All Hail the Alicrab! A Peek into WaniKani

Since I was a wee kanji learner, I have gone upon the mountains and lo, preached the goodness that was the world of Remembering the Kanji and all the RTK followers would rejoice on high…that is until the Almighty Alicrab appeared and toppled RTK over the hill.

Wanikani is crack where RTK is caffeine, picking off where RTK does and going a step further. I found that after RTK there was a sort of deadening space where you lose a little motivation, but mostly because though you can see soooo many kanji everywhere and understand that gist (which is an awesome feeling) it is sorta a little browbeating to sorta ‘start from scratch’ in terms of getting sounds to the kanji. RTK’s 2nd book supposedly addresses this issue, but never have I really heard any good comments about RTK2, nor have I even been remotely interested in it.

This is ultimately why WaniKani is now my beginner ‘program’ of choice when anyone asks me how to start the reading/writing process. It all began with the Alicrab.

What is the almighty Alicrab you say? Well pictures are worth a thousand words.

Just an alligator with a crab body here, nothing to see, move along!

General Thoughts

Though you can see Tofugu’s own post about WaniKani, I’m here to give you a peak at my thoughts. Even though I have completed RTK1, it might not be completely fair to hear my thoughts on the ease of the program. Worry not however, because I forced about 3 people near me who had relativity no kanji experience to use it as well.

Having been a member of the beta for some time now, I’ve seen a wealthy amount of UI changes, even their blog post is quite outdated, however, the changes are like most site changes, some you like, some you don’t. I’ll admit at least for this sensitive eyeballed person here, the newer color scheme is just a tad bit painful and I do hope that it may change soon, however that said, I still enjoy the overall changes and progression that WaniKani has taken on. I’ve seen the levels progress from 7 to now 33, and things like audio and such add up.

I think my favorite things about the site is the system itself, its cuteness of the Alicrab, and the ease of the layout (where you get to see lots of information to fuel your excitement), where as my most hated thing is the lack of sentences and rigidity during reviews (I’ll explain the review section below), but mostly the color scheme (yeah yeah I know, I might complain about it a little more though. Not to say everyone feels the same, lots of people enjoy the color. As a side note, its not my monitor as I’ve viewed it on several computers and my ipad).

Enough of my general talking, let me get down to business.

WaniKani Basics

The Radicals

Like RTK where there are elements that you use to propel mnemonics, so does WK. If you’re into RTK just a little bit, it would not be hard to convert over at all. Even I, who’ve had those keywords in my head for a long time, was almost painless to switch. There were only a few where I continuously miss them due to RTK, such as 日, however I do not see it being problems for those with no heavy RTK influence.

The Kanji (General)

Kanji are usually given the most appropriate keyword for testing periods (SRS), however there are explanations of more within the kanji’s information…center? I’m not sure where he is pulling his list from, but from what I can tell in my own readings and such, the kanji are all relevant kanji you’ll need to know.

The Kanji (Readings)

The readings for the kanji are broken into two sections, the kanji side and the vocabulary side. For some this may seem like a rather odd thing, and at first I was a little eyebrow raising, however I noticed right away the ingenious behind it. Well Played Good Sir, Well Played. If you’re like me, you can never remember the difference between the words, On’Yomi, or Kon’Yomi, however, and though I still don’t think it matters if I do, WaniKani takes on that responsibility of helping you distinguish between when to say what (in general) without you caring to know still. I might of confused you, but when I give an example below, I will point this out better.

The Vocabulary

Every kanji has a vocabulary in which it goes into in the WaniKani side of things, and some even get a handful (especially combined with other kanji). This can be a little confusing, as for kanji’s readings in its kanji only side is sometimes different than the vocabulary side, and can be a little mind numbing if you mix them up and get the review wrong. However, the reinforcement of how the reading’s show up is a blessing in disguise, and it helps hit home that the kanji should never be confused with its vocabulary counterpart (even if, it is a single kanji vocab). Okay, maybe you’re worried or confused now, but I’ll show you below in an example. The great thing however is most of the vocabulary I feel is pretty common and useful right out the gate.

Levels

WK works on a leveling system. The number of radicals, kanji, and vocabulary differ for each level as well. The radicals do not run out however, due to a lot of them being kanji used in other kanji. This is similar to how RTK worked, and perhaps some people have complained about just slightly, since they have to double test on it, however others feel that it is doubly helpful that way.

Home Page

The homepage, where all your information is before your eyes, you can easily see where you came from, where you’re at, and where you’re going. The dashboard is useful, with the ability to always return to the home screen, start your lessons, your reviews, drop down boxes to view your Level, Radicals, Kanji, and Vocabulary.

The layout is prone to changes, so rather than describing it, I’ll just tell you stuff that has remained on there pretty much the whole time I’ve been on WK. You get to see 4 levels of mastery and a burned item. Basically the more you answer correctly your items pass through stages until they’re so ‘burned’ into your mind that you’ll never forget them.

Apprentice –> Guru –> Master –> Enlightened –> Burned

I have to admit I miss the images they use to have with the levels, of the demon guy, but the new look is sleek and good too showing a turtle coming out of its egg.

Progression bar on the level for both Radical and Kanji has been there, letting you know how many you need to unlock to move forward. I’ve never paid any attention to this, but its a cool thing to look at if you’re powering towards the next level and need some visual boost to propel forward.

It’s also nice to note that there is a color scheme that matches what the item is. When reviewing, the color of the background changes to help you realize it’s a specific item. For example when you have a kanji and a vocabulary item that is the same, the color will change still. The colors are noted below with the examples.

