Herbo Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:Once I realized I can improve my vocabulary by concentrating on the vocabulary while using context sentences, it changed things. I saw what I was doing wrong with UBJG and KO2001. I saw the faults with AJATT's Khatzumoto's suggestions on how to approach the SRS and sentence mine.

What do you mean by this? You are far further along this path than me.

First, Happy New Year everybody.

Herbo, what I said applies to me, but if you find it applies to you adapt as you see fit. Khatzumoto first recommended the sentence method. This was put the sentence in Kanji and try to read. In addition you'd write it out. What Khatz suggested next was instead of going Kanji to reading then writing it out, go Kana to writing it out. He figured it got annoying writing out kanji when you can see it. Plus it made sense that writing the word correctly from kana meant you had a great grasp of the word. Early this year, he adapted it even further by suggesting going AUDIO (via Text to Speech) to writing it out. Lastly, he refined it to say shorten the sentence down to no more than 25 kana characters.

Each of these are great suggestions. They built on each other and answered problems Khatz was seeing in his studying. The Text to Speech I think had a big impact on this forum when he made it.

Yet, in all these variance, you'd write out the entire sentence. You'd mark the sentence wrong if you got any part of it wrong. It just stopped working for me. I realized that in a 15 word sentence, there's 15 things you can mark wrong if you went that route. I just choose recently to narrow that choice down to 1 word. It's a strict application of the +1 concept in a way. All it is though is I found an answer to a problem I noticed just as Khatz did with his.

cjswanson1355 Wrote:I've seen a lot of criticism for iKnow's translation, but just how "bad" is it? I wanted to go through the 10,000 words which will eventually be offered, as well as use the sentences uploaded to do most of my Japanese studies. This would seem to be ideal since I don't need to sentence mine or do grunt work; I can just sit down and study. Would my Japanese be awful if I studied exclusively from it, or would it just sound a bit off here and there?

I haven't heard a lot of criticism. Here's my take on the problems being said here though.

Note: All these are related to Cerego's Core Japanese Series. Please realize that other companies and individuals are putting together their own stuff that may be better (in fact, that's a big plus in iKnow's favor in my opinion).

1. Bad Translations - Well, they're translations, so I'm not too concerned with it. It's meant to give you the flavor of the Japanese. Granted, I'm only 1000 words in. On the other hand, there is a "report" option to tell iKnow problems with any word or sentence.

2. Slow Audio - Put this in perspective, it is real Japanese just pronounced more clearly. You're not going to develop your listening skills here. You're developing vocabulary (and seeing/hearing it in context) that you can then use to improve the impact of listening to Japanese. To answer CJ's question - yes, your Japanese would be awful if all you used was iKnow. I hope your watching TV shows and other things Japanese where the real learning begins.

3. iKnow versus Anki - Seeing that these items are common use (download everything and use for free, no problem), there is no versus. Here's my ultimate goal should a more detailed spreadsheet get put together: Use iKnow to get 100% completion on a group of 200 words (takes about a month at the most). Now I consider these words "learned". Since I don't like iKnow's long term SRS set-up, I'll stream these "learned" words via RSS or that spreadsheet into Anki so that now these "learned" items can stay "memorized". I think it's been said before not to use Anki (or any SRS) to learn material. iKnow has a nice approach to get these words in your head, and Anki is perfect to keep it there afterwards.

Really though, it's learning vocabulary words that you have to keep in mind. I think Hashiriya can back me up on this that just the basic 2000 words super charges all the Japanese stuff you watch and read. Yeah, it's nothing new. Anyone that finished KO2001 or seriously mined Japanese sources got similar benefits. It's that the format from iKnow clicked with me, and is so easy to use there's no need for me to take extra effort from other sources.

Plus, let's be honest, even the basic 2000 words is going to take time if you're new to this. I think very few will finish the intermediate (6000 words total) much less the advanced which is 10,000 words. You'll likely get to a point where you say "Why am I wasting time learning word by word when I'm picking it up great passively?" You change your plans up to fit how you've progressed.

