Smart SRS and Why You Should Use It

When I was making my N1 grammar cards it made me feel pretty good that when they were finally done, they could help other people as well. I had actually been thinking with a particular friend in mind because he had said he was going to take the test this year, but when I mentioned to him that I posted the cards up he said he'd never heard of Anki. I'm not exaggerating when I say I was floored. Maybe that's a slight overreaction, but from my standpoint I can't even imagine SRS review without using a smart application. Don't confirm or deny because I doubt I can handle the repeated shock, but I suppose there might be other people out there making flash cards on...*gasp!*...cards! There are a number of reasons why you should stop and I want to go over a few of those.

SRS Apps are Smart
Anki allows me to easily answer each card with multiple choices. Choose hard and I'll see the card again sooner, easy and I will see it much later. Not only does this help keep information in mind until it can be bound to long term memory, but it also reduces the tedium of seeing cards you know too well. Another benefit is that I don't toss old cards into a box and forget to look at them again months later when I might have forgotten them.

SRS Apps Reduce Clutter
On a related note...no cards! Cards take up a lot of space and are wasteful. I already have a phone and computer, so using Anki doesn't take up any extra money, resources or space.

Anki Uses Cloud Storage
It only takes one button press to syncronize my cards on my phone with those on my PC. This makes it easy to create cards on a PC where I can easily switch between languages or access the web and then load them onto my phone. It also means I can't lose my cards to a freak mishap.

Loading Media into Cards
I'd be really impressed to see someone load a sound clip into a paper flash card. You can load just about any common media into Anki cards including pictures, sound and video. You can even insert hyperlinks. This goes hand-in-hand with what I think is really the best way to learn anything: bind the terminology with some real, tangible experience. Binding information to stories and imagination works well too as James Heisig found when he came up with his method of Kanji memorization. Getting creative with making flash cards can take a lot of time, but so can memorizing things. Putting in the work up front may in many cases produce better results in the long run.

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How I Make and Use my Cards
What I'm studying lately is a lot of information taken from a standardized test. The first thing I've been doing with my vocab deck is making a card for each entry in my vocab book. That's a lot of cards. Something like two thousand when I'm done, I think. There's far too much material to remember it all through rote memorization. To get it to stick I have to tie it to memories wherever I possibly can. One method is putting some time between studying each lesson and taking the mini quiz. Another is reading a novel every day and taking note when I see words I have learned. If it's one I struggle with, I make a card out of the whole sentence and tag it with the author's name. Sometimes I simply ask a person about the word. Do they actually use it in conversation? In writing? Is it old? Is there a kanji for it? What kind of nuance does it have? How does it compare to its synonyms? Anything that is pertinent and especially interesting will help me remember the word later on. And finally, one of the best ways is to go out of my way to use the word. Use it wrong and people will make a funny face (hopefully) and I can ask why. Use it correctly and the conversation will flow smoothly. I feel good about it and remember it based on that emotional experience.

Memorizing information in bulk is terribly boring. I don't think there is any way around that, but I do think there are many ways to do it as efficiently as possible. And there are ways to set yourself up for reinforcement and encouragement when you read something smoothly, express yourself in conversation, understand key information or simply realize that you aced a question on an inefficient, unnecessary standardized test. Good luck to anyone else taking the test this July! Only three more weeks to go!

Studying grammar for N1? Try this deck of Anki flashcards.

It's not perfectly complete, but here is the deck that I am making to study N1 grammar. I realized that I need to share it ASAP if it is going to be of use to anyone else. There are a few grammar points from N1 that aren't in there because most of these were made using 1級 study materials.

I use it in conjunction with the 総まとめ vocabulary book, which I am also making a deck for, and with Murakami novels. His work contains a surprising amount of the N1 vocab and grammar. That goes against everything people told me about how I would never need what I'd learn when studying for this test. Anyway, I find that discovering words in context after I have studied them helps get them nice and stuck in my memory. Sometimes I go out of my way to use them in conversation, even when it will be awkward because no one actually says it. Then I have a good laugh with the person I'm talking about and I can bind the word to that memory too. A little shrewd? Sure, but worth it in my opinion =)

I hope it helps you as much as (I think!) it is helping me! Good luck with your studies!

