Potbelly, I'm not nearly at your level yet. I'm still working my way through core 10k. However, if you're finding it difficult to add new words from your current reading material why not fan off into a new field with its own specific terminology? Like textbooks for example. Reading a history textbook will get you tons of new vocabulary related to that field, for example.

P.S. how do you add your vocabulary? do you use epwing or some similar utility? and does it have sound?

If I do it from a frequency list, I use the epwing utility. For the kanken. I just enter them in the imiwa iOS app and then export the data. Usually I use yomichan for reading books so add vocabulary that way. I'm trying the kanken studying now because besides just passively learning the vocabulary, you actively use it. Needless to say. Recognizing the vocabulary via hiragana and writing out the kanji takes a lot more thought than just passively reading it.

Ok, sorry to continue this derail but have you found a way to add native sound to your decks?

Chomskyan Wrote:Ok, sorry to continue this derail but have you found a way to add native sound to your decks?

Native sound? You would have to go to the web sites where people speak out words for you and add it to each card. There is a site or two which specializes in this but the names escape me.

PotbellyPig Wrote:

Chomskyan Wrote:Ok, sorry to continue this derail but have you found a way to add native sound to your decks?

Native sound? You would have to go to the web sites where people speak out words for you and add it to each card. There is a site or two which specializes in this but the names escape me.

The two I know are forvo.com and Rhinospike.com

PotbellyPig Wrote:I agree that words from a frequency list or the step books won't be as useful as from actual reading at this point. It may be more interesting to do them from the step books since then I can review with the kanken tests and also the 3ds game. I think the reasoning that you go through while working out the kanken problems is helpful. Anyone else have any other opinions on this?

Well the thing about KanKen vocab is that it really doesn't conform that well to frequency lists. So if you're going to do KanKen you will end up learning a lot of "useless" words. I didn't really mind that, though, since you will end up getting all the obviously frequent words. It's just that you'll also end up learning some vocabulary along with that which is less useful overall.

I didn't mind, and KanKen was a great way to deepen my general kanji knowledge after finishing RTK. It also improved my listening quite a lot because I became able to more quickly imagine the kanji for a word I was hearing, and then by extension become able to guess the meaning in a similar to fashion as when I see a word on a page.

KanKen is a great vocab builder, but it's not a replacement for real reading practice by any stretch. I did it because I found it interesting as a general hobby outside of its usefulness as a tool for learning Japanese. I've always liked kanji a lot and have always hated calligraphy. So KanKen was a natural way for me to continue kanji study.

erlog Wrote:Well the thing about KanKen vocab is that it really doesn't conform that well to frequency lists. So if you're going to do KanKen you will end up learning a lot of "useless" words. I didn't really mind that, though, since you will end up getting all the obviously frequent words. It's just that you'll also end up learning some vocabulary along with that which is less useful overall.

I didn't mind, and KanKen was a great way to deepen my general kanji knowledge after finishing RTK. It also improved my listening quite a lot because I became able to more quickly imagine the kanji for a word I was hearing, and then by extension become able to guess the meaning in a similar to fashion as when I see a word on a page.

KanKen is a great vocab builder, but it's not a replacement for real reading practice by any stretch. I did it because I found it interesting as a general hobby outside of its usefulness as a tool for learning Japanese. I've always liked kanji a lot and have always hated calligraphy. So KanKen was a natural way for me to continue kanji study.

I think the biggest benefit I am finding, as you stated, are the exercises. It trains your mind to recognize the hiragana word. I can see how it can help your listening comprehension. I'm up to step 14 and I think I'm getting better at it. I think I'll finish going through the pre-2kyuu book and then consider what to do after that. I've read about 50 light novels and got a little tired of it so this is like a good break from that. Is there a pre-requisite number of words I should know before I attempt the 2 kyuu step book or are the ~28.5k words I'm familiar with sufficient to give it a go? 2 kyuu looks like it could be a big step up from pre-2kyuu.

Just as an update, I went on an intensive study through the Pre-2 kyuu step book and should be finished with it in about a day or two. I did all the exercises for the 41 steps except for the bushu ones which don't really interest me for now. I've gotten a bit tired of it so I don't think I will move to the 2 kyuu step book for now. I'm hoping all the recognizing of the hiragana words and writing them in kanji will help my listening skills as a side benefit. I think I will go back to listening practice and see. My listening skills are sorely lacking since I've spent most of my time reading and neglecting listening. At the very least I was able to add another 1000 words to my anki deck.

@PotbellyPig 28.5k words is insane.

I'm thinking about getting back into KanKen again... my son will be born soon and he will grow up bilingual which will include learning to write kanji too. I wouldn't feel right if I expected him to learn it but I didn't know it fully. I want to be a good role model. Of course his mum can write Japanese just fine but seeing dad do it too might help with the motivation. I definitely think KanKen DS3 will be an awesome learning tool for him when he's old enough to use it.

Anybody else preferring the Cover series over the Step one, though?

tetsueda Wrote:Anybody else preferring the Cover series over the Step one, though?