Heck, right now, I'm writing down the word each time it comes up for review. Now, that averages about 1 minute per word per review on iKnow. This obviously slows me down, but I think it's worth it for now. Later, I may do what others are doing and just read it. I've changed up how I've played the game before, I'm sure I'll do it in the future.

Nukemarine: I have only used iKnow's review system briefly, but I was unimpressed. It uses micro intervals at the start which are a waste of time if future reviews are going to be delayed significantly, and it puts off further reviews until you've covered all the material in a lesson. Apart from the shiny lights and sounds, what's the appeal?

Recently, I showed iKnow to my girlfriend, who's a heavy Anki user, and studies a lot more than I do recently. I thought some feedback on Anki vs iKnow would be interesting. She enjoyed the flashing lights and sounds, but after a few days grew frustrated with the forced dictation and timed answers . She got halfway through a 200 word course in those few days, but says she's forgotten the bulk of the material already, which makes me question the efficacy of micro intervals when they're not reinforced. She asked me to help her import the material into Anki when she reaches the end of the 200 words in the course, but I suspect she'll keep using iKnow in the future for the initial learning (though not bother getting to 100%, as you are doing).

She says when she doesn't really feel like studying, she uses iKnow - which reflects what other people have said about iKnow being more fun than Anki. I wonder how much of that is due to the well made content rather than the actual review system, however.

Finally, her comments on the community aspects: when looking up individual words in the lists, she found things like:

A: この単語なかなか覚えられなかったけど、やっと覚えた！
B: そうそう！

A: この単語難しい！
B: そうだよね！

She pointed out the uselessness of such comments and how the time spent commenting on words is time lost on actually studying them.

That's not to say that all of the community aspects of iKnow are useless, and I haven't even explored them myself.

yeh Nukemarine, just studying through the first 2000 words has thrown my comprehension of Japanese onto another level... I listen to Livestation every night when I am going to sleep so I hear plenty of normal speed Japanese too. The more words you cover the more you are able to remember others.. A lot of the words share similar kanji/readings as you move along and if you remember that kanji from a previous word, it makes the new word easier to read... at the same time it kinda reviews that kanji of the previous word and further reinforces it in your brain (I hope that made sense) I feel that iKnow is just the beginning for me personally... Just like you said though, working through the 10,000 offered words is going to take time... sure there is chances to forget words as you are moving along but when you do see it and look it up again in the future for lets say something like Anki, then it will just be that further embedded in your memory...

Resolve, I agree with you. It's great as the initial learning, gets the word into your head. It has a nice stepped learning feature. The lack of flexibility with the SRS portion though just gets more and more frustrating as the number of words (and lists) build up.

Part of the problem is how I approach my reviews of the completed items. First I like to write out the word from memory based off of the audio. Course that mean I have to listen to sentence while SQUINTING so a can barely make out where in the sentence the word is being tested. With Anki, it's just a matter of putting the audio, word and sentence in kana for the question field (ah, such lovable versatility). Next, I like to see if I remember how to pronounce the Kanji word. Problem with iKnow is I just heard the pronunciation 3 minutes ago. With Anki, it'd be a seperate card spaced .25 or so. I'm a man who likes versatility. But I'm also lazy, so I like all of iKnows pre-made, outstanding content.

If I did my reviews solely how iKnow delivered them, I doubt I'd have much issue. Guys like Cracky are getting 240 reviews done in 60 minutes. So he's not writing anything down I don't think. Even then, he's saying he's seeing benefits.

