How to Make Japanese Flashcards in Anki
As discussed in a previous post, spaced repetition is the fastest way to acquire vocabulary in a foreign language. Anki is one of the best applications to use towards that end because of its versatility and customizability. Once you know how to make cards in Anki, you’ll have to decide how to design them i.e. what information to include. In this post, I’ll share the format I used to make flashcards to study Japanese vocabulary.
I like using Anki to make my own flashcards because I get to choose what information to study and how fast to study it. This flexibility is something I recommend everyone to take advantage of. Feel free to use what I did as a starting guideline, but also experiment to discover what approaches you like and find more efficient.
Note Fields
The first question to answer is what information to include in the flashcards. This determines the fields to add to your note type in Anki.
Word & Kana
I know what you’re thinking, “Duhhh obviously you’re gonna need the word to learn it.” But there’s more nuance to Japanese words than that.
Most words are written in kanji characters. These characters often have multiple readings, depending on the word they’re in. The variety feels especially vast as a beginner. Thus, it makes sense to memorize the reading with the word.
Towards this end, I kept the kana reading and the kanji word on separate sides of the flashcard. That is, I trained myself to recall the reading from the written form of the word.
Picture
A lot of my ideas regarding flashcard design are derived from the book Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It. One of the best things I got from the book was understanding the importance of pictures for memory retention.
We’ve all heard the cliched phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Now’s the time to apply it. In my experience, having a picture or two saved with a word makes it much easier to learn it. It’s easier to remember a picture than an abstract meaning. By repeating a word multiple times with its image, you come to associate the two together.
The aim is to create a mental dictionary with pictures, to which you attach Japanese words. In this way, you’re able to take advantage of your superior ability to remember images.
The picture doesn’t even need to be directly connected to the word. Just something vaguely related is enough for the purpose of aiding in memory. For example, to remember 革命的 (innovative), you can use the image of Steve Jobs announcing the first iPhone.
Meaning
The previously mentioned book also talks about how your native language can be an impediment to the learning process. You should be studying to speak & understand the language, and not merely translating it. That’s the entire point of using images to learn Japanese words, instead of English definitions. We’re aiming to skip the translation layer in the mental process and go directly from foreign input to comprehending it.
For this reason, the book advises to not keep the English translation. However, in my experience, having the word available right in front of you for quick checking is too convenient to give up. Trying to look up a word you forgot can be an annoying speed bump that takes you out of the flow of going through your cards.
When you’re doing almost a 1000 cards per day like I was, you practically don’t have time to read it. You try revising as fast as possible through a quick glance at the image.
Once you start learning abstract words, having the English definition handy helps to keep the concept clear in a concise manner. Images aren’t as precise and example sentences take longer to read. For a quick jolt to memory, the English definitions do well.
Even if you want to eliminate English from your cards, it’s still advisable to keep it in the note. Either because you eventually change your mind when you realise I’m right (just kidding). Or so that you’re able to quickly search for a word in your deck through English.
Pronunciation
Having an audio clip of the word’s pronunciation is helpful to train your listening skills and get you used to hearing the word.
It’ll also be helpful to realise mistakes you’re making in vocalizing the word. Granted, kana readings usually accurately represent the spoken form so this isn’t a huge issue in Japanese.
Where to get audio
Forvo.com: Forvo has a huge collection of clips of words spoken by native speakers in almost every language. It’s a little cumbersome to search for and download a clip for every word you’re adding though.
MIA Japanese: This Anki addon, created by the awesome guys at Matt vs. Japan, may seem overly complicated at first glance because of how many features it has. However, to add audio is as simple as a few clicks. It uses actual native audio, probably sourced from JapanesePod101.com like most automatic sources. It’s simple to add audio to individual notes when creating them, or in bulk. The tutorial is quick and easy to follow.
Dictionary Link
This is an innovation that I’m quite proud of uniquely uncovering myself. I like to revise kanji while reviewing vocabulary. I do this by trying to remember the keyword of each kanji in a word. Needless to say, I often fail at this. Tired of cumbersome manual lookups, I created this link that takes you to jisho.com in one click and tells what the kanji mean along with their stroke orders.
To add this to your cards, just paste this in your card template.
<a href=”https://jisho.org/search/{{Word}}%20%23kanji">Kanji</a>
Remember to replace “Word” with the name of the field in which you’re storing the word.