There has always been a showing of current forum posts and the beta blog for WK, so far as I can remember. There is a forum on the site, but I do not participate in it, but from what I have seen, there are bug reporting places, requests, questions, minecraft information, and of course people talking about Japanese related things like media and what not.

Other things have come and gone on the page, such as now there is a ‘New Unlocks”, “Critical Conditions Items”, like those you miss a lot, and “Burned Items” (last 30 days for the new and burned). Also a when to review now, and a bit from then.

Overall the main points have stayed there, just changes in how it is displayed, with a few tweaks.

Lessons

Certainly the first thing you do on WK is a lesson. A lesson basically consists of the radical, kanji, vocabulary that you are learning to show up, its breakdown (which is what the item is all about), meaning, and reading. These are able to be viewed outside of the lessons as well, and during reviews. The lesson will generally provide you with a mnemonic to use, however you are free to use your own, you just cannot modify it into the system.

Perhaps a first confusion for many is, if you are given more than one reading. In this case, you only need to input one when reviewing, not both/all.

You do roughly 5 new items before it goes into a mini review, and then back again into the lessons. This is helpful to help re-solidify  and I enjoy it a lot. It is one of the reasons that I liked iknow as well, which incorporated a ‘learn, review, test’ SRS mentality.

Review

The second main thing you do on this site (and probably actually the most thing you should be doing) is reviewing. WK is an SRS, and therefore, you have to come back and review. Reviewing is pretty straight forward. The review screen will show you what you’re reviewing (and is color coated depending on the item being vocab, kanji, radical) and some options below it.

• item at top in colored box
• question
• input box
• option to view Hiragana

Once you enter in your answer, a few things happen. The top right stats will change depending on your correctness, as well as the box. If you get it right, your stats stay closer to 100% rightness, if not, it detracts from that and you get a little red box where the input was. Options to relearn about the item is now allowed to be accessed. Most items (vocabulary) have sounds which you can hear when ever, and keyboard shortcuts are highly usable, making it really nice.

If you need to look up information on the item, at first it will only show you what you missed, so that it does not give away other testable aspects of the word, however, you can click to see more information to allow you to see more if you’ve just completely forgot a bout the item in question.

A few people claim that the strictness of the spelling is very off putting, but the system does allow for a handful of mistyped words, however similar meanings aren’t usually accepted. There are ways to ask for this stuff on the forum, but you have to be reasonable to an extent about what you can allow in these types of input tested programs.

When items are right, of course, your box goes green! Yay! You can still view information though, just in case you need a refresher, and you’ll notice that when items are reviewed in completion correctly, they can be upgraded, and if missed in one aspect, possibly downgraded (like you get meaning right but reading wrong).

Example run through!

So when you’re a beginner, the very first thing you’ll see is a radical. Here is a listing of some of the radicals you’ll see right out, 大，十、口、日　Its pretty straight forward. Once you unlock a certain amount of them, then you’ll be able to see a kanji. Here is where we’ll pick up our example.

Kanji! [Pink Background]

上＝じょう＝above, equipped with the radicals that make up this Kanji, writing it is easy, and the mnemonic brought with it :

Meaning: “There’s a toe above ground. Look at it.”

Reading: “The toe sticking up above the ground is just a little thing… You go up to poke it and then you realize that the toe actually belongs to Joseph (じょう) Stalin. Joe doesn’t like people messing with his toes, so you slowly back away.”

There is more information given in general during the lesson, but this is the most important things to bring from it in the long run.

Then later on you’ll run against its single kanji vocabulary form.

Vocabulary [Purple Background]

上＝うえ＝up 

Meaning: “When a vocab word is a single kanji and alone, it tends to steal the meaning from the kanji. Same goes for this one too. It means above or up.”

Reading: “When a vocab word is a single kanji and doesn’t have okurigana (hiragana attached to the kanji) it usually will use the kun’yomi. Since you learned the on’yomi reading of the kanji, we’ll need to use a mnemonic to learn the reading of this vocabulary word. —- Above you is a huge weight. You’re holding it up and struggling (it’s heavy!). You look up and try to crane your neck to see how much it weighs (うえ), but you can’t see the numbers on the side of it. How long can you hold it above your head like this?”

So as you can see, there will be a few of these you’ll run across and forget which one went to which one. It can be a little frustrating at first I know, but working through these little small things make it all pretty cool in the end, trust me.

More vocabulary:

As you combine other kanji into your learning, they will combine with other kanji and create even more vocabulary words. Here are some that the above kanji are turned into both within the first level to many later:

上る、上げる、上がる、上手、以上、上司、差し上げる。。。

and many more.

User Created Tools

A cool thing is that every user has a code to their account that contains some general information, like what’s due, lessons, and so on. People have created handy little extensions and what not to use, and If you get into WK I recommend you check them out. They’re mostly about helping remind you to do your work!

Closing Thoughts

Of those that tried it out for me, only a few complained of frustration of some of the exact input spelling for meanings and readings. All in all, we all agree that WK picks up a huge piece that Heisig doesn’t do very well. Perhaps to me, the absoluteness is what bothers me most, and has always been the case with any language to language. Where there are with no doubt words that equal words, that is not always the case, and without sentence examples and usages, the vocabulary words feel a little detached. So it would be my recommendation to combine the sentence mining method with WK in full force from the beginning! Seeing what I have, I also feel that if you were to complete WK, you should go straight to J-J. There is enough background to switch over easily to monolingual, especially if you sentence mined your way through it.

How to get it

As it stands, WK is in the beta phase, so please email sign up! The great thing about beta is that you get started sooner while still helping mold the product. On another good note, you get a discount when going beyond level 2. Yes WK is a paid product, and you can pay by several methods in several time groups. Those who have Textfugu also receive a discount (not stacked). So get in now to get the discounts! Also, it is not known when WK will be released fully and tit is not known how many full levels, though I have heard whispering of at least 50 levels.

