TiddleMonkey Wrote:I have the 4 character compound book from that company. It doesn't have an index or list of what characters are what level, but each entry does say the level beside it.

The book has a good number more compounds than the game's dictionary and there is more information for a fair number of the compounds (related words, origins and such).

This is a typical page from the book.

As for the game, I really like how stroke counts (among other things) are multiple choice now. I must have spent hours writing '3' only for it to read it as '1'. I do miss the ability to write the character on screen while thinking though.

Kanken Wrote:Thanks for the answers Potbelly, I'm going to buy the game. I spent countless hours on Kanken DS 3. I will only take Kanken Level 2 since pre-1 and 1 levels can only be taken in Japan (and pre-1 could be doable but 1 is far too hard for me).

RandomQuotes Wrote:The text is either green or red...

PotbellyPig Wrote:Looks like I found my limit without studying with the practice exams in the 3ds game. After passing 4 kyuu many times in a row, I proceeded to take a 3 kyuu test. It is harder but I would probably pass if it weren't for the 4 kanji compounds. At the 3 kyuu level it asks to write two of the characters in each compound and I just don't know enough of them. I took the test two times and I'm failing by 7 or 8 points each time. Do the step books for each level contain a list of the 4 kanji compounds? I'm assuming the books have them but I just want to make sure. In the meantime I guess I'll just practice the kakitori section which I am also a bit weak in.

erlog Wrote:

RandomQuotes Wrote:The text is either green or red...

It wasn't meant as a criticism. I was just explaining why I was confused since I didn't remember the text of the titles was red.

erlog Wrote:

RandomQuotes Wrote:The text is either green or red...

I was stuck on that section for 2級, and I ended up having to do that. I was alright with just the step books up until that point, though. I believe there's also a giant Anki deck of 4 character idioms available that you can also sort by KanKen level. I'm not sure I trust their sorting, though, and it also takes a bit of munging in Excel to format them the same as the KanKen questions.

erlog Wrote:I had 400 四字熟語 from 5級 to 2級 in my Anki deck when I passed 2級. I took 2級 like 4 or 5 times or something, though. So it's likely I just got a lucky draw on which ones appeared the last time I took it when I passed.

Here's the book I used:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4816352031/

PotbellyPig Wrote:

erlog Wrote:I had 400 四字熟語 from 5級 to 2級 in my Anki deck when I passed 2級. I took 2級 like 4 or 5 times or something, though. So it's likely I just got a lucky draw on which ones appeared the last time I took it when I passed.

Here's the book I used:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4816352031/

Thanks for the link.

Did you study the "regular" (non 4 kanji) vocabulary in the step books or this book before you took the tests? Or did you only concentrate on just the 4 kanji compounds that appear the books? Also do you remember about how many words you knew before you passed the pre-2 kyuu and 2 kyuu exams? As I stated previously, I am in the 23k word range and was wondering how far that can take me without having to resort to word lists (besides the yojijukugo ones which I know I have to go through).

erlog Wrote:I typed all the Step book questions into Anki from 5級 up to 2級. It's unclear to me how much vocab I know because of how long I've been doing stuff in Japanese. The last time I took one of those vocab size estimate tests(between 準2級 and 2級) it put me around 30-35k or something. I'm not sure how much I trust that, but I do know that I can read most native material quite comfortably without a dictionary at a decent pace.

I still come across a handful of words I don't know every week, and they're mostly everyday words that are so basic they never come up in vocab builders or are katakana words so they're never on KanKen. Yesterday's word was ランドセル.

23k seems only a few thousand short of where you would want to be. With where you are in your KanKen studies, I don't think you have much to worry about. You'll probably increase your vocab size by a few thousand as you go along.

When you get into the 15k+, 20k+ vocab size it stops really being useful to count because you probably have most of the low-hanging fruit covered. It starts to become more important to think about proficiency within specific domains like business terms, school terms, biology terms, etc. Through experience you'll be able to spot the domains where your vocabulary is lacking, and then concentrate on those as you need them for your lifestyle.

Kanken Wrote:Apparently new Kanken games (well, based on the same one we discussed above but with a game for each level if I understand correctly) will be released on Wednesday: http://www.gamefaqs.com/search/index.html?game=kouekizaidan+houjin


I don't know what will be different but if anybody knows, I would like to know hehe.

Kanken Wrote:Oh well thank you, since I ordered the full version a few days ago there's no need to buy those.

TheVinster => I have yet to receive my 3DS copy but it's from the series of the Kanken DS games so that shouldn't be very different. I have Kanken DS 3 Deluxe and I find it excellent.

Someone who got both versions could help you more.

PotbellyPig Wrote:It's been a while since I played around with the kanken game for the 3DS. But I was wondering, do you guys consider the kanken step books a good source of vocabulary? I'm currently at about 28.5k words that I have gone through in anki. Last light novel I read I added about 105 new words out of a 260 page book. So the amount of new words, while a good amount, are slowing down. I was thinking of dumping the vocabulary from the pre-2 and 2 kyuu step books into my anki deck. Is this a good idea? Are the words useful enough to be worth learning? Or are they too esoteric? Or if I wanted to add more words from a general source would I do better with a frequency list? I have added words from a large frequency list in the past but was thinking of doing something different this time. Thanks in advance for your opinion.

Taishi Wrote:

PotbellyPig Wrote:It's been a while since I played around with the kanken game for the 3DS. But I was wondering, do you guys consider the kanken step books a good source of vocabulary? I'm currently at about 28.5k words that I have gone through in anki. Last light novel I read I added about 105 new words out of a 260 page book. So the amount of new words, while a good amount, are slowing down. I was thinking of dumping the vocabulary from the pre-2 and 2 kyuu step books into my anki deck. Is this a good idea? Are the words useful enough to be worth learning? Or are they too esoteric? Or if I wanted to add more words from a general source would I do better with a frequency list? I have added words from a large frequency list in the past but was thinking of doing something different this time. Thanks in advance for your opinion.

I think at your level, lists of any kinds won't do you much good if you're worried about how useful the words are, since at this point "useful" is on an individual basis. Since you probably already know most of the useful vocab in pre-2 and 2 you should expect maybe 20% of any new words you learn to be useful for you. If this sounds discouraging to you, you should probably just keep doing what you're doing.

If, however, you're still interested, I personally think it's a great way to reinforce one's overall kanji ability. To give an example: even if 桟道 is not a particularly useful nor useful words for most people (Japanese people I have asked have not known this word) it has personally helped me better grasp the meaning of 桟, which appears in other more common words such as 桟橋. In other words, the "useless" vocab reinforces the "useful" vocab, so I guess useless is a relative term.

I won't tell you which is the better idea, but you can hopefully make your own opinion based on this post.