Anki is a spaced repetition system (SRS) – basically a smart flash card software. You can only really appreciate it after you learn about Khatzumoto’s 10, 000 sentences project, which is worth quoting in full here:
“Sentences are far better than individual words or grammar rules, because a correct example sentence is nothing other than a set of words arranged according to grammar rules with the added benefit of showing the “sense” in which to use the words. This is crucial. It’s no good knowing the word for something if you misuse it.
As one might expect, a lot of words in Japanese actually mean similar things; they may even translate to the same word in English. But they are not the same; knowing when to use what is the difference between sounding native-like in English or Japanese, and sounding just a little bit “off”. Correct usage is that je ne sais quoi, what the French call the…I don’t know what.
For example, the words “place” and “site” mean almost the same thing. But look at these two sentences:
“A building site” … “A building place.”
One of these sounds correct; it feels right. The other is just…off.
Now, am I suggesting you need to learn every possible sentence in Japanese? Of course not, not even close. You don’t know every possible sentence in English, but you seem to be doing fine at that. What I am suggesting is that learning thousands of real Japanese sentences will eventually give you a “feel” for what is and is not correct Japanese. Your human brain’s fuzzy logic will start to make the connections for you.
If you give it a moment’s thought, isn’t that how you write and speak English? Especially speaking. You don’t usually think “hmmm, well, I’m wanting to express the subjunctive mood here, so I should use ‘were’ instead of ‘was’”: there’s no time for crap like that. You just say it out. And you’ve been doing that as long as you can remember.”
As one might expect, a lot of words in Japanese actually mean similar things; they may even translate to the same word in English. But they are not the same; knowing when to use what is the difference between sounding native-like in English or Japanese, and sounding just a little bit “off”. Correct usage is that je ne sais quoi, what the French call the…I don’t know what.
For example, the words “place” and “site” mean almost the same thing. But look at these two sentences:
“A building site” … “A building place.”
One of these sounds correct; it feels right. The other is just…off.
Now, am I suggesting you need to learn every possible sentence in Japanese? Of course not, not even close. You don’t know every possible sentence in English, but you seem to be doing fine at that. What I am suggesting is that learning thousands of real Japanese sentences will eventually give you a “feel” for what is and is not correct Japanese. Your human brain’s fuzzy logic will start to make the connections for you.
If you give it a moment’s thought, isn’t that how you write and speak English? Especially speaking. You don’t usually think “hmmm, well, I’m wanting to express the subjunctive mood here, so I should use ‘were’ instead of ‘was’”: there’s no time for crap like that. You just say it out. And you’ve been doing that as long as you can remember.”
-Khatzumoto, Source here.
How to use ANKI
Firstly, write a “correct example sentence” on the front, full kana & kanji NO furigana or romanji:
E.g.:
彼は英語以外にも２つの言葉を自由に操る。
You write on the back the pronunciation (in hiragana, not romanji) and the English translation:
E.g. かれはえいごいがいにもふたつのことばをじゆうにあやつる。
‘He has two languages at his command besides English.’
After inputting these correct example sentences in your deck, ANKI will show you this card and, depending on how easy/hard it was for you to remember the pronunciation/translation, you can choose when you want ANKI to show you the card again (in 10 minutes, in 2 days, in a month?)
The important thing, as Khatzumoto stresses, is to take example sentences from natural Japanese sources – be it websites, books, anime, song lyrics, manga, Khatzumoto’s sentence pack (http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/category/qrg) or websites that generate free sentences such as Denshi Jisho (see below)
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