I hope that this was helpful, if you have any further questions, or are participating already and would like to expand, comment below!

 

What I Did On My Winter Vacation (Delenir)

Hello friends! It’s good to be back after the winter holidays! As I mentioned, I took a break from blogging to try some hardcore Japanese-ing! I wanted to make December all about action rather than theory or preparation. The best way to explain is of course with photos!

iOS

Switching entirely to iOS for my mobile platform has been very beneficial for my immersion environment. The biggest reason is that the interface (and many apps) can be set to Japanese. This is something I haven’t seen yet on any Android phone in Canada. Even the few tablets I’ve seen that can be in Japanese rarely extends this feature to the apps. I’ve found a plethora of games that can be played in Japanese, and in the case of certain ones like SquareEnix’s titles, sometimes that’s even its native language. This has been a great change for my immersion environment and ensures even more Japanese at all times!

iKnow you’ll like it!

iKnow.jp is one of the greatest things I’ve ever come across, thanks to our faithful reader Daniru. I’m sure it’s nothing new to some readers, as it’s related to the previous smart.fm website. I’ve been told by veterans of the service that it’s come a long way, and it really shows. It’s a paid service that provides a decent trial beforehand. To me, it’s worth every penny twice over. It’s available on the web, Android, and iOS and automatically syncs across devices. There’s so much I like about it, that I think it’s time to break out the bullet points:

Stats!!!

• I was immediately sold when the first thing it did was give me a placement test. The lack of this was the biggest downfall on similar services that I’ve tried. It put me into the Core 3000 which the 3rd level of the 6000 most common Japanese words. This means not having to relearn hundreds if not thousands of words you already know.
• On that note, if you do come across a word you already know, or maybe just don’t find all that useful, you can mark it off. You can actually do this en masse before starting a new section to make it that much more effective.
• As an aside, I actually like it far better on iOS rather than on the PC, to the point where I use it exclusively on my mobile devices.

iKnow on iPad iExample

• Every single word has at least one example sentence with a full audio reading by native speakers.
• You’re tested multiple ways on the same word, including meaning in both directions (J>E & E>J), kanji reading, listening, and spelling.
• What kinds of testing you get is very customizable. You can turn off certain kinds of testing if you don’t find it useful, and when it comes to typing you can either do it via full keyboard, or pick each character from a multiple choice interface (which is great on a smaller phone screen.)

コロコロ

Manga collections like CoroCoro are something I like to describe as bulk manga. These are relatively inexpensive manga collections (compared to たんこばん) that are printed on lower quality paper (still better than newspaper though) and are very thick (they can exceed 700 pages at times.) They’re for a younger audience, so there’s always ふりがな. The content can be anything from Pokémon to card game manga, and there are quite a few ads that I actually find equally entertaining, since they tend to be about stuff I like, such as video games or figures. I got a few of these types of manga from J-List including a 4-panel collection which is great for browsing. Like I say it can be a cheaper way to get some manga into your collection than buying whole series, so please enjoy!

２０１３年！

Last but not least for this post, I want to wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year! May 2013 be the year your dreams come true!

 

(Japanese) Rosetta Stone Studio 1

こんにちは、べりーさん！これは何色ですか？

あの。。。。。。。。。これはあかです。。。。？！

That’s how my studio started off! You may be asking, WHAT THE CRAP IS STUDIO?! Read on my little minions!

Well, first, let me give you some background information! Mikoto-chan and I both have subscriptions to Rosetta Stone’s Totale system (mostly for experimental reasons). This is the mobile and online version of their language learning platform.

First you may say, Wow, Way to go panda, being a tool! Why would you spend money when the INTERWEBS IS SO FREE AND HAS SO MUCH ON IT!?

Well, crazy readers, that may very well be true. But, as a language learner blog author, I like to push the boundaries. I like to see whats out there! I like to spend my monies, learn the ups and downs, and report back to you so you can spend your monies! I mean, learn better! I did an introduction post to Rosetta Stone here.I plan on going back and going more in depth with the certain aspects of the program. Thanks to my lovely persuasive writing skills, Mikoto-chan decided to buy the program as well, and thus began the wonderful journey of “who’s doing better when!”

No seriously, nothing says I love you like cut throat competition!

As mikoto wrapped up her level 1, we decided to schedule a Studio lesson/session at the same time. This way, we can be supportive to each other and make each other feel less… stupid! Luckily this turned out well as it was just her and myself and of course the wonderful Mari-san (our coach).

To be honest, I was so scared. More than scared! I was crazy chicken scared. However, this morning (As it was a 5:30 am appointment) I WAS READY TO DO eeeeet! It’s ok to be scared. Don’t let that stop you.

15 minutes before the lesson/session opens, you can click the “Attend button” This allows the program to load and to work out any kinks. They have live help (and by live, I mean less than a 15 second wait for help) who can help you. It’s very general information such as, log in and out, clear cache, change browsers, but nonetheless, it was QUICK! I Can see this being helpful to the non-computer savvy people as they can quickly explain how to do such things. You may ask, panda, how do you know of this lovely service! Turns out, RS studio HATES chrome and Mikoto uses chrome. It’s a known issue and they will straight up tell you just to change the browser.

So, the session/lesson starts and The Ultimate Supreme Mari-san says hello, pronounces your name in Japanese (かわいいね) and gets to business! As mikoto wasn’t yet in the studio, she aｓｋｅｄ me all of the colors that I should know. Of course, and this goes without saying, NO ENGLISH! I did explain in English  that mikoto was logging in and had difficulties as I had no idea how to say that in Japanese. No idea. I said sorry probably 8 times around saying it though. And she responded in Japanese of course.

