The "Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar" Production Decks

"A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar" (DBJG), "A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar" (DIJG), and "A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar" (DAJG) are three books in a trilogy of in-depth Japanese grammar references by Seiichi Makino and Michio Tsutsui. After years of work, I've finally "finished" making production cards for all three books. These decks (part of my production card collection) contain most of the example sentences from the books in order to help you practice the grammar patterns covered, with cloze deletions for grammar structures as well as vocabulary. There are often multiple cloze deletions per sentence, which generate separate cards treated as related siblings. This means that if you have multiple cards due that are generated from the same sentence, it will delay showing you other cards from that sentence if you've already seen that sentence today.

English translations from the books were used as a starting point, but many of the translations have been altered in order to clarify what exactly is missing from the Japanese sentences to help the learner fill in the blanks. Page numbers that specify where each sentence can be found in each book are included in the "Notes" field visible on the back of each card, which can help tremendously when referencing the authors' detailed explanations of usage rules and related expressions.

If you're reading through one of these books for the first time and would like to study the relevant sentences as you progress through the book, I recommend suspending all cards from that deck, and gradually unsuspending cards that correspond to the page numbers you read in the book, enabling sentences for study bit by bit. Using the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar as an example, here's how to do it. You can easily modify these instructions for the DIJG deck as well:

In Anki, click on the DBJG deck:

Then click on Browse to open the Browse window:

Make sure the search bar at the top of the Browse window contains the text "deck:current" and press Enter on your keyboard to perform a search for cards in the current deck (DBJG):

With the relevant cards from the DBJG deck now shown in the results, choose Edit > Select All from the menu to select all cards:

With all cards from the deck now selected, suspend them by choosing Cards > Toggle Suspend from the menu:

With all cards from the deck now suspended, you can gradually unsuspend cards from pages you read in the book to enable the sentences for study. Since the page numbers are listed in the "Notes" field and are in the format "pg#", you can search the deck from the Browse window to find cards from specific pages in the book using the following search string: "deck:current Notes:pg#", replacing # with the actual number of the page you read.

For example, let's say you read page 1 in the book, and want to start practicing cards from that page. To find cards that correspond to page 1 in the book, search in the Browse window for "deck:current Notes:pg1":

With the cards from page 1 now shown in the search results, select them by choosing Edit > Select All from the menu, and then unsuspend them by choosing Cards > Toggle Suspend from the menu:

If you'd like to unsuspend more cards from other pages, perhaps page 2, search the Browse window for "deck:current Notes:pg2" then select all cards and unsuspend them like you did for page 1:

As you read more of the book, come back to the deck's Browse window to search for and unsuspend cards from the pages you read, and keep revealing more cards!