How to Use Anki for Learning Japanese (and the Core 2k/6k deck)

In this video, I'll delve more in-depth about how to use Anki, and the Core 2k/6k deck. This is the 2nd episode in the series of how to learn Japanese, so make sure that you check out Part 1, because it builds upon that video, and stay tuned for Part 3, which once again builds upon this video!

These are all suggestions from my personal experience and from what I've seen, so, feel free to try out different things to see what works best for you!

This video is a part of my guide on how to learn Japanese (or any language):
EPISODES

LINKS:
- Part 1 to this video listed above^

MUSIC:
SENTIVE - 旅人 (off slos-v1_2)
SENTIVE - まったり (off slos-v1_2)
The Thought of You - TrackTribe

Huge thanks to Seto Koji for allowing me to use his music!

CHAPTERS:
00:00 How to use Anki
00:40 How to review an Anki card
2:08 Don't match to other's standards
2:25 Fields of a card
2:35 Do I have to read the sentence and/or get it correct?
3:13 Should you read the word out loud?
3:25 Listening to word/sentence audio every time is valuable, but..
3:45 What about the image of the card?
4:40 Card types
5:10 Vocabulary cards
5:20 Sentence cards
5:35 My current favorite card type
6:05 Similar looking words in the C2k/6k deck
6:20 Changing the format of the cards for further context
7:01 Editing a single card for further context if necessary
7:18 You can undo a review
7:28 Fixing sync issues
7:50 Changing the daily reset hour
8:00 Last resort to get your reviews in
8:14 Stats
8:35 Add-ons
8:45 Hard/easy buttons
9:00 Hitting again doesn't mean that you failed
9:30 Should you learn Kanji separately?
10:05 How to do Anki throughout the day
10:50 italki
12:26 Final words

________________________________

[Livakivi]

Hopefully the video helps! If you have any questions, I'll try to answer as many as I can!
EDIT: As a clarification, pressing the hard/easy buttons on Anki doesn't really matter that much, I'd personally just avoid the hard button and just press good instead, but I still use the Easy button to do reviews of really easy cards faster, which is fine. My personal opinion on the buttons is just that its simpler to have less choices than to mentally calculate which button you should press, which is what beginners often spend too much energy on.

[theofficialpollo]

10:36 "Finish your cards early or you'll sacrifice sleep"
Me just finishing my cards at 3 AM (almost every single day) and having to take class at 7 am. Y E S.

[gs]

In my experience, learning kanji separately helped me distinguish similarly looking words as well as being able to take more cards per day .

[vsrock]

One thing to mention is that I think the decks based on the "Tango" series of books are a bit better than Core 2k/6k, thanks to their consistency and the words their sentences use beside the target words. Also for new learners, don't make studying the Core or Tango decks the end goal, they're just a stepping stone to learn enough words (say the first 3000 words) so that you can dive into sentence mining.

[astradent]

Thanks! I really appreciate the effort in your channel. This has helped so me so much and gave me much motivation and knowledge in my Nihongo learning journey. Lastly as an American your English sounds excellent!

[maddyw]

Even though this video is best suited for Japanese learners (something I am not) I thought it was cool to see your process. I find your videos so interesting and motivating. If internet shiba can learn Japanese I can learn French.
Great content as always! I’m excited to see parts 3 and 4 :)

[PortgasDChopper]

I just wanted to tell you that im extremely thankful for your videos. You're hella inspirational! Wish you the best man!

[hijeffhere]

I know that the video is targeted to the beginner learners of the language but I would like to share some additional tips that may be useful especially if you're in the upper beginner to lower intermediate level.

1. *Learn first before Anki* - Make sure to learn and understand the word or the card before using Anki. Anki is a tool that aids memory recall through spaced repetition. Take note that it aids *recall* not learning. The purpose of Anki is to make sure you don't forget *what you know*. That means if you don't learn the word by heart, then it will be difficult to recall that word, which in turn will make Anki program ineffective.

2. *Review only days* - Set a weekly schedule for Anki such that some days will be used for learning new cards plus review cards, and the rest of the days to review only. I set mine into 5/2: 5 days (weekdays) for learning and review, and 2 days (weekends) review only. The reason is that - as stated in the video - review piles up very fast and it gets overwhelming especially when you also need to learn new cards, so you need a day or days that will serve as breather to clear those piling review cards and prevent a burn out.

3. *Honestly answer your cards* - Always put an effort when answering the cards. Don't just press the _Good_ or _Easy_ button just to get over the review phase because it will mess up with the algorithm. Do not be afraid of pressing _Again_ if you completely forgot the card. I used to skip pressing _Again_ because I'm afraid of losing the _Interval_ of that card thinking I'm dumb and I have to learn it again. Remember, Anki is a tool that aids in recalling what you learned, and it should be a reflection of what you currently know (or do not know or forgot) in order to be effective.

4. *Review Cards first before New Cards* - There's a setting in Anki that shows you _Review Cards_ first before the New cards. By setting Anki this way, the review will serve as some sort of a "warm-up" before the main course i.e. the new cards.