Anyways, I regret not screen capping the crap out of this, but I was afraid of infringing on the instructor’s rights as she was on webcam. (I know my logic doesn’t make much sense, but I couldn’t very well ask in Japanese if she didn’t mind).

Anywho, anyways again, the layout is such,

The webcam with Mari-san and our names are on the left. On the right is the interactive graphics side. Mari uses a VERY over-sized mouse picture, shown below, to point at things. Sometimes she types in the box so you can see how to spell it.
As I was the first one listed, I was the guinea pig and was able to discover what she wanted to know first. This is a scary but fun position. She is so energetic and helpful, so don’t feel embarrassed. She whispers hints, types hints, and cheers you on. As soon as I started talking, I felt more confident and comfortable with her. It felt like I knew her for a very long time.

Sorry, I have to take a moment to laugh at my sketch of the studio session. It does not give the real thing justice.

So, the studio doesn’t follow the core lessons exactly, but it does cover information that you should have some grasp on at this moment. It combines information in such a way that it pulls from everything and pretty much combines it into one sentence. However, this studio focused on questions like:

これは何ですか？What is this?

これは何色ですか？What color is this?

これは何人のですか？(not sure if i wrote that right!) How many are there?

And of course, the students would respond in like. One time she asked what was it and I didn’t have a clue how to say it in Japanese, so I said it was black and she giggled and responded yes, but what is it? There was only one time I was completely lost, but she gave us a quick little grammar lesson and it fixed that!

Mikoto and I both agree that we enjoyed studio. This is because the answers are truly open ended. You can mess up, correct yourself, and still be ‘right’. We all have brain farts and we all stumble. She tends to not be hyper critical of you because you are a JAPANESE BABY. However, what we don’t like is she types in romaji. That’s probably because the program pretty much supports mostly romaji in the games and such. It’s unfortunate, but mikoto and I are planning on asking her to type in kana the next session we have.

If can’t tell by the tone of my writing, I am in a very good mood. This is because, as a beginner, I feel like I rocked it. Maybe it’s because I got all of my worrying out the night before, but mikoto-chan even commented that I sounded very confident. I would say, despite my pauses, I just ran with it. I messed up. I’M SURE I DID! I kept saying ですこ instead of ですか I totally discarded 彼は sometimes. Sometimes i just said あの, tsktsktsk (the sound). I tried very hard to replace all of my ums! and I say um a lot!.

That also being said, mikoto rocked it as well. She definitely picked up on stuff faster and her mistakes were milder and normally just a usage thing.

My advice? Do it. Of course, I  mean if you have the program and am scared of doing the studio. It’s a wonderful experience to talk to a native speaker if you don’t have the chance to in every day life. Especially someone as kind and cool as Mari-san. It’s also an added bonus that she’s female and I can listen to the way she words and says things. Just as there are ‘manly’ things in America, there are ‘manly’ phrases in Japan.

But you can make Japanese friends and get this experience anyways, but this is a great way to speak with a native in a learning capacity about things you’re actively studying.

Overall experience, from adogidag to 13,049 (adogidag being the lowest) I would say I’m around a kgoudgu. I would be at 13049 if it was only in kana/kanji. Also, just throwing it out, Mari-san likes cats. I agreed because I couldn’t say dogs are better. but next time she says Cats are cute, I’m throwing that out there. Dogs. Are. Better!

ありがとうううううううううううううううううう(get it, like a howl?)

 

Using Evernote for your Japanese studies

Evernote is, as the name suggests, a note creation and management system. It’s extremely multi-platform–everything from desktop apps for Windows, Mac, to a web-based version and even an app for all major mobile devices. You can write text, take photos, or even record audio that syncs seamlessly across all devices you may use, including your own secure web account. Of course, you’re here for Japanese learning tips, so let’s get right to it! There are a few ways that I use this application to support my studies, such as:

Sentence collection – This is actually one of the original reasons I started using Evernote. I copy and paste sentences from various sources such as Read The Kanji or Yahoo! Dictionary to review later and run through Learning With Texts. This type of use is where the web version *really* comes in handy, because I can simply have Everynote on the next browser tab and easily go back and forth.

My Map To Japanese – Your map is a living document, always changing and being updated. Having access to these notes on any device means that I can keep myself on track, anytime.

Blog Notes – It should come as no surprise that I frequently use Evernote to jot down ideas for future posts, or notes for the next one coming up. In fact I created the draft copy of this post right in Evernote.

Ideas for actions – You may have seen my previous post where I mentioned I had a checklist of items to add more Japanese to my environment. Well you never know when an idea will strike you, so being able to quickly and easily write down a thought makes sure no ideas get missed.

Other personal uses – Of course all of these uses can apply to other things in your personal life. Sometimes when I’m studying, if something non-Japanese related comes up, I write it down in Evernote, mentally setting it aside so that I can keep focusing on my studies for the time being. Timeboxing, baby!

This is the most convenient note application I’ve ever used, if for no other reason than the sheer speed that you can access your information, and the worry-free syncing. No logging in every time and clicking upon clicking. Just put your cursor in the box and off you go, able to edit your notes with ease. Overall, it’s just a great way to organize your thoughts and information, and I think you’ll find it to be a valuable addition to your Japanese learning lifestyle.

Media Recommendation – Roger Swan’s YouTube Channel

Roger Swan is sadly no longer with us, but he has left us all the gift of sharing his adventures in Japan. He presents us a very real, down to earth and fun view of the sort of interesting things one can do in the land we all dream of. I know these videos have been a great inspiration to me, so I hope you can enjoy them as well.

