Don’t sweat the length of sentence. Just do this: BOLD term the kana and kanji portion of the sentence that is the word you’re testing. Next, DON’T WRITE OUT THE SENTENCE, just write out the word being tested. Yes, write out the sentence ONCE when you first review it. But after that, just worry about that one word the sentence is there as context to test you about. For those that did RTK, this is akin to Heisig saying you don’t have to write out the kanji endlessly on end to learn them, just once or twice properly can do it. In addition, if you fail a sentence, it’ll be only because of this one word (or concept) that’s being tested.

Now don’t misunderstand me. You still want to read the entire sentence. You still want to understand the entire sentence. But with the above, you stop failing a sentence cause of any dozen of words in it. You focus on that one word you added the sentence for in the first place.

In case you’re doing TTS, there’s hope here too. When you convert your sentence to audio, put a copy of the word at the front with spaces or commas (1 or 2 seconds worth) followed by the actual sentence. In your Anki (or other SRS), bold term your kana and kanji sentences. In your definition field put the J-J for that word only. You can add the J-E if you need to for that word and others, but ALWAYS put the J-J so it’s there when you need it.

Yeah, it’s the +1 thing all over again. But I was finding that CHORE (ok, boring task) of writing out the sentences again and again. I sweated whether to fail because I missed one of the words but not all. This takes it all away. That sentence is about that one word. Everything else is context (important, but not being tested). If I cannot pronounce that one word (via Kanji to pronunciation) or write that one word (via audio to kanji), then the card is missed. Missing other things, well, you have other cards that’ll test them soon enough.

Basically, longer sentences should not be an issue now.

I use the term “error” somewhat controversially here; in particular, I’m talking about the tendency towards very short sentences that some of the articles and success stories have, which sound unnatural as all get-out. It’s entirely possible that they’re written that way primarily to make it easier to read for beginning learners. If that isn’t the case, however, it seems to me quite possible that there’s some damage caused by focusing on short SRS entries at work here, assuming they’ve followed SuperMemo’s advice along the same nature.

http://www.feedmejapanese.com

rich_f,
you may be exactly right, I don’t know. I just preferred to ‘wait’ until I’m fluent before making decisions about these (after all) secondary things.
I thought Japanese might be an exception because I noticed that some stylistic conventions are different, at least in the book I’m reading. For example, the tense of the verbs is not always coherent. Usually the narration is in the past tense, but it often jumps into the present tense, for reasons I’ve yet to discover. But I’ve decided to just read on until those reasons become clear by themselves.

Besides, one may argue in the following way:
- I don’t want to write long sentences because they are hard to understand.
- I want to be fluent in Japanese and understand everything I read in Japanese
- Some Japanese people for some reasons (lack of style or something) use long sentences
- Therefore it may be useful to practice long sentences even though I don’t plan to use them myself.

That said, I think Khatz’s advice in this post is sound, and I’ve already started to avoid long and boring sentences. What I said above was just for the sake of dialectic.

As for longer being better? It’s never better when it comes to sentences, no matter the language. Read a JP newspaper article or two, and you’ll see that sentences are still pretty short for the most part. The basic rule of journalism is to write to the 4th grade level, because you want to sell papers to everyone. The whole idea is to get info to as many people as possible, as clearly as possible. You wouldn’t expect a 4th grader to read those horrible sentences, would you?

And people who use “utilize” in any written form really should be stabbed repeatedly with blunt, rusty scissors. (Especially bureaucrats.) It’s not the most egregious offender, but it’s up there.

I personally feel that this is the case.. it seems to happen to me at least.

On the other hand, I didn’t feel like discarding long Japanese sentences, because I know nothing about the style of written Japanese. It could be that long sentences, in Japan, are not such a bad thing. Maybe if you’re really fluent in the language, understanding them gets really easy, much easier than it would be in English or Italian.

These doubts have led me to the decision to avoid any thought about style until after I’m fluent.
What do you think? Does it make sense?

When you mentioned “the brain/people wanting a series of short, quick victories” I couldn’t help remembering something I found out while reading on procrastination (hmm …no comment) :

==============================
[Piers Steel, a University of Calgary psychologist,] came up with something he calls temporal motivational theory (TMT). It boils down to this:

Utility = E x V / Gamma D

Utility is the desirability of getting something done. E is expectancy, or confidence. V is the value of the job, and includes not only its importance but also its unpleasantness. Gamma stands for how prone a person is to delay doing things. And D means delay, or how far away the consequences of doing, or not doing, the task are.