日本語能力Ｎ１文法　Ａｎｋｉデック

I Got 99 Problems and They're All Extremely Nuanced Grammar Points

Recently I found this list of all the grammar points covered by the N1 Japanese Language Proficiency Test. It is by far the best resource I have found to date, and in fact is what I was trying to put together already. I'm glad I found it because I'm sure I wouldn't have been thorough enough and it would have taken a lot of time from learning what I need to know. The Japanese explanations are so concise and the examples so easily understood that I have taken to using this in lieu of my grammar book (総まとめ series).

I'm working on Anki flash cards for the example sentences. They have the sentence on the front and the Japanese explanations on the back. For vocabulary I don't yet know I wrote in the readings and/or English definitions. When it is done I will share and link the deck for others to use.

Update, Late April: Writing, Drawing, Painting, Studying.

I got back from the United States yesterday afternoon. It took just over twenty-four hours for us to get from the hotel in Tampa, FL to our home in Nagano. After a good night's sleep (the first in over a week), I got up today and got right to work on wrapping up little projects that have been nearly finished for far too long.

What have I been doing lately? Fair question. I haven't posted much about what has been going on over here so I wanted to update and talk about it.

Starting with writing, I have been putting together short stories since the beginning of the year. The one I just finished a third draft for is a rather long (11k words) horror/fantasy story that fits into a world I have been working on.  If this draft goes over well with my beta readers I'll be submitting it to Tor and while it is being processed I'll work on the other stories that fit into the setting. I also have an odd speculative fiction story, a flash short, and a story set in Tokyo that I'll be submitting to other markets. I've been bouncing between drafting new stories and redrafting whatever I finished last. I'm finding that's a process that works nicely for me.

I'll be getting back to drawing sometime soon, but that will depend on how some things go on the translation front. I have been in contact with a friend about a promising opportunity, but there isn't much to say right now except that I have been a little extra busy with it. Right now my goat story is scanned in pencils and inked with Sakura manga pens. I need to rescan the inks and clean them up in GIMP. I have used Android apps to draw on my Cintiq, but this will be the first time I really get around to working with it on a PC app. With inks finished, I can color it while simultaneously prepping it to be an interactive iOS application. That, I think, is the ideal way for me to release my work because I want to make it as useful as possible to language education. I'm imagining something similar to the Oceanhouse Dr. Seuss apps: read-to-me features and touch controls prompting audio with pop-up pictures.

I have some new 40k models I've been painting as well and I will hopefully get them finished before next weekend. There is an event in Nagoya I'll be attending and I need my figures ready for transport before then. Time to crack down on painting and get these guys done. There is a post about one of them on my other blog, and I'll be posting about the others as well a little later on.

And lastly, I've been studying like a madman. I have the Japanese Language Proficiency Test coming up this July. I'm taking the highest level they offer and the material covered on it is the kind of stuff you never see in most documents or even technical/business discussions. Even having worked in a Japanese environment for almost three years, I'm not convinced I would pass without studying hard. I don't particularly want to take this test more than once, so I'm going to do my best to do it right the first time. I've been doing practice tests, reading a lot of grammar discussions online, watching YouTube lessons, reading Murakami Haruki and now that I am back home, I'll be setting up my vocab flashcards on Anki (which is an amazing SRS tool).

The other studying I have been doing has been for writing. I read some of the Writer's Digest books on specific elements of fiction. Some were great (Plot; Beginnings, Middles, Ends; Characters and Viewpoint) and some were awful (Dialogue; Action and Suspense). I also read Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, by Umberto Eco and have twenty other books on topics from that period lined up for when I finish this Murakami novel. I posted a picture of those on the Facebook page if you didn't see it.

 

Suffice to say that I have much more to do than I have time for. If I'm quiet on this blog, consider that a great thing. It means I am getting work done and playing with my daughter. I'll be sure to post about it when I have some things to show you though.

Thoughts on the 2014 UNSCEAR Report Regarding Fukushima Radiation Health Risks

I want to post something irresponsibly ill-informed. Please bear with me. I just saw an article (full disclosure: that site is paid for by the World Nuclear Association which obviously colors how I view their perception of the report) that says UNSCEAR's study shows data against rising cancer levels around the Fukushima plant and against increased radiation exposure excepting areas within the 20km evacuation area. Here is their very poorly made power point presentation. I want to get more informed so I can understand what kind of background the report arises from, but I'm finding that more difficult than I originally expected.

