Sentence card question

[hoary crane]

So i’ve got about 3800 anki cards that i’ve made rn, about half are individual word cards and half are sentence cards. With my word cards i mostly made them at the start of my immersion because i didn’t really know what i was doing and that seemed like the most normal way to format them. Then i started learning about sentence cards a little more and now i’ve completely converted to them. So just to give some background I have about a consistent 93-95% retention with 15 or 25 per day at max (with occasional off days). I read the entire card and read the whole definition when reviewing it and then click the buttons accordingly. So here is where my actual problem starts, I can remember my sentence cards super well but when encountering them in immersion i often forget the reading, meaning or everything all together. I feel like because i have a whole sentence to go along with the word I end up subconsciously correlating the two and I because unable to remember the word without the corresponding sentence from my card. So I was thinking that maybe I should switch back to a format with just the word on the front. I feel like when i first started out it was easier to remember the words in immersion but also harder to remember them in anki. However I feel like this could’ve been from me just not being familiar enough with the language at that point. So i’m just wondering what kind of card formats others use, if anyone else has had this problem and/or how to potentially solve it.

I’m not really sure where to put this but these seems like a pretty appropriate spot. I kinda wish there was just like a general questions area but i think this is okay.

[summer nimbus]

IMO in your case switching to doing vocabulary cards would be a great idea to try.

The problem you're having would also be solved by immersion so technically speaking you don't have to change anything and it'll work itself out anyway, but if you're going to do anki you may as well do it in a way that targets what you need help with the most.

93% retention and higher is quite high indeed, and may be a sign that for one reason or another your cards are too easy. this could be another indication that a card with just vocab on the front will be what gives you the biggest benefit for your time in SRS.

Also this question is totally fine here imo. It could also go in #methodology-questions

[hoary crane]

Thanks for the response, I have a few questions still though if you don’t mind. So I assume by saying it’ll get better through immersion you mean that I will continue to see the words in my immersion and eventually make the connection. If that isn’t what you meant please correct me. Second is that I don’t know how my cards could be too easy. I think i’m making them correctly but if i’m not i’ll kinda guide you through my criteria on what i turn into a sentence card. So if i’m immersing and I hear or read a sentence that I feel like I would’ve understood with just once more word or sometimes one more piece of grammar I do a lookup with yomichan. From here I look at the yomichan frequency dictionaries, (all of mine are ranked in ascending order) generally i’ll mine anything within 1-20,000 and anything from 20,000-30,000 i’ll determine if i should mine it based on how useful the word seems to me and my current domain. I rarely mine anything 40,000+. If you could can you explain a little more on how I could potentially make them a better difficulty.

[summer nimbus]

"Too easy" is kind of a blanket term for a whole bunch of different things you could play around with like the interval modifier, content on the card, etc. One thing that could be happening is you're making a strong connection between the word, how it's read and what it means and the card itself but that isn't translating very well to recognizing it in immersion. Ways to improve on that might include

1. Simply immerse more. You were understanding what I was trying to say correctly
2. Maybe less context in your card will make your time spent repping more valuable. Vocab word only on the front, like you were considering, would do this.
3. Using a longer interval modifier would mean you get the same benefit from your reps but spend much less time on them. I don't have much experience messing around with this, but if your retention is super high this is an option to look at.

[fiery cloud]

If you choose stick with sentence cards, the solution for this very common problem is to keep mining sentences that you don't understand. It doesn't matter if you already have the target word - don't beat yourself up about what you "should" know.

Suppose you have only one card with 信号 and it's specifically 信号が青に変わって -- which is one of only three cards to contain 青。 This means if you remember any of those words you can fill in the gaps for the rest, which is why you're not being challenged to remember your target words.

Now you come across

信号待ちで止まっていると、スマホが震える。
||When I stop(ped) at the [traffic] light my phone buzz(ed)||
in your reading. You should know 信号 and 待ち isn't a hard suffix so this is super-frustrating. Don't be frustrated, mine that sentence too. It gives you useful memory interference and forces you to generalize. Traffic light becomes a more complex concept, it doesn't always turn green.

IMO sentence cards are good for a richer understanding of words. You might not increase your count as fast - it certainly becomes harder to count how many words you know. But the words that you do know, you know better. Eventually that turns into intuition and once you have that your vocabulary can grow very quickly.
So I'm a big advocate for them. I just wish people were more aware and accepting of how they need to overlap with each other to be effective. This results in a slower start.

[hoary crane]

I think I kind of understand what you’re saying, mining something once is good but can often lead to correlations and not a wide enough understanding of a word. By mining a word multiple times hopefully with a more complex sentence you loosen that correlation while also expanding you’re knowledge of the word. I also like the idea of not stressing about what I should know and that even if I’m supposed to know the word from anki that doesn’t mean I can’t mine it.

I don’t really mind not knowing my exact amount of words i know I just enjoy seeing words I mine or look up being used later and feeling better at Japanese.

I guess i’m going to keep going at sentence cards but if i keep having problems i might also make some vocab cards.

I could also potentially make vocab cards for the words im supposed to know from anki. I think im just going to do it your way and make a duplicate sentence card thanks for the feedback everyone 🙂