Opinions on vocab reviews for book

Bunpro
#1

Curious what those of you who are actively reading do for reviews (if you add them, I’m aware not everybody does and may only rely on reading itself for review and maintenance and that’s okay! But I want to force feed myself vocab now to get to a nice cruising speed where I personally can do that).

I’m following along my book with a vocab deck, and as some of you already know, I added an entire chapter of vocab to my reviews at once (⁠๑⁠•⁠﹏⁠•⁠) I found it easier than going through and clicking add one by one, and my learn button is introducing them out of order so 🤷 . It ended up being a lot because it was the first chapter so duh it’ll have the most vocab from the deck. It is getting better though and I’m starting to retain them now that it’s been a couple days since.

But, I want to continue with my reading routine and start the next chapter. Curious to see what others do when learning new vocab from book.

Do you stop reading when you feel you’ve seen too many new words for the day?

Learn the vocab before you start the chapter (if following deck)?

Just read as much as you want and have a set amount of vocab to learn each day regardless, maybe not reviewing words you’ve encountered until days later?

Reread a chapter until you feel you’ve got a good grasp of its vocab and only then move on?

Something else?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions \⁠(⁠๑⁠╹⁠◡⁠╹⁠๑⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠♬

7 Likes
#2

I don’t love my current system, but will share anyway.

On days when I read, I usually try to read a chapter or two just to maximize my exposure to native content. When I start a new book, I use the imiwa app on my phone to create a blank vocab list. Then, when I read I add any words I don’t know to this vocab list. After finishing the chapter/reading for the day, I’ll go back through the vocab list and add any words that show up in the JLPT decks to Bunpro, ignoring any that are A/E or unclassified.

I think ideally, I would be studying more than just JLPT related words, but since I’m currently studying for that I think I’d get too overwhelmed with reviews if I added every word I don’t know, especially since a lot of words can be very specific to a certain genre or situation. One nice thing about imiwa is that it will show you whether you’ve added the word to other lists or not, so you can kind of be like “oh I ran into this word before and didn’t add it to reviews, but I’ve encountered it X amount of times in other books and haven’t learnt what it means through just exposure.”

I will say though that even though I don’t love my current system, I have found that my general reading speed and vocab has increased a lot since I started reading regularly. Even if I’m not adding every word to reviews, there are still a lot of words I’ve chosen not to add that I’ve just naturally picked up because I’ve seen it so many times in other books.

As a last note, in regards to numbers of new words I add a day: I kind of play it by ear. When adding new words, I always read every example sentence for it in Bunpro so it definitely takes a bit longer than if I was just to add it to my queue after reading the definition. If I have the time and the forecast for my upcoming reviews looks manageable, I’ll add in between 10-25 words. If I don’t have much time, I’ll just add 1-3 words and add the rest on another day when I have time.

8 Likes
#3

I’ve become super lazy, so I read without any prep study. if I see a word I don’t recognize, I make a mental note of the kanji. If I see a word 4-5 times in a short period that I don’t recognize, then I actually look it up. I get through about 10 pages an hour of a light novel this way, and while I don’t understand 100% of the content, I feel like the exposure and repetitiveness alone makes up for it.

I don’t have a word limit for a day, just when I’m mentally exhausted from reading which could be from 10-15 pages. then I switch back to reading english books. lol.

5 Likes
#4

Can you plz let me know what Deck you’re referring to here?
Stuff should be showing up in order. I can check through your account :nerd_face:

2 Likes
#5

I would but its working as it should now ฅ⁠^⁠•⁠ﻌ⁠•⁠^⁠ฅ you fixed it with sheer willpower thank

2 Likes
#6

What I usually do is read a book through once without looking things up (unless I get super stuck on a section, then I might look up a few words that I think are the keywords), then I go back through the book a second time and harvest the words that I don’t know.

I write them and the sentence they are in in a notebook and add words from there to my flashcards (usually 15 a day). I don’t use bunpro for vocab, I use anki and manually make all of the flashcards myself. Its probably not the fastest way of going about it, but its been working well for me and definitely helps with my retention spending the extra time doing it.

To add, I usually have at least 2 books on the go at once; one that I am extensively reading with minimal lookups, and the one I am going back through a second time to harvest words from. I don’t harvest words from every single book I read, just the ones I like the best or the ones that I know will have related vocab to other things that I want to read in the future.

4 Likes
#7

For now I’m adding every unknown word to reviews, except for those using rare kanji. The idea is to remember the scene/sentence the word came from to help with SRS.

I’m mostly reading and adding words in sync, by paragraph or page. Often I’d read forward a bit more after exceeding word quota for the day, or re-read last day’s pages and see if I missed anything. Just depends on which parts of the brain are more fried xD

On days when I could dedicate a lot of time and focus to this, I’d add up to 100 words per day. But that also blows up review queue size.

Ideally I’d want JPDB Reader to parse the page I’m reading, and mark SRS reviews in parallel. It seems complicated to set up though.

Also, to pick up speed I’d have to skip rare words. For example, I’ve attempted 人類は衰退しました, and absolutely loved how MC squeamishly calls carrots biennial Apiaceae, but this kind of vocabulary killed my retention rate and motivation along with it.

3 Likes
#8

Interesting thread. I haven’t used vocabulary SRS properly for a while now however I’ve been trying to think of more fine-tuned ways of integrating it into my routine again just for a little extra boost.

I once heard of the idea of intensively reading the first 10-25% of books and then extensively reading the rest. I kind of like this idea as it allows you to get used to the writer or domain and also capture any phrases the author likes to use and then after the intensive phase you can then take in the rest of the book and work through whatever you’ve mined as you read on. Not sure if I will go for this method yet but thought I’d share as it’s something I’ve not heard too many people discuss before.

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