Hey guys,

I finished rtk1 and recently found this (http://www.readthekanji.com/quiz) website to help me learn the readings. I've only used it for a couple days but I feel like I'm learning a lot. The site remembers which cards you did good/bad at and test you accordingly. It also gives you a sample japanese sentence to see the kanji/compound in context

I just wanted to know if anyone else uses this site since I haven't found many posts about it on this forum. Most people here rave about iknow. So I guess my question is if I should focus my studies on iknow or readthekanji. I know I should probably just do both but I feel like I don't have enough time to use so many different study methods effectively (right now i'm using pimsleur, rosetta stone, reviewing the kanji, and readthekanji) i think adding iknow to the equation is doing a little too much. whats your take?

thanx!

I get on there every so often. I think it's great for quickly going through lots of JLPT words. Sometimes I forget which words have long vowels and stuff, so that's what I mostly fail on, whereas on Trinity or Anki, I'd still consider those words remembered. The way readthekanji is set up makes it extremely strict, which is good for me right now. So that, the speed of it, and the kanji wall it's got keep me coming back to it.

Personally I stopped using smart.fm after a short time and moved almost completely to anki.
The order of the lessons didn't seem anywhere as good as the Kanji Odyssey 2001 sentences, and the scheduling algorithm seemed completely brain-dead - I could easily get most items completed without knowing them, and at the end of a series it would schedule single items multiple times on the same day with no spacing at all. This was a while ago, when they were still called iKnow - perhaps it's improved by now? Anyway, I had absolutely no confidence in it, whereas Anki seems very robust.
It was a pity, the use of audio was nice, and I probably could get some good use out of the dictation feature.

I just signed up to readthekanji to give it a try, looks promising. I too struggle with the long vowels (じょ　vs じょう etc.), so having to type it exactly is very useful.

I wonder if you could do the same thing in Anki.
i.e. by using the (new?) feature where you type in and it will match a field?
If you already have the sentence, you highlight/color the word you want to test, and add another field to your model to hold the reading of the word. The downside is the time it will take to set up all your questions.

Well you could do all the cloze deletion stuff in excel quickly with its various features and then get it imported.

Nii87 Wrote:Well you could do all the cloze deletion stuff in excel quickly with its various features and then get it imported.

FYI - I did a search, and apparently Anki includes a cloze deletion feature - http://ichi2.net/anki/wiki/ClozeDeletion

What I was talking about wasn't exactly cloze deletion.

Cloze deletion (at least as implemented in anki) will take
"ガソリンエンジンは空気とガソリンを15対1の割合で混合する。"
and turn it into
"ガソリンエンジンは空気とガソリンを15対1の割合で[...]する。" Question
"ガソリンエンジンは空気とガソリンを15対1の割合で混合する。" Answer (has to be next field).

Personally, I'd rather this became
"ガソリンエンジンは空気とガソリンを15対1の割合で[...]する。" Question
"混合" Answer.

But What I want to do is take
"ガソリンエンジンは空気とガソリンを15対1の割合で混合する。"
copy the word to another field and highlight the word in the original sentence
"ガソリンエンジンは空気とガソリンを15対1の割合で混合する。" Question
"こんごう" Another field

Perhaps a new Anki plugin is in order (joke for those who read the Anki forum).
Seriously, after the JLPT I think I might look into this.

But I see your point.
Do you have any advice on how to do this in excel?
Do you need to break out the VBA scripting?

Also, if you have an existing deck, how easy is it to re-import and just add a new field?

Why not just put sentences in and grade yourself a little stricter? Nothing is stopping you from counting cards wrong that you forgot a long う or a small っ in.

And more to the point, why go through all that work with the sentences when you can just force yourself to read the entire sentence correctly and fail the card if you can't. That's what I do and I haven't had any trouble determining when I'm right and when I'm wrong.

That's actually what I do.
But I'm sure I've missed a few mistakes along the way, especially for words that I think I know.

MethodGT Wrote:Sometimes I forget which words have long vowels and stuff, so that's what I mostly fail on, whereas on Trinity or Anki, I'd still consider those words remembered.

You really shouldn't do that. Thinking きょと is as good for 京都 is the same as thinking せんせ is okey for 先生. Personally, I always fail my cards in Anki if I miss a long vowel.

I signed up to check this out and the sentences look really useful. Has anyone put the data into a spreadsheet or anki deck that they could share? I'd rather study this material in anki than on their website.

Tobberoth Wrote:

MethodGT Wrote:Sometimes I forget which words have long vowels and stuff, so that's what I mostly fail on, whereas on Trinity or Anki, I'd still consider those words remembered.

You really shouldn't do that. Thinking きょと is as good for 京都 is the same as thinking せんせ is okey for 先生. Personally, I always fail my cards in Anki if I miss a long vowel.

I agree with Tobberoth. As far as I've seen, the Japanese are very sensible to the length of the vowels, and sometimes they just don't understand you if you don't pronounce them correctly.

I thought that was an excellent website for reinforcing readings and learning new ones. I personally like to jump around some days I do Smart.fm and some days I use Anki and other days I just read Japanese comics or books or just watch Japanese TV or movies and then some days I do everything listed and then some. My attention span is terrible so I have to use several different resources in order to keep myself studying Japanese everyday otherwise I just read blogs about people learning Japanese like I am at the moment while taking a slight break from my RTK review.

nac_est Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:

MethodGT Wrote:Sometimes I forget which words have long vowels and stuff, so that's what I mostly fail on, whereas on Trinity or Anki, I'd still consider those words remembered.

You really shouldn't do that. Thinking きょと is as good for 京都 is the same as thinking せんせ is okey for 先生. Personally, I always fail my cards in Anki if I miss a long vowel.

I agree with Tobberoth. As far as I've seen, the Japanese are very sensible to the length of the vowels, and sometimes they just don't understand you if you don't pronounce them correctly.

No question. Get the long vowels right, or pick another language. You will be rendering words you do not intend to render if you don't get this right.

I love this website! I find it really useful to learn readings super fast whilst picking up on a lot of JLPT vocab... I did the entire JLPT 4 deck in 3 days and on the second run through it I find because I know all the vocab, my comprehension of the sentences is far better

Shtephen Wrote:My attention span is terrible so I have to use several different resources in order to keep myself studying Japanese everyday otherwise I just read blogs about people learning Japanese like I am at the moment while taking a slight break from my RTK review.

I'm so like that too lately. What can we do about it.

I recommend reading "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. It helped me fix that problem and majorly increase my productivity.

Wait, what am I doing here?

Does anybody know where the sentences from readthekanji.com come from?

They come from the Tanaka Corpus? 英辞郎? Somewhere else?