First of all, I really like this idea. I hadn't found any vocab tool I liked so far, and this seems a good one. I've tried a few rounds and I have noticed the following:

- 一月  without meaning pointer I typed 'ichigatsu' which it told me was incorrect... This vocab does not distinguish clearly between ichigatsu and hitotsuki with a meaning pointer.

- Bug/runtime error: after I'd done a round of 50, I tried to do another one. The colour came up grey instead of red. That looked odd, so I pressed the x to get out of that screen. Afterwards, I wanted to start up again, but it gave a runtime error '380', could not set ListIndex property. Invalid Property Value.

Anyway, all was well when I saved the spreadsheet, went out of Excel and restarted the whole thing.

Anyway, thank you, great idea, keep up the good work!

Well I did find something else a little awkward: when entering 'otoko no ko' it did not recognize it as correct, and I had to enter it as 'otokonoko' instead. Once I knew, I could avoid it, but it would be nice if both were recognized as correct if possible.

This is an excellent learning tool.  I am going to try to get it to work on my Palm.  I have been using twinkle on my palm for all of my current vocabulary study, but this is a very good tool as well.  I am going to pass it on to some other friends who are learning Japanese. 

Thanks for all of the hard work guys.

Christoph wrote:

I seem to have found a small (on my system anyway), when a suffix question appears (～人、～日), it seems that no matter what I type, ～にん、ーにん、にん、whatever it tells me I am wrong.

Has anyone else found this problem?

Me too. I got an email from mspertus, he reckons this could be to do with entering the answers in kana, which I was too.

Agree that is looks good and will hopefully get even better.

Cheers,

As for entering "otoko no ko" vs. "otokonoko" the Japanese don't write with spaces between words so that is why the program only accepts the "otokonoko" rendering. At least that's my two-cents.

Oh, sorry, I didn't realize about the kana thing. I'm entering using romaji and everything seems to be working fine.

astridtops wrote:

First of all, I really like this idea. I hadn't found any vocab tool I liked so far, and this seems a good one. I've tried a few rounds and I have noticed the following:

- 一月  without meaning pointer I typed 'ichigatsu' which it told me was incorrect... This vocab does not distinguish clearly between ichigatsu and hitotsuki with a meaning pointer.

I agree it looks a very promising tool. Thanks for all the effort!

I also got confused with 一月 without a meaning pointer.

Johnnyltn wrote:

Oh, sorry, I didn't realize about the kana thing. I'm entering using romaji and everything seems to be working fine.

Yup, when I started entering answers in romaji, everything went smoothly. There was no need to enter the '~' symbol. However entering kana is still problematic in this regard.

I think it would be good if the text input box held the answer that you type rather than changing to the correct answer. As the answer is displayed below it is redundant AND it would be nice to compare what I type with the correct answer...only on the very rare occassion I get them wrong:)


Regarding how the testing works, if you pass say 45/50, you then go straight on to the 5 that you got incorrect and it keeps testing you till you get them right. I assume that is how you designed it, but I just wonder if that is the best design. I have no real Leitner knowledge other than a basic understanding of the principles...BUT for me personally, I just like to move on.

So, say I had 5 failed kanji in a test I would like to be able to move on to the next 50 card test which could potentially contain the 5 failed from the previous test. When you go straight to your failed kanji, as you've literally just failed them, the answers are still fresh in the mind. So my feeling is that this doesn't really help push them into your long term memory.


Is there a way to skip the earlier tests and get to the kanji you are most interested in? I'm going for JLPT2 this year and as time is short I'd just like to skip to the kanji most relevant to me (at this stage in time).


'Excel@Japanese Help > Help' - it gives an error message.


Quit out of test then try to restart a test gives an error 380 > (details > Excel would crash (although this could just be my machine)) - restarting the sheet sorts it out.


Cheers,

synewave wrote:

astridtops wrote:

First of all, I really like this idea. I hadn't found any vocab tool I liked so far, and this seems a good one. I've tried a few rounds and I have noticed the following:

- 一月  without meaning pointer I typed 'ichigatsu' which it told me was incorrect... This vocab does not distinguish clearly between ichigatsu and hitotsuki with a meaning pointer.

I agree it looks a very promising tool. Thanks for all the effort!

I also got confused with 一月 without a meaning pointer.

Johnnyltn wrote:

Oh, sorry, I didn't realize about the kana thing. I'm entering using romaji and everything seems to be working fine.

Yup, when I started entering answers in romaji, everything went smoothly. There was no need to enter the '~' symbol. However entering kana is still problematic in this regard.

This is now fixed. See my last post.

synewave wrote:

I think it would be good if the text input box held the answer that you type rather than changing to the correct answer. As the answer is displayed below it is redundant AND it would be nice to compare what I type with the correct answer...only on the very rare occassion I get them wrong:)


Regarding how the testing works, if you pass say 45/50, you then go straight on to the 5 that you got incorrect and it keeps testing you till you get them right. I assume that is how you designed it, but I just wonder if that is the best design. I have no real Leitner knowledge other than a basic understanding of the principles...BUT for me personally, I just like to move on.

