In my last post, I reviewed Anki, a flashcard srs (spaced repition system) program that is almost essential for language learning. Now, I'm going to talk about the most common ways to use this flashcard program, as people have come up with ingenious ways to use this program to help them learn that I for one wouldn't have thought of by myself, but I'm a bit slow I think.
The most obvious way to use flashcards is to memorize facts. When I was in second grade, our teacher was obsessed with using flashcards to teach us math. We would have contests and competitions over these flashcards and who could get the most right or recall the answer fast enough. To share a little secret with you, math and I still don't get along, despite the flashcards.
When learning a language and being told to make flashcards, most people try to make flashcards in the same way that they use them for mathematics or science, or any other subject. You write out the Japanese word on one side and the English translation on the other, allowing you to quiz yourself. This is kind of how Smart.fm used to work, except it would provide example sentences and a few other exercises to show how the word is used, and it was a spaced repition system as well, so the frequency of which you saw each card was dependent on how well the software thought you knew it.
This is all well and good, but Khaztumoto introduced me to another way of using flashcards, and that's what he calls sentence mining. For him, flashcards are the crux of his method of learning, not a suppliment. He believes in doing as much in the language, or for the language, as possible, and a good way to remember it all is to mine interesting sentences, since he also believes that if you're not having fun, then you're not learning properly and will burn out.
This is how it works. First, you read an interesting manga (or watch an anime, movie, jdrama, or read a book) and as you're going through, you find sentences that seem good to learn. If you're a beginner, you start with simple sentences and work your way up to where the whole book or manga seems easy, or at least that's how I interpret this part of the method.
The reasoning behind this is simple - words without any context and grammar points without context (I added the grammar bit) are meaningless. For example, what would be the point of knowing the English word "like" if you don't know how to use it. There's a lot of different ways to use the word, and without example sentences for each of them, such as, "I like to learn languages," or, "Learning a language is like boiling ramen," a textbook explanation of the word will probably be lost on you. Looking through a dictionary, there's a lot of words like this, and you have to see them in a sentence in order to fully grasp how they're used.
As such, finding interesting sentences is a great way to see how everything comes together in a sentence, and using Anki makes sure that you remember them. As you come to understand how sentences are put together, you can make up your own without a textbook to necessarily teach you how. Definitely check out the site, as Khatzumoto explains in much better than I can.
Finally, someone decided that it would be a good idea to program something that would allow a user who has a movie or anime episode with both English and Japanese subtitles to sentence mine the whole thing, complete with audio and even visual if one so desires, without an epic struggle. Introducing Subs2SRS, which has become a bit popular with people who do the sentence mining thing, for it really shortens the process, and it's pretty reliable. There's even pre-made decks on the learn any language wiki!
I really like this software, but it can be very hard to find Japanese closed captions for anime. Finding anime with subtitles in .srt format isn't too bad, but finding Japanese captions for anime is near impossible sometimes. If you want to do that, here's a few sites I recommend.
AnimeTranscripts: This place doesn't actually provide subtitle files, but it does have transcripts, which will help you immensely in your sentence mining mission, regardless of whether you're using Subs2SRS or just looking for interesting sentences. It's a website created for Japanese people learning English through anime dubs (the thought scares me), but they also provide some transcripts in Japanese for English speakers wanting to learn Japanese through anime. It's pretty interesting and even has a forum.
Kitsunekko: This seems to be a popular place for finding subtitles in Japanese, although he has a habit of going down for long periods of time. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a lot of anime that I watch, but I definitely recommend you take a look.
Akusento: This particular page I linked to is in English, although the majority of the site is in Russian. There's some movie subtitles and anime subtitles here, including a few episodes of Rurouni Kenshin.
Project "Modelino": Another Russian page, but you can view it in English or French as well, and I linked to the English verison. There's a number of Japanese movies on this page, so it ranks high in my list of places to find Japanese subtitles. I recommend viewing it in FireFox with Rikaichan turned on if you're unsure of the titles.
D-Addicts: Let's face it, Japanese dramas can be really hard to come by, so downloading from this site is a good thing, and it also provides Japanese subtitles for some of its shows. So, if you can get a show with both English and Japanese subtitles, Subs2SRS takes care of the rest!
When in doubt, if you're Japanese is good enough, I recommend going to Google and typing in the name of your anime in Japanese plus "字幕", or "じまく", which means "subtitles". Sometimes that yields results, too.
