Hello Everyone

My name is Eric, and I am from Cooori (you have probably seen the ad before in the upper left).
Well, I wanted to let you all know that we have been actually working nearly around the clock these last few months to bring to you Cooori 2.0. We will be opening up beta here for 2.0, free of charge of course, pretty soon. Before I give out the details and links to sign up pages, I thought that I would introduce myself and answer any questions that you may have about learning Japanese online, about our system, about other services, etc...

Feel free to contact me directly at: eric@cooori.com, or respond to this thread.

In the meantime, we have been working hard on various "how to~" style Japanese lessons, and some general study tip lessons.

Here are just a few of our recent posts:
Japanese study tip - daily routines
How to apologize in Japanese
How to use sumimasen

Cheers,
Eric

P.S. Stay tuned for some information on Cooori 2.0 Beta. And, follow us on Periscope! - Cooori. We live stream tours of Tokyo and Japanese lessons nearly every day. If you find us on Periscope, please let us know that you heard about it from the Koohii forums. Cheers.

Hi Eric,

And I am a paying user from your site since last year.
Do you plan to introduce the Korean language or other languages in this year?
"the company will press on with many other language pairs" ( http://www.cooori.com/weblog/enjp/2012/0...012-issue/ )

I quoted the replies for my questions. I replied to many answers from that e-mail I received, those are in italic. Maybe my knowledge about the decks is not accurate, but that's not so important.

I can not recommend Cooori to anyone though
* I experienced stability problems, the website was sometimes slow or didn't save my session. I didn't meet this problem recently
* Few sentences had the wrong audio or missing. When I wrote about it to the support, the reply was "will fix ASAP", but didn't do that for weeks (one or two months)
* I stopped e-mailing to support@cooori.com, since I didn't feel that anyone is reading my concerns about the website
* now that we have Nayr's deck, this site is no longer so important to me (...for my Japanese studies)

Quote:A: "Need to take a close look at that deck."
A: "I checked Nayr's deck. Would be interesting to understand what you like about that deck."

This year iknow.jp decided to ask Damien (from ankisrs.net) to take down the public decks related to the iknow website.
iknow had two courses: Core2000 and Core6000. This was free for people (until the takedown notice).
Some other users from the community took the sentences from Japanese Sensei app ( https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/japanese...92247?mt=8 ), and created the unofficial Core10k deck, mixed the sentences from Core6000 + Japanese Sensei.
The Core10k deck contains 10000 sentences, has audio for each sentence.
Nayr decided to share his deck with the community. Because iknow's Core decks are forbidden to distribute now, we can create a new deck
* Nayr's 5000 deck + Japanese Sensei sentences
Now talk about the quantity:
* the "new" Core10k deck with audio > cooori's 5000 words ; both of them have high quality audio from native speakers
As a sidenote, Nayr said he will release another deck with new example sentences. And it may happen before I will see the Cooori 2.0. That's why I said: cooori "is no longer so important for me".

* online service only (I use only the desktop website)

Quote:A: "We will launch both iOS and Android apps in middle of this year."

I meant: cooori is a service, not a product. If my subscription runs out, I won't have anything. It's not a problem for me. But some people like to own things. They like to download pdf, mp3 files and take them where ever they go. Without worrying about the lack of nearby wi-fi spots.

* can not export the wordlist (not the copyrighted sentences, only the wordlist), from already available and custom "My theme" deck

Quote:A: "interesting feature request. We will think about it. Would you like both the words and the definitions?"

For me the list of Japanese words would be enough. I don't need the example sentences and the definitions as I mentioned in "not the copyrighted stuff"

* popup dictionary's definition about the the grammar ("ます" and such simple word chunks) is missing, displays "coming soon" (since 2014)
+ online dictionaries already have this, and conjugation chart

Quote:A: "We are in talks with Japanese professors who are going to help us create a special grammar module in Cooori."

From the Learn tab the review has no extra settings
* ( I have the JLPT N2 on my shelf )
* I had many problems with current card format: with the FRONT side of the card and with the definition + qualifier combinations


eg. there are words, they have the same definition in English "night"

＊ i.　ゆうがた
＊ ii.　ばん
＊ iii.　ゆうべ
＊ iv.　 よる

definitions for these words are:
* i. evening
* ii. evening (formal)
* iii. last night; evening

Today is 16th April. Imagine you have learned all these words in the past 6 months. Now here is a quiz on cooori:
FRONT side of the card
* evening (formal)
I met this word three weeks ago (= current interval ~20 days). What the answer can be?
ゆうがた, ばん, err.... ゆうべ, no maybe よる . *roll eyes*

During the quiz the card has two sides
* FRONT: shows only the word definition "evening (some-notes-here)", without context/sentence.
* BACK: japanese word in sentence, and the English translation of the sentence
It doesn't help to improve the memory hooks (=sentence context) and recall later by them.

