Notes: -Learn how to make conditional note types in Anki here: docs.ankiweb.net/#/templates/generation?id=conditional-replacement -When I say “intermediate”, that would roughly correspond to Stage 2B/2C of Refold. Anything below that corresponds to what I refer to as “beginner”. -At Refold, after Stage 1, we don’t recommend putting full sentence translations on the back of cards. Moving away from translations will help you start to understand your target language IN your target language, without relying on your native language. -Correction: 11:03 should say “Vocab Card Cons”, not “Sentence Card Cons”
How can I make these cards? Do I need a file from a tv show or movie or does it work otherwise? My TL does not appear have any subtitle txt files online
I just want to thank you for giving me the confidence I needed to start to pursue a new language at an adult age, I've been studying Japanese now for a little over 6 months and met up with two japanese on working holiday in my country a few days ago, and we spoke for four hours in Japanese about all sorts of things, and I even expressed things that I didn't even know I could say them or how I had learned how to use the words. It was a magical experience to suddenly realize I could express myself somewhat fluently about all sorts of things from social problems to favourite dishes and work out routines.
@@thedodoplayer8521 a long time ago now but I had a lot of spare time due to corona restrictions. I think I started with 20 cards a day of remember the Kanji and 40 cards a day of the 1000 most common words, where half of the cards were Japanese to english and the other half were english to Japanese. At some point I started adding my own cards and did 20 a day of that while I progressively reduced the amount of Daily cards if the other decks. Once I really got into the pace of things I did about 1 hour of Kanji a day(writing and reading), 40 minutes of vocabulary, 20 minutes of grammar and around 4-10 hours of immersion a day with reading, Listening and watching drama/anime.
@@thedodoplayer8521i guess it is a bit misleading to say six months when I was studying many hours a day. While ut is true I did it in a short time frame, I had probably spent around 1000 hours with the language at the time. Since then I haven't put as much effort into actively 'trying' to acquire Japanese, which is a bit of a shame, but I still leisure read manga in Japanese and watch Japanese anime to retain my skills.
High-quality video with intuitive visualization. I am a native Mandarin speaker and it's great to see example with my mother tongue. Can't wait to see Matt do a show with Chinese .
@@default632 he said on Patreon Q&A that he's not gonna learn another language after Mandarin. He said something like "I will master Mandarin, then I will use English, Japanese and Mandarin to communicate and bring value to this world" (I don't remember what exactly he said, but something like that)
@@coconutpineapple2489 a few similar words doesn't make it easy for him to learn Chinese. Seeing how he has learned Japanese though, he understands the work of learning a language. But he still needs to learn tones, Chinese characters etc.
@@JackLuongI was like this, but a year ago I switched back to vocab cards and I'm glad I did. Sentence cards rely too heavily on pattern recognition, and you spend more time on each card. Which is a bad thing when you could be spending that time reading native material instead.
Thanks for the video, its especially useful since this exact topic has been on my mind recently! Was interesting hear to your take on this, I found it very rational and well thought out!
Your production value has gone up by leaps and bounds! The consistent refold branding is amazing. I think that this will help bring more beginners to this platform.
This was definitely my experience as well, when trying to mine sentence cards before my vocabulary was large enough I just got overwhelmed in both trying to find sentences that were easy enough and contained my target word, or trying to comprehend sentences that were above my level but contained the word. I naturally switched to using text vocab cards just so that I could get something done and now I'm back to sentence cards.
Same. Loved vocab cards as a beginner. But as an intermediate I need more. I've edited my deck so that the focus is on the main vocab in question. But there is a sentence in smaller font below it. I try my best to read and know the meaning of the word/ reading and then if I can't remember then I read the sentence. If I still can't remember then naturally I fail the card. If I know it I have the option to just move on quickly. As I'm studying Japanese, I often know the meaning of the kanji but not the reading or vice versa. I only pass it if I know both and the cards are still immature. If they are rather mature and I know either the meaning or reading (with the later I'll know the gist of the sentence but may be off a bit with the meaning of the word) I just pass it if I want to, assuming I'll see it again in my immersion. Otherwise I'll fail it if I think it's a useful word that I want to remember. Both formats are useful but like Matt said, there's a time one could be better than the other. I appreciate the suggestion of a transition for learning new words. Also simply using the same tool differently depending on what you're trying to accomplish.
@@tsnk9806 Some people do, but I think a majority of the refold community does it this way. Seeing your native language and recalling another language's word is active recall. I think for the refold approach we try and associate the meaning to the Japanese word, not making a connection to our native language but the raw idea itself. When you are speaking to someone you don't think of the word in your native language first then translate it to your target language and then say it, not usually anyways. Sorry if my explanation is bad but watch Matt's most recent video with Xiaoma they touch this topic a little. Edit: Neither way is wrong just do what you think is best
Livakivi a Estonian youtuber who does a lot of Japanese language videos described vocab cards as showing beginners a word so they know it exists. Sentence cards just allow you to learn a words meaning in context.
in theory yes, in practice that's not the case at all. what I and apparently many other people as well have found is that with sentence cards, you will most of the time end up learning the sentence by certain cues, like the beginning of the sentence, the overall structure of it or very easy and familiar words that are contained within it. while you will know the meaning of the sentence with the help of these cues, you fail to learn the word that is actually the target of the i+1 sentence. by that I mean that you might as well completely blank out the target word of the sentence that you are trying to learn with it and still know what the sentence means, which as a result does nothing for you actually learning the word, especially if it's outside of this particular context.
@@hexamine666I agree. This is why my preferred card format (at least what works for me) is a mix of both. On the front I have in a big font the vocab word, and I try to recall its meaning and reading by itself first. If I have trouble with it, I have a smaller font example sentence with the target word in it. That helps a lot for words that I haven’t quite internalised yet, and for disambiguating words that mean different things in different contexts.