 

Delenir’s review of JapaneseClass.JP

JapaneseClass.jp is a website for learning Japanese. It focuses on vocabulary, individual kanji readings, and kanji meanings. It also has a strong social element, allowing you to have friends lists and challenge fellow Japanese learners. Appealing to the gamers among us, the site uses experience points to turn learning new words into an RPG-like quest.

The learning process is based on multiple choice answers to questions. You can practice a certain amount of random questions to earn your attendance for the day, and/or take various levels of tests of specific questions. One feature I really liked was the Reading tab. It will automatically pull small amounts of text from current websites, arranged by category, and can analyze them to create a custom vocabulary test. The idea is that afterwards, you could read that text and understand it. Normally you have to attain a certain level to be able to use this feature, but a donation can unlock it early. Another great way to get some reading in, is how after being tested on each term, it will show you example sentences with translations and readings for your convenience.

There are a few drawbacks to the site however. One is that is does not teach grammar at all. This can be confusing to new learners who aren’t familiar with things like various verb forms. Also, if you’re not new to Japanese, it can be quite tedious to work your way up the levels by going through hundreds or even thousands of words that you already know. Let’s look at a few pros and cons…

Pros

• Very active and friendly community
• Everything is web-based, so it’s very easy to get into
• Mixes vocabulary and kanji study
• Provides example sentences
• Reading function can analyze text quite well
• Fun level-up system

Cons

• Does not teach grammar
• Example sentences are only shown *after* your answer is selected
• People with previous experience need to trudge through a lot of basic vocabulary

The site is a nice quick and easy way to practice Japanese. That being said, the ability to take some sort of placement test would be a huge bonus, so that more experienced learners can start at a higher level (but maybe still start at 0 for experience to make it fair.) There are a lot of small details that I do like about the site, and it was really great to be able to talk with other learners, so please give it a try to practice your Japanese!

Tool Recommendation – Online Stopwatch

For those of you that practice timeboxing, you probably know that there isn’t always a good timer to use nearby. Fear not! This website features a large format (MY EYEBALLS), straightforward countdown timer with an alarm sound you will definitely notice! It’s especially useful when you’re studying within a browser, since the tab’s title is automatically updated with the remaining time. Personally I have it right on my bookmarks bar, with other daily use tools and websites. Use it, and your time, wisely!

 

Rosette Stone Totale: PC WebEx meeting and more

Webex Meeting Overview:

• Several speakers, some English natives, and some Japanese natives. Each has their own topic. Video chat between the RS Staff and us. Learns about the culture briefly and the background story of each speaker. It’s a little hard to hear them because they use the built in mic.
• Teaches us about components of the program that maybe we didn’t know or haven’t done.
• Simbio- Japanese learners play with English learners and connect. We use the common language to interact with each other!
• Studio Coach coaches us to do the studio, don’t be nervous, it’s okay to be nervous even if we are! She is very warm and friendly. I probably will join her and report back! She says she develops  a friendship with each learner and each Studio only has 2-3 learners at a time.
• Speaks about the Success center: success.rosettastone.com (a browser support), talks about facebook support.
• They say 30 minutes a day, 3-5 times a day is a recommended time frame, but they say it’s personal and whoever should do that.
• QA at the end, but there’s 200+ people so if you want your question asked directly, best to phone in.
• 30 free days were given to those who were present.

 

Extensive Reading + Intensive Reading, The Ultimate Combo!

When it comes to learning Japanese through reading text, you may have heard about two opposing ideas that I’ve talked about a bit before. (My LWT Guide). At the risk of repeating myself, here they are:

• Extensive Reading is reading a lot of text in your target language, at a level that is in your comfort zone, preferably with visual aids. The idea here is the pure volume of your active exposure to the language.
• Intensive Reading is reading a smaller amount of text, stopping to look up each word that is unknown. Here the idea isn’t volume, but understanding.

These are often seen as opposite methods. Extensive reading says you can learn everything through massive exposure with nothing more being needed, and intensive reading says it’s more important to completely understand one smaller body of text than just some of a large amount. As you might imagine, I’m going to tell you that it’s not one or the other, but both together that are super effective. And as you might also imagine what the solution is… Indeed, Learning With Texts. It can bridge that gap between these two methods, expanding the territory of your Japanese learning. You may have noticed I like to keep it simple, using only the most effective tools in a variety of ways, rather than spread my efforts too thin with too many different programs and methods.

Now most users of LWT may say that it’s primarily an intensive reading tool, designed to look up unknown words as you go. Yes it is, at first. You read text you’ve entered, look up unknown words, and have LWT store your findings for later reference. This is effective intensive reading at its finest. Where its power for extensive reading comes in is when you hit the print button. It’s a little misleading because it’s useful for so much more than making paper copies of your texts.

Without getting into the specific sites I use for materials, suffice to say the most important thing is to be sure it’s all relevant to your interests. For extensive reading, things with visuals such as manga and games are perfect. If you’re just looking at text you don’t understand with no context it isn’t very enjoyable. But for intensive reading, where you’re able to reference anything, websites with news about stuff you like, Wikipedia topics and kids sites with colourful layouts can be a great way to progress in Japanese.

For extensive reading, it’s just as much as possible however possible with no real order on things. With intensive reading, I do have an order that I’ve found to be effective. It’s like this!