The bigger the top number compared to the bottom, the less likely a task will be put off. So if you expect to do well at a job (E), and it’s a pleasant thing to do (V), and you’re not prone to being delayed by distractions (Gamma), and it has to be done right away (D), you’re not likely to procrastinate.
==============================

Source:
http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/170857

I did my master’s in journalism, so now when I see “utilize” instead of “use,” I just cringe because “utilize” is bad English. It’s a 25-cent word where a 5-cent word works better.

I think that concept can apply to any language. Rather than saying short is better, I’d say better is better. A good clear sentence that doesn’t get lost in itself is the sort of thing I’m always looking for. Then again, nobody talks like a newspaper, either. It’s 10 kinds of tricky to find the right sentences sometimes.

I’d say that i+1 works for good, clear sentences, but it will break down if the sentence is too long and convoluted. I think I would have problems memorizing either of those chunks in English, let alone in Japanese, simply because my brain would just shut down after a certain point. It stops being about language learning, and starts turning into memorizing a book.

It’s sort of like how relativity works just fine and dandy until you start getting too close to a black hole, and then everything gets all weird. Those sentences are very close to collapsing in on themselves and becoming black holes of meaning, from which not even the tiniest bit of enlightenment can escape.

But i+1 should work for most average stuff. It’s really just an overly clever way of saying “Don’t bite off more than you can chew,” for those of us who have a high nerd coefficient.

Anyway, I did go back and edit all the sentences I had down to a core sentence or two. I also added in the understood parts which would not be understood in a single sentence. So I also agree that sentences can get too long, which hinder the reviewing process.

My problems with not following the +1 issues (as Rich points out), came to a head with Kanji Odyssey (outstanding set of books by the way). There, even a short sentence or two were packed with new material. I was trying to railroad my way through it. It just got tedious seeing the same sentence again and again (ie, not fun). Finally, I decided to follow the +1 method and SUSPEND cards that had too many new items in it. After adding 300 or so sentences, I will go back and look at the suspended cards. If they’re then a +1 (heck, even a +0) I unsuspend them. Such is the beauty of the Anki program (amoung other things).

I guess to sum up your point: Short, sweet and progressive.

Good points all around. You’re right — the i+1 principle, and by extension “fail-point count” lie at the core of all this. You made a great point here:

>If you’re a beginner, then everything is “+1″ to you. So naturally, your sentences will be short. As you advance, you’ll have more, “Oh yeah, I know that” moments, so your sentences can get longer, with fewer “+1″s.

The reason I was focusing on length is…I personally had some basically i+1 sentences that were still too long (and therefore boring, for me). Like this one, where the intention/i+1 was to learn 「荒唐無稽」:

「主として、リー・ハーヴェイ・オズワルド、CIA、マフィアや大物政治家がケネディ暗殺の犯人あるいは黒幕らしいとして語られるが、この映画は独自の説に基づいて展開されている。この独自の説は、説の材料は80年代に発表されていたものの、あまりにも荒唐無稽として研究者からは退けられていたもので、この映画により一躍知名度を高め、有力と評価を受けるまでに伸し上がった。」

and this one:

「漢字を見る限り，「穿鑿」はおっしゃるとおり「穴をあけるように1箇所を深く掘って理由を尋ねる」、また「詮索」は「つなを引張ってどこから来ているか由来を調べる」といったように微妙なニュアンスの違いを感じます．換言すると，前者は探り出すプロセスやそのシツコさに力点があり，後者は由来そのものに力点があるといった相違です。」

In addition to (or perhaps as a part of?) i+1, I believe another principle at work is that of the brain/people wanting a series of short, quick victories (more on this in a future post). Then again, i+1 may be the “all-encompassing” concept, and length just a facet of that…Maybe length just gives a convenient metric or guide. Because of course there are sentences that are short enough, but definitely not i+1 and therefore unmanageable at this time.

Perhaps length of sentence naturally increases fail-point count, even with i+1 at work? What do you think?