Still, with the way that one can get the RSS or XML feeds, it seems that someone can hammer together an Anki plug-in that: asks for a list name, downloads all words from that list or user with certain percentage (say 100%). Another variant is all the data is stored on iKnow, but Anki (even Anki online) pulls from it per review. Put simply, all anki is does is store an iKnow word label and progress on that label. The label just tells anki what data from iKnow to show (photo, word, sentence, audio, etc.). Seeing that there's a phone interface, even that type of interface could be made. Granted, this is just taking advantage of the API, which is one of the things I like about iKnow as a concept. Anki wins as the SRS, iKnow has the content and bulk data storage, the API helps merge the two.

As for comments on individual words, yeah it's a waste in my opinion too. However, you have 200,000 or more users so some will have more free time and tastes than others. The comments on lists are more useful (but only just so). The best part of the community is the friends list where each can encourage others in some way. Hashiriya and I both are in awe of Cracky's progress. Though in truth, he's not much further ahead in the large scheme of things. Yet, that encouragement helps us both get our reviews in. Another thing I like is looking at journals of Japanese users. This language interaction is a nice plus.

Nukemarine Wrote:But I'm also lazy, so I like all of iKnows pre-made, outstanding content.

This is the same for me, I like not having to do anything and getting tested on the word a few different ways. I know I could recreate this in anki but it would take more work and entering abunch of stuff into anki all the time is what killed my motivation to study before. I do think anki is the better SRS also and still plan to use it for my long term knowledge.

Nukemarine, did you look at the spreadsheet atreya posted? It looks like you can get the spreadsheets of everything that you've been wanting.

About the translations: they're only a problem if they're the only information about the sentence you get. If you learn the meaning of individual words separately then it's fine. Standard warnings about using only one learning source apply.

Just recently started on iknow and i find i'm really enjoying it and the words are sticking great, I'm going to try using there example sentences for each of the words and enter them into anki for long term memory while going through the steps maybe i'll sound a little weird but should be nothing that can't be fixed as i get better at the language.

the 2000 courses on iKnow are great... easy to understand grammar and fairly concrete words... but 6000 series is a different ballgame for me... my grammar and kanji knowledge aren't holding up enough for me to get through them it seems... I never finished RtK the correct way it was intended... when I studied RtK a year or so ago I only had the book and not this wonderful website to go by... so basically I had stories for the first 500 kanji but after them I just wrote the rest of them out by primitives without creating stories for them... my limited kanji knowledge got me through the 2000 series but I think I am going to have to go through this website before I can tackle 6000...I've been going through Tae Kim's guide as well these past couple of days.. I really missed the pictures from the 2000 series too... FYI I don't write anything either... I was going to save that for once I had finished iKnow and got into the anki portion of studying

For people who use the iKnow site, do you put every word into Anki at the same time... or do you use iKnow for iKnow and Anki for Anki stuff? I'm thinking of doing that since I check Anki every day, iKnow I might not go to all the time.

Tobberoth Wrote:For people who use the iKnow site, do you put every word into Anki at the same time... or do you use iKnow for iKnow and Anki for Anki stuff? I'm thinking of doing that since I check Anki every day, iKnow I might not go to all the time.

I already have an iKnow Anki deck. Once I complete the 2000 level I plan on using Anki to study it. I will use iKnow for the 6000 level and then study within Anki afterwards as well, though. Given the volume I might just suspend the cards for lessons I haven't studied, and unsuspend them after I complete each level.

I'm using the Iknow Anki deck that was linked. Just a download with all audio and sentences.

And ummm, to add I do think the vocabulary is heavily business based as previous posters said.
辞任
大蔵省
合併
従業員
株式
営業
輸入
消費大国


Just some of the words that have come up, and I'm only ONE full day in to this deck. We'll see how it turns out.

Tobberoth Wrote:For people who use the iKnow site, do you put every word into Anki at the same time... or do you use iKnow for iKnow and Anki for Anki stuff? I'm thinking of doing that since I check Anki every day, iKnow I might not go to all the time.

