How To Begin Using Subs2SRS

hihiii! So, Tori-kun was asking some questions about how to use Subs2SRS, and i thought it might be useful to other people too if i wrote a post about it. So, here it is...

ok, firstly, here's the link to the subs2srs program:
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=2643
i'm rubbish at technology, so if you have any technical questions, please ask cb4960.

i didn't use subs2srs when i was anki-ing dramas, i took the snapshots using the snapshot tool on my media player, and cut out the audio by hand using audacity. i don't recommend you do that unless you have a lot of time!!! (although i found it really fun to do myself, i was free all day to do it, so...). If you're using subs2srs, you're also going to need Aegisub http://www.aegisub.org/ to retime the subs (it's super-annoying when the beginning or end of a line is cut off because the subs weren't timed properly!)

It might sound like a lot of work, but really it's not, and it's definately worth it!!!

So, how should you start using Subs2SRS with Anki? Well, there's no one correct method, so i'll just talk about the things that i found helped most...

1stly, i can't really recommend starting with a full deck of all the lines in a program. i tried that to start with, but really couldn't get into it that way. Loads of the lines i couldn't hear what they were saying, or it was just some random boring thing. When i picked the lines i wanted to learn, it was much much better!

When i started, i couldn't understand most of the lines in the show i was picking from, and using Rikaichan on every word would have been much too time consuming. So, i started off just using the english subtitles. Whenever i saw a line that i thought was interesting, or could be useful in some way, i just found the corresponding time in the japanese subtitle file, and got the line that way.

When my reading ability improved, i did pick from Japanese subs only, using Rikaichan for words i didn't understand. And when my listening ability had improved, i would go through the whole show stopping and pausing to read the japanese subs when i didn't understand a line. All of these things helped a lot.

What kind of program should you SRS lines from?
It really doesn't matter. Preferably one that you like, but i'm sure every show has useful phrases in it. The only thing i'd really advise is that you shouldn't pick any lines where the audio quality is unclear, at least at the beginning. Really clear audio, without 2 people speaking at once works best, and drama is usually good for this. Also, starting with fairly short phrases works best... you don't need to memorise sentences that sound like speeches, it's too much effort for too little reward (something i wish i had thought more about earlier!).

Anyway, the point is, don't go looking for an "easy" show. No program is easy when you start subs2srs-ing, it only becomes easy after you work on it!!! The 日本語 rankings can give you an idea as to which shows have a lot of commonly used expressions, short sentences, relevant language types, or clear audio, but if you love a show marked I/A, you should go for that. You get to decide which lines to pick, and there are easy, short lines in pretty much anything! And, apart from the audio quality issue, there is no real "difficult" or "easy" about language learning. It's all just Japanese, one thing is as hard as the next if you don't already know it. :)

How does Subs2srs help?
One thing it helps a ton with is listening ability. When i first started, Japanese audio sounded like meaningless jumble a lot of the time (or "porridge", as Tori-kun calls it ;). Sometimes, even when i entered a sentence into my deck i couldn't make out what they were saying... i just tried to hear it, shadowed it, and marked the card based on whether i recognised the meaning, rather than every individual word. Then, after a few weeks, or a month or so, i'd find it had become much much clearer, and i could really hear what they were saying! It takes a little while to sink in, and it takes a little while longer to recognise the same expression said by someone with a different kind of voice. But, it's not so long until you start recognising patterns, and can identify similar sentences to the ones you srsed as well, with just a word or so different, that you can identify and look up on it's own.

The other thing it helps with is speaking. The more useful expressions, and the ones where a certain expression was used in a certain context, are the expressions i can use easily now. My speaking ability is very poor, and apart from these, making sentences is a real chore. But, this is another good reason to pick things that you might want to say some day. If you remember the context well enough, those expressions just come to you in the right context. This is far more effective than vocabulary mining for this purpose!!!

What kind of card types were the most helpful?
I used a bunch of card types, and many of them had one sentence on the front, and another sentence on the back. This helped firstly because it added a load of context that meant that i couldn't forget where in the show any one line came from. It also helped because i also used them as sort of, context based production cards. So, hearing the first line and seeing the snapshot of the place in the show it came from, i then had to produce the line that followed. Where the line had been picked well, this is definately helpful for speaking ability. I also always made this production card along with another type of card, which was just a basic reading or listening card of either the first or last line, because this reinforced the sentence enough to not make production too difficult.

Anyway, if you want to see examples of the card types i made, or use my Anki deck from when i started picking from dramas, you can find it here: http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=5093

i hope this helps a bit :) have fun!