iKnow Website, outstanding resource for learning

[nukemarine]

http://www.iknow.co.jp

Seems like a great resource for those looking to pick up vocabulary. It gives you a vocabulary word (200 per set, 10 sets in the basic course). The word comes a definition of the word in English, a sentence in Japanese read by professional voice actors, a picture that's related to the word and the sentence, a kana and English version of the sentence.

You're trained on the word in a spaced fashion. IIRC, it's Japanese word to English definition (5 choices), Japanese word to English definition (10 choices), English definition or Kanji word to Kana pronunciation (5 choices), Kanji word or English definition to TYPED kana pronunciation. You can select whether you want Romaji, Kana, or Kanji. After each, you'll the sample sentence again.

It's done over time. You test 5 or 10 words in a lesson. First time, you get upto 27% done per word (if you do it 100% correct). You'll see the word come up again after a week and complete 50%. I assume after a month, the word comes up enough times to get 100% and be considered complete. It suggests 3 lessons per day, so that can cover 30 words per day (either new words, or reviewing older ones).

Currently, there's 2000 vocabulary words for the basic core set. There will soon be another 4000 words for intermediate and another 4000 words for advanced.

Note: It does not teach kana, grammar or how to write kanji. Get that training elsewhere (Tae Kim, UBJG, Kodansha, here, RTK, etc). This looks like a great site to build up vocabulary in a structured manner. In addition, its easy to copy and paste to create your own variant if you're using an SRS like Anki.

Best of all, it's free and intends to stay that way. Hope it helps.

[sushi4ever]

Wow, that looks interesting, I took the sample lesson and I was really satisfied with it.

Very clean layout and enough settings to customise your learning, it looks really really promising so I'll sign up now and give it a thorough try.

And, hey, free...

[Myuka]

Thanks to you I started using this site and I am very impressed. It's excellent for building up vocabulary and it's fun I like the layout of the program a lot, it's shiny and I like how you can change the theme sky and sakura the best I'm using sakura right now. It's bright, fun and effective. I'm learning new words quickly and reviewing words I already knew but forgot all about It's excellent for people who are jumping on the boat after a study break. I'm very happy with it and it is free so take advantage of it. The brainspeed is excellent for helping bring up my speed in reading and stuff which I need for when It ake the Japanese AP test as I need to be able to read a lot of things very quickly. So yeah anyone and everyone should try it! I love it, although hey this is only my first day on it. We'll see. I also like it because I joined livemocha and had a good time there but, I couldn't do the speaking part as I don't have a microphone so I'd always get marked off my score for that. iknown combines listening, writing and reading only so far as I know so that's good for me since I can't speak. I still like live mocha though and I'll use it more after I use more iknown and review for my textbooks, it's a little more advance I think.

[Rinifett]

Thanks to you I started using this site and I am very impressed. It's excellent for building up vocabulary and it's fun I like the layout of the program a lot, it's shiny and I like how you can change the theme sky and sakura the best I'm using sakura right now. It's bright, fun and effective. I'm learning new words quickly and reviewing words I already knew but forgot all about It's excellent for people who are jumping on the boat after a study break. I'm very happy with it and it is free so take advantage of it. The brainspeed is excellent for helping bring up my speed in reading and stuff which I need for when It ake the Japanese AP test as I need to be able to read a lot of things very quickly. So yeah anyone and everyone should try it! I love it, although hey this is only my first day on it. We'll see. I also like it because I joined livemocha and had a good time there but, I couldn't do the speaking part as I don't have a microphone so I'd always get marked off my score for that. iknown combines listening, writing and reading only so far as I know so that's good for me since I can't speak. I still like live mocha though and I'll use it more after I use more iknown and review for my textbooks, it's a little more advance I think.

How are you able to change your theme? I can't figure it out.

[Myuka]

Launch Iknown.
Click Settings
Go to Themes and choose the one you want. Then click close. Super simple.

Do you kow how to add sentencs to your list I'm having issues.

[somenube]

This is much better than Rosetta Stone, or at least RosetaStone 2.2. (the one I tried and despised)

[nukemarine]

Ok, I've been using iKnow for almost 3 months now. I've not been consistent all throughout, and I changed up my study methods. But first I thought I'd add some updates to this:

1. The Japanese Core 6000 was released about a month or so ago. Like before, these are the most frequent vocabulary words based on Japanese Newspapers. Now, usual argument against this is that it skews toward economic and political terms. Where that loses steam is that by the time you get 6000 words in, all basic vocab lists merge so the results are still the same. Also, each word has an associated sentence and professional voice reading. No photos this time. The last batch Japanese Advanced Core 10,000 should be out this month or in January.

