Experimental techniques

Over the time I have spent learning Japanese, I have optimized some of the aspects of the learning process to suit my needs. The methods I am going to discuss in this post are very personalized and likely not the most efficient. However, they have helped me deal with knowledge gaps.

The Kanji Problem:

As discussed in the previous post, “Remembering the Kanji”, while providing a solid foundation, is by no means complete. Visualization and the Migaku Kanji add-on helped me expand my knowledge regarding kanji to some extent. The work that I had done so far was no doubt enough to get me to a decent level of reading comprehension. But I found that I was having trouble with remembering certain words. This was mainly because they used the Kunyomi of their component kanji instead of their Onyomi. Coupled with this was the fact that I would frequently mistake the readings of kanji that looked similar, such as, 縁 and 緑. It was quite obvious that I needed more practice outside of Anki. 

The Peg System:

The peg system is a memorization technique that typically uses number-noun pairs. I decided to try out this technique to remember vocabulary. It started out as nothing more than a fun experiment. But I soon realized that this method could be used to practice kanji.

My Version of the Peg System:

Before explaining how I use the peg system, there are a couple of things that need to be kept in mind.

1. The purpose of this exercise is to practice kanji. Forgetting a few words on the list is O.K.

2. This is not a replacement for Anki. 

Instead of using number-noun pairs, I opted to give each number from 0 to 9 a distinct personality. This allows me to link words directly to the numbers themselves. I also find that this makes using the peg system easier for remembering words that represent abstract concepts. I would populate the list, which would remain active for the entire day, with words that I came across in my immersion. At the beginning of the next day I would ‘clear’ the list by looking up each of the words on it in a monolingual dictionary and practicing the component kanji of the words through visualization 

Advantages and Disadvantages: 

The biggest advantage to using this method on a regular basis is being able to familiarize myself with the stroke order of commonly used kanji radicals. This method also helped me to memorize vocabulary that I had trouble with previously due to Kunyomi readings.

The downside to this method is that it is time consuming. If I had fifteen words on my list, clearing them would take a minimum of one and half an hour. A possible solution to this is to clear the list in blocks of two or three as and when needed. This does not reduce the total amount of time spent clearing the list , but it does reduce the tedium. 

How I Mine Sentences:

I have covered the various tools that make efficient sentence mining possible.This section will discuss some of my personal rules of thumb when it comes to sentence mining. It can be difficult to find i+1 sentences at the beginning stages, so there isn't a lot of choice when making sentence cards. This situation, however, doesn’t last very long. After attaining a certain level of language ability, it is likely that you will find i+1 sentences everywhere. It can be tempting to add every i+1 sentence you come across. But doing so is going to be counterproductive as it takes time away from immersion.

I find that making cards only for the words that I have seen at least twice before, helps tremendously reduce the time I spend on mining. Another aspect of this is frequency of lookups. Simply put, it refers to how often you are looking up words. Looking up every unknown word is not only time consuming, but also impractical. The best way I have found to restrict the urge to look up words is to set a minimum interval, say, five minutes between lookups. This means that I am only allowed one lookup every five minutes. These are some of the techniques that have helped me manage my time efficiently when immersing.