Weekly Thread: Material Recs and Self-Promo Wednesdays! (June 19, 2024)

3 comments

1. Hello r/LearnJapanese!

   We’re excited to introduce Niwago, a free platform designed to enhance your Japanese learning experience. Created by a team of two on a budget that is just about enough to buy a cup of coffee, our beta is now live, offering:

   * **Advanced Spaced Repetition System (SRS):** Our custom algorithm promises better efficiency than traditional methods like Anki.
   * **Comprehensive Content:** Vocabulary flashcards and fill-in-the-blank exercises for grammar.
   * **In-Depth Grammar Lessons:** Detailed explanations and examples.
   * **Anime Vocabulary Decks:** Learn Japanese with vocabulary from your favorite anime.
   * **Multilanguage Support:** Currently in English with German and Slovak this month (more languages to come, pending feedback).

   We’re dedicated to keeping core features free and are planning future AI enhancements for personalized learning paths and real-time tutoring.

   Try Niwago now: [https://niwago.com/](https://niwago.com/)

   Your feedback is invaluable as we continue to improve and expand. Happy to answer any questions!

2. Hello,

   I’ve created [https://nihongoclassroom.com](https://nihongoclassroom.com/), a website to learn Japanese through interactive drills and spaced repetition.

   Right now, you can learn Hiragana, Katakana, 2136 Kanji, and more than 6K vocabulary words. All of this includes male and female audio, explanations, and examples.

   You can group and sort these in various ways (more than 30 combinations), including JLPT level, school grade, Onyomi group, stroke count, and more. This allows you to learn in the way you find most comfortable and change it anytime without losing or resetting your progress.

   It’s not a flashcard app. These drills are more useful than that.

   First, they focus on active recall instead of multiple-choice options, making your brain do the work so you can learn faster.

   Second, they focus on many skills, including readings, meanings, and building up words and kanji by their parts.

   Third, they provide immediate feedback to correct your mistakes, so you don’t continue making errors without stopping to think about and correct them.

   Fourth, they can detect your confusions with other characters in the same drill session. For example, characters like さ and ち will appear side by side after you confuse them enough times. This is incredibly helpful when learning look-alike characters.

   Fifth, these drills adapt to your performance, giving more focus to the items that give you more problems. This is achieved with a dynamic points system that counts your correct and incorrect answers.

   Additionally, the automated spell checking allows for typos in your answers, which is important as you don’t want to get too caught up in English spelling when your goal is to learn Japanese.

   Finally, you can answer in natural language instead of memorized keywords. For example, for a kanji like 月 (moon), you could answer with the keyword “moon” or something like “the celestial body that appears at night.” This approach helps you learn Japanese through explanations and meanings instead of just memorizing keywords or rough translations.

   These drills come in two modes: practice and test.

   In practice mode, you can make as many mistakes as needed to learn the items.

   In test mode, you have a limited number of errors you can make before failing the drill.

   After you pass a test, the items are sent to your reviews.

   These reviews are scheduled using spaced repetition, meaning that only the items you get wrong will be reviewed regularly, while the ones you get right will be reviewed further apart.

   Finally, on the content pages, you can see your progress. This progress is global, regardless of the order you choose to study. For example, if you are studying by school grade, you can still see the progress you’ve made by JLPT level or stroke count, giving you a more holistic view of your Japanese learning progress.

3. I have been working on a Japanese learning game as a hobby project, and want to share it with people!

   It’s like Little Alchemy, but for Japanese. For example, you can mix “木” and “木” to get “森.” The app has JMDict built-in, so you can look up definitions and really learn the words. Someone also asked for this a couple years ago here as well https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/uvv36b/would_a_kanji_game_similar_to_little_alchemy_be/!

   You can check it out at [https://playxcommune.com/alchemy/](https://playxcommune.com/alchemy/) or just search for “Kanji Alchemy” in the app store. I am still actively adding new features so would love to hear feedback especially if you find game to be fun/helpful!