You offer more elucidating tutelage than most, I think: I appreciate that you avoid excessively cryptic prose, unlike some others in the community! Keep up the good work!
Finally, some good old thumbnail ! Maybe we will have an anime upside down in the background. Actually, seeing you speaking is easier to follow what you are saying. Edit : I watched the video and this is top quality. I love this format very clear, and easy to follow
I like that you're adding more visual aspects to your presentation rather than just speaking directly to the camera. It makes for a more immersive experience.
Another good video. My experience with using flashcards for vocabulary is that some words will stick and most of the other words will still require me to encounter the word in multiple contexts through immersion (like the video says). I try not to spend too much time on the flashcards, and will spend way more time on immersion activities.
Wow, this is the best video I've seen about sentence & vocab cards. I'll definitely be sending it to some friends next time I'm trying to explain what sentence cards are. Thanks for the great content Matt !
Awesome video, Matt! I started making vocab cards along with my sentence cards recently for words with short/clear definitions. Was wondering if that was a wise decision. Your thoughts/explanations always help me feel like the time I’m spending on language learning will pay off!
Was thinking about the differences recently so interesting coincidence that this video came out recently. Really helpful, especially the ability to create conditional Anki note types so I can make both kinds of cards. That’s really cool to me
For every new word I use both types. A vocab card and as many sentence cards for every meaning i want to learn. It works best for me. All dictionary definitions are inserted in the vocab card but I mainly focus on remembering those for which I have a sentence card too.
Also I just wanted to point out a small observation I've made myself regarding the two formats. Sentence cards really shine if you want to speak the language using the words correctly in a proper context (duh, right?), but if you just care about understanding, then you can get away with vocabulary cards. You don't need to really know the precise context of a word, just its general meaning to understand it when used in context. But you miss out on the benefit you get from reviewing the word in a proper context and the colocation over and over via Anki. I've told myself that I'll just get the context and colocation through immersion and I think sometimes I will but sometimes not. Probably not more often than I will if the word isn't too common.
Matt, Don't know if you'll respond or even see this, but I'm an American who has reached native level fluency in Brazilian Portuguese using the mass immersion approach that you used to talk about before refold. I was surprised you didn't mention the most obvious and useful version of vocab cards: an image on the front of the card (usually a concrete noun like you mentioned) and the word representing that image in your target language on the back of the card. If I want to say "elephant" in my target language, the first thing that's gonna come to my mind is an image of an elephant and then (if i want to communicate "elephant" to others) I will have to remember the word for elephant in my target language. In this way, this style of vocab mimics real life recall. It also gets rid of the ambiguity of words with multiple definitions. If I place a picture of bark on the front, there's no way of getting confused with a dog's bark.
I'm just starting to learn my third language which is Japanese, and in my case I definitely remembered the words I want to remember using sentence cards rather than vocab cards, cause I tried using vocab cards for a month and I find it hard to remember the target words, unlike when I started using Sentence cards. Though I have started studying last month, I decided to drop my old ways,(textbook type) when I learned about immersion learning.
With Refold Spanish cards, I have trouble recalling the meanings of the more abstract words, rather than objects like ‘leaf’ or ‘grass’. That being said, I realize when I hear the words ‘soler’ while immersed, I have no trouble recalling. Now it makes sense to me. Vocab cards vs sentence cards.
Nice video! Thanks! I personally use vocab cards for simple object-oriented nouns such as "dog" or "tree" and sentence cards for everything else. Because, for example, abstract things like "impression" or "willpower" seem ok when I created the card, but then after a week or so I just have no idea what exactly was that definitely easy thing) For both types I never use an audio or pictures. Instead I put source name on the front of the card separated by a new line, like this: ぼ。ぼくは。 断[だん]じて！ 教授と ” 言[い]い 争[あらそ]い” なんて、やってない！ 大逆転裁判
A good example is やっぱり. It was basically useless me looking it up and making an vocab Ankicard for it. Too many meanings that are very context based. Wasn't until I watched a video by a native speaker explaining it that I had at least a reasonable idea of its meaning.
Great video! I personally use a mix of maybe 75% vocab cards 25% sentence cards and it has worked well for me so far. I have just one point to make regarding your section on review time: Personally for a majority of my vocab card reviews I don't look at the definition or sentence, because I know the word - I just mash enter twice and move on to the next card. So those ones really do take only as long as it takes me to recognize the word, ie maybe a second or two. I don't feel like I'm losing out on anything by not reading the sentence, because I can use that time to do actual reading.
In the beginning, instead of using vocab cards, I've found that putting the target word on the front with the sentence is a bit better. Of course, this is with the understanding that getting the word is the goal, rather than the sentence, but the sentence can still be attempted before knowing the answer. This gives you a chance to practice reading sentences from the get-go, and often you don't need to be able to read every word to understand a sentence enough to get a feel for how a word is used. You also will pick up vocabulary that is commonly used in practice sentences automatically, even if it's not a target word (yet). This method essentially removes the cons of vocab cards when the sentence can be mostly understood, and is a built-in transition to using pure sentence cards when you get to the point where that's feasible.
Great!!! The question: When learning new words with different meanings, would be better to learn their multiple meanings or at least some of them, or would be better to grasp only one definition at once and keep going until you stumble upon the same word in another context?
Yeah I started with vocab cards, 1 card per word... I was writing how many meanings each word hard in brackets as a hint. So I had cards like "Draft (7)" or "Hitch (5)" and I had to list all of the meanings each time. Needless to say that many of my cards became leeches quickly lol. Good thing I only added around 600 cards so it's not as painful to now redo them as sentence cards.
I think if you're learning a non-European language vocab cards at the beginning make more sense. If you're learning a European language I think sentence cards can still work at the beginning. It isn't too hard to find sentences where only one word is completely unfamiliar.
Perfect timing (almost). I noticed how I was often using sentence cards to infer from context and felt like I was cheating. Therefore I have been thinking about using single word cards instead.
