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I would probably say get past ‘Being Casual’ in season 5 – This introduces Dictionary form words.. All of the vocab presented in iKnow is in Dictionary form which is then transformed for the example sentences. Without undertanding how and why the transformation happens it might be a bit off putting as you would be trying to remember 3+ words when you only need to remember one.
It’s not presented in an advanced setting, it is mainly for raw vocab training, however some gramatical understanding is a huge help.
I attempted Jcore 1000 back in January just before I started Textfugu – Had not luck and got very frustrated with it – I went back last week and have managed to pile through 100 words in a week (took about 5/6 hours study in total as I have been looking up the Kanji on kanjidamage to make sure they stick and I’m not just trying to rote them).
Paypal takes about £7 from my account for my subscription – just go to xe.com for the 700 yen conversion to your local currency.
Let me know how you get on, i’d love to hear more peoples feedback as it is working really well for me so far!
Thanks for the quick responses. I do like the site but maybe I should wait just a bit.
I’m trying to get through it as fast as I can. Since signing up around 12 days ago I’m on step 8 of Core 1000, if I can finish 3000 by the end of May I’ll be pretty happy. It’s a bit easier for me maybe because I already know around 2000 kanji. (on their own, not compounds)
One thing I wish I know let you do was combine the steps after you’d learned them well enough. I think getting a set of 20 words max makes it to easy.
@Yggbert thats pretty impressive.. I spent about 6 hours on the step one, mainly because I stopped to look up the Kanji mnemonics and study every sentence.
However, my rate of exposure and retention has shot up since I started the course. It’s pretty easy for me to tackle 20 words a day if I really work at it – 6000words / 20pd = 300 days – Under a year to get 6000 words down, not bad.. Obviously, I might not make 20 new words a day.. Meh, combine that with a Japanese class and some reading + podcasts.. It can all move at a pretty decent rate once you start enveloping it into your life.I once asked a dutch friend of mine how he spoke such fantastic English, on to par with myself, a native.. He said that in Holland, 90% of the TV is in English, he read English books growing up etc.. He didn’t have any real English interaction until he moved here about a year ago (he’s 23 or something) – It was just all in his head and with a little practice has been able to apply it all.. pronunciation an all.. Ok.. so dutch is pretty similar, and would only take 6 months to gain a good understanding and lexicon from the base of English, but you get my point.
@TangSooPap – Don’t get disheartened.. It usually take about 2-3 months to get up to season 5 (if you only working an hour a fay) – sooner if you put your mind to it – I’d set a goal.. Once you reach season 5, subscribe to iknow and get those vocab juices going! I wouldn’t just ignore iknow until this time, keep at it.. just don’t worry if you’re getting frustrated as it will fall into place ^_^
@isocracy Thx. I do work everyday not just TextFugu but I also use Thomas Method, it’s a great way to start. In fact I’m learning about the te forms now so it’s a bit ahead of where I am here. I like textFugu for the community plus the written stuff.
I also work through “Erin’s Challenge” for listening mostly which is a real weak point for me. Sheesh they talk fast tho. O_o Just picking out words I know is the challenge part for me!
I have Flashcardlet and ANKI on my iPod and I carry it with me always to refresh myself on vocabulary.
I will get into iKnow at some point, I did the sample lessons and it was pretty good!How’s the Thomas Method worked out for you? I saw it ages ago on TV and wanted to try it, I just can’t be bothered to start something new that isn’t that effective.
Erin’s Challenge is pretty good.. although it takes a lot of time, good for listening, but I didn’t pick much vocabulary from it. I find the Japanese depths of YouTube to be much better for listening (and usually pretty humorous).
Anki is brilliant for Kanji, I just never found it useful for vocab, I find it needs to be presented in lots of sentences and repeated before it really goes into my head. I’m not satisfied until I can truly remember the word and not just recall it.
I havn’t touched on te form yet – i’m hoping to get there by this weekend as my Japanese Teacher wants to cover it, I need a head start ha!
