Hoping for SRS tips with どんな時どう使う日本語
Hi Kaeru!
First I want to thank you for all the work you've put into this amazing site. Your guides, schedules, and reviews are an amazing resource for those of us going after the top levels of fluency and JLPTs.
I'm starting my prep for the 1kyuu now and feel that I should start with my weakest area--grammar--so that I can fix it while simultaneously building up vocabulary. (I read a lot as it is, 日系新聞 articles and Giles Murray's two Japanese literature books, so I think reading comprehension will be OK, especially by December. Since I hear that's usually the toughest part, I'm feeling a little less overwhelmed than many, I imagine.)
Anyway, as I meander my way to my point... ;) I saw that you used どんな時どう使う日本語 to bolster your grammar abilities. Did you use it in conjunction with Mnemosyne? I'd like to make that work as I've just been using paper-based flash cards, and it's a real pain to keep everything organized so that points I'm missing come back up at the right intervals, etc.
If you did use SRS, would you mind letting me know how you structured the cards? Maybe the best way is through an example, so I'll lay it out and perhaps you can tell me how you put it together in your deck.
～を通じて ・ ～を通して
1) 人類の歴史を通じて、地球のどこかで常に戦争が行われていた。
2) この地方は一年を通じてほとんど同じような天候です。
3) 留学時代を通して、私は保証人や先生からとてもいい影響と受けた。
4) 一年を通して彼は無遅刻、無出席でがんばり、皆勤賞をもらった。
The way I've got it laid out on the paper cards now is just as above. The grammar point on one side, and the example sentences on the other. From your experience, was this an effective way to get your grammar work in, or did you find something a bit more efficient/effective?
Thanks a million for wading through the long post! Any (more!) help or advice you have really is greatly appreciated!
Clay
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Just make each example
Just make each example sentence a single card. If you can understand the sentence, mark it as a pass.
If you really want to emphasize learning the grammar, you can delete the part of the sentence that is the grammar point, and then do a fill-in-the-blank. I don't think this is very practical for どんな時どう使う, but I used this technique with the UNICOM book to good effect.
The basic idea with Mnemosyne is that 1 idea= 1 card. You don't want to be testing multiple things on the same card. As long as you stick to that principle, you should be fine.
Regards,
Kaeru
Thanks!
That approach makes a lot of sense. It's totally different from my natural inclination of looking for a specific problem to solve (I'm an engineer with an MBA, so it's hard to shake that tendency! Hehe), but I think it'll definitely be the way to go.
I'll start off just putting everything from どんな時どう使う in and testing myself like you recommend. Once I've got it pretty much down, I'll grab the UNICOM book and use it as a fill-in-the-blank test (which will appeal nicely to my 'always searching for a concrete answer' tendencies). ;)
Thanks a lot for such a quick reply!
If I may suggest, it might
If I may suggest, it might be better to get the UNICOM book now, input that instead, and use どんな時どう使う for the explanations and for extra examples if you need them. どんな時どう使う breaks the examples down a little differently than the UNICOM book, which results in more cards-- probably more than you need.
For the 2kyuu, I used the UNICOM book and どんな時どう使う together, but for the 1kyuu, I only entered cards from UNICOM, and used どんな時どう使う as a reference. The UNICOM book is designed specifically for test prep, so it's already ready for entering into Mnemosyne.
Cheers,
Kaeru
Great tip
Sorry for taking so long to reply. It's been a wild couple days here.
Your recommendation makes sense, and it'd definitely be my preferred way to attack the grammar studying since it's more efficient than brute forcing all of the 500 sentences from どんな時どう使う. Unfortunately, I'm in the U.S. right now and already have どんな時どう使う in my arsenal, but don't have the UNICOM book and can't afford the crazy shipping from Amazon.co.jp.
I've applied for a job in Japan that, if I get hired, will start September 1st, so I can order the book as soon I get there and still have almost three months with it, worst case scenario. I also have a book that I noticed a lot of buzz about from around three years ago called 上級で学ぶ日本語. It's actually a book for reading-comprehension, but back when I bought it a lot of people were raving about the great job it does pounding vocab and a lot of the grammar points into your head. So hopefully the stuff I've got now will give me the six months or so of study materials I need so that I can just be refining things and focusing purely on test prep aids when (and if) I get there in September. (I did see that the Japan Shop does carry the UNICOM book at a slightly inflated price. I'll kind of play it by ear and if I can't wait until September, maybe I'll just get it from there. Ideally, though, I'd like to buy it through your affiliate link so that I can contribute at least a little something for your work on this site and your recommendation!)
Thanks again!
Clay