Alright. I'm just gonna keep using sentence cards in general, but if the contextual clue for a given word is too big or if the word is a simple one meaning word without a complex definition I'm going to make vocab cards instead.
@Pierre Robin I was worried that having sentences that make inferring from context too easy would result in less focus on the word itself and therefore not being able to recognize it in a different context. After this video I'm more optimistic that this shouldn't be a huge problem tho.
I prefer vocab cards over sentence cards. As you have already mentioned in your video, the sentence cards are too easy as they give you hints by already providing the necessary context. Of course, context is always crucial when studying vocab in general but our brain being a pattern-recognizing machine will take advantage of this. I am a native German speaker and wanted to improve my English. I always had a pretty natural feeling with my grammar usage, listening capabilities were excellent but producing the language was always my biggest flaw. My vocab was super limited and I essentially sounded like a 5-year-old when I tried to speak, even though my overall understanding of the language was nearly perfect. The only way to address this issue was by using vocab cards, but having the German word on the front and the English (target) translation on the back of the card. Having "mastered" my English I moved on. Currently, I'm into Korean and I'm trying to apply the same strategy. Interestingly, this time I am facing the opposite problem. While my speaking skills are actually not that bad, my listening skills are lacking quite a bit. This sorta one-way style of studying probably wasn't the best idea haha. However, I feel that now I have to put in way less work that had to do with English. Improving my listening is simply done by - surprise - listening, which can be quite enjoyable. Cramming in vocab like a maniac on the other hand - less of an enjoyable experience.
Had this recently with some english keywords I was learning for kanji while I put them in vocab cards, and just could not grasp why exactly I wasn't understanding the word after so many reviews. Makes so much sence now.
Great video. I more or less agree with everything. An additional benefit of sentence cards is that it really focuses you to choose only low-hanging fruit for your cards. Since you're only learning "easy" sentences, it drastically whittles down what vocab you might potentially put into Anki. I guess hypothetically you could make vocab cards out of low-hanging fruit sentences, but since it's not as crucial, I could see how sentences that are too difficult could end up in your deck.
Great analysis Matt! Sentence cards are way superior imho, but vocab cards have their place (irregular kanji readings etc.) You can also get a few reps easily while doing other things since they don't require your full attention. I m curious about your thoughts on Core2k/6k/10k decks, since they are already premade, and they are a combination of Vocab, Sentence and Audio cards, allowing you to review them in any fashion you like. You must be familiar with them and I would like to hear your opinion! Thanks for the great video!
I use a deck that has vocab and sentence cards for each word,and audio. I use them all as vocab cards (double drilling) but could start using the sentences whenever I'd like
To rep vocab cards more quickly, you need to not read the sentence on the back unless you think you need to because you forget how the word is used. Yeah, a shortcut that maybe you shouldn't be taking but it is a time saver. And I can say from experience, depending on my motivation to study, sometimes I need that shortcut or I won't do my Anki reps at all. I've gone through different phases over the years switching between vocab and sentence cards. At the moment I'm using a sentence card deck. It has native audio for the sentences which makes doing the reps much more rewarding. I think without the native audio I'd probably burn out and have to switch back to vocab cards. I actually went way overboard and hired some voice actors through a website to record a bunch of Korean sentences for me to spice up my Anki deck. Way too expensive but if I get through this sentence deck thanks to them, I'll call it even and money well spent after all. (Although native audio from TV/Movies is also good, it's a lot harder to understand)
Wouldn't it make more sense to have the target language on the back of the card so you are at least giving yourself the chance to remember as opposed to automatically seeing it? Active recall yields much better results than passive recall (aka seeing the word straight away)
Really curious to see this, as I've been doing a combination of the two ( words in context sort of approach ), and have seen great results so far with much better retention. Feels easier to understand a word when you also understand the sentence it's in
Having been doing production cards for over a year now, after watching this I am going to give comprehension cards a go. Production cards have given me a lot value, but on the other hand I feel like it takes ages to review stuff as recalling can take a long time and you can only add so many a day as you can only memorise so many new words.
Yeah, production cards create more powerful memories, more quickly, because you're active recalling the info. Comprehension cards are cool but you are just recognizing, essentially just a form of reading, it takes a lot more repetition to learn something through recognition (though people often feel like they're learning more). Tons of research on this showing effortful recall beats recognition for learning. Try the site Universe of Memory,
@@jamiekim6926 Producing what you can't recognize is pretty stupid. Production comes naturally, and can be improved by doing real production in real life, not anki.
@@default632 Criticizing a point that you haven't even really attempted to understand is pretty stupid. After all, what could decades of research in learning and memory tell you? You know better than those idiots right? Carry on pal, good luck.
I'm kinda curious - there are some sentence cards I've been wanting to make where I just want to make sure I understand an idiomatic way of expressing an idea. There isn't necessarily a single word I don't know, just that I want to reinforce an overall natural way to say something. In that case, I would just put the meaning of the whole sentence on the back of the card, as opposed to the definition of a single word I don't know. How do people feel about this approach?
When I first started doing sentence cards for Norwegian, I made the mistake of thinking it was okay to learn sentences where I knew all but one the words, regardless of whether I understood the rest of the words in that context. It got frustrating very fast
Hi, Matt, thanks for the videos and all your teachings and inspiration, I am now learning (roughly 2 month in) japanese using your suggestion of input (listening and reading) + anki (vocab), i have a question about learning vocab. When I learn a new word like 上手[じょうず], it's sounds like the name "George" to me. Is it a good thing for me to use this type of mnemonics or should I avoid that way of memorizing as much as possible? (Would you suggest me to use any sort of mnemonic at all? Would that make things very unnatural since I would have to sort of go thru another room in my mind to extract that piece of information when I need to extract it?) Thanks a lot.