1. Starting fresh on the weekend (whenever that happens to be for you!) I enter text into LWT, usually not too much so that I can reference all unknown words in a single sitting. When I gather more text later, I’ll just add it in the existing entry.
2. Throughout the week, I enter more text and also review as I go on phone and PC. At this point, I don’t print anything out, since reading it right off the server means it’s up to date.
3. After the week is over, I export all new terms to Anki (which would have a score of 1 at this point on LWT).
4. I then give all these exported terms a score of 2 to move them up the ladder, since they’re no longer new terms at this point.
5. I now make a few printouts of the text. One includes translations and kanji readings, to be left lying around the house for casual review. The other includes only readings, to practice reading without the use of English. I sometimes post these up within sight while doing other things, so I can review “yesterday’s news” at times where I might not otherwise have exposure to Japanese text.

What sort of reading materials do you enjoy the most in Japanese? Let me know in the comments below!

Media Recommendation: Hungry! (Drama)

A drama series about a guy who leaves behind his rock-star dreams to take on the culinary world. Fairly easy to follow even if you don’t know any Japanese at all yet. This series made me realize how much I love the Food genre for J-Dramas, and how it doesn’t really exist specifically in English. Another interesting part of Japanese pop culture!

 

LWT: Daniel’s Guide for Japanese Useage

Getting Started

Learning With Texts is a tool that has moved me out of my rut and on to Tadoku-style language learning. It’s like creating your own textbook, with all the materials being of your own choosing. I use some different settings than Mikotoneko, so you may prefer one method or the other! The best way to explain it though, is to show it to you… so here goes!

First you’ll need to get on to a LWT server. I highly recommend this one one hosted by Fluent In 3 Months. Once you’re logged in, there are a few settings you can change in LWT that will make your life easier and your studies more effective. Assuming this is your first time seeing LWT, these instructions might not make sense but trust me, this stuff works. First click the “My Languages” button on the main screen.

Then you’ll get to your settings:

Among a few things, you can set your dictionaries here. Personally I use the default one that the Fluent in 3 Months server is set up with, jisho.org, and for my second one I use trusty Yahoo辞書. (I’ll explain my particular usage for each one in a moment.) I leave the Google Translate field blank, cause if you’re a language learner, then machine translation is the enemy So here are the exact URLs to use for those dictionaries:

http://jisho.org/words?eng=&dict=edict&jap=###

http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch?p=###&stype=0&dtype=3

The ###s are there so LWT can replace it with the word you’re looking for. Sadly not all online dictionaries can work this way, but luckily these two great ones do!

Next you’ll see two settings that are very important for Japanese: “Make each character a word,” and “Remove spaces.” LWT can be made to work with Japanese either way, but setting them both to Yes has taken away a lot of headaches and frustration for me. In my research I also discovered this is how the developer suggests using it with Japanese too. I’ll show you how this works in the next step.

Using It!

So you get to your material by clicking on the “My Texts” part of the main screen (and then “New text” if you haven’t added anything yet). When you open a text you’ll see 4 frames:

• The upper left corner is basically just a menu. If you’ve got your settings like mine, you’ll want to click off “Show All.”
• The bottom left is your text.
• The upper right is where you’ll be able to create your cards/notes for new terms.
• The lower right is where the dictionary results will be shown.

OK here comes the fun part. Click on the first character of a word you don’t know. A box will pop up that looks like this:

What you want to do here is now tell LWT where the word ends. Then, a new, complete term will be created and marked in your text. It will also automatically look up this new term in with your first dictionary. If you didn’t click off the “Show All” button earlier, then it won’t make that distinction your text. What I do is paste the reading AND meaning into the translation field. For the Romanization field, I either enter nothing at all, or only enter a partial reading that will later on be displayed on the question portion of my Anki export. Learning the entire reading for compound kanji can be daunting, so for example if I had a new word like 一生懸命, I might have いっしょうけんめい in the answer portion, and have いっしょう**** in the question portion as a hint.

Exporting

Once all the unknown words have been looked up, I create a PDF “printout” for my Kindle with the in-line definitions and a furigana version using the site hiragana.jp. (You could also do this for cellphone, tablet, paper version, etc.) Yet another use for this site is creating supplementary reading material based on my source text. This is where Dict2 being set to Yahoo comes into play. I’ll go through the text again, clicking on certain new words and open them in a new tab with Dict2. I then collect all the example sentences from each tab, paste it into hiragana.jp (you have to log into it for that) and create a furigana collection of all the examples to help me fully understand new words.

And what resource would be complete without Anki fitting into it. LWT has full support for exporting all these new terms to Anki, along with the sentence it appeared in, translation, romanization etc. To start this process, click on “My Terms (Words and Expressions)” on the home screen.

This is the interface you’re going to see. First, to show only terms in a learning status, click the “Status” dropdown box and select, Learning [1..4]. This will filter out your terms list to only show words you’re learning (as opposed to learned.) Then click on the dropdown box next to “All ## Terms” and select “Export ALL Terms (Anki).” Now this part is currently a known issue in some browsers. Although I use Google Chrome, the only browser I’ve seen this work on without a hitch is Opera of all things. I’ve heard of it working in IE but it won’t for me. In either case, it will generate a delimited text file that can be imported into Anki. Using that text file to its fullest extent is a whole other ball of wax, covered very nicely here. After exporting the text file, I mark all the current terms as Learned, since Anki and my printouts will be taking care of the process from this point. That way they won’t be mixed up with your next export.

Where do you get texts? The simple answer is of course from anywhere that interests you. I actually have a mini bookmarks folder of sites that specifically use for LWT material. Here are some examples!

• Kanji version of Learn Japanese By News
• Japanese subtitle files (You can paste it into a spreadsheet program to get rid of all the extra timing data)
• キッズ@nifty
• Official sites from some of my favorite games
• The Japanese Wikipedia
• Even just random text from web interfaces on sites I’ve changed to Japanese!

That’s it for now! It seems like a really long and complicated process, and I admit at first it is. But trust me, after you use it once, it will be so second nature that you’ll be able to groggily get out of bed and be learning new words first thing in the morning like I do. Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ll find LWT as useful as I have!