So, say I had 5 failed kanji in a test I would like to be able to move on to the next 50 card test which could potentially contain the 5 failed from the previous test. When you go straight to your failed kanji, as you've literally just failed them, the answers are still fresh in the mind. So my feeling is that this doesn't really help push them into your long term memory.

I've used it both ways with the failed kanji and prefer when it repeats until you get it right. However, this isn't imposed on you: The retesting is not stored in history, so this allows you to do it either way (at least once I fix the "Quit Test" bug you mention below).

synewave wrote:

Is there a way to skip the earlier tests and get to the kanji you are most interested in? I'm going for JLPT2 this year and as time is short I'd just like to skip to the kanji most relevant to me (at this stage in time).

No. For rather complicated reasons that darg_sama and I discussed in depth, we switched the program from being kanji-based to being word-based (We also each spent hundreds of hours using the kanji-based version). I plan to eventually write up the reasoning and put it in an onsite essay. Targeting specific kanji would be complex (but not impossible), so I'm not in a hurry to implement it. Fortunately, because of the Leitner algorithm, it will recognize that you know the basic vocabulary and only rarely test you on it, so it shouldn't take long to get to words you find a challenge. If you'd prefer to use the kanji-based version and manually select which Kanji to test, PM me for it and I can send it to you (it may not save you time, though, because manually selecting the kanji quickly becomes cumbersome).

synewave wrote:

'Excel@Japanese Help > Help' - it gives an error message.


Quit out of test then try to restart a test gives an error 380 > (details > Excel would crash (although this could just be my machine)) - restarting the sheet sorts it out.

Thanks for the great feedback!

Mike

Seems to be doing just that. I spend a good part of the day yesterday testing more and more sets of 50, and suddenly, my nice green kanjis of the first two rows turned white and yellow. I was a bit alarmed at first, but then I realized I had crossed from JLPT4 to JLPT3 and was required to do more meanings for the kanji I already learned for JLPT4 meanings. Since my own profiency is somewhere around JLPT3 (we're not in the test loop around here), you'll have to figure out the rest yourself.

Oh, I did notice something else:
My kanji started to fade to light green after a mere 12 hours. Now, that could be because it doesn't take absolute time in account, but rather the amount of practice you put in since you last visited that particular vocab, but it annoyed me a bit that following 10 tests or so didn't include the fading kanji vocab. Also, I would hope that if I start to slow down and do only 1 or 2 tests a day, it would take more time for the kanji to fade?

Also, one of the things that I wonder about is that the program decides to progress at its own pace. Probably because I still get about 70% right most of the time, but sometimes I would like to tell it "no new stuff at the moment, give me a couple of rounds of recap instead". Maybe a system where you can choose between automatic progress (as it seems to be doing now) and consciously adding more vocab would be nice for those people who like to drill their existing vocab very thoroughly before moving on to new stuff.

I found another ambiguous one: for 十分 it didn't accept juppun, but juubun instead, so I think that needs a meaning pointer as well.

Just adding that I'm still very happy with the new tool, and I cannot applaud your efforts enough (despite all my critical remarks, which I do hope come across as having a constructive tone).

Last edited by astridtops (2006 September 27, 1:07 am)

mspertus wrote:

synewave wrote:

Is there a way to skip the earlier tests and get to the kanji you are most interested in? I'm going for JLPT2 this year and as time is short I'd just like to skip to the kanji most relevant to me (at this stage in time).

No. For rather complicated reasons that darg_sama and I discussed in depth, we switched the program from being kanji-based to being word-based (We also each spent hundreds of hours using the kanji-based version). I plan to eventually write up the reasoning and put it in an onsite essay. Targeting specific kanji would be complex (but not impossible), so I'm not in a hurry to implement it. Fortunately, because of the Leitner algorithm, it will recognize that you know the basic vocabulary and only rarely test you on it, so it shouldn't take long to get to words you find a challenge. If you'd prefer to use the kanji-based version and manually select which Kanji to test, PM me for it and I can send it to you (it may not save you time, though, because manually selecting the kanji quickly becomes cumbersome).

Same as you Renske, but let's face it, it isn't going to do any harm to go through stuff we should know.

I have been meaning to get started, but what I'm planning on doing is getting the 'List of kanji appearing in past tests' from the MLC JLPT2 guide http://www.mlcjapanese.co.jp/Download.htm into Mnemosyne. If you fancy giving me a hand inputting them, that could be our contribution. What do you think?

Thanks for all the great feedback!

The system should be self-adjusting. Give it a week, Synewave and Renske, and if it isn't primarily testing you on level 2 words, let me know and I'll add a "minimum JLPT level feature".

Astridtops, If you want to know why a kanji has faded, just click on it and type Ctrl-i (or choose "Show Kanji Info" from the toolbar). Once you've gotten a kanji right twice, it will fade a lot more slowly (and be tested less frequently). I'd also ask you to give it a week, and if it's still adding words at a high rate, let me know and I'll add a "No new words" feature. If you're scoring about 70%, it will stop adding words soon.

I know you guys have your hands full but do you have any thoughts concerning the colors for the background? I had mentioned about the difficulty seeing the lettering on the red background testing area. Just thought I'd ask again in case this question might have slipped by.

Thanks again for the wonderful program.