5. *Remove English in your cards* - I recommend removing every trace of English or other languages in your cards and have it entirely written (or spoken) in your Japanese. English (or other languages) will get in the way when reading, writing, listening, and speaking in Japanese because you'll always have translate the word in your head before you imagine or realize the concept/context.

6. *Use images* - Instead of using other languages, it is recommended to use images because this is more directly tied to the concept than words in another languange. You can search the Japanese word in Google Images to find a suitable image for your card, and this is a good exercise because it's like you're playing 4 pics 1 word in Google Images to understand the concept behind that word. It may be helpful to set your Google search settings to the following:
・Region of Search Results: Japanese (日本語)
・Language of Search Results: Add Japanese (日本語)

7. *Fields* - Anki has _Notes_ which contains _Fields_ (this is where you put information) to create multiple cards. My Notes contain the following Fields
・Written word
・Image of the concept
・Sound of the word (mp3)
・Sample Sentence
With these, you can create multiple cards that will test your knowledge in different ways. For example you can have a card that asks:
・ Given the written word → How do you imagine it (Image)
・ Written word → What does it sound like? (Sound)
・ Image → How is it written?
・ Image → How does it sound like?
・ Sound → What concept comes to your mind? (Image)
・ Sound → How do you write it?
That's a total of 6 cards in one note. It can be reduced to 3 cards if you ask for both other info at the same time. The disadvantage of this is that it will take a very long time to learn vocabulary this way.

There are many more tips I wish to share but this is getting long so I'll stop it here. If you have other suggestions or criticisms, please feel free to do it.

[Qaster]

i really want to thank for motivating to not dropping studing japanese, you help me to escape from disilusion and misjudging japanese, and show me the way of learning japanese. Thank for all, and ありがとうございました

[ri-ppy]

I've also been using sentence cards with highlighted words for a while now and they're amazing.
They're giving me around 5~8% higher accuracy on mature cards than pure vocab cards while still being about twice as fast to review as pure sentence cards. I like them so much that I even started highlighting words in old pure sentence cards that come up while reviewing.
Definitely recommend using that format for sentence mining.

[jamesbrock]

Anki really works. I ended up using Anki for about 4ish months, but then I ended up stopping for some reason or another. I am just now getting back in to it, with the deck reseted. I am already 100 cards in, and most of the cards I can still recognize can recall pretty easily with a few hiccups.

[tcoren]

Since I studied kanjis before starting, I don't really have an issue with recognizing words (or recalling their meaning), my main issue is with the pronunciations.
Hence, I found a method to deal with duplicates while still keeping both cards and not giving myself a huge clue like an example sentence: I just list the meanings / readings the card DOESN'T have.
So let's take 上下 as an example. This has two pronunciations, じょうげ and うえした. Therefore, I have two cards for it. Basically, the じょうげ card has a "this is not the うえした pronunciation" disclaimer on its frontside. When I reach the card, I might immediately go in my mind "oh this is うえした", but then I see the disclaimer and go "oh this word has two pronunciations and I'm currently tasked with recalling the other one. Hmmmm, it's probably じょうげ. Nice"

[Dinhjason]

I don't know how many more, "How to learn from Anki videos" your channel needs, but I'll acknowledge that you're re-iterating on your previous details finer and finer.

You're getting succinct, my good man!

[shouta]

part 2 already? i love your videos livakivi, i have been learning a lot form you

[copingforever]

the trick to make the kanji deck more interesting is to always customize it, the most popular deck also provides for example a list of words that use the kanji, you can then mark the words you already know, provide example sentences with references to the source and you will slowly build up an interesting deck that truely becomes your personalized core

[KnightCrown]

Love your videos. Just to share, I've been learning for about 8 months now and I started with a modified bersion of the 2k/6k deck which uses sentences with the specific learning phrases bolded. I usually try to learn every word within the sentences even if they are not the target phrases. It always felt like learning a bonus phrase and its rewarding to see them come up again in other sentences. It also greatly helps with getting used to the grammar early on.

Good luck with learning to everyone out there!

[coolbrotherf]

One thing I found when using Anki is that I didn't need to worry so much about always remembering every kanji reading perfectly in the beginning. After I saw words and kanji in context during immersion, I started to easily be able to recall kanji readings better than just failing the same card over and over again. I would try to remember readings, but as long as I got the translation correct I would pass the card. When trying to remember the readings as a beginner, it would take hours trying to remember both English and Japanese words for every kanji. It was just to much information to remember early on so I just focused mostly on understanding the meaning first and that helped a lot.

[marquisdehoto]

I didn't expect the next video to come so soon xD

And I don't know why I watch a video about the Core 2k/6k deck when I don't even learn Japanese xD
But the videos are always so motivating and nice to watch :D

[IapetosGaming]

Thank you so much for making this video. I realized that I was using the wrong 2k/6k deck the whole time, where the words were in a really random order. I now started over with the deck you linked in the description and it is so much better!

[SpeedyGwen]

I curently use kaishi 1.5k and its card style is to show the word and a sentence underneath where its used and it helps a lot, sometime I forgot the word but I remember it when reading a sentence where it is in
tbh, its better in general as it is rare in nature to have words alone, they are usually inside sentences where the context around is always here and important, and if u can understand most of a sentence, it already means that ur learning well anyway