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iKnow never stops reviewing mastered courses. Even words I mastered over a year ago will still come back up for review eventually. Though you can remove words that are too easy if you wish.
Plus you can play their Brain Speed game to get some quick practice on any courses, without waiting for the words to come up for review.
@kanjiman
I used the old version, and I don’t know how substantial the changes have been for the new one. I know they’ve updated the vocab to be more modern.
The sample pages I’ve seen look the same as the old one.
Yes, Genki is my textbook of choice for beginners, but mostly for the reading comprehension exercises. The grammar can all be learned elsewhere (Tae Kim’s, JSPFEC etc), though Genki does a good job of creating a structured system with lots of exercises.
I found the structured reading practice worth the price, and if you wanted an offline textbook it’s the one I’d recommend. Whether or not a textbook would be right for you is another matter though, and one that only you will know the answer to. Some people do fine without them, others like them.
@Missing and kanjiman:
‘Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don’t Tell You’ by Jay Rubin is another gem actually. It’s an excellent book, but probably not for complete beginners. It’s worth reading just for the ~20 pages on は vs が alone, but the book is full of good stuff.
@kanjiman:
If you were to buy any other books I would suggest that the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series should be your priority. Start with Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar and then get the Intermediate and Advanced ones when possible. They are by far the best resource I’ve bought for Japanese and I maintain that every learner should try to own them.
I also own Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication, but didn’t really get anything out of it since I had already learned it all through textbooks and Tae Kim’s site. I think it would have been a nice resource if I’d bought it earlier in my learning, but the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series has much more content, more example sentences and better explanations/notes too (though obviously being a dictionary makes it somewhat different to use).
I agree with Kyle and Joel. Literally “more broad meaning”.
However trying to read most of that sentence makes my head hurt.
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.
“Honestly, from the perspective of one who gets called CG, Takahashi Minami’s idol manner is not good.”
I can’t believe I actually looked it up, but CG is her nickname, either being Computer Graphics or Cyborg Girl depending on where you look. I didn’t care enough to find out which is correct.
I think you’ve misunderstood me, because I’m not saying that anyone shouldn’t use native materials.
I’m just saying that I believe it’s possible for too little understanding of a text to be counterproductive to reading practice. Regardless of whether it’s native material or not.
I’m also not saying that reading advanced material and looking up a ton of stuff doesn’t have a place.
I think there’s a point where if you’re having to look up too many words in a particular text, then the returns are no longer worth the time and effort. Especially if it’s reading comprehension and speed you’re working on, rather than trying to pick up new vocab.
The best way I’ve found to improve reading comprehension is reading something that you can just about understand at a decent pace (though you may not understand 100% of it), but not so easy that you don’t even have to think about and process it. You want as much understandable exposure in a natural context to the grammar and vocab you’ve learned as you can get, in order to cement it in your brain. So that its use in real text becomes second nature to you. Which then makes harder texts much easier to comprehend and so on.
If you have to stop and look things up too frequently, it can just get in the way of that process and you’re no longer actually reading with any cohesion.
Trying to read something too difficult for your level can sometimes provide a good learning experience, but that is not necessarily the best way to actually practice reading.
I think it’s a balancing act.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 8 months ago by
Elenkis.
He’s not going to get any kind of decent reading comprehension practice from manga and Mainichi, or native jpop blogs, while he hasn’t yet learned how to conjugate casual verbs or -て form. Or if his vocab is so limited that he has to stop and look up too many words every sentence.
If you do want to go the textbook route, Genki 1&2 have the best reading exercises I’ve seen for the beginner level. Otherwise you could finish learning all the essential grammar first from a free resource like Tae Kim’s Guide and then get started on trying some easy texts. If you struggle with that then you can always grab a textbook later.
I’m not sure you’ll find anything of that level without buying a textbook that has proper reading and conversation exercises.
I think it’s an area where TextFugu is completely lacking as a textbook. It’s a shame Koichi got rid of the ongoing story that he was doing in some of the old chapters.
WWWJDIC is Edict. Both are by Jim Breen.
Edict is his J-E dictionary, WWWJDIC is his online interface for searching it.
Just to clarify something I said earlier regarding the Tanaka Corpus, the original sentences weren’t actually translated by students. They were compiled and typed in by students, but taken from various multilingual sources like news articles that had been translated from English to Japanese or textbooks. Once it became part of Tatoeba, it became open to anyone to add sentences to it.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 8 months ago by
Just to add, I submitted a correction for ぱちり and it has been approved and corrected in the main Edict database. Most Edict based dictionary apps wont be using the most up to date database though, so will still have the wrong definition for now.
But at least it’s fixed.
It’s not just your dictionary, all Edict based dictionaries have that same definition.
The example sentences those free dictionaries use are all from the Tanaka Corpus, now maintained by Tatoeba. Many of them are not natural Japanese because they are English sentences translated into Japanese, done by students without any kind of proofreading. The original Tanaka website even has a big disclaimer with multiple warnings about how they shouldn’t be trusted too much:
http://www.manythings.org/corpus/warning.html
This is different to the Kenkyusha which has native Japanese sentences translated into English, written and translated by a team of professionals.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 8 months ago by