 

LWT: Tricks of the Trade

Part 3 of the ongoing LWT posts. If you haven’t heard about LWT check these posts out: Part 1 (Intro) ; Part 2 (Guide for Japanese-Mikoto).

If you’re like me, and you’ve done a good bit of Japanese, or you know a great many vocabulary words, or phrases, you’ll be at a disadvantage in a way, simply because you’ll have a lot of grunt work to do, so that you’re up to date on your particular knowledge. Here are some tips on how to address it in a fast as possible kind of way.

• create a new text, and within it add in any vocabulary you know really well by do any combination of the following:

1. taking your anki lists, surusu lists, or other exportable files into a spreadsheet and merely copy and paste
2. look up websites that will have common phrases (like beginner sites)/word frequency sites (if you learned this way)/jlpt vocabulary lists/or vocabulary listings of text books you use. Websites make it easier because you can just copy and paste
3. or manually type in words/phrases you know

• Once you’re done stuffing this text (save and open), you can do either

1. go word/phrase by word/phrase adding in definitions/pronunciations, marking how well you know it, and make a time of it
2. or just click the “I know all” at the top. This will not put definitions or pronunciations on the words, however, if you know them already then it might not bother you for them to not have it, but clicking all words known means that they will not show up as new/unknown words in the future, and will not bother you. You can always go back and add to it later if you forgot, or need a reminder.

• From there, you can start with a pretty solid base of words that you wont have to worry about, and doing it all at once can help prevent your flow from being stopped.

I did this, in fact the example pictures is taken from a beginner phrases text I made. I went scouring on websites out there for the basic phrases that I’ve known for a long time, and it helped me get rid of a ton of stuff. Its annoying, but the ‘i know all’ is pretty straight forward way to get it out of the way.

If you’re new you will not have this problem all that much. Adding a separate text for phrases might be helpful, but otherwise, the purpose of LWT is learning with texts, not arbitrary lists, so leave the vocabulary lists at home.

So if you’re new, or now you have your base vocabulary/phrases done, and ready to start, now you have to find the texts to learn with! Here are some great resources to use!

• Learn Japanese By News: This site is awesome! Not only do you get small, easy to digest articles, but you can view the kana and kanji forms of it, and you get native audio. This site is screaming, USE ME!
• Wikipedia in Japanese: This site my be bashed for its academic uses by naysayers, but for learning Japanese, this is the mother-lode. You can learn about anything you want while learning Japanese! What is better than that?
• GOO Lyrics: Do you love to learn with music? This is the site for you! Tons of Japanese lyrics to solve all your lyrical needs (and maybe discover more songs and artists)

Beyond these few that I recommended don’t forget:

• News sites in general: Sometimes these can be a little difficult to learn with, kanji heavy, but a lot of sites out there has audio to go with it, so its worth looking into.
• Children’s websites: These sites tend to have less kanji, but are simple to understand.
• Books: Kinda…self explanatory : Sites like those Liana lists, or Aozora Bunko are useful.
• Blogs: Perhaps another giant resource of texts, from subjects about animals to food, from sports to technology, blogs are a new medium. The draw back to blogs however is there can be typing/grammar errors.
• Educational sites: (Japanese for Japanese People) There are tons of epic sites out there that are focused on teaching fellow Japanese people about things. Whether its about how their public systems work, or their taxes, there are lots of sites out there.
• Official guides for fellow Japanese people: There are tons of traveling web sites out there meant for Japanese people and not just foreigners.

Popular News sites include:

• Asahi
• NHK
• Yahoo!ニュース
• Googleニュース
• MSN
• Infoseek　ニュース
• Goo ニュース
• FNN
• TBSニュース
• Yomiuri　Online　ニュース

Popular Children’s Websites:

• NHKきっず
• きっずgoo
• キッズ@nifty
• Yahoo!きっず
• キッズネット
• キッズステーション
• Kid’s Web Japan

Popular Blog Websites:

• Authority‘s listing of Top 100 Influential Blogs
• Google’s Blog Search: This is epically useful.　Just type in a term that you are interested in, and bam, lots of blogs!
• FC2　Blog Search:　Same principle of Google’s

Helpful Search Terms: If you’re a beginner, your text that you will be using is sort of limited. I would limit my texts to maybe things like Chokochoko’s library, or perhaps a site like Erin’s Challenge (you can copy and paste scripts and add audio) alongside children’s websites. However if you’re getting into it, or feeling adventurous for websites, then the following search terms could come in real handy:

• News:　ニュース
• Children/Child/Kid:　キッズ,　きっず,　子供
• Blog:　ブログ
• Lyrics:　歌詞
• Tales/stories/lore:　ストーリー,　昔話 (folklore), 物語 (legends or fairy-tales), 恋物語 (love story), 奇譚 – (mystery stories), 推理小説 (detective story), and so on

Finally you have your sources, which well, I went out of the way to link a bunch! hahaha! If you have some useful broad search terms or sites that you think is particularly cool for LWT, then put them down below. You’re now ready to put it into a spacer program. I recommend:

Dani’s Space Inserter!

This is an awesome tool to space out those Japanese words, though not always completely correct and accurate, its pretty darn close and can save you lots of time! It helps with LWT very much! I personally use the MeCab setting myself.

Supposedly there are others out there, but I’ve never heard of them, or seen them, or apparently used them. So if you have any to recommend, plug em down below.