Now to answer your question
* a) the word on the flashcard's FRONT side is missing context ; default flashcard templates on cooori
FRONT side
"evening" english definition + word audio
BACK side
その夜はだいぶん寒かった。 + sentence audio
The night was so cold.
* b) the missing word is in its context on the flashcard's FRONT side ; that's what I'm asking for, yeah Cooori 2.0 will have this
FRONT side
evening + word audio
その__はだいぶん寒かった。
BACK side
その夜はだいぶん寒かった。 + sentence audio
The night was so cold.



I will talk about the Learn tab, not about the Quiz tab. There should be a way to disable certain quiz types during the review
* ( Note: FRONT side to BACK side )
* a. quiz type) Kanji to English definition
* b. quiz type) English definition to Japanese word + Japanese sentence
* c. quiz type) Japanese word to English definition


In the deck there are 1000+ cards any many of them have the same definition, plus an extra field (= the text between the curly brackets).

Quote:A: "No definition is the same in our database (at least it should not exist). Therefore we have the qualifier in the brackets to differ definitions. I agree that some of the definitions could be done better."

Exactly. The difference is only in the extra field (= qualifier). Definitions are ambiguous. But remembering what the heck was inside the brackets (as a qualifier) and associating qualifiers with japanese word is hard task. imho This has nothing to do with language learning. It's about memorizing useless facts (= qualifiers).
If "some of the (ambiguous) definitions" in two themes are up to 50 cards, that almost ruined half of my day, because I will always fail those cards. I know, it's only me. 50 (ambiguous) cards / 2000 cards (learned, mastered) = only 2% of the database. 50 (ambiguous) cards / 200 cards per day (in review) = 25% frequently failed cards of all cards due to review.

* I can not edit the definition, the definition and the usage in the sentence sometimes doesn't match

Quote:A: "for a reason we don't allow users to change the definition. Our LS should know better than learners."

Language Specialist? I meant definition for private use, not viewable for other users.
From the Supermemo manual: "You may be saving 70-90% of your time if you remove or reformulate the hardest 5% of your learning material! "
* eg. change the definition
Effective learning vs software design/limitations

* I can not split a huge deck into smaller chunks
+ my limit was around 700 cards, I can not learn more cards with the build-in SRS scheduling algorithm

Quote:A: "why would you like to do that?"
A: "why?"

Many people have their upper limit was around 500, 1000 cards and then around 3000-5000 cards.
eg. " I have about 500 entries in my SRS just to realize that I only can answer just a few ones of them and to forget almost all the pronouncation and things… This is really frustrating-,.-"
Using pen and paper I can memorize 1000 items, but not more. It becomes unmanagable. Cooori AI, SRS didn't solve that.
+ I can not prioritize new decks over old decks; I can only deactivate the old deck and forget about the reviews and the words altogether I learned in 6+ months

Quote:A: "interesting to get this feedback. The AI manages the prioritization but UI/UX could be better once it comes to prioritizing and activating/deactivating decks."

From the Anki manual
"Display Order...You can use this to control the order cards appear in, placing high priority cards in decks that appear higher in the list. "
* But I would like to prioritize the decks only, not the individual cards

After only two months of use I felt the limitations of cooori. In the past year I haven't seen any announcements about new features on the blog, as many, as you announced in the first year of cooori.com. Only tips and what countries your CEO has visited.

About the Quiz tab, inconsistency
* Stories' progress bar increases as I learn vocab from other decks
* meanwhile Beginners' and School Books' progress bar is still on 0%, even if I mastered 2000+ words from an other deck

Quote:That is indeed weird. If you learned words from these decks then these progress bars should have increased.

* I haven't used Quizzes, I only import the decks (themes) to my shelf, click the big Learn button and do my reviews every day
+ somewhy Quizzes and Review (=Learning/Session) are two seperate concepts on cooori, their progress bar is often independent, even if two progress bar are related to the same theme

Quote:A: "correct. The quizzes are used as tests in some universities."

