Studying Kanji in Anki
I use a Remembering the Kanji deck I d/l from the RevTK forum. There is not only kanji and English, but also hiragana and katakana readings of kanji context words for each kanji. Helpful but a lot of info. Since my level is very low right now, here is how I am studying so I can get through the deck but still get some JP language exposure.
First I open Firefox which has the Rikaichan plugin installed. I open tabs for: Google Translator, Reviewing the Kanji study page to look up stories for kanji, and Tae Kim's page in case I need to look up pronunciation for hiragana/katakana. I enable the Rikaichan plugin and toolbar.
On the Anki card, before flipping and showing the bottom, I read the top two lines, but only the first word/phrase of each. The top line is a katakana reading of the kanji, and the second line in blue is a hiragana reading of a word using the kanji.
Then I flip the card and look at the top line of kanji, right under the big kanji character. This is what the second line from the top is phonetically reading. I take the first word only and copy it into Google Translator. I put an orange box around the three Japanese areas I look at.
Then in Google Translator I mouseover the kanji word and Rikaichan pops up this little window with the dictionary entry for it. If I press F, and sometimes F plus any other button for stubborn ones (I use the Shift key) it will say a reading of the word. Much better than the Google translator one, because it's a recording of the entire word, not just the sounds pasted together.
It also helps to tell you where the elements in the kanji come from.
Right now I just glance at the word and say it a few times but am not actively trying to remember it. I figure that I will learn vocab later on for real. But doing this will probably at least help me to familiarize myself with some words and pronunciations.
It is quite a bit more time-consuming than just flipping the kanji and story. I can do this now because I've studied these kanji already. But I'm not sure what I'll do later when it's all new kanji that I have to make up stories for. I don't want to be spending 5 minutes per card. So I may throw the looking up part out the window if it takes me an hour per day. We'll see.
First I open Firefox which has the Rikaichan plugin installed. I open tabs for: Google Translator, Reviewing the Kanji study page to look up stories for kanji, and Tae Kim's page in case I need to look up pronunciation for hiragana/katakana. I enable the Rikaichan plugin and toolbar.
On the Anki card, before flipping and showing the bottom, I read the top two lines, but only the first word/phrase of each. The top line is a katakana reading of the kanji, and the second line in blue is a hiragana reading of a word using the kanji.
Then I flip the card and look at the top line of kanji, right under the big kanji character. This is what the second line from the top is phonetically reading. I take the first word only and copy it into Google Translator. I put an orange box around the three Japanese areas I look at.
Then in Google Translator I mouseover the kanji word and Rikaichan pops up this little window with the dictionary entry for it. If I press F, and sometimes F plus any other button for stubborn ones (I use the Shift key) it will say a reading of the word. Much better than the Google translator one, because it's a recording of the entire word, not just the sounds pasted together.
It also helps to tell you where the elements in the kanji come from.
Right now I just glance at the word and say it a few times but am not actively trying to remember it. I figure that I will learn vocab later on for real. But doing this will probably at least help me to familiarize myself with some words and pronunciations.
It is quite a bit more time-consuming than just flipping the kanji and story. I can do this now because I've studied these kanji already. But I'm not sure what I'll do later when it's all new kanji that I have to make up stories for. I don't want to be spending 5 minutes per card. So I may throw the looking up part out the window if it takes me an hour per day. We'll see.