Never tried it. When I went through the Step pre-2kyuu book I used it for mining the vocabulary and doing the exercises. I already knew the kanji by themselves by doing RTK a long time ago. I haven't looked at the 2kyuu book yet since I've been busy doing other things. The Step books are the official series from the people who give the test so most people use them. Those books that go through the most frequently covered items, as an addition, would be really useful for people actually taking the test.

I prefer the way the questions are organised, or rather how they aren't organised in the Cover series. In the Step series you know what characters (and their corresponding onyomi) will pop up in each chapter, so you are not made to be ready to use any kanji in your arsenal. Also, since they claim near 100% coverage, ideally you should find the same words in both books.

tetsueda Wrote:I prefer the way the questions are organised, or rather how they aren't organised in the Cover series. In the Step series you know what characters (and their corresponding onyomi) will pop up in each chapter, so you are not made to be ready to use any kanji in your arsenal. Also, since they claim near 100% coverage, ideally you should find the same words in both books.

I think the Step books are oriented to learning. While the other 2 official books that are offered at each level, the past tests one and the one that is organized by question types, are more "random" by nature as they are not organized into the steps.

So I've started working my through this game as a new way to improve my kanji reading skills. Starting from 10級, the only problem I seem to have so far is that a lot of the questions seem to be repeated. this is despite only having seen like 30% of the 10級 questions.　 Has anyone else had this problem?

Well, there's only so many questions (especially for 10級) and some questions are more common than other.

When I got that game I was hoping it'd be much structured. Like... you failed so-and-so let's work on all these exercises. Instead you just do whatever. Kinda fell off pretty early because of it.

tetsueda Wrote:Well, there's only so many questions (especially for 10級) and some questions are more common than other.

Are you talking about the 3ds version of the game? I noticed this issue immediately and it hasn't been fixed. I've seen it at all levels down to pre-2 kyuu.

I have only played on a DS, so I don't know about the 3ds versions(s), but on the DS the distribution seems pretty fair to me (apart from that it doesn't have any 旧字体 and 文章問題 on 一級).

PotbellyPig Wrote:

tetsueda Wrote:Well, there's only so many questions (especially for 10級) and some questions are more common than other.

Are you talking about the 3ds version of the game? I noticed this issue immediately and it hasn't been fixed. I've seen it at all levels down to pre-2 kyuu.

I can echo this for the 3DS version; I'm not sure but I have a vague feeling that when a new day passes more unseen questions tend to appear (if there are still a bunch unseen leftover that is). Not sure if that's actually true at all. I would really prefer if there was a way to prioritize unseen questions but I haven't found any such option.

TheVinster Wrote:When I got that game I was hoping it'd be much structured. Like... you failed so-and-so let's work on all these exercises. Instead you just do whatever. Kinda fell off pretty early because of it.

I have no idea what the DS version was like but the 3DS version charts your ability graphs so you can see which sections for a level you should work on, and you can do questions in just that section. It also lets you save particular questions to study specifically for later if you please.

I got a little tired of listening practice so I decided to switch back to the Kanken for a bit. I'm started going through the 2 kyuu step book. I've done the first 4 steps so far. This step book is a bit shorter than the pre-2kyuu one so hopefully I can get through it a bit faster. I'm up to about 34k words gone through via anki so I think I can handle it for the most part. It's too bad that the 3ds version of the game seems to have an issue with repeating questions too soon or else I would use it. I happen to own it.

PotbellyPig Wrote:It's too bad that the 3ds version of the game seems to have an issue with repeating questions too soon or else I would use it. I happen to own it.

Yeah I can corroborate this; it makes it way less usable. Or at least a lot less useful.

Flamerokz Wrote:

PotbellyPig Wrote:It's too bad that the 3ds version of the game seems to have an issue with repeating questions too soon or else I would use it. I happen to own it.

Yeah I can corroborate this; it makes it way less usable. Or at least a lot less useful.

Not sure why they don't fix it. They did issue an update shortly after the software came out but that fixed another issue. There have been no other updates.

Well, the track record for this kind of software is really terrible. So it wouldn't surprise me if the devs lucked into making great study software with KanKen DS3, but then went back to making mediocre software afterward. A lot of this genre of software is basically a licensed cash-in with very limited attention paid beyond implementing very rudimentary features that may not actually work.

I hope they fix the 3DS version of the game. I don't have a lot of faith that they will, and I would suggest people just go get KanKen DS3 since that's still probably the best version. There's still dupes in that game, but maybe the distribution of them is better.

I was wondering about question database size, but I've been too lazy to deal with the encryption stuff on the 3DS to get at the actual question data.

Also, on a technical note, if the question data is of a similar format to KanKen DS3 then fixing the duplicate question problem might not be so trivial. There were duplicate questions in that version as well, but it wasn't accidental. The duplicate questions were manually specified in the question index. If this 3DS version uses a similar data layout then it's possible that removing the dupes would require filling that hole in that specific test with a different question.

They also might see the dupes as intended behavior since I doubt they've ever heard of Anki and the way that we like to study here.