What is Reddit's opinion of
iKnow!?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
24 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
These books: All about Particles & A Basic Dictionary of Japanese Grammar. Worth every penny. Read them cover to cover.
These websites: https://www2.gwu.edu/~eall/vjg/vjghomepage/vjghome.htm
Watch these videos
Go through the grammar database and make a sentence for each one. Aim for 1/day?
So much better for beginners than every other srs program. There are lots of free alternatives but I've yet to find one that matches the quality and experience.
Remember to study every day.
But also remember to rest and stop worrying every now and then.
One thing not listed on the everything page is http://iknow.jp/home
I use this a lot and its amazing. It's a real slog through the first few groups of 100 kanjis but worth it. I'm on the 6th group and I'm familiar with enough words now that its making my reading noticeably easier, for sure.
You can also find all the courses here: http://iknow.jp/content so you can adjust your level up and down if that doesn't work. I personally was placed in the Core 4000 series, but I found it was really helpful to start at Core 1000 and just mark items I knew really well as 'mastered' as I went along.
I can definitely relate to that :( I had similar experiences but here in Canada. The funniest mishap I had was I tried to say 赤 but instead it came out as 垢. Ugh!
Yep, they are all public. I'm working on the fourth list of 100 items now and I usually complete one every 2 months. They're all over the place though so use at your own risk ;) http://iknow.jp/users/hellokimmi
Fortunately you are in the age of the internet. Whatever you do, don't go and shell out hundreds of dollars on textbooks. If you are going to pay money, pay for some online services that really provide you with learning platforms that can help you with your listening as well as reading.
Have a look online at places like http://iknow.jp (there is a button at top to change the display to English) to get started. Quite user friendly and easy to do for ten or twenty minutes a day. Later on you might want to try out something like www.lingq.com, which is a very nice service.
At www.ankisrs.net you can get some free flashcard software and start plugging in things you find here and there to memorize. Maybe starting with Hiragana is a good idea. Youtube should have a bunch of good channels to watch as well if you have a hunt for them.
Do Pimsleur on your commute.
If you're in a situation where you can study Japanese at work (ALT?) and you're coworkers are cool with it, then you can probably get away with using a pair of headphones for studying. Just make a point of casually chatting with coworkers, "Isn't technology great? I can practice Japanese with native audio. It is such a help." That way everyone knows you aren't just listening to music.
Learn hiragana and katakana. Use Lentil's Japanese courses with are free, JalupNEXT's kana courses which are free, or iKnow's courses which you can get three months free with the coupon code "rlearnjapanese".
iKnow could be useful to you for learning vocabulary. I think they even have a romaji setting, but I really think you ought to learn the kana at least.
Knowing hiragana and katakana is good for you even if you aren't looking to master the language. It opens up so many additional resources.
I used NihongoMaster, as it taught the kana, simple vocab and then quizzed you on it all. The Introductory part where it teaches all this is free. I kept up with this to continue learning grammar and kanji.
For books I used Japanese Hiragana & Katakana for Beginners for mnemonics and writing practice.
To perfect my knowledge, I used http://iknow.jp/home. I'll be continuing with this to learn more kanji/vocab.
I read the Heisig book last month, just out of curiosity, by this time I knew my kana very well.
انا كذلك لم يعجبني (انكي) ولكني وجدت موقع افضل منه في تحفيظ الكلمات
انصحك اللا تركز في حفظ ال(الكانجي) لوحده، ولكن احفظ الكلمات مع الكانجي
يمكنك ان تجد رمز (كود) لتفعيل 3 شهور ببلاش اذا بحثت عنه في هذا السب ريديت
اخبرني اذا لم تفهم شيء مما قلت ^_^
One list I found some time ago is the http://iknow.jp/ 's "Japanese Core x000" series of courses (here's more direct link: http://iknow.jp/content/japanese ). Their word lists are browsable for free, so you can download them.
I thought of the same thing a year ago (I'm sure plenty of people have), but I couldn't find anything.
I started by throwing together this Memrise course on signing up for Mixi, and I later started making this iKnow.jp course for browsing reddit in Japanese.
They're both extremely crappy, yet still have a small handful of users.
I'm sure if you (or someone) created some quality content for this niche, plenty of people would use it.
Why choose one or the other? They are both good for different things.
If you want to give iKnow a proper try, create an account and go to this page and enter the coupon tryiknow which will give you two months free.
Try:
http://www.gwu.edu/~eall/vjg/vjghomepage/vjghome.htm
http://iknow.jp/ (Not exactly grammar, but a really nice study tool. Used to be free, but it looks like they now require subscriptions)
look up smart.fm. http://iknow.jp/?utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=smartfm_redirect&utm_source=http://www.google.com.au/url&utm_term=smart.fm
Ive been using it for years. It is THE best way to learn kanji and vocab. Trust me!
