Using SRS to Practice Grammar Exercises?

I was wondering if anyone else has tried using SRS to practice grammar.

I originally tried to learn just by reading and taking notes with the Tae Kim Guide and then Imabi, but I realized that just being slightly familiar with topics was only good for reading, but not actually forming my own sentences, so I sought out a way to practice grammar through doing conjugations and writing out sentences that demonstrate certain concepts, and to that end I’ve worked through a Genki I memrise course and plan to to do the Genki II one next.

I was wondering if anyone else has done this and how they’d expect this form of practice to differ in quality through working through a work book. I think the main thing is that you work through less overall problems, but review them with SRS so you come back to them before the concept can be forgotten.

My main issue with the SRS idea is that sometimes I tunnel-vision and memorize a conjugation rather than really understand what the rule is (but reviewing my old notes helps avoid this) and that more complicated sentences on memrise don’t necessarily specify whether to use simple or past conjugations, making it easy to make small mistakes. The course I use is also kana only, which is good since there are some Kanji in Genki I that WK hasn’t taught me, but its a pain to switch everything to Kanji.

The last downside is that I don’t know what to do after the Genki II practice course on memrise, since there doesn’t seem to be a good enough Tobira grammar practice course, though there is one person I know from reddit who’s planning on making Shinkanzen master grammar practice course (With full kanji) though he’s only made the N4 one, which I’d probably skip in favor of the Genki II course.

So thoughts? Am I shooting myself in the foot by not using a traditional textbook? So far I think I’m learning, practicing, and reinforcing the grammar well enough, but I want to be sure this is the best use of my time moving forward.

I’ve been thinking similar thoughts and recently have been experimenting with using the japanesetest4you grammar decks here:

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1696628291

Since I’ve only started, I don’t yet have a sense on whether or not it is working.

Hey, yes I do this and my experience with it has been really good.

I have a simple Anki card type for grammar points - on the front of the card I write myself a mini-quiz on the elements of the point (sometimes with an example sentence or two, and on the back I summarize in my own words, and give the example sentence translation.

Heres a totally random card I pulled out of my deck:

Front:

Back:

I have the SRS set to show me a new card again in 2 hrs if wrong, graduate to 1 day if right, and an interval modifier of 100% for reviews.

I did this for every grammar point in Genki. I found over time that the shorter I can make the card the better, both for the purposes of judging how to mark my response and for making it feel easy to get through the deck. Breaking a grammar point into multiple cards is fantastic (e.g. In Genki -にくい and -やすい are treated as one point but here I’ve split it up), and the exercise of making them solidifies the content in my head.

Also (and this may be more relevant to your question) I put all the audio grammar exercises in – as a “grammar practice” note type. Front of card only: just a picture of the exercise from the book with the audio. That’s it.

I really can’t overstate how helpful it’s been. I feel truly solid on everything from all of Genki 1/2, even the stuff I haven’t run into in the real world very much.

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Have you tried renshuu.org? I haven’t actively used it yet, but have looked around the site. It seems decent and has grammar grouped by JLPT and category (not sure if anything else). I’m honestly not sure if it uses SRS and how reviews work, but it might be worth at least looking into.

My general suggestion is to use a combination of resources, both physical and digital. I think the most important thing is getting different perspectives/explanations on grammar. Maybe one resource explains something in a way that you don’t understand, but with another resource it just clicks. Whether using an actual workbook or SRS is better, I could only guess. But I believe it can only be good to reinforce your knowledge using different resources and learning techniques.

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I was using Jtest4you for this purpose, and now Tae Kim is under way.

Now. I plan to create my own, using sentences from Shinkanzen Master. If this should succeed, I would be able to do exercises in Shinkanzen Master better. After all, I want to be able to do exercises well.

Moreover, I plan to fix the habit of not reading sentences thoroughly / aloud by practicing with audio sentences. This can be generated to a robot voice in Anki.

My plan:

  • Card type A
  • Front: Audio in Japanese
  • Back: Japanese sentence, personal translation (EN), official translation
  • Card type B
  • Front: English sentences
  • Back: personal translation (JP), Japanese sentence
  • Card type C
  • I will consider cloze sentences too.No general idea right now.
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I heard about renshuu the other day. How is it? It seemed more like a vocab drilling site like memrise or WK than grammar from what I can tell. Does it have enough grammar practice exercises? Is it paid or free?

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It is free, for all vocab at least. For grammar, it is partially locked.

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Good idea to use audio. I too have noticed that its difficult to read entire sentences somehow, so I try to make it feel like I’m creating them organically rather than memorizing a stock phrase, but perhaps I should do some more intensive listening practice.

I am not sure if you are fine with Anki, but…

Robot voice generation: Convert Written sentences to Audio: Mass automation possible? Otherwise, database of Audio sentence (natively spoken) by JLPT? → in short. AwesomeTTS
My sample edit of Tae Kim deck I create some time ago: Share Your Japanese Attack Plan! - #33 by polv

renshuu has a lot of grammar information, but again, I don’t know how it tests you on it. There are free aspects and there is a paid version. It’s cheap compared to WK: $4 a month or $99 for lifetime.

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