More Random Tips:

• do as much Japanese – Japanese as you can. The more you can limit English the better! I personally try and show the kana readings for the kanji first, followed by any Japanese explanations, and then only followed by English explanations if necessary. If you’re just starting out, this is not really practical, as English is still your primarily used language, but when you can start switching into Japanese only, I recommend doing it. Use JP only dictionaries in your options, and so forth.
• Keep one large story by itself, or group small texts according to themes: Blog entries about Cats for instance, News about Technology, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Haiku…
• utilize the exporting feature with sentences for anki, or use surusu’s browser mcd maker alongside lwt
• choose stories that are within your realm of learning. Sorta how you go about choosing things for Tadoku, you choose for LWT. You do not want to pour into a text where almost 100% of the words are unknown (unless of course you absolutely have to because you’re a beginner). Aim for about 75-80% of words known. This helps you guess the other words in context, and allows you to not feel like you’re being bogged down.
• read through text several times before doing anything
• First try to guess what something means based on surrounding info, then look it up.
• For phrases/words/sentences that are giving you a hard time to say, plop that into rhinospeak or a similar site
• don’t forget the wonders of Speech to Text programs for transposing books you own into written format in half the time!

Got any other words of wisdom? Let us know below. I’m still starting out in my discovery of the cool features of LWT and how to manipulate it best for Japanese, and the most effective way of putting into my daily schedule, so all experiences are welcome!

 

LWT: A Guide to Setting up for Japanese Learning

Here we’ll cover the basics to getting started in Japanese with LWT! We’ll cover topics like where to get signed up, setting changes, deletion of old content, adding new content, using a insert spacer website, customize your dictionaries, and so much more.

The Beginning

Go here! Your friendly Fluent in 3 Month website helps you get started in your journey to LWT. As you can see below, the area’s highlighted in red show you you’re on the right page.

Fluent in 3 Months

Scroll on down, (or read if you haven’t first for some more information), until you see a few links, and you’re going to click on either one. If you aren’t signed up in his system, it doesn’t take much time at all.

Then you just log in!

From there you will see this opening and you have officially begun your journey into LWT.

Settings!

The screen below is your home screen and its also where you’re going to select the Japanese in the drop down menu like this.

Once Japanese is selected now, lets change some settings that will help you out. Select, My Languages:

You’ll get this screen:

Click on the little paper/pencil icon next to Japanese to open the settings for that language.

Mikoto's settings for multilingual. Use the dictionaries of your choice.

I finds it to be easier to make each character not a word. I use a space inserted that helps this out tremendously, but I know my kana, and therefore making each character a word can sometimes be a little redundant and annoying. I would play around with both and see which of those two settings you like.The guide that will be posted tomorrow will show you just how different someone can be with Daniel’s guide!

Hit Change!

Quick! Get to the Texttor!

From the main menu, you want to click on My Texts.

 

 If there are any texts there, I recommend you delete them. Above you see a blue box, that is where you delete a file from the system. If you change settings, they do not effect older texts, not to mention the default texts there to me are not all that helpful. So I deleted it for both those reasons.

If you were not deleting a text and wanted to go into the text to work you’d click on the book icon (the orange box). But in this case, you want to add some text, so you would click the New Text link (green box).

From there you get a simple screen in which to add things. At this point you need to actually stop and find text that you want to put into the program. We’ll discuss great places to find text and what not in our Tips and Tricks post on Friday, but for now we’re going to take an easy example to get us started. I used the basic skit from lesson 1 of Erin’s challenge: I can speak Japanese website. Copy and paste the text into a spacer program like Dani’s Space Inserter! I personally use the MeCab option at the bottom. Copy and paste this into the program in the Text section.

The Title (red box) should be informative, letting you know what in the text, so you know what you’re looking at without having to open the full text just to see. The Text box (blue), is where you paste any of the Japanese you’re wanting to learn. And lastly you can add tags and what not, but when you’re done, hit the Save and Open button (green box) to begin.

Once it opens, you’ll notice a lot of red and blue if you’re starting out. Things in Red are already in the LWT dictionary system, and blue things are not in the system yet, that have not been learned by you yet. Clicking on a blue or red box will bring up an editing box and dictionary link on the right.

Once you start marking words you know in a grading system (brown box) the text will show as that color on the words in the text box. Notice how my screen has yellows, oranges and white boxes with blueish greenish lines underneath? That means that those words were marked in my system already. The screen cap above also shows the edit box on the right for the first two kanji which is considered a word in this case.

(Blue Box) If you browse the dictionary and find what you’re looking for, you can simply add it into the translation box. I put the kana in brackets followed by the definition in English for multilingual purposes. Then hit Save after selecting a status of how well you think you know it. BTW, Wkn means Well Known. If I’m not happy with the first dictionaries choices, I then hit the link for other dictionaries (red box), until you find what you are happy with. Rarely have I had to go elsewhere or ask someone for some answers.

You will do this for every term you come across. Sometimes you have to play around with the words to get what you want, and sometimes there are words in phrases, and phrases on a whole you may want an alternate translation for, like idioms. We’ll go over tips and tricks on Friday, but for now, just knowing that you’re not limited to only grouping words is important.

In the example above you see the number 3. It is also color coded, and when you click on the number it shows that you have a phrase involving many “words”. In this case the phrase covers the wholeness of the good morning. I have [2] gozaimasu separated because it appears as endings in multiple places, and ohayou separated because it sometimes appears on its own in text.

When you are done, you can merely go to the main menu or you can click on the little blue phrase box with the ? in it to test your materials, or you can even make some anki cards with them! I’ll have a whole other post on anki exporting and manipulation in April. But for now, simply getting accustomed to getting the material in and going is enough to start.

Tomorrow I’ll try to get Daniel’s guide up and running to show his specific settings and what not, but for now, here is a link to Benny’s forum for some general LWT Q’s and A’s.