After close to 2 years of using ajatt/mia, I've found both to be benefitical. Although, over the last 6 months, I've been making audio/vocabulary cards. I find them much better for new words compared to sentence cards. That isn't to say sentence cards aren't good, they are very good for some situations, but I personally prefer vocabulary cards now.
Same. You end up hearing the audio so many times that as soon as you see the word you can hear it playing in your head. If I had the sentence on the front I wouldn't get the same effect. I've memorised half the lines in a whole anime just due to repping it in Anki lmao.
I've been wanting to know how you recall monolingual card definitions ever since you posted the first view on how to review cards so I'm happy to get an answer and agree with what you said. If I can't find an example sentence for a monolingual card I need to make though I usually just find the closest English definition though since it saves all the hassle and I feel like I still recall the word in the long run
I'm curious, if you learning only "comprehension" method (I mean only chinese->english cards), so you just now be able to some speak or write in chinese without doing typically reversed cards (I mean english->chinese cards)?
Good video, one question have that you didn’t really touch on in this video is, how complex or simple do you think you should make sentence cards. As you move into the advanced stages do you think that the sentence complexity should increase? Or should the sentences stay simple and just be complex enough to provide context to the key word? Hope that makes sense
So I've been using vocab cards lately with the word audio on the front but I don't auto play it. So basically I attempt to read the word first (no furigana) but if I can't read it I just play the audio then guess the meaning. When I flip it over I am presented the meaning, an example sentence and the audio for both the word and the sentence. In your diagram you had audio and text on opposing sides. What are your thoughts on my approach and the idea of including both text and audio on the front? Should I have two versions of my deck, one with just audio and one with just the text?
Great video. Jumped on the refold band wagon is great guidance and to keep on track with language learning. Not tried Anki. Currently using Fluent U. Are there any great german cards already made?
You can learn to recognize kanji with text vocab cards and text sentence cards which are comprehension cards, yes. The issue here is that you don't learn to hand write your kanji, whereas with production cards you can go through the process to learn how to write these kanji. This leads to my question: how do you guys learn to hand write? I just started learning Japanese 4 weeks ago, I also plan on learning how to write kanji while learning my vocabulary. I don't find it efficient to learn how to write kanji at the very end, I prefer to do it throughout the whole journey.
Is one expected to read the whole sentence in the Sentence Card every single time? I've always had the habit of only really reading the full sentence when the card first appears, any other time I'm just tunnelvisioning the target word. I suspect this isn't really giving me the benefit of sentence cards. Hell, I almost feel like I'm instinctively avoiding to read the whole sentence, as it doesn't feel like I recall the word if I do so, like it's "cheating" and shouldn't count. I know that isn't the case most likely, but it's pretty burnt into my habits, despite this I really do wish to get the maximum benefits a Sentence Card would bring, it's just that I'm not quite sure if this is a factor that goes into play or not. Maybe it's just entirely normal for people not to ritually read the whole sentence either.
Notes:
-Learn how to make conditional note types in Anki here: docs.ankiweb.net/#/templates/generation?id=conditional-replacement
-When I say “intermediate”, that would roughly correspond to Stage 2B/2C of Refold. Anything below that corresponds to what I refer to as “beginner”.
-At Refold, after Stage 1, we don’t recommend putting full sentence translations on the back of cards. Moving away from translations will help you start to understand your target language IN your target language, without relying on your native language.
-Correction: 11:03 should say “Vocab Card Cons”, not “Sentence Card Cons”
The video production value has been getting higher and higher lately!
How can I make these cards? Do I need a file from a tv show or movie or does it work otherwise? My TL does not appear have any subtitle txt files online
hi matt (or guys), how can one make an anki card type with a conditional word field ? Is it an add-on? 11:50
@@Makiaveliiste You don't need an addon. You can learn how to do it here: docs.ankiweb.net/#/templates/generation?id=conditional-replacement
@@mattvsjapan Thank u !
I just want to thank you for giving me the confidence I needed to start to pursue a new language at an adult age, I've been studying Japanese now for a little over 6 months and met up with two japanese on working holiday in my country a few days ago, and we spoke for four hours in Japanese about all sorts of things, and I even expressed things that I didn't even know I could say them or how I had learned how to use the words. It was a magical experience to suddenly realize I could express myself somewhat fluently about all sorts of things from social problems to favourite dishes and work out routines.
wait how did you learn so much in only six months thats crazy how many cards a day did you use on anki?
@@thedodoplayer8521 a long time ago now but I had a lot of spare time due to corona restrictions. I think I started with 20 cards a day of remember the Kanji and 40 cards a day of the 1000 most common words, where half of the cards were Japanese to english and the other half were english to Japanese.
At some point I started adding my own cards and did 20 a day of that while I progressively reduced the amount of Daily cards if the other decks.
Once I really got into the pace of things I did about 1 hour of Kanji a day(writing and reading), 40 minutes of vocabulary, 20 minutes of grammar and around 4-10 hours of immersion a day with reading, Listening and watching drama/anime.
@@thedodoplayer8521i guess it is a bit misleading to say six months when I was studying many hours a day. While ut is true I did it in a short time frame, I had probably spent around 1000 hours with the language at the time.
Since then I haven't put as much effort into actively 'trying' to acquire Japanese, which is a bit of a shame, but I still leisure read manga in Japanese and watch Japanese anime to retain my skills.
@@Mappooo ooo okk
Im fairly intrated at Matt scheduling the premier of this video at a time I was not available.
I see what you did there
High-quality video with intuitive visualization.
I am a native Mandarin speaker and it's great to see example with my mother tongue. Can't wait to see Matt do a show with Chinese .
Matt has been on a roll since he started learning another language.
I can't wait to see where he'll be after Mandarin. I'm guessing either a European language, or Arabic, or Korean. Most likely Korean.
@@default632 he said on Patreon Q&A that he's not gonna learn another language after Mandarin. He said something like "I will master Mandarin, then I will use English, Japanese and Mandarin to communicate and bring value to this world" (I don't remember what exactly he said, but something like that)
I assum he learns easily, because there are many similar words Japanese and Chinese, plus word order is similar with English.
