Comments on: What is it about these MCDs? Part 4: The Active Output

By: beneficii

beneficii — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 04:57:19 +0000

I’ve got my MCDs ready to go. For now, I want to focus on particles and which verb endings are used (whether it’s present tense or past tense, continuous tense, etc.). I think that will help me build sentences faster.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 10:05:12 +0000

Definitely agree. Use crutches. Use training wheels. Use floaters. You’ll outgrow them and swim on your own eventually, but you won’t get any bonus points for having done it the “hard core way”, so in the mean time just do what is easiest.

By: ナカツ

ナカツ — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 03:39:18 +0000

If you’re worried about the bilingual aspect of rikaichan, but want more than just readings, check out rikaisama. It uses the sanseido monodic (and I think can use more, though I haven’t tried), and it’s awesome!

If you’re worried about it being a crutch generally… Well don’t, it’s better than not reading at all 🙂 You’ll outgrow it in time.

By: ブライアン

ブライアン — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:14:33 +0000

You need to *understand* the definition, or else it doesn’t do you any good later. (But, personally, I don’t bother getting the readings for every word in a definition I don’t know. Understanding is the important part.)

Early on, what you’re going to end up doing is a *lot* of recursive lookups. For example, let’s look at the word 【景気】（けい・き）：
売買・商取引などの状況。また、社会全体の経済活動の状況。
Okay, so the first word I don’t know (I can read it from the kanji, but let’s check to make sure) is 売買, so let’s look that up:
【売買】（ばい・ばい）：売ることと買うこと。売り買い。
For the sake of length, we’ll stop there, but if you anything gave you trouble in that definition, you’d look up that term, and so on. Return to the original definition, take the next new word, and define it. Then, when you understand the original definition, you take that entire tree of definitions and make a bunch of cards out of them.

This is a fair amount of work, but the rewards are huge — obviously the dictionary becomes a lot easier to use. Also, it will teach you generalized vocabulary and how to describe actions and situations you don’t know the exact word for. This is *huge* when holding a conversation, because even a software dictionary is too slow to be doing tons of lookups in the middle of a conversation.

By: 魔法少女☆かなたん

魔法少女☆かなたん — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 06:51:33 +0000

Being able to read the definition does matter, at least to the degree that it helps you recall what you’re reading. I tried using definitions I didn’t understand and it didn’t work very well.
Look up the words you don’t know in the definition in a bilingual dictionary as a “jumping off point” to use the monolingual dictionary. You’ll get a lot of basic descriptive words by doing that, and the process will become much easier as you go along.

By: アメド

アメド — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 03:52:24 +0000

I’ve read the MCD posts now but all I need to do now is: make it all automatic (furigana,monolingual-look-ups,etc) I don’t add that much sentences anymore but it’s definitely time I try new things to reach the next level. I’ve been learning for 2.5 years now and I feel that learning Japanese isn’t hard at all anymore but now it’s time to fill in the gaps and reach complete fluency.

By: アミール

アミール — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 03:06:01 +0000

Oh, sorry, I used the wrong expression. I meant I wouldn’t be able to read the definition.. my vocabulary is small at the moment, maybe 300, 400 words? Or does not being able to read the definition even matter at all? I was able to read all but 2 kanji from your example, 周期･現象 (I got the dot fixed!)

By: ブライアン

ブライアン — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:56:36 +0000

“Not sure how I would write a definition in Japanese.. soo.. hopefully I can get to doing that soon!”
You don’t. You copy the definition from a (online/software) dictionary. Or failing that, something like Wikipedia — I’ve even defined オタク slang using the tag database on pixiv. Writing your own is far too error prone and too slow to be of use.

By: アミール

アミール — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:55:13 +0000

Ah, thanks for your explanation aswell. Interesting way of making the back card. If I can get my ・ to get small again, I’ll definitely try that!! I don’t really make bilingual cards, ONLY when there’s a totally new word I was just introduced to, or a new grammar point(although I eventually delete the English on those card after it’s understood).. since I’m still working on genki books at the moment, I’m still fresh with grammar. Not sure how I would write a definition in Japanese.. soo.. hopefully I can get to doing that soon!

By: 魔法少女☆かなたん

魔法少女☆かなたん — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:26:53 +0000

My “vanilla” cards (why does vanilla have such a bad rep as boring…it’s a great taste D:) tend to take this format:
Front:
地球が太陽のまわりをまわる周期は約一年だ。
Back:
ちきゅうが・たいようの・まわりを・まわる・しゅうきは・やく・いち・ねん・だ
And then the definition of any words that I feel I need. In this case, it was only 周期 since the others were all very familiar to me. Incidentally, it’s “+1” cards like this that are by far the most fun and useful in this format.
周期（しゅうき）→同じ運動や現象がくり返されるとき、その一回にかかる時間。

I usually look for the specific definition that fits and add only that. For words that have about 8 million different uses like かける or とる, this can be time-consuming to prepare, but is more useful when actually reviewing the cards.
I’ve never had any bilingual cards for Japanese, and haven’t attempted to do this for any other language I’m interested in yet, so I can’t tell you how those would look.

By: トラビス

トラビス — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 19:50:00 +0000

I’m going to be using a combination of sentences and MCDs. I think once I go fully monolingual I will be adding more MCDs than sentences. However, I don’t see ever stopping sentences since they obviously worked for Khatz.

By: アミール

アミール — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:24:07 +0000

Ahh sorry to the original commenter, I didn’t meant to reply to your post!
But thanks ライトニング for the reply! This info was very useful (:

By: rigabamboo

rigabamboo — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 03:59:06 +0000

>> I’m assuming you’d only write the answer as opposed to writing the entire sentence with the old method.

Right.

>>would it be a good idea to transition to mono-lingual and MCD’s at the same time?

You can start MCDs before you go monolingual. I'm currently learning Korean as a beginner with bilingual MCDs.

By: Nova

Nova — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 03:10:21 +0000

Cool, cant wait

Everytime I see MCD I think of McDonalds

By: rigabamboo

rigabamboo — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 01:14:18 +0000

That was totally on purpose. Totally. >_>

By: gankoo

gankoo — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:58:13 +0000

I use Rikaichan a lot, but I changed the default settings so it doesn’t display english translations. I just use it for the readings. Mostly.

By: ライトニング

ライトニング — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:55:22 +0000

Sentence on front, and on the back there are readings and definitions for the words.
For monolingual, here is how one of my cards look.
Front
屁を放出することを放屁と言う。
Back
屁「へ」を　放出「ほうしゅつ」　することを　放屁「ほうひ」　と言う
屁（おなら）
放出（吹き出すこと。また、あふれ出ること〔２〕蓄えていたものを外部に出すこと。持っているものを手放すこと） If there are multiple definitions, I copy both.
放屁（おならをすること）
Yeah, I have strange sentences…

If it was bilingual, for me, it’s the same, except the definitions are in english

By: Serena

Serena — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:56:30 +0000

I can see Rikaichan becoming a crutch. For me, it isn’t but I guess it depends on how you use it. Its a great resource and is especially handy for beginners. I use Rikaichan with Chrome and at the top right I can switch Rikaichan on and off. So I only use it when I absolutely need it.

By: アミール

アミール — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:52:46 +0000

Can someone shed light to me on how to make a Vanilla sentence? I’m clueless and can’t find anything..

By: Sebbe

Sebbe — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:42:53 +0000

Why does part 4 come before part 3 in the series?