This is a perfect of example of how Anki’s rich customizability lets you pull off things you can’t in other apps.
Example Sentence
Not gonna lie, this is one part that I’m not very fond of. If you’re anything like me, you like being done with your flashcards as soon as possible. Reading a long sentence, that might have terms you need to further lookup, slows you down by a huge factor.
One could very well make the quality vs. quantity argument, postulating that it’s better to learn a word better through context than rush through it with an English translation. Such an argument even has ground for merit. But while data is my guide, experience is my teacher. Fact is that I just don’t like reading example sentences to memorize words because it feels slow.
It’s obviously a different story if you’re learning sentences wholesale but that’s not what this article is about.
So why then do I include example sentences? One reason is to clear the ambiguity caused by a vague definition. More than a handful of Japanese words aren’t intuitive enough to understand how to use them from their definition. An example perfectly clarifies this.
When reading online or watching anime, I save a word with the sentence I found it in. The sentence reminds me of where and how I discovered the word. This personal connection is an invaluable aid to memory. Thus, the second reason I include sentences is to remind me of this personal context.
Helpful Add-Ons
These add-ons for Anki make adding flashcards a more efficient process.
Fluent Forever — Open Websites
This add-on uses input from the word field to open new web browser tabs that have the information required to fill the rest of the fields. By default, it’ll search for the word on Google images, Forvo, an English dictionary and urban dictionary. This can be easily changed in the add-on settings. You can add whatever links you want, but you’ll need to know where exactly in the link does the word fit in.
The add-on makes it possible to look up all the information you need regarding a word in one click.
ImageResizer
This add-on automatically resizes whatever image you paste in a field into a pre-defined maximum height or width. By default, images are scaled to have a maximum height of 400 pixels. This can be changed in the settings but, in my opinion, you don’t need to. It’s a set and forget type of add-on.
To Recall or Not to Recall
In the beginning, it made sense to practice recalling words since I was learning a lot of basic vocabulary. I was bound to need it sooner or later to be able to communicate effectively.
However, past a certain point, I stopped doing that because a lot of new words I came across were too rare and impractical to be worth remembering. Instead, I just revise recognition cards that prepare me to read a word if I come across it again.
Practising recall may improve memory, but it takes a fair bit of time each instance you do it. That’s time that I would rather spend consuming Japanese content now.
Which Side to Include Fields On
For the recognition card, if your aim is to learn a word so well that you basically know it like a dictionary, keep the word on one side and everything else i.e. reading, audio, sentence and picture on the other. This will train you to remember everything about a word from just its appearance.
You’ll need to learn to recognize words on their own as a beginner because you won’t have the experience required to understand a word from its context. The sentence surrounding a word won’t help you much if you have a hard time reading it. I myself followed this approach for the first few thousand words I learnt.
I currently learn words that I’m not likely to use but would like to understand if I encounter them again. Hence, I try to learn words in the same way that I come across them. I keep the word, its audio, sentence and screenshot of where I found it all on one side; with its meaning in English on the other.
You could say that I’m reducing the effort needed to learn the word a bit too much, but I’m in no hurry since I’m not likely to encounter many of these words anytime soon. Over a long time frame, even this leisurely pace of revision is enough to make language gains.
As for the recall card, it's just the flipped version of the recognition card I used as beginner. As stated previously, I no longer use them.
How Many Cards I Revised in a Day
During my beginner phase, I used to study 300–500 new cards and revise 500 cards per day. It took me 5–6 hours per day to get through my deck. Following this, I went through about 4000 words in 2–3 months.
I was able to pull off this insane load because I studied mostly to kill time in boring classes at college where sleeping was only other productive activity possible. I’m significantly lazier now and don’t do more than a couple of tens of cards a day, that is, if I revise at all.
Conclusion
In reality, there are as many religions as there are individuals. — Gandhi
There as many approaches to learning languages as there are learners. It’s important to remember that I simply shared my style and approach in making flashcards. I hope that you find something interesting enough to try out for yourself.
The most efficient method is one that you find the most fun and interesting. There’s no point in having a scientifically advanced, research-based approach if you never actually follow through with it. An approach that inspires you to put into extra effort will take you further in the long run.
Now, I’d recommend closing this post and taking the initiative to begin learning before I start dropping more cliched aphorisms like life isn’t a race, it’s a marathon.