I use http://iknow.jp, they have a very comprehensive 6000 word list with example sentences with in built SRS. It worked really well for me but it is a LOT of words to memorize. If it fits your learning style you should check it out
That interesting - you are at nearly the same spot I am in levels, a bit ahead really. My profile.
It seems weird to me that you have a lot of lessons open as 'studying'. I guess the site never closes them for you? I tend to have a single one under studying at any one time, and when it moves to completed, I start a new one. The completed ones remain as part of my reviewing though.
Even after the algorithm change, I still get things progressing to Strong and Master though its a lot slower. I don't do close to 100mins a day, thats a lot! I do whatever the site wants me to do, until it says that I am done for today. Its typically about 20mins a day. At some point the lesson will lock and it will tell you that you are done and you should start a new one. You have to unlock it (with the skip button?) if you want to keep going. Is that what you are doing to get to 100 mins?
I have no real answers but I'm as curious as you are as to why nothing is getting mastered.
edit: I'll add, in my graph you can see a long stretch of no new items started. That's because i was just grinding on level 8 to get it to move to completed, then I started level 9. It sounds like you don't do it that way??
Like others said, RTK won't teach you to read kanji but it teaches you to recognize and write them. You need a second tool that you do together with RTK. I use http://iknow.jp and I was finding it really hard to differentiate between things like 話、読、語、詰、詩 just from pure memorizing. RTK helps with that.
I really like iKnow for vocabulary! They have at least one sentence for each word which can be helpful as well. (three month trial: rlearnjapanese )
Quizlet can be nice for quick little quizzes and practise. You can set up your own "class" and test/quiz yourself over the material. People also have created their own "classes" that you can use.
Renshuu I haven't really used this one, but it has quizzes over a variety of material as well. It isn't as colorful or "pretty" as Memrise for sure, but quite a few people like it.
Ahh I see! I started with Coori too but then quickly switched to a combination of iKnow and Anki. Now I do all my vocabulary in iKnow and make cloze deletion and other random cards in Anki.
Did you know that iKnow has Genki decks as well? They don't really advertise the fact that they have a giant library of people's custom decks which is unfortunate, so lots of people tend to miss it: http://iknow.jp/user_courses?cue_language_code=&keyword=genki&response_language_code=en&utf8=%E2%9C%93
/r/learnjapanese !
I have been lurking there for a while and someone linked a free try to iKnow! which I've been poking around with - I "mastered" the hiragana section, started the katakana and about halfway through the first core vocabulary - and I was able to follow along with the hiragana to some extent reading this (at least enough to read やあん...やあん...やあん?
I'd love this... but not sure which would be better JTE or ETJ (Japanese To English, English To Japanese).
I use http://iknow.jp while it's not translation, it does help with words. Formerly smart.fm, it is a paid site, but it's cheap and the exercises really help me a lot.
Also think about looking into iKnow. Regardless of how much time you have the software they use to teach Japanese is very relaxed and you can do as much or as little as you want.
Bear in mind that this doesn't teach grammar and syntax as much so it would be better as an aid to your studies. It requires a monthly fee, but in my opinion it is quite worth it.
Another good site is Mesmrise. Which uses similar principles to iKnow and Anki etc. and is also quite relaxed to use.
Any other questions feel free to ask.
First, you should definitely get katakana under your belt asap. For learning vocabulary, I highly recommend iKnow (http://iknow.jp/home). You can use this through a web browser, or iphone app. It's not free, there is a subscription. iKnow is a great combination of listening and reading. You learn words in the context of a sentence which makes recall much easier. If you do use this site, I recommend always listening to the full sentence, and reading along while it's being spoken. I even write them down. If you don't know how to write a kanji character, you can use this site to look up the stroke order: http://www.yamasa.cc/members/ocjs/kanjidic.nsf/SortedByKanji2THEnglish?OpenView You can copy a kanji out of a web browser (Not sure about on iphone though. I've never tried.) Best of luck with your studies! You'll have to work hard at it, but getting a hold of this language is extremely rewarding.
Hmmm, this is like smart.fm. But this includes some pics to memerise better. But, if you want a better program, take a look at this: http://iknow.jp/?utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=smartfm_redirect&utm_source=direct&utm_term=
Go to iknow.jp and give their Japanese Core 1000 a try (being sure to read and recognize the sentences, not just the individual vocabulary.) If you like that, you can find a deck Core 2000 with much of the same common vocabulary for Anki.