So, happy hunting, and have fun sentence mining!
The most obvious way to use flashcards is to memorize facts. When I was in second grade, our teacher was obsessed with using flashcards to teach us math. We would have contests and competitions over these flashcards and who could get the most right or recall the answer fast enough. To share a little secret with you, math and I still don't get along, despite the flashcards.
When learning a language and being told to make flashcards, most people try to make flashcards in the same way that they use them for mathematics or science, or any other subject. You write out the Japanese word on one side and the English translation on the other, allowing you to quiz yourself. This is kind of how Smart.fm used to work, except it would provide example sentences and a few other exercises to show how the word is used, and it was a spaced repition system as well, so the frequency of which you saw each card was dependent on how well the software thought you knew it.
This is all well and good, but Khaztumoto introduced me to another way of using flashcards, and that's what he calls sentence mining. For him, flashcards are the crux of his method of learning, not a suppliment. He believes in doing as much in the language, or for the language, as possible, and a good way to remember it all is to mine interesting sentences, since he also believes that if you're not having fun, then you're not learning properly and will burn out.
This is how it works. First, you read an interesting manga (or watch an anime, movie, jdrama, or read a book) and as you're going through, you find sentences that seem good to learn. If you're a beginner, you start with simple sentences and work your way up to where the whole book or manga seems easy, or at least that's how I interpret this part of the method.
The reasoning behind this is simple - words without any context and grammar points without context (I added the grammar bit) are meaningless. For example, what would be the point of knowing the English word "like" if you don't know how to use it. There's a lot of different ways to use the word, and without example sentences for each of them, such as, "I like to learn languages," or, "Learning a language is like boiling ramen," a textbook explanation of the word will probably be lost on you. Looking through a dictionary, there's a lot of words like this, and you have to see them in a sentence in order to fully grasp how they're used.
As such, finding interesting sentences is a great way to see how everything comes together in a sentence, and using Anki makes sure that you remember them. As you come to understand how sentences are put together, you can make up your own without a textbook to necessarily teach you how. Definitely check out the site, as Khatzumoto explains in much better than I can.
Finally, someone decided that it would be a good idea to program something that would allow a user who has a movie or anime episode with both English and Japanese subtitles to sentence mine the whole thing, complete with audio and even visual if one so desires, without an epic struggle. Introducing Subs2SRS, which has become a bit popular with people who do the sentence mining thing, for it really shortens the process, and it's pretty reliable. There's even pre-made decks on the learn any language wiki!
I really like this software, but it can be very hard to find Japanese closed captions for anime. Finding anime with subtitles in .srt format isn't too bad, but finding Japanese captions for anime is near impossible sometimes. If you want to do that, here's a few sites I recommend.
AnimeTranscripts: This place doesn't actually provide subtitle files, but it does have transcripts, which will help you immensely in your sentence mining mission, regardless of whether you're using Subs2SRS or just looking for interesting sentences. It's a website created for Japanese people learning English through anime dubs (the thought scares me), but they also provide some transcripts in Japanese for English speakers wanting to learn Japanese through anime. It's pretty interesting and even has a forum.
Kitsunekko: This seems to be a popular place for finding subtitles in Japanese, although he has a habit of going down for long periods of time. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a lot of anime that I watch, but I definitely recommend you take a look.
Akusento: This particular page I linked to is in English, although the majority of the site is in Russian. There's some movie subtitles and anime subtitles here, including a few episodes of Rurouni Kenshin.
Project "Modelino": Another Russian page, but you can view it in English or French as well, and I linked to the English verison. There's a number of Japanese movies on this page, so it ranks high in my list of places to find Japanese subtitles. I recommend viewing it in FireFox with Rikaichan turned on if you're unsure of the titles.
D-Addicts: Let's face it, Japanese dramas can be really hard to come by, so downloading from this site is a good thing, and it also provides Japanese subtitles for some of its shows. So, if you can get a show with both English and Japanese subtitles, Subs2SRS takes care of the rest!
When in doubt, if you're Japanese is good enough, I recommend going to Google and typing in the name of your anime in Japanese plus "字幕", or "じまく", which means "subtitles". Sometimes that yields results, too.
So, happy hunting, and have fun sentence mining!
I was thinking of using jap-songs instead (splitted song w/ lyric at the back), but this is a good idea as well..thanks=)
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