How to Study With Anki

You will use Anki most heavily at the beginner level since this is where the most direct memorization takes place. You should use it as a tool to increase your comprehension and mostly focus on cards where you translate Japanese to English. As you progress, flashcards should take up less and less of your study time. If you find that your flashcards have piled up, don’t worry. You don’t need to do all of your reviews every single day. Anki is fully adjustable for a reason. For most of my decks, I have 10 new cards a day and 30 reviews. For a deck like hiragana or katakana, your daily new cards may be 50 or more, while a deck with a lot of grammar may only be 5. It all depends on what you find comfortable and can manage. If doing many reviews is boring, reduce it. If you can’t remember 10 words at once, then reduce it. Play around with Anki a bit to see how you like to study.

How to Set Up Anki

Anki on PC

After you have downloaded and opened Anki, it will display this page. Yours won’t have any decks or the pronunciation bar, but the options will be the same.

Anki decks will end in .apkg. They can easily be transferred and shared as independent files. To add downloaded decks to Anki, simply double-click on the deck you want to add. Sometimes it will ask for permission to add the deck, other times it will just add it directly. The decks linked below are the ones used in the Japanese Language Pathway. They will be explained in more depth later.

To add new individual cards to a deck, first click on the deck you want to add the new card to, then press “add” on the toolbar at the top of the screen. In the image below, the new card will go into the Japanese Sentences deck.

This is where you enter the information to make a new card. At the top of the screen, you can change the type (this changes the fields and how the card looks when finished) or the deck. The fields are pretty self-explanatory and should be filled out according to how they are labeled. Once you click add, the card will automatically be added to its respective deck. It’s easiest to add audio later after the card has been created, and I’ll show you how to do that later in tips. When you are done adding cards, click “close” in the bottom right corner.

To see all the cards in your deck, click on “browse” from the main screen.

Here in browse you can sort through and edit your cards. To search for a specific keyword, type it in the top search bar. You can also sort cards by deck, tag, or state in the left column. To edit a card, simply click on it. The browse menu can be a little tricky to navigate at first, so I recommend just looking around to see where everything is. As you look through it more, it will become more familiar.

Back in the main menu, click on a deck to open it.

You’ll be presented with a few options when you open a deck. The one you’ll use the most is “study now.” However, we’re first going to look at “options” on the bottom left of the screen.

The options menu is where you select how many new cards you see each day and how many reviews you have each day. What you set this to will depend on how you like to learn. I don’t like doing all my reviews every day and prefer to be exposed to more new material, so I set my reviews lower than recommended. I’m not trying to remember every single sentence and word perfectly, I just want to review them a few times. If you want to remember everything, then you can set your reviews higher. You can also increase your new cards per day if you feel like you can handle more new material. When I first started studying Japanese, I would sometimes do as many as 50 new cards a day. However, my standard is 10 new cards a day and 30 reviews, since it takes about 10-15 minutes to study that number of cards.

After you have selected how many cards you want to study every day, go back and select “study now.” Your flashcards will now appear in study mode. In the center of the screen, you’ll see the flashcard prompt. In this case, it is a Japanese sentence, so your goal is to read and understand the sentence. At the bottom of the screen in the left corner, you’ll see “edit.” This allows you to change the individual card you are currently looking at. In the center at the bottom of the screen, you’ll see three numbers. The blue number is the number of new cards, the red number is the number of cards you are currently studying, and the green number is the number of reviews. When you are ready to see the answer, press “show answer.”

Once the card is flipped over, you will grade yourself. How you grade yourself will dictate when you next see this card. In this case, if you couldn’t read the card at all, you would press “again.” If you could understand it a little but not fully, you would press “hard.” If you could understand and read it, but it took some time, you would press “good.” If you can easily read and understand it, press “easy.” You will learn how to grade yourself over time. If stuck between two levels, choose the lower one. For example, if you’re not sure if you should choose “hard” or “good,” choose “hard.”

When you are done studying for the day, press the sync button in the upper right corner of the main screen. This will upload your progress to AnkiWeb so you can save your progress and study on other devices. Sync will also automatically be activated every time you open or close Anki.

Anki on Mobile

On Android Anki is free, but on IOS, the Anki app is about $25. If this is too expensive for you, you can use AnkiWeb, which is the free browser-based version of Anki. Anki web is only used for studying cards, so you will need to use a computer to create and edit decks.

Once you download the Anki app, you will open it to see this page, but you won’t have any decks yet.

If you already have an Anki account with Anki decks, press the sync button to see your existing decks.

If you need to add an Anki deck, press the three dots in the upper right corner.

Next, press import to select the Anki deck you want to study from your phone’s documents.

The decks below are part of the Japanese Language Pathway and will be explained in more depth later. You can use one of them to practice importing a deck.