I've been adding each of the sentences manually for all the vocab as i do them literally only takes a minute or so longer to enter them into anki (haven't even bothered with the download of all the sentences just copy paste as i do them), so i get the best of both worlds the great learning ability of iknow with the long term memory of anki.

tibul Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:For people who use the iKnow site, do you put every word into Anki at the same time... or do you use iKnow for iKnow and Anki for Anki stuff? I'm thinking of doing that since I check Anki every day, iKnow I might not go to all the time.

I've been adding each of the sentences manually for all the vocab as i do them literaly only takes a minute or so longer to enter them into anki (haven't even bothered with the download of all the sentences just copy paste as i do them), so i get the best of both worlds the great learning ability of iknow with the long term memory of anki.

Question is, aren't you getting quite a lot of reviews every day? I mean, iKnow tells me to do 30 words each day.. 30 new sentences to Anki each day equals insane amounts of reviews... especially if one is to add their own words as well outside of the iKnow vocabulary.

Quote:Question is, aren't you getting quite a lot of reviews every day? I mean, iKnow tells me to do 30 words each day.. 30 new sentences to Anki each day equals insane amounts of reviews... especially if one is to add their own words as well outside of the iKnow vocabulary.

Currently have 131 cards scheduled for review this time tomorrow in anki and i've been averaging 25-30 sentences a day all week, although i'm sure the review will probably go up even more it does'nt seem to take long to do 100+ reviews.

I've also noticed with iknow it says you have 30 words to do a day but half of those are just reviews for previouse words so its usually much less than 30 sentences unless you happen to do more than the 30 words which i've been doing over the holidays.

Although whether i can keep up this pace with reviews and learning new things should be interesting as I'm back at work soon, so over 100 anki reviews + 70-90 RevTK reviews and also adding new things while going through iknow could be very tiring and time consuming after work.

tibul... if you are tired after work, i just recommend going to bed and starting your day studying... it's much easier to study with a fresh mind....

Tobberoth Wrote:Question is, aren't you getting quite a lot of reviews every day? I mean, iKnow tells me to do 30 words each day.. 30 new sentences to Anki each day equals insane amounts of reviews... especially if one is to add their own words as well outside of the iKnow vocabulary.

Umm, this is another failing on iKnow. That 30 items a day means both new and reviewed items. It's a completely useless suggestion that should be removed. I've been recommending people to review all their studied items first no matter how many items it is. After that, then study new items if you have time left over on your schedule. So on days where a lot of items are getting reviewed, you probably won't add new cards. On days the reviews are short and or fast, you'll have time to add new cards.

This though points to a benefit of iKnow: the time graph. You know how much you were studying a day, both in total time and total items. I kind of wish Anki had such a feature. For me, I like to have 120 minutes of study time a day. I try to get what reviews I can do in those two hours. After that, I try to add as much new items as I can. I found this also helped me in my reviews. It's no longer "Oh no, I have 500 cards due for review", it's "Ok, I have two hours I WILL use to knock out what I can". If my reviews back up, well, that means I don't add new items. The graph just shows it for me plain as day, though I wish it was color divided to show number of studied items that were new, 50%, or complete.

Good comments everyone. I've been meaning to try iKnow for a while now, and over the last few days I finally got round to giving it a go. I think it is quite good. I think the main use is as a vocabulary builder. Certainly you will need other sources of information such as a grammar guide to go with it. I quite like the user interface and having a decent set of study material with integrated audio is invaluable.

As others have suggested, I plan to study the core 2000 set in iknow and then use the anki deck for later review.

Regarding the 30 items per day, I ignore that. After doing 20 I get sick of iknow.

I also have my doubts about the algorithm. There are lots of people out there recommending different algorithms, but there doesn't seem to be much empirical evidence for one over the other. I personally agree with what others have said, that the iknow algorithm presents the same item again too quickly. The list of consultants that iknow use is quite impressive, but I wonder how much "science" is really behind this tool?

regarding the translations, I think they are OK, but they are idiomatic rather than exact. This can make it a bit difficult if you are trying to figure out the exact meaning of a word other than the target.