@@coconutpineapple2489 a few similar words doesn't make it easy for him to learn Chinese. Seeing how he has learned Japanese though, he understands the work of learning a language. But he still needs to learn tones, Chinese characters etc.
that thumbnail. love it
omg old thumbnails. matts back, boys
HELL YEAH
Sentence cards are honestly the reason I remember so much of my vocabulary lol
i probably would not be continuing learning the language if i did not know about sentence cards
@@patatos879 fr
I switched from vocab to sentence card and I can remember double the words with less effort! with all the comprehension benefits
@@JackLuongI was like this, but a year ago I switched back to vocab cards and I'm glad I did. Sentence cards rely too heavily on pattern recognition, and you spend more time on each card. Which is a bad thing when you could be spending that time reading native material instead.
Thanks for the video, its especially useful since this exact topic has been on my mind recently! Was interesting hear to your take on this, I found it very rational and well thought out!
Your production value has gone up by leaps and bounds! The consistent refold branding is amazing. I think that this will help bring more beginners to this platform.
Very Curious about this. Can't wait to watch it.
+1
+1
+1
This was definitely my experience as well, when trying to mine sentence cards before my vocabulary was large enough I just got overwhelmed in both trying to find sentences that were easy enough and contained my target word, or trying to comprehend sentences that were above my level but contained the word. I naturally switched to using text vocab cards just so that I could get something done and now I'm back to sentence cards.
Same.
Loved vocab cards as a beginner. But as an intermediate I need more. I've edited my deck so that the focus is on the main vocab in question. But there is a sentence in smaller font below it. I try my best to read and know the meaning of the word/ reading and then if I can't remember then I read the sentence. If I still can't remember then naturally I fail the card. If I know it I have the option to just move on quickly.
As I'm studying Japanese, I often know the meaning of the kanji but not the reading or vice versa. I only pass it if I know both and the cards are still immature. If they are rather mature and I know either the meaning or reading (with the later I'll know the gist of the sentence but may be off a bit with the meaning of the word) I just pass it if I want to, assuming I'll see it again in my immersion. Otherwise I'll fail it if I think it's a useful word that I want to remember.
Both formats are useful but like Matt said, there's a time one could be better than the other. I appreciate the suggestion of a transition for learning new words. Also simply using the same tool differently depending on what you're trying to accomplish.
Guys, you really don't make reverse cards (your native language-> target language), and only doing "target language" -> "native language"?
@@tsnk9806 Some people do, but I think a majority of the refold community does it this way. Seeing your native language and recalling another language's word is active recall. I think for the refold approach we try and associate the meaning to the Japanese word, not making a connection to our native language but the raw idea itself.
When you are speaking to someone you don't think of the word in your native language first then translate it to your target language and then say it, not usually anyways.
Sorry if my explanation is bad but watch Matt's most recent video with Xiaoma they touch this topic a little.
Edit: Neither way is wrong just do what you think is best
@@drauc Thanks for your answer. And how about you? In this approach, have you any results that satisfy you?
@@tsnk9806 Yes it's what I use and I've found a lot of success with it. Everyone is different though so I recommend going with what you think is best
Livakivi a Estonian youtuber who does a lot of Japanese language videos described vocab cards as showing beginners a word so they know it exists. Sentence cards just allow you to learn a words meaning in context.
in theory yes, in practice that's not the case at all. what I and apparently many other people as well have found is that with sentence cards, you will most of the time end up learning the sentence by certain cues, like the beginning of the sentence, the overall structure of it or very easy and familiar words that are contained within it. while you will know the meaning of the sentence with the help of these cues, you fail to learn the word that is actually the target of the i+1 sentence. by that I mean that you might as well completely blank out the target word of the sentence that you are trying to learn with it and still know what the sentence means, which as a result does nothing for you actually learning the word, especially if it's outside of this particular context.
@@hexamine666I agree. This is why my preferred card format (at least what works for me) is a mix of both. On the front I have in a big font the vocab word, and I try to recall its meaning and reading by itself first. If I have trouble with it, I have a smaller font example sentence with the target word in it. That helps a lot for words that I haven’t quite internalised yet, and for disambiguating words that mean different things in different contexts.
You offer more elucidating tutelage than most, I think: I appreciate that you avoid excessively cryptic prose, unlike some others in the community! Keep up the good work!
xD
Finally, some good old thumbnail ! Maybe we will have an anime upside down in the background. Actually, seeing you speaking is easier to follow what you are saying.
Edit : I watched the video and this is top quality. I love this format very clear, and easy to follow
This video - 10/10 the editing is sick! I would love to see a progress video of your Chinese and how you make those amazing anki cards.
I like that you're adding more visual aspects to your presentation rather than just speaking directly to the camera. It makes for a more immersive experience.
Matt that thumbnail brought back so many good nostalgic memories!! Yes mate
The part starting around 9 mins I am so glad to hear put into words. I abstractly understood it but wasn't quite sure ;)
Another good video. My experience with using flashcards for vocabulary is that some words will stick and most of the other words will still require me to encounter the word in multiple contexts through immersion (like the video says). I try not to spend too much time on the flashcards, and will spend way more time on immersion activities.
Wow, this is the best video I've seen about sentence & vocab cards. I'll definitely be sending it to some friends next time I'm trying to explain what sentence cards are. Thanks for the great content Matt !
I just realised that "intration" is basically an English version of 逆ギレ.
I think matt uses 逆ヒレ in an older video too. Some kind of continuous MattVsJapan Universe haha
They're actually different! For 逆ギレ, the person isn't aware that they have no right to be angry. For intration, the person is aware.
@@mattvsjapan Ah okay gotcha! In all seriousness Intration is actually a pretty good idea for a new English word.
