Hi everyone,
I’m working on a personal project in order to get better at coding and ideally I would like to create something that is also useful to others.
Personally, I’ve often put really high expectations on myself when it comes to learning Japanese. An example would be Anki flashcards when I would set a goal of 20 or 30 words a day (or more). I found that after few days I am reluctant to open the app as I know it will require a lot of mental focus and in the end I give up. An endless loop of ineffective intermittent cramming.
My idea here would be to just expose myself to one word or kanji a day in a place that I check everyday, my email. After all, we all have enough time to learn just one word or kanji, right? This wouldn’t replace flashcards or any other form of memorization we do, just provide an easy and continuous knowledge feed that will be helpful on days where we just don’t have it in us to memorize 20 new words.
What do you guys think?
edit1: spelling
edit2: wording
edit3: NOTE – This would of course be free.
13 comments
Personally, I get so many emails a day that another email added to it would only make me ignore one more mail by the end of the day.
I understand the position you’re in and I tried something similar a few years ago. I kind of abandoned it a few months down the line, only to think that I’ll be able to pick up where I left off someday. And that day has yet to come. So this isn’t meant to discourage you but I am skeptical of the effectiveness of your endeavor.
I would be interested, especially if it was actually useful words. Some of these kinds of emails have obscure or not very used words and that makes them a bit useless, but I’d be very happy to be exposed to a word each day.
It might be nice to have example sentences as well and hiragana transliteration.
Don’t think I’d be as interested in single kanjis that are not words in themselves, I would find that a bit too much for a quick bite sized daily thing.
That’s actually such a good idea, I would instantly subscribe to your newsletter
I’d rather it be an app.
Absolutely! Please let me know if it starts
Honestly, no. One word a day means 365 words a year. That’s such a small number of new words that it is basically meaningless, and that’s ignoring the chance that a word that I already know is sent.
Yes!
i just started learning kanji so yes, i would be interested. but its much better if the kanji’s getting emailed are the kanji’s that are commonly used
Depends. If it’s some really obscure word that could be fun, but for basic vocab beginners would be better off just doing anki.
If you could integrate some system in which users could use their anki data to make sure that the word isn’t one that they already know then I think it could be cool but I really don’t see how its any better than setting your daily cards to 1.
Also I think you might be using anki wrong. You should be working at a pace that suits you. If 20 – 30 new makes you not want to use the app then what’s the point? Consistency is key with SRS.
I would love this
If you make that I’ll try it out for sure.
No. Things like these often just end up being ignored by users after a while.
And tbf, this is almost useless. Learning vocab has to be a conscious effort, and the selection of lexical units to learn should be personalized.
So no, daily emails with kanji is not a very practical idea.
I got an email account that isn’t flooded with spam, so why not? Sounds like a lovely idea!