It may be just be that I'm incredibly skeptical of anything authorities say about Fukushima. And I think that's reasonable given how much TEPCO and the Japanese government lied, especially directly following the earthquake when they said there was no meltdown whatsoever. So naturally I have to wonder what affiliations UNSCEAR might have. It's not like it is uncommon in the US to appoint regulatory officials who have been CEOs of the corporations they are regulating. Their conflicts of interest ought to exclude them from taking such appointments, but sadly that is not the case. I googled briefly to see what I could find, but the articles that came up inspired little confidence in their journalistic integrity. One of the better ones can be found here.

That's a big part of the problem I have in trying to find the answers I want. It's easiest to find links to sensationalist articles that are in many cases even less credible to me than the news I consider propaganda. One of them claimed that UNSCEAR is "subservient to IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency)" who must approve all its reports. And that the chairman, Wolfgang Weiss, was "a boss" (how incredibly vague) for Euratom, an international organisation founded to create a specialist market for nuclear power in Europe.

Given common sense developed through years of rolling my eyes at committee appointments, it seems any of that could be accurate. But there's a serious lack of trustworthy information.

I'm not saying it's entirely outside the realm of possibility that UNSCEAR is actually an unbiased and independent committee. I'm also not saying that it is impossible that the observed thyroid cancer spikes were an isolated incident linked with the initial meltdown. It could very well be that the protective measures are working outside of the 20km evacuation zone.

What I am saying is that at the end of the day you have to be able to trust the information you're being given if it is to have any value. Neither side of this argument inspires trust, in my opinion. Data collection is a potentially dangerous task, so it takes a dedicated organisation to do it (assuming they really collect the data and don't just estimate it, a practice that has been employed before and that I wouldn't blame them for because getting close enough to collect useful data would be scary). But who supports that organisation? If their findings aren't transparent and their affiliations utterly independent, I wouldn't be willing to stake human lives on them.

The bloggers writing about this stuff, on the other hand, aren't conducting investigations that can override my skepticism with facts. Linking to Wikipedia and copy/pasting supposed affiliations (however much sense they might seem to make) doesn't argue the case. Neither does jumping to conclusions based on observing other unrelated events and circumstances. Good investigative journalism about the Fukushima plant itself could have been reassuring, but the new secrecy act the Japanese government passed last December made matters of nuclear energy a state secret. Reporting on them can earn both journalists and informants years of prison time.

I think it's hard to come out on either side of this issue without being judged either gullible or paranoid. I suppose I'm a little of both and that may be while it's hard for me to buy into the information I'm finding. But without transparency and without investigative journalism what should a reasonable person think? The best I can come up with is that I'm not moving near the Fukushima plant any time soon, and that I doubt any chairpersons of the IAEA will either.

Email: What are your thoughts on raising your kid with regard to language and religion?

I got a question from a friend of mine and thought I'd share my answer here too. Here's his email.

Hey I was curious. Please don't take offense I'm just curious because you have an interesting family life that is very distinct and multicultural. Are you raising your kid multilingual? And if so, English and Japanese? It may seem like a dumb question. But here is an even weirder follow up. And please again I don't mean this in a jerky way it's just been on my mind. What are your opinions on raising your kid religiously? My wife to be is Jewish and I'm a dirty pagan. We are both learning Swedish (and obviously we speak English), but I was wondering about your strategy to incorporate your ethno/religious background in your situation. Me and Demi have talked loosely about how we would do it with our kids, but I'm really curious about your opinions. Sorry if this seems weird lol. I [just] finally got the courage to ask someone who is kinda in our situation but theoretically lol.

No problem at all man. I wouldn't be any kind of friend if I took offense to you asking my advice and opinions. Those are some really challenging questions so I hope you don't mind me taking some time and space to answer them.

Beginning with language, yes definitely the goal is for our daughter to be bilingual. There are a couple reasons for that. First and foremost is because my family doesn't speak Japanese and my wife's family doesn't speak English. To be a part of everyone's life she needs to be able to communicate. There is also the professional benefit of having native level skills in two languages. I've been studying Japanese for nearly a decade and even though I can do business there is still a clear distinction between myself and a native-speaker. I don't know if I can ever bridge that gap completely. I'd like to give my daughter every advantage I can. And I also think knowing/studying more than one language is valuable to a healthy and satisfying intellectual life.