@@sandwichbreath0 Not enough of a word to be listed in Merriam Webster
I cant believe we don't already have a word for this concept its pretty useful
At 11:03, isn't the slide supposed to say "Vocab Card Cons"?
Opps!
Awesome video Matt! I'm really enjoying sentence mining and just Anki reviewing in general, so it's nice to see another video on that topic!
Thanks a lot for this.
I was having nightmare about what sort of card to use.
Honestly "intration" is a pretty useful concept
Just found your channel. I absolutely love it!
Thank you so much for this! Could you do a video on how to make card types with the conditional word field and pretty colors?
Very curious about you mandarin progress 👀
Really good video !! Also cool that you are learning mandarin 👍 nice to see you learning a new language
Awesome video, Matt! I started making vocab cards along with my sentence cards recently for words with short/clear definitions. Was wondering if that was a wise decision. Your thoughts/explanations always help me feel like the time I’m spending on language learning will pay off!
Such a valuable video. Thanks for the effort in making this 🙌🏾 ⚡️
Was thinking about the differences recently so interesting coincidence that this video came out recently. Really helpful, especially the ability to create conditional Anki note types so I can make both kinds of cards. That’s really cool to me
For every new word I use both types. A vocab card and as many sentence cards for every meaning i want to learn. It works best for me. All dictionary definitions are inserted in the vocab card but I mainly focus on remembering those for which I have a sentence card too.
Also I just wanted to point out a small observation I've made myself regarding the two formats. Sentence cards really shine if you want to speak the language using the words correctly in a proper context (duh, right?), but if you just care about understanding, then you can get away with vocabulary cards. You don't need to really know the precise context of a word, just its general meaning to understand it when used in context. But you miss out on the benefit you get from reviewing the word in a proper context and the colocation over and over via Anki. I've told myself that I'll just get the context and colocation through immersion and I think sometimes I will but sometimes not. Probably not more often than I will if the word isn't too common.
Thanks for such a great video! Gave me plenty of good things to think about! Appreciate all the help!
I was waiting for such video for a long time since I myself struggle to choose between the two.
Matt,
Don't know if you'll respond or even see this, but I'm an American who has reached native level fluency in Brazilian Portuguese using the mass immersion approach that you used to talk about before refold. I was surprised you didn't mention the most obvious and useful version of vocab cards: an image on the front of the card (usually a concrete noun like you mentioned) and the word representing that image in your target language on the back of the card. If I want to say "elephant" in my target language, the first thing that's gonna come to my mind is an image of an elephant and then (if i want to communicate "elephant" to others) I will have to remember the word for elephant in my target language. In this way, this style of vocab mimics real life recall. It also gets rid of the ambiguity of words with multiple definitions. If I place a picture of bark on the front, there's no way of getting confused with a dog's bark.
oloco tu é fluente mesmo?
I'm just starting to learn my third language which is Japanese, and in my case I definitely remembered the words I want to remember using sentence cards rather than vocab cards, cause I tried using vocab cards for a month and I find it hard to remember the target words, unlike when I started using Sentence cards. Though I have started studying last month, I decided to drop my old ways,(textbook type) when I learned about immersion learning.
Thank you so much this was so helpful!!
I literally made a post of this question in Reddit like 1 or 2 days ago. Lmaooo, nice video!
With Refold Spanish cards, I have trouble recalling the meanings of the more abstract words, rather than objects like ‘leaf’ or ‘grass’.
That being said, I realize when I hear the words ‘soler’ while immersed, I have no trouble recalling.
Now it makes sense to me. Vocab cards vs sentence cards.
This is absolute gold!
great video. thanks for giving a useful and informative analysis
Intration is such a great word
What's the Chinese show you got the sentences from called? (like the cards at 5:25)
"Love O2O" - I'm rewatching this myself... again...
It's on Netflix, which has some great Chinese dramas!
Nice video! Thanks!
I personally use vocab cards for simple object-oriented nouns such as "dog" or "tree" and sentence cards for everything else. Because, for example, abstract things like "impression" or "willpower" seem ok when I created the card, but then after a week or so I just have no idea what exactly was that definitely easy thing)
For both types I never use an audio or pictures. Instead I put source name on the front of the card separated by a new line, like this:
ぼ。ぼくは。 断[だん]じて！ 教授と ” 言[い]い 争[あらそ]い” なんて、やってない！
大逆転裁判
Incredible content. Thank you.
A good example is やっぱり. It was basically useless me looking it up and making an vocab Ankicard for it. Too many meanings that are very context based. Wasn't until I watched a video by a native speaker explaining it that I had at least a reasonable idea of its meaning.
やっぱりまちがっていません
When could I hear you speak Mandarin, I expect your Mandarin will make me amazed!
Great video! I personally use a mix of maybe 75% vocab cards 25% sentence cards and it has worked well for me so far. I have just one point to make regarding your section on review time: Personally for a majority of my vocab card reviews I don't look at the definition or sentence, because I know the word - I just mash enter twice and move on to the next card. So those ones really do take only as long as it takes me to recognize the word, ie maybe a second or two. I don't feel like I'm losing out on anything by not reading the sentence, because I can use that time to do actual reading.
at 11:10 i think you meant "vocab card cons" in the text
Great analysis, I came exactly to the same conclusions as yours.
any tips on how to set up the conditional field to change from vocab card to sentence card?
In the beginning, instead of using vocab cards, I've found that putting the target word on the front with the sentence is a bit better. Of course, this is with the understanding that getting the word is the goal, rather than the sentence, but the sentence can still be attempted before knowing the answer. This gives you a chance to practice reading sentences from the get-go, and often you don't need to be able to read every word to understand a sentence enough to get a feel for how a word is used. You also will pick up vocabulary that is commonly used in practice sentences automatically, even if it's not a target word (yet). This method essentially removes the cons of vocab cards when the sentence can be mostly understood, and is a built-in transition to using pure sentence cards when you get to the point where that's feasible.
