Sentence mining with Jiten

Sentence mining means capturing a word together with the line you found it in, in order to study it in context. The word will come with your memories of the scene, which is why mined words stick better than pre-made lists. With Jiten Reader it is one button.

Setting up, once

First, you need somewhere for the words to go. On the study decks page press Add Deck, choose Word List, give it a name like Mining, and press Create Word List. This is the only deck type that accepts individual words; media and frequency decks cannot.

Two important things to note:

• It has to be active so the new cards come in your study sessions.
• With the default Top deck setting for new card gathering, all your new cards come from the highest deck in the list as long as it has words you haven't seen yet. If you have a big media deck above your mining deck, move the mining deck to the top with the up arrow, or switch New card gathering to All decks equally in your SRS settings.

Then point the extension at it. In Jiten Reader's settings, open Mining and set Target word list to your new deck.

If you leave Auto-mine to selected word list off, then you'll get a deck picker each time, listing only your word lists, which is useful if you sort words into several decks. Turn it on to send everything straight to the target deck.

While you are reading

Hover a word you want, press Shift to open the popup, then press Deck +.

That is it. The word is added to your list and the surrounding sentence is saved as a custom example sentence, so when the card comes up for review it shows the line you found it in.

The button tells you where you stand. ✓ In list means the word is already in one of your word lists. With auto-mine on it goes further and shows In deck, greyed out, when the word is already in the deck you are mining to.

You can bind a key to mine quickly under Keybinds → Review. Add to word list only works when Auto-mine to selected word list is on, since there is no picker to open otherwise.

Choosing what to mine

It's often recommended to mine i+1: a sentence where exactly one word is new to you. You understand everything else, so the meaning is inferable from context and the word will be easier to remember. Jiten Reader can mark those for you with Mark I+1 sentences in the text under Text Highlighting, which is off by default. Tick Only mark when below frequency rank underneath it and a Maximum frequency rank box appears, so only reasonably common unknowns get marked.

The frequency rank can also be a good indicator. A word you will meet again is nearly always worth a card. Something rare is worth mining only if you want to remember it. Words you understood without help usually do not need a card at all, so mark them known instead.

Without the extension

You can add any word to a word list from the site. Press the ... button next to a word anywhere it appears, and pick a list under Add to deck. This adds the word only; there is no sentence attached, though you can write one yourself afterwards.

Limits and clean-up

Across all your word lists you can hold 150,000 unique words, or 300,000 with Jiten+. There is no per-deck limit. Separately, you can have 60 study decks in total, or 200 with Jiten+, and that count includes your media and frequency decks.

Removing a word from a list leaves its card and its sentences alone. Deleting the whole deck keeps the cards you have already studied and your custom sentences, while the words that never became cards are gone with the list.