Hi, I was considering subscribing to one (or possibly both) of these sites. I get $500/year from my company (I made a different post about this and appreciate the advice their as I will probably get some of those things also). However, no one mentioned these two sites and I was wondering if anyone has used them. I'm almost finished with RTK (a second time) and with smart.fm closing I was wondering where to go from there. Anyway any opinions would be great.

Thanks

I need more uses for my tablet but i don't want to pay for skritter.

Here's a review of Textfugu (not mine, I just thought it was a good review), though the site might have improved since it was written. It looks like it's most useful for beginners.

I agree that it's best for beginners. I bought a lifetime membership to TextFugu when it was first released and I love it. I've learned a ton and it's provided a great base for learning Japanese. The author responds to questions if you email him and he's really helpful. Plus he keeps adding new lessons, which gives me more to study even though I've already covered all of the basic material available on TextFugu.

I've used both services.

As a beginner I appreciated the way that TextFugu is written and liked the grammar explanations more than my textbooks, I also liked the idea of having the author available for help. Unfortunately it's still very incomplete and Koichi is slow to add new lessons. I finished all the material there months ago and season 4 still hasn't been continued since then. I feel that my studies are now always going to be more advanced than what he has available, so I'd hesitate in recommending paying for it until there's a lot more content there.

Using Skritter with a tablet is pretty fun and a nice way to make sure your stroke order is correct, but I don't like it as an SRS. It's never clear to me when I should end a session and there's so much repetition that I find myself burning out on it. I'm not exactly sure why but I actually find my retention is considerably better using a pencil and paper with Anki.

Thanks for the help on this guys. I broke down and bought a tablet to try skritter out on and not sure if I'm going to keep using it or not. I bout Minna no Nihongo so I started to study that list on skritter but it's pretty hard even for the beginning lesson. I've finished RTK and might start to do Heizig on skritter to make sure I got the stroke order but the thought of going through RTK a third time all the way through makes me wanna puke. I get $500 a year from my company to study personal development stuff so I may buy a couple months subscription anyway. I think though, I may start just going through Minna, Tae Kim and start AJATT 10,000 sentence method. Still just a week since I finished RTK so I'm still seeing 200-300 reviews a day.

Elenkis Wrote:I've used both services.

As a beginner I appreciated the way that TextFugu is written and liked the grammar explanations more than my textbooks, I also liked the idea of having the author available for help. Unfortunately it's still very incomplete and Koichi is slow to add new lessons. I finished all the material there months ago and season 4 still hasn't been continued since then. I feel that my studies are now always going to be more advanced than what he has available, so I'd hesitate in recommending paying for it until there's a lot more content there.

Using Skritter with a tablet is pretty fun and a nice way to make sure your stroke order is correct, but I don't like it as an SRS. It's never clear to me when I should end a session and there's so much repetition that I find myself burning out on it. I'm not exactly sure why but I actually find my retention is considerably better using a pencil and paper with Anki.

Sorry for the slight thread necromancy. I found the style of the writing to be enjoyable, but I'm on the fence for getting a membership. I'm a bit past the skill level of the beginner levels so I'm not quite sure what to expect in the later lessons.

Do you think it would be worth doing a one month subscription?

It really depends on what you mean by "beginner". I started Textfugu as a complete beginner, and did the first 4 seasons before switching over to RTK full-time. Now that I finished RTK a couple of months ago, I'm working my way through the remaining grammar lessons and the vocabulary that Textfugu has, before moving on to Core 2k/6k and (if needed) parts of Tae Kim's grammar guide.

I think that Textfugu really shines in getting you through beginnerhood - maybe the first 9-12 months for most people - before letting you loose upon the wider world of Japanese learning. He integrates grammar, kana, kanji, and vocabulary, and by the time you're done you'll be able to figure out how to learn more on your own. He also talks about study methods, ways of maintaining motivation, and stuff like Lang-8.

I suppose it's spoon-feeding in a way, but for me it helped a lot. There are definitely issues - updates are slow, so don't expect to have lots more content written between when you start and when you finish. And I'd still stick to RTK for learning kanji (though I do like the kanji vocabulary section on Textfugu and think it helps a lot in learning readings of ~350 of the most useful kanji). But I think that Textfugu is definitely worth it if you need a bit of help figuring out how to get started and through the first part of learning the language.

I signed up for TextFugu and did that for a short while until I started RTK. I really like Skritter and use it every day. (I already had a tablet.) It can be addicting.

I guess I'll go back to TextFugu when I'm done with RTK. (It's taking me forever.) TF relies heavily on Anki, which bores the crap out of me.

Altaira Wrote:I signed up for TextFugu and did that for a short while until I started RTK. I really like Skritter and use it every day. (I already had a tablet.) It can be addicting.

I guess I'll go back to TextFugu when I'm done with RTK. (It's taking me forever.) TF relies heavily on Anki, which bores the crap out of me.

Just thought I'd mention that TF is coming out with it's own Kanji learning site called WaniKani (http://www.wanikani.com)

I have no clue how it'll actually be as it's just started sending out it's Alpha keys.

Obviously that doesn't help with vocab decks, etc but yeah, just thought I'd mention it. ^^

kkdmg Wrote:Just thought I'd mention that TF is coming out with it's own Kanji learning site called WaniKani (http://www.wanikani.com)

I have no clue how it'll actually be as it's just started sending out it's Alpha keys.

Obviously that doesn't help with vocab decks, etc but yeah, just thought I'd mention it. ^^

Bit late replying, but I thought this could be useful info.
See, I'm an alpha member over at WaniKani (though I guess TF members have accounts now, too; I've been there since about two weeks in, before TF members got access), and it's pretty much the best thing ever. As we alpha testers never signed a no disclosure contract or anything (haha), I figure I can reveal that the beta's gonna be released PRETTY SOON, and it's not gonna cost too much, so yeah. It's definitely worth it, imo. The SRS works very well, and though the mnemonics can be pretty daft at times, I've never had any big problems with remembering a kanji using them.
Most people on there say that they keep wanting to review things earlier, even though they can't, because the service is so addicting. I'm inclined to agree, haha.