Same for me about ANKI for Vocab, that’s why I use Flashcardlet to help pound it into my head initially. Anki intervals get too long too quickly. I opened up a set I hadn’t used in months and not only did it want to show me every card, the intervals now inexplicably ranged from 1 to 4 years. At my age I probably shouldn’t be scheduling anything for 4 years hence -_-;
Thomas Method was where I started, plus it was inexpensive at the time. They are in the process of redoing it and charging more. http://www.amazon.com/Michel-Thomas-Japanese-Beginners-Program/dp/0071614362/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335384491&sr=1-1 It was my first exposure and worked out great for teaching me the beginning grammar structure. I ripped it to my old MP3 player and it has a permanent place in my car. I listen/review a lesson on the way to the gym and back.
Cons are vocab is limited and teaches no reading skills.
I had trouble with various textbooks I used except a couple I bought for learning the kana. They just bored me to death and I had no feedback.
I’m into the Advanced Thomas set now. http://www.amazon.com/Michel-Thomas-Japanese-Advanced-Program/dp/0071637621/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335384491&sr=1-5
Using Audacity I’m extracting the native speaker parts (she speaks slowly and distinctly) and making flash cards out of them so I can practice listening skills.I get the idea that most of us are all over the map with what we know and what we use to study with the common thread is that we are all here.
Oh and the big strength of the Thomas Method is all vocab is used in sentences. You soon start with -masu endings for the verbs you learn then work up to other tenses (-masen, -tai desu etc) adding nouns and a few adjectives as you go.
Wow, I’m surprised, and impressed that iKnow is getting positive reviews. I signed up for it when it first went paid, I felt like the free service was worth paying for, and I was glad to give them my money for the service. I was horribly disappointed. I really felt ripped off, and I got nothing from the service. It was a total waste of money. I would have gladly paid for their original service, but their new service didn’t seem worth my time, even if it were free. To each his own, but if you used smart.fm, then don’t expect the same quality and feature set you once had. You’re paying more for less.
I think the core iKnow app and system is much better than the old smart.fm, and that’s what I care about most. I find that it has become a more effective tool for learning vocab, and for me, that is worth paying for.
If it’s content created by other users that interests you, then I can see why you would be disappointed. But most of the user created courses in smart.fm were really quite poor and got little use (and I created and shared some courses myself).
Hm, it’s possible they’ve re-added most or all of the missing features since I last saw it. When it first went live many of the key features that I loved about Smart.Fm were missing. I’m glad to hear they’ve gotten things back on track.
They’ve added features over time, but even when it first transitioned I still found the core learning application was a good improvement over the old smart.fm one. I guess the features that were missing at the time were not ones that I cared much about.
Fair enough. I’ll just shake my cane at the kids in the yard then! ;)
I was wondering can you tell me if they’ve ever added an option to give feedback on how comfortable you are with the word? I really like how with Anki I can say “That was hard.” or “too easy”, and it will account for that. With smart.fm, and iKnow, it just assumed I was learning as fast as everyone else, and sometimes it would assume I knew a word before I actually knew it. Also, is there a way to change the status of a word or course, if it thinks you know it, but you’ve been away for awhile, and you to reset the word or course? Finally, as I recall in the original it had practice sentences with the vocabulary that would get read to you, and in the new one that was removed. Do you know if the added that back?
It’s always had the sentences, there’s not been any change there. It shows you the sentence every time it tests you on the word, unless you choose to skip it.
It doesn’t have anything like the Hard/Easy/Very Easy options in Anki, though you can suspend words that are too hard or easy. It’s quite different to Anki because it tests you on a word in multiple different ways each session (rather than only showing it once) and if I recall correctly the SRS algorithm is supposed to automatically adjust the scheduling of the word based on your performance. They’ve never gone into exact specifics of how the algorithm works though, and they’ve adjusted it a bunch of times.
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