2. Enhanced API support. What this means is that 3rd parties can develop software to interact with iKnow and your data. The possibilities are STAGGERING. Consider, you complete the Core 6000. Now you're going to watch Death Note. One program can scan the Death Note script for word frequency, compare the words against those you already know, compile a vocab list of new words, then upload the new vocab list to iKnow. Another application might look at your learned items, then on Japanese websites add furigana to words you don't know (and preload definitions). Another application might allow you to right click on a word on a Japanese page to add it to your vocabulary study list, along with sentence and photo if needed.

3. Enhanced list management. You can bulk upload and download sentences and lists. Soon, group managed lists will be available (imagine 20 people helping create a JLPT 2 vocabulary/sentence list).

4. Podcasts of your study lessons. Activate this, and the system generates a podcast of your daily study session (it'll say the word, then the sentence). These are done in 90 second blocks of 10 words.

5. Cell phone support (Japan only).

6. Computer Generated Text to Speech (Currently only European languages, Asian languages coming this month) - If you've used this, you'll know that text to speech technology has improved dramatically over the last 5 years. Yeah, native speakers are best, but this is infinitely better than you mumbling off the furigana.

My study methods:

iKnow does long term study mode. This is essentially an SRS, but performed slightly different. So, when you learn a word, you don't go and review it again that day. You will wait a week and see if it sticks. Anyone with experience in SRS can appreciate the benefits of this.

The basic core is in 10 courses of 200 words each. At first, I just did 30 items per course (recommended by iKnow), but this turned out to be silly. Now I - Review ALL my due items in course order (as I'm upto Course 6, that means I do 1 through 5 reviews then onto 6). After the due items are done, I learn new words in the last course. After I learn all words in a course, it's just a matter to add in the next course. Currently, I try to study 2 hours a day. So if there's time after all the reviews, I try learn upto 30 new words a day.

Anyway, it's a versatile system. It's not as good as Anki when it comes to SRS, but for availability of vocabulary and associated items, it cannot be topped.

[Pork Chop]

I do like the tool, finding time to use it is the hard part.
Ran through 100 items my first day and haven't been back.
Will make more of an effort to work on it in the future; because it's definitely a valuable resource.
Lately, my focus has been elsewhere - mostly kanji and trying to get my little jlpt 2 facebook group off the ground.

[Azure]

I love it, feel free to add Runaway987 to your friends if you wanna learn along etc. It has exponentially increased the speed at which I learn and I can do it at work as well in the spare 5 minutes I get. It's absolutely awesome, i'd pay money for it and it's free

[two_heads_talking]

Ok, I've been using iKnow for almost 3 months now. I've not been consistent all throughout, and I changed up my study methods. But first I thought I'd add some updates to this:

1. The Japanese Core 6000 was released about a month or so ago. Like before, these are the most frequent vocabulary words based on Japanese Newspapers. Now, usual argument against this is that it skews toward economic and political terms. Where that loses steam is that by the time you get 6000 words in, all basic vocab lists merge so the results are still the same. Also, each word has an associated sentence and professional voice reading. No photos this time. The last batch Japanese Advanced Core 10,000 should be out this month or in January.

..

Are these kanji posted on a website somewhere?

[nukemarine]

Two heads,

Not sure what your question means. Are you talking about the word frequency list? There's no kanji per se on iKnow in that it does not teach you individual kanji. For the word frequency, I'm sure someone has a link to it. There's one I found,but it was based of frequency of 250 million character words from various Japanese websites.

[Dustin]

nukemarine, how far into iknow are you, and how long have you been using it, and about how long per day do you use it?

I am almost 3/4 through rtk and will do tae kim runthrough as well as my JFE text before getting into intermediate stuff, and I was thinking of doing iknow as well.

I just want to know what to expect for timelines etc.

Thanks!

[monkeykoder]

I'm probably overdoing it I did about 4hrs today on the first set and will probably do some more tonight (did you know it won't let you keep going on a lesson after you've covered all the words in one day? I guess I'll have to start lesson 2).

[richvh]

iKnow has changed it's name to Smart.fm.

[dat976]

What is the IIRC? Please, i need to know.