If you press the plus sign in the bottom right corner, you will see a menu where you can create new cards and decks. From this menu, you can also add community decks by selecting “get shared decks.”

When you press “add,” the add new card screen will pop up. You can change the card type and deck at the top of the screen. Fill out the sections of the card accordingly, and when you’re done, press the checkmark in the upper right corner. Audio can not be added on mobile and must be added on a computer. See tips for more information.

To alter a deck, go back to the main screen, and long press on the deck you want to change. From here you can add new cards, browse current cards, or rename the deck, but first go to “deck options.”

In deck options, you can change how many new cards you see each day and how many reviews you have each day. What you set this to will depend on how you like to learn. I don’t like doing all my reviews every day and prefer to be exposed to more new material, so I set my reviews lower than recommended. I’m not trying to remember every single sentence and word perfectly, I just want to review them a few times. If you want to remember everything, then you can set your reviews higher. You can also increase your new cards per day if you feel like you can handle more new material. When I first started studying Japanese, I would sometimes do as many as 50 new cards a day. However, my standard is 10 new cards a day and 30 reviews, since it takes 10-15 minutes to study.

To start studying your flashcards, single click on a deck on the main screen. Below is what a flashcard looks like. This is a type card, so there is an area at the bottom of the screen for entering your answer. Normally, you will answer in your head or out loud then press the show answer button. To edit a card, click the three dots in the upper right corner. The numbers in the upper left corner show how many new cards, current cards, and review cards you still have for the day.

After you press “show answer,” you will see the back of the card and grade yourself based on how well you know the material on the card. How you grade yourself affects when you’ll see the card again. If you are stuck between grades, go with the lower one. For example, if you are between “good” and “easy,” select “good.” It never hurts to review more.

Tips for Creating Japanese Flashcards

There are two types of cards you will want to focus on making: vocabulary cards and sentence cards. You can find the templates for these below.

For vocabulary cards, you will fill out the fields according to how they are labeled. In the first field, put the commonly written form of a word. This will usually be in kanji, but sometimes it will be in hiragana or katakana. I know it may seem intimidating to make flashcards with kanji on them but trust me, you’ll be glad you did. As you learn new words, you should learn the kanji with them. The best way to learn to read kanji is through exposure, and this will save you a lot of headaches down the line. The Japanese, hiragana, and English fields should always be filled in. The image and example fields are optional. I generally only add images for nouns. You can easily add an image by dragging it into the image field from Google or a folder on your computer. Press “add” when you’ve finished filling out the fields. Audio will be added later.

After you add a new card, it will generate two different types of cards. The first card will be a type card. This card asks you to type the character you see. You can type either the hiragana or kanji for the word. After you flip the card, you will grade yourself on your ability to read and understand the word presented. This is one of the best techniques for learning how to read kanji while also picking up new vocabulary.

For the second type of vocabulary card, you will be presented with the English translation and need to remember the Japanese word. You do not need to remember the kanji or how to write it. You will just need to remember how to say the word. Grade yourself based on how easily you are able to remember the Japanese word.

Sentence cards focus on reading and comprehension. Only the Japanese and English fields need to be filled out. What you put in the hiragana field is up to you. If you just started learning Japanese, I recommend putting the full sentence in hiragana, but as you get better and can read more kanji, I recommend only putting hiragana for words you can’t read. Press “add” when you’ve finished filling out the fields. Audio will be added later.

The first type of sentence card shows a sentence on the front for you to read. On the back will be the hiragana reading and the English translation. You will grade yourself on how well you can read and understand the sentence.

The second type of sentence card focuses on listening comprehension. A sentence will be read out loud to you, and you will grade yourself based on how well you understood it. These cards are optional, and you can download the template without audio cards if you’d like.

Add Audio to Your Flashcards

To add audio to your cards you need to go to the webpage for the AwesomeTTS Anki extension. Scroll down until you find the add-on code and copy it.

In Anki, go up to the top of the page and click “tools” then click “add-ons.” You can also get there by pressing Ctrl + Shift + A.

Now enter the code you got from the AwesomeTTS webpage and press ok.

Once the add-on is installed, go to “browse” and you should see AwesomeTTS was added to your top toolbar. You may need to restart Anki if it hasn’t appeared. Next, select all the cards you want to add audio to and click “AwesomeTTS.”

This is where you can choose what voice you want to put on your cards. The easiest voice to use is Google Translate, so select that first. Then make sure you have the voice set to Japanese. Select “Japanese” for your source field and “audio” for your destination field, then press generate. If you’re not sure you set everything correctly, compare your screen to the image below.

If you would like higher-quality voices or larger batch generation, I recommend using Microsoft Azure. However, you will need to get an API key which is a little complicated because it requires making an Azure account and giving them your payment information even though it’s free. If you would like more information, you can CLICK HERE.