I am not, however, teaching her Hebrew. I also don't speak either Hebrew or Yiddish. I don't see a need for Julie to learn those because while it is part of our cultural history, we have no living relatives with whom we need to communicate that way. We'd do as well to learn any other language we have historical ties to in my opinion (like Gaelic or Latin, for example).

As far as religion goes, I am not at all religiously Jewish and Japanese religion isn't much like what we're used to in the US. There is a lot of tradition and there are many rituals involved, but it's just something they do, not something they live their whole lives by. There are exceptions of course, because there are certainly monks who dedicate themselves to their spirituality. I'm of the opinion that I'm Jewish no matter what I believe in because any of Hitler's followers would have beaten me to death and shot my kid in the street. I feel it is important to understand things about your own history if for nothing else than to know that people who hate you out of ignorance won't see the difference between a religious Jew and a cultural one.

I can't honestly say what I want to tell her is true about spiritual matters. I may just not bring it up and just teach her morality based on the old "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" axiom. Then if she has questions I'll talk to her about it when she asks. Maybe I'll point her towards what she needs to study in order for her to find a doctrine that she finds satisfying. Essentially, I feel that religion is incredibly personal. It's main role in my own life at least is to cope with the indescribable and majestic mysteries of life and the universe. Sorry to get a little more philosophical there than I'd like, but that's roughly how I'd put my feelings into words on that matter. I want her to figure out what's right for her without me having to overexpose her to my own particular system first.

I honestly can't say if I really think those are all the right ways to go about things. Some people take to their parents' religions very easily. Others rebel against them. But if your kid grows up to be a nice person with a healthy appetite for knowledge and the ability to communicate with the people that matter to them--that's pretty much the best I'd ever hope for.

In any case these are just my opinions and I'm not an expert of any kind. But this is what I came up with when asked to put an answer into words long before I'm ready to put it into practice.

The Wrong Kawasaki: Unlocking Google Barriers with Second Language

There is a lot that can only be learned by reading materials in the original language. You might find plenty on Japanese history or anime in English, but if you want to know what it is like to grow up in Kawasaki and if you want to know why people consider that area dangerous, you have to search in Japanese.

That wasn’t a conclusion that I came to easily. For years I avoided using the net in Japanese where I could. There is so much information in English that it’s not necessary in many (if not most) cases. The wall that I hit was Kawasaki. Apparently I hit it as hard as if I had ridden a Kawasaki motorcycle into it, because bikes were the *only* thing I could get Google to bring up. Well, I'm thankful for it because it got me to step out of my comfort zone and I learned some things that I doubt I'd have found anywhere in English.

Something I am likely to return to many times when I talk about translation and language learning on this blog, is that for a number of reasons elitism and insecurity mingle freely within students of Japanese. Judgmental attitudes are everywhere on the net, in university, on the street, in the bars, cafes and workplaces. Discussing why that is would probably be interesting (and here's a blog post that does so, though I do disagree with her on a number of points), but for now I'm more interested in trying to free myself from it. For my own part, it is relieving to admit that I had a mental block against even trying to use the net in my second language.

I know for some people, making active use of their second language is first nature. But I also know that, like myself, it isn’t natural or automatic for many others. When I taught English as a second language, I found it very difficult to get students using Google in English. I knew it would be a huge benefit to them because of the sheer volume of information available on the internet in English. These days I feel foreign language teachers ought to be able to do, or at the least ought to be learning to do, anything they preach to their students as indispensable. I should have taken my own advice long ago, but sometimes (read, usually) I find that I have to be forced into taking the necessary steps forward.

If you are studying a second language and aren't already doing this, I encourage you to learn new things in your second language. Don't just study the language, but seek out topics that you can learn about for the first time and do so with the vocabulary and grammar you have available to you. Learn the words and structures you need to grasp what you're reading, but focus on the information and what you need to know from it, rather than on the language itself. I think one of the effects of this practice is to learn and be conversant about things you might not be able discuss in your primary language. That was something I encountered for the first time working with transparent circuits, and it is something I'm still studying in English so I can catch up again.

And if you try it and it doesn’t help much, or even if it is just boring, no sweat! Unlike expensive textbooks, finding materials on the net is free!

If you’ve had some experience with this, or even if you think it is total rubbish, let me know in the comments!