I would like it to be able to show additional information about for example the verb classification.

Also obviously iknow have some major venture capital behind them and all those staff don't come cheap, how are they going to get a return on their investment? If a lot of advertising appears at a later date that will be annoying.

Does iknow have english learning materials as well? If so I might recommend it to a Japanese friend?

Not counting user's lists, there's twice as many English learning courses listed than Japanese ones (70-odd to 30-something).

shakkun Wrote:Nukemarine, did you look at the spreadsheet atreya posted? It looks like you can get the spreadsheets of everything that you've been wanting.

The only problem with the xml files is that, it has information on 20 items only (even if the list has more than 20 items in it). Is there any way to get the feed with all the items in it. I am sure I overlooked something here...

atreya Wrote:The only problem with the xml files is that, it has information on 20 items only (even if the list has more than 20 items in it). Is there any way to get the feed with all the items in it. I am sure I overlooked something here...

The link given was

http://api.iknow.co.jp/lists/19053/items...er_page=20

you can get a max of 100 items per page by changing per_page=100 and then get all pages by changing to page=2, .... kind of annoying.

radical_tyro Wrote:

atreya Wrote:The only problem with the xml files is that, it has information on 20 items only (even if the list has more than 20 items in it). Is there any way to get the feed with all the items in it. I am sure I overlooked something here...

The link given was

http://api.iknow.co.jp/lists/19053/items...er_page=20

you can get a max of 100 items per page by changing per_page=100 and then get all pages by changing to page=2, .... kind of annoying.

Ah! Thanks! This way, I can get all the vocab from each list. But is "include_sentences" necessary? It has the sentence data in the xml even without that command. Anyway, I noticed that every word in the xml has all the sentences from the iknow database which has that particular word in it mapped to it. For e.g. ここ has all the sentences which use the word ここ mapped to it.

The problem now is that eliminating duplicates will be a chore in a large list where for example, the word 本 will have the sentence ”ここに本があります。” mapped to it and the word ここ will also have the same sentence mapped to it (apart from other sentences as well).

Is there any way to work around this ?

atreya Wrote:Ah! Thanks! This way, I can get all the vocab from each list. But is "include_sentences" necessary? It has the sentence data in the xml even without that command.

You're right, the sentences are included regardless of the value of include_sentences. I guess it's a bug. I posted a comment on the API page but I'm not sure if they read those regularly.

atreya Wrote:Anyway, I noticed that every word in the xml has all the sentences from the iknow database which has that particular word in it mapped to it. For e.g. ここ has all the sentences which use the word ここ mapped to it.

The problem now is that eliminating duplicates will be a chore in a large list where for example, the word 本 will have the sentence ”ここに本があります。” mapped to it and the word ここ will also have the same sentence mapped to it (apart from other sentences as well).

Is there any way to work around this ?

I'm writing an Anki plugin to import these feeds and am having the same problem actually. With the API you either get the sentences only, the items only, or the items and all sentences and duplicates. I don't see an easy way to get the items with the sentences from those lists. What you're doing is possibly specific enough to filter the sentences by id, but I'm not sure. I posted a comment at http://developer.iknow.co.jp/docs/user_c...ms_studied but again, I don't know if they read that.

radical_tyro Wrote:I'm writing an Anki plugin to import these feeds and am having the same problem actually. With the API you either get the sentences only, the items only, or the items and all sentences and duplicates. I don't see an easy way to get the items with the sentences from those lists. What you're doing is possibly specific enough to filter the sentences by id, but I'm not sure. I posted a comment at http://developer.iknow.co.jp/docs/user_c...ms_studied but again, I don't know if they read that.

Hmmm... So for now there is no way to get feeds for a specific course without the duplicates. Its great that you are working on a plugin! ^^ How does one go about filtering sentences by id or just getting the feeds with the sentence data alone ?