Speedanki Blog

Hi All,

The December JLPT test results came in a few months ago, and we got some nice feedback:

I used Speedanki to prep for Dec 2009’s 1-kyuu exam, and thanks to your cards I passed 1-kyuu and got an 87 on the vocab/kanji section.

Thanks and keep up the good work!

Moondust Sparkle

Congrats to Moondust and everyone else who passed! And これからもっと頑張りましょう to those who didn’t ;)

Now for the actual beef of this post. Noah Figg emailed us to tell us that he has developed a script that adds keyboard and mouse shortcuts to Speedanki! This will make it much easier for power users to flip between cards and file them into folders. Thanks a lot Noah!

You can download and install the script here. It is designed for the Firefox browser, which you can download here if you don’t have it yet. Edit: Also works with Google Chrome and may work with other browsers as well.

Instructions from the script’s download page:

Sanki SpeedAnki.com Shortcuts

Adds keyboard shortcuts to Speedanki.com site.
Version: 0.1.2

Adds keyboard and mouse shortcuts to Speedanki.com Japanese vocabulary memorization site.

They are targeted at all views but the list view, i.e. flash card type views.

Keyboard shortcuts use only the arrow keys and shift key. Mouse shortcuts are done by middle-clicking and dragging 60+ pixels in a direction and shift key.

Up/down – flip card
Left – previous card
Right – next card

Shift-Up – move card up one category
Shift-Down – move card down one category
Shift-Left – toggle example sentence
Shift-Right – toggle meaning

Another Firefox add-on that I use myself and have been meaning to write about for a long time is Rikaichan: a Japanese dictionary that translates words and shows kanji readings and radicals when you simply move your mouse pointer over a kanji in Firefox. It’s a useful complement to Speedanki: if you want to check out what other meanings a word may have, or what radicals that kanji contains, just move your mouse pointer over a Speedanki card. It also supports not only English translations, but German, French and Russian as well.

You can download and install Rikaichan here (again, the Firefox browser is required). Tip: when you are hovering over a kanji compound and want to examine an individual kanji, press Shift and Rikaichan will change to a different mode.

The next JLPT exam is little more than a month away. 頑張れ！

Hi All,

The next Japanese Language Proficiency Test date is approaching fast: it’s July 4, 2010. That’s 93 days from now! However, the test will only be offered in Japan, India and other Asian countries on this date. In North America and Europe, the next test date is December 5, 2010. You can find your nearest JLPT test center from this list provided by the Japan Foundation. They have even created a little world map as a shortcut to the list, bless them.

Unless you are new to the JLPT, you have probably heard that this year the test will be slightly different from previous years. The Japan Foundation’s official announcement (together with some sample questions) about the change is available here. It’s a bit difficult to decode, so let me summarise the most important point: a new level will be added between the old levels 3 and 2. This is because a lot of people found the jump from level 3 to level 2 to be really difficult. In other words, they are adding a nice intermediate level that will smooth out the learning curve. The old