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i was a user back when the website was free and was called Smart.fm (when boss Koichi had it as one of his free recommendations).
after they changed it to a paid service, i ditched it and went to Anki. Anki is great, but its obviously quite the dull program and is strictly flash cards (with an SRS system) without much variety in studying.so a couple weeks ago i thought id buy a subscription of iKnow… and im VERY happy i did
the great presentation, calendar, and sentence/listening exercises make the vocab learning process fun again. i lost that with Anki…
if you have the money, id highly recommend it. theres many other features that help you learn and give you motivation to do so.does anyone else share or disagree with my opinion on these programs? id be happy to answer any questions about iKnow.jp as well~
Funnily enough I signed up to iKnow this morning and it’s pretty great. Love having everything synced across my phone, iPad and any web browser. Vocab is my weak point right now too, so doing all the core stuff is going to be nice.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 8 months ago by
Luke.
Just download the core 2k deck from anki shared decks. No reason to spend money when you can get it all from free lol.
Aside from that, I do enjoy the core 2k, and would prefer to have it in anki any time, since it is a much better SRS :bYou can get the raw vocabulary but the overall experience is much better using their website.
you get the sentences, the audio, the pictures and everything, besides the layout everything is the same when it comes to the sentences ^^
I believe he’s talking about the way the iKnow website works and how the app tests you, rather than the content.
I feel much the same way and find the iKnow application (which has improved quite a lot since the days when it was free) works better for me than Anki when it comes to new vocab. I just find the way it tests you on a word in multiple different ways to be helpful. That’s just me though, I use them both.
I have to agree. I love Anki, but losing iKnow (once it stopped being free) was a huge hit to my studies. I did get the core decks for Anki, but I could never get them to work 100% properly, and it just didn’t feel as “fun” as iKnow’s did. So I just stopped using it and it was a further nail in the coffin for my studies, which are still dead.
I honestly don’t really have the money to commit to a monthly subscription, but I’d really like to try signing up to iKnow to see if it doesn’t help me get back into studying once and for all.
Yeah, when I reviewed iKnow I thought it was a really solid service. I can understand why people were upset when it went from free to paid, but I definitely think it’s worth the money.
agreed Elenkis, i think youre completely right.
and the problem with it is that its a paid service. its totally fine with me, but its quite the commitment for the younger learners who dont have jobs. maybe they have a trial run so you can test it out?… dunno :PYounger learners can probably convince their parents to chip in. My parents were definitely willing to help me pay for much more useless things when I was younger.
I think a lot of the appeal is its simplified and requires basically no setup or work to get going. That can be appealing to a lot of people if they find learning a new program (even if anki is pretty easy) a bit too much
Wow, signed in with my old smart.fm account and it’s telling me the last time I studied there (basic な adjectives) was January last year… Feels like a lifetime, old friend :’)
Don’t know if it’s worth the money though. It sounds like it’s probably a decent service, but any more than FREE is too much money for me ;) Will have a look at it properly with my 5 free trial sessions later though, maybe see if it’s good enough to shell out a little for. My anki deck doesn’t have any images, so it could be a bit more interesting here.
Ah, that jingle as the window opens is so nostalgic :P And the nice blue colour. Reminds of the very start of my Japanese journey (around September ’10) – learned hiragana and katakana on smart.fm, which it taught me pretty effectively. That was back when I first started TextFugu, a time when Anki was just a secondary option alongside the main man that was smart.fm :P
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This reply was modified 12 years, 8 months ago by
MisterM2402 [Michael].
The subscription fee is honestly not that bad now that I look at it. At least, it’s something I could potentially afford. But still, my monetary situation is just so chaotic that monthly subscriptions of any sort just really scare me.
Meh subscription is pretty negligible when you look at the benefit of having such a streamlined resource..
I used iKnow way back when I first started studying Hiragana.. It was.. so so for that.. Then I tried to get started on the core 1000.. but with no knowledge of grammar.. Fail.
However, having a quick free session with my old account.. It’s now definitely worth it.
Textfugu is brilliant.. however relying on Anki for my vocab is a pain.. iKnow does a really good job of this (a lot like rosetta stone – I find RS really good for vocab as it allows me to associate images and sounds with vocab rather than just abstract hiragana and Kanji I haven’t come across).I’m guessing Koichi used to work there.. Should really set up referral scheme for textfugu and use it for vocab.. Anki +for Kanji -for Vocab
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This reply was modified 12 years, 8 months ago by
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