra program called Anki to help memorize words. So I just Googled it and downloaded the program and I don't really understand how it is different from any other flash card program. Also do you manually enter the vocabulary (and kanji?) into a deck you create yourself, because that seems very tedious...You can download others peoples decks or make your own to fit your style, thats the power of Anki, customization.
Anyway I am trying to understand why this is considered such a useful tool in the Japanese learning community.
Making your own decks depends on person to person and I personally consider it quite fun. the deck I made myself is nearing 20000 words atm and I just do it over time.
You can make your own decks or download decks other people have made.
It’s useful because it also uses SRS like WK, as you choose how confident you are in your answer, and from there it decides when to show you that card again.
You do it everyday, and it introduces new cards each day (you choose how many, often though people try to do too much and get burned out.)
In a regular flash card program you would just do every card without SRS, but considering how many cards there are for kanji decks, that’s not really feasible.
I see… are there any good links to sets made by other users?
Just google Anki japanese decks, you can find plenty. Most people suggest using the core 2k 6k 10k around
Yomichan for Anki is pretty awesome if you want to add specific vocabulary from a book or song to a deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/934748696.
I like it quite a lot for adding song lyrics so I can practice listening while I commute in the morning.
I can’t comment on the core decks because I tried them but found too much overlap with words I already knew so I decided to make my own decks from study materials I use.