Hello there,

today I felt like spreading the word and I wrote down my routine to "close the loop" on vocabulary, that is from the moment I find a word I should learn, until the moment I have it ready in Anki to study --

it would be fairly simple if it wasn't because I learn each word in a japanese sentence with english translation and in three different types of cards.
I automatized the process as much as I could

here I paste the explanation (16 steps!) hope you don't mind

best regards --- I posted the file on the group website, VocabularyLoop.zip

the vocabulary loop

To start the vocabulary loop you need to have a buffer of words you want to learn. I have a list in a draft message in Gmail for that. Whenever I look for new words in the electronic dictionary I bookmark them and at some point add them to the list. Once you have 30 or 40 words it makes sense to make one iteration of the loop. There are quite a few steps but once it is all in place it is easier than it looks.

1. Put the words into MOJI extention for firefox. Since you cannot select more than 100 characters at once I just push shift + Page down to select a number of words and then alt + W to put them into MOJI. You need to have activated the shortcut in the configuration of MOJI. Then I repeat for another block (Shift + page down again). Once you have 2 or three blocks into moji you can move to the next step (doing more at once is way too much work and you will regreat it)
   
   
2. Open http://www.alc.co.jp, http://www.kanjicafe.com/icemocha.htm (you will need to create a user to use this one) and http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/ in different tabs. Also open a notepad or an empty plain text gmail message in a new window (shift + complose mail). Resize the main browser window horizontally to allow the the notepad or gmail message to sit side by side with the main window. There will be plenty of copy and paste.
   
   
3. Select the first word in MOJI, from the definition select the kanji word (in red) and push ctrl + c. Then select the http://www.alc.co.jp tb and search for that word. Select a sentence pair (japanese - english) that is not too long and not too short and paste it on the email message. If you do not find any sentence that satisfies you check at the othere two tabs and proceed the same way.If you don't find any sentence for that word, probably is not quite worth to learn it.
   
   
4. Repeat the process for the rest of the words of the list. On the email message make sure to leave an empty line between pairs of sentences. Do not worry about # or * just delete the indents that some time appear. This process is quite time consuming, but with some music and some practice you get faster.
   
   
5. In the Moji sidebar select "more" and then "export" from the top menu. Select the contents and copy them into an empty plain text gmail message or a new notepad window. "Clean up" the list by deleting words with more than one reading or words that broke down when searching them on moji. You need to have at the end so many words like sentences (if you screw up a bit it can be fixed in excel, but is easier to do it here)
   
   
6. Select the list of words and copy them. Open the excel file (allow the macros) and in the "reorder" sheet (erase everything in case there is something) paste it from the cell A1.
   
   
7. Select the list of sentences (make sure there is an empty line separating each pair from the next) and paste them in the "reorder" sheet from the cell C1.
   
   
8. Now go to the cell B1 and push ctrl + R. This will activate a macro that will reorder the sentences so that the japanese ones come before the english ones.
   Then, click ctrl + E. This macro will erase the numbers in the column B and also eliminate any # or * preceding the sentences.
   
   
9. Now select all the english sentences, cut them (ctrl + x) and paste them from C1
   
   
10. Check that there is indeed the same number of words than there is of sentences. If not you will have to search for the extra word and delete the cell (select shift cells up).
    
    
11. Once you have a perfect set of words and sentences copy it and paste it from column B, at the first empty row. It is convenient to separate different sessions with a blue empty line.
    
    
12. It is possible that some sentence do not include the word in the exact form that it appeared in MOJI. Sentences in this situation will appear in Column K. Check them and see how the situation can be fixed. If the kanjis are very rare and the sentences only include the word in Hiragana, then probably is best to change the word from the word list to hiragana only (e.g. ¤À¤¤¤¬¤¯ [¤À¤¤¤¬¤¯] / university...). If the sentence contains an inflextion of the verb then is best to edit the sentence in Column K. Since it is the result of a function you need to copy the cell and paste it on the same place and then select "values only". That will bring the text and you can edit it putting the gap where needed. It ifs a te-form probably is wise to leave the ¤Æfrom the verb.
    
    
13. You are almost finished. Now select from column B to column J for all the rows that you have added. Copy all these cells and paste it in a word document. When you paste select "keep text only" from the fold down menu. Alternatively you can go to paste-special and slect text only.
    
    
14. Now save the document as "plain text" and select UTF-8 encoding so that anki can read it properly. This process is a bit tiresome so it is worth to create a macro for that as well.
    
    
15. Go to Anki and open the Deck VocabularyLoop.anki, and select Import. Select the text file you saved in the previous step and click import. For each "fact" (word-sentence pair) it will create 3 cards,
    
    wordInSentence: this has the word to study in one line, and the sentence in which it appears -- need to guess the reading and at best the meaning of the sentence as well.
    
    gapInSentence -- the sentence appears with a gap on which should come the word of study. Try to guess the word with the help of the english translation of the sentence and the definition of the word.
    
    FuriganaInSentence -- this one is to work the visualization of kanji from hiragana. The word appears in hiragana inside the sentence, you need to guess the kanji.
    
    
16. That's it you are ready to go! If reviewing in a computer is highly recomended to use the web interface so that unknown words in sentences can be easily checked and ADDED TO THE WORD BUFFER! Remenber you need to close the VocabularyLoop!!