About the review process
* many card will be asked twice in a session, before it's rescheduled (=its interval increases) ; I have a hour long session
* I forget all my cards with 20+ days interval because the lack of context on the FRONT side of the cards; I learn a language from context, not flashcards with english definitions

Quote:A: "I felt the same. This is why Cooori 2.0 will be much more context based. Actually the concept of Cooori will change from being memorizing words to learn through context using a stronger AI algorithm."

About the Stats tab
* Numbers in Unfamiliar words....Words in long term memory doesn't change over time, even if I don't review my words (because I disabled some decks)
* there is no way to predict tomorrow's, next week's number of due-to-review cards

Useful things I like
* I can click on any kanji, and beyond the basic information about the kanji, I can see what words - I have already mastered - contain that kanji
* decks for Minna no Nihongo, Hakase, Genki
* there are many sentences for the same word, and new audio content are uploaded

About me
* My retention rate is above 80% ; I can not tell you the exact number, because cooori's stat in the end of the lesson is somewhat different from other SRS software
* I'm not yet the master of Chinese/Japanese characters, but I am better at reading than listening. weird
* I learn from premade (JLPT) deck; I create custom deck for materials way above my level of Japanese

Quote:I like that. We designed Cooori to try to have users create their own decks customized to themselves. We will make this much easier with Cooori 2.x

Cooori was never intented to be an all-in-one language learning platform, but who knows about spaced repetition
* maybe already knows about free alternatives
* some advanced learner claims, they don't need audio, they can find cheaper alternatives
* they can use less restricted learning software with more options

Dear xfact2007

First and foremost, thank you very much for such a well-thought and very well-written response. Your feedback is very important to us. In fact, our CEO took it upon himself to address a lot of your issues. There were several long discussions on your points today and I can tell you with certainty, that we will be addressing every one your points with Cooori 2.0.

I will be sending you a private message through Koohii with a link to the Google Document in which our CEO has answered / commented on your questions. If you have trouble or questions regarding his comments, please let me know (in this post, or via a private message / email - eric@cooori.com).

In addition, I did want to mention that, the reason for such a lack of updates in the current Cooori product, which we refer to as Cooori 1.1, is because the last 1 1/2 years has been very much spent dedicated to creating Cooori 2.0. From my perspective (marketing), I feel that Cooori 2.0 is a complete re-birth of the original Cooori product and dream.

Things that you mention such as "context based learning," "smaller segregated decks," "more control," etc... are all very present and important in Cooori 2.0.

Included in my private message will be the link to the Google Document addressing your response.

Thank you once again for your feedback, it was both well described and, to us, very valuable data that we are taking to heart.

Cheers,

Eric
Cooori

Cooori Wrote:Hello Everyone

My name is Eric, and I am from Cooori (you have probably seen the ad before in the upper left).
Well, I wanted to let you all know that we have been actually working nearly around the clock these last few months to bring to you Cooori 2.0.

While that sure sounds nice, might it perhaps also be an idea to respond to some of the ideas (and sometimes corrections) people post on the Coori Ideas Page? It can be found here: http://cooori.uservoice.com/forums/125717-general . Because from the way it looks now, it's a little hard to escape the impression that none of you at Cooori are really bothering with what the paying customers you already have are saying... And it's not as if we post that often. Less than 10 posts this year, I estimate.

(And I'm one of those paying customers, BTW. One who also doesn't much appreciate not being replied to when he sends questions by mail to the support person whose email address he was given when he joined and who he should mail "in case he had any questions".)

xfact2007 Wrote:* I can not edit the definition, the definition and the usage in the sentence sometimes doesn't match

In my experience, the definition in the "floater" (or "hover over" or whatever it's called) that appears when you mouse over a word very often instead of "sometimes" doesn't match or even come close to the way it is used in the sentence. The only reply I got when I commented on that, is that most users will more or less figure out what is intended. But when, for instance, a verb that is translated as "to be separated from" is used as "to say goodbye to" someone who boards a train on a station, I can't help but feel that essential information is missing from the translation in the "floater/hover". And there are many, many, many more examples like that one, and worse ones, like where the word in question doesn't seem to have been translated at all in the English translations. One downright embarrassing example is where a verb is translated as "to lead [a person]" (連れる, I believe) and the first sentence it was then used in was about leading an *animal*. But any and all comments on such problems on the "Ideas Page" mentioned above simply go unanswered...