Great!!! The question:
When learning new words with different meanings, would be better to learn their multiple meanings or at least some of them, or would be better to grasp only one definition at once and keep going until you stumble upon the same word in another context?
Yeah I started with vocab cards, 1 card per word... I was writing how many meanings each word hard in brackets as a hint. So I had cards like "Draft (7)" or "Hitch (5)" and I had to list all of the meanings each time. Needless to say that many of my cards became leeches quickly lol. Good thing I only added around 600 cards so it's not as painful to now redo them as sentence cards.
Can you reccomend a japanese sentance deck that looks like the one you have been diplaying as your examples? With furigana plz 🙏
The thumbnail is on point
I think if you're learning a non-European language vocab cards at the beginning make more sense. If you're learning a European language I think sentence cards can still work at the beginning. It isn't too hard to find sentences where only one word is completely unfamiliar.
That was an amazing video thank you so much
Love O2O (微微一笑很倾城) 😍 I've been loving Chinese dramas.
I'm a beginner, but inspired by you a couple of years ago to watch shows
I want "intration" to be an actual word, I love it.
Perfect timing (almost). I noticed how I was often using sentence cards to infer from context and felt like I was cheating. Therefore I have been thinking about using single word cards instead.
Alright. I'm just gonna keep using sentence cards in general, but if the contextual clue for a given word is too big or if the word is a simple one meaning word without a complex definition I'm going to make vocab cards instead.
@Pierre Robin I was worried that having sentences that make inferring from context too easy would result in less focus on the word itself and therefore not being able to recognize it in a different context. After this video I'm more optimistic that this shouldn't be a huge problem tho.
I prefer vocab cards over sentence cards. As you have already mentioned in your video, the sentence cards are too easy as they give you hints by already providing the necessary context. Of course, context is always crucial when studying vocab in general but our brain being a pattern-recognizing machine will take advantage of this.
I am a native German speaker and wanted to improve my English. I always had a pretty natural feeling with my grammar usage, listening capabilities were excellent but producing the language was always my biggest flaw. My vocab was super limited and I essentially sounded like a 5-year-old when I tried to speak, even though my overall understanding of the language was nearly perfect.
The only way to address this issue was by using vocab cards, but having the German word on the front and the English (target) translation on the back of the card.
Having "mastered" my English I moved on. Currently, I'm into Korean and I'm trying to apply the same strategy. Interestingly, this time I am facing the opposite problem. While my speaking skills are actually not that bad, my listening skills are lacking quite a bit. This sorta one-way style of studying probably wasn't the best idea haha. However, I feel that now I have to put in way less work that had to do with English. Improving my listening is simply done by - surprise - listening, which can be quite enjoyable. Cramming in vocab like a maniac on the other hand - less of an enjoyable experience.
Had this recently with some english keywords I was learning for kanji while I put them in vocab cards, and just could not grasp why exactly I wasn't understanding the word after so many reviews. Makes so much sence now.
11:51 How exactly do you do that..?
I’m also curious
Great video. I more or less agree with everything. An additional benefit of sentence cards is that it really focuses you to choose only low-hanging fruit for your cards. Since you're only learning "easy" sentences, it drastically whittles down what vocab you might potentially put into Anki.
I guess hypothetically you could make vocab cards out of low-hanging fruit sentences, but since it's not as crucial, I could see how sentences that are too difficult could end up in your deck.
is synthesized audio ok ? Anki has a nice add on for that !
Great analysis Matt! Sentence cards are way superior imho, but vocab cards have their place (irregular kanji readings etc.) You can also get a few reps easily while doing other things since they don't require your full attention. I m curious about your thoughts on Core2k/6k/10k decks, since they are already premade, and they are a combination of Vocab, Sentence and Audio cards, allowing you to review them in any fashion you like. You must be familiar with them and I would like to hear your opinion! Thanks for the great video!
Matt if you don't mind, could you share the name of your Chinese vocab deck that shown in the video?
I use a deck that has vocab and sentence cards for each word,and audio. I use them all as vocab cards (double drilling) but could start using the sentences whenever I'd like
最近見始めました！今は日本の大学でロシア語やってるので言語学習の共通点があって面白いです！
今まであった日本語学習者の中でダントツな日本語アクセントだと思ったので、たまに聞きたいです笑
Thanks Bro, your videos help me with English and Japanese, Nice video. Greetings from Mexico 😁
To rep vocab cards more quickly, you need to not read the sentence on the back unless you think you need to because you forget how the word is used. Yeah, a shortcut that maybe you shouldn't be taking but it is a time saver. And I can say from experience, depending on my motivation to study, sometimes I need that shortcut or I won't do my Anki reps at all. I've gone through different phases over the years switching between vocab and sentence cards. At the moment I'm using a sentence card deck. It has native audio for the sentences which makes doing the reps much more rewarding. I think without the native audio I'd probably burn out and have to switch back to vocab cards. I actually went way overboard and hired some voice actors through a website to record a bunch of Korean sentences for me to spice up my Anki deck. Way too expensive but if I get through this sentence deck thanks to them, I'll call it even and money well spent after all. (Although native audio from TV/Movies is also good, it's a lot harder to understand)
Wouldn't it make more sense to have the target language on the back of the card so you are at least giving yourself the chance to remember as opposed to automatically seeing it? Active recall yields much better results than passive recall (aka seeing the word straight away)
11:52 Is Matt using some kind of an add-on for Anki? How come the characters become colour-coded and get pinyin?
I think it is a addon for anki 2.0
I dont know if there is this addon for anki 2.1.
Where can i do same as those cards. What is the name of this software or site that provides those card . Please any one answer
Always putting audio on the back of my vocab cards has helped my listening skills immensely. I almost won't make a card if I can't find audio for it.
Really curious to see this, as I've been doing a combination of the two ( words in context sort of approach ), and have seen great results so far with much better retention. Feels easier to understand a word when you also understand the sentence it's in
Having been doing production cards for over a year now, after watching this I am going to give comprehension cards a go. Production cards have given me a lot value, but on the other hand I feel like it takes ages to review stuff as recalling can take a long time and you can only add so many a day as you can only memorise so many new words.
Yeah, production cards create more powerful memories, more quickly, because you're active recalling the info. Comprehension cards are cool but you are just recognizing, essentially just a form of reading, it takes a lot more repetition to learn something through recognition (though people often feel like they're learning more). Tons of research on this showing effortful recall beats recognition for learning. Try the site Universe of Memory,
@@jamiekim6926 Producing what you can't recognize is pretty stupid. Production comes naturally, and can be improved by doing real production in real life, not anki.
@@default632 Criticizing a point that you haven't even really attempted to understand is pretty stupid.
After all, what could decades of research in learning and memory tell you? You know better than those idiots right? Carry on pal, good luck.
I'm kinda curious - there are some sentence cards I've been wanting to make where I just want to make sure I understand an idiomatic way of expressing an idea. There isn't necessarily a single word I don't know, just that I want to reinforce an overall natural way to say something. In that case, I would just put the meaning of the whole sentence on the back of the card, as opposed to the definition of a single word I don't know. How do people feel about this approach?
Wouldnt hover be like the best of both worlds, you could easily choose to just do vocab or sentence depending on if you were to hover over the word
though this wouldnt work for context specific words like bark
私も英語の勉強でアンキアプリ 使ってまーす。スキマ時間にちょこちょこ 復習できるからすっごく便利!!
is it better to create your own language deck or just use one that already exists? And how should i decide what to transform into a flashcard?
When I first started doing sentence cards for Norwegian, I made the mistake of thinking it was okay to learn sentences where I knew all but one the words, regardless of whether I understood the rest of the words in that context. It got frustrating very fast
Hi, Matt, thanks for the videos and all your teachings and inspiration, I am now learning (roughly 2 month in) japanese using your suggestion of input (listening and reading) + anki (vocab), i have a question about learning vocab. When I learn a new word like 上手[じょうず], it's sounds like the name "George" to me. Is it a good thing for me to use this type of mnemonics or should I avoid that way of memorizing as much as possible? (Would you suggest me to use any sort of mnemonic at all? Would that make things very unnatural since I would have to sort of go thru another room in my mind to extract that piece of information when I need to extract it?) Thanks a lot.
After close to 2 years of using ajatt/mia, I've found both to be benefitical. Although, over the last 6 months, I've been making audio/vocabulary cards. I find them much better for new words compared to sentence cards. That isn't to say sentence cards aren't good, they are very good for some situations, but I personally prefer vocabulary cards now.
Same. You end up hearing the audio so many times that as soon as you see the word you can hear it playing in your head. If I had the sentence on the front I wouldn't get the same effect. I've memorised half the lines in a whole anime just due to repping it in Anki lmao.
I've been wanting to know how you recall monolingual card definitions ever since you posted the first view on how to review cards so I'm happy to get an answer and agree with what you said. If I can't find an example sentence for a monolingual card I need to make though I usually just find the closest English definition though since it saves all the hassle and I feel like I still recall the word in the long run
I'm curious, if you learning only "comprehension" method (I mean only chinese->english cards), so you just now be able to some speak or write in chinese without doing typically reversed cards (I mean english->chinese cards)?
there is usually no phonetic transcription for idioms in dictionaries, can I just put phonetic transcription for simple words?
Good video, one question have that you didn’t really touch on in this video is, how complex or simple do you think you should make sentence cards. As you move into the advanced stages do you think that the sentence complexity should increase? Or should the sentences stay simple and just be complex enough to provide context to the key word? Hope that makes sense
So I've been using vocab cards lately with the word audio on the front but I don't auto play it. So basically I attempt to read the word first (no furigana) but if I can't read it I just play the audio then guess the meaning. When I flip it over I am presented the meaning, an example sentence and the audio for both the word and the sentence.
In your diagram you had audio and text on opposing sides. What are your thoughts on my approach and the idea of including both text and audio on the front? Should I have two versions of my deck, one with just audio and one with just the text?
👀☕🇧🇷 Ahahahaha i really love this thumbnail haha. Can't wait to watch it. また後で.
Hue Hue BR
Great video. Jumped on the refold band wagon is great guidance and to keep on track with language learning. Not tried Anki. Currently using Fluent U. Are there any great german cards already made?
You can learn to recognize kanji with text vocab cards and text sentence cards which are comprehension cards, yes. The issue here is that you don't learn to hand write your kanji, whereas with production cards you can go through the process to learn how to write these kanji. This leads to my question: how do you guys learn to hand write? I just started learning Japanese 4 weeks ago, I also plan on learning how to write kanji while learning my vocabulary. I don't find it efficient to learn how to write kanji at the very end, I prefer to do it throughout the whole journey.
Nobody learns to write kanji because it's basically useless. Even if you live in Japan, you'll rarely ever write kanjis.
Is one expected to read the whole sentence in the Sentence Card every single time? I've always had the habit of only really reading the full sentence when the card first appears, any other time I'm just tunnelvisioning the target word. I suspect this isn't really giving me the benefit of sentence cards. Hell, I almost feel like I'm instinctively avoiding to read the whole sentence, as it doesn't feel like I recall the word if I do so, like it's "cheating" and shouldn't count. I know that isn't the case most likely, but it's pretty burnt into my habits, despite this I really do wish to get the maximum benefits a Sentence Card would bring, it's just that I'm not quite sure if this is a factor that goes into play or not. Maybe it's just entirely normal for people not to ritually read the whole sentence either.
I think sentence cards are better for beginner's but vocab cards are better for intermediate+
I was trying to do a conditional word field and I cant, someone can help?
Matt is it a good idea to use sentence banks combined with morphman or should I just make cards of what I find during my immersion?
The chad thumbnail