Oh I forgot to mention another benefit of self deck creation: it grows with you. Some words are so well known that new cards do not contain their pronunciation

Oh I forgot to mention another benefit of self deck creation: it grows with you. Some words are so well known that new cards do not contain their pronunciation. A new card may have 7 kanji words but only the hiragana for only 2 of those words. Likewise a card may only contain translation for one or two words. As time goes on I also select more difficult sentences. In both cases a premade deck cannot match your learning curve like self-made decks can. I must also give credit for AllJapaneseAllTheTime for getting me excited about learning and for how to use SRS. A typical card of mine might be: Front: エナメル質は歯の歯冠の最表層にある、 Back: 質＝しつ//quality 歯＝は//tooth 歯冠＝しかん//tooth crown 最＝さい//most 表層＝ひょうそう//surface That example has every pronunciation and translation. A real card would not have 歯 at all since I know it by heart. 質 and 最 would not have translations. Also notice how this is not a full sentence. Japanese often features many run-on sentences so I split them. Also notice there is no sentence scope translation. AllJapaneseAllTheTime now suggests a newer format which features partial-ization of compound words which should work better for new decks: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/10000-sentences-is-dead-long-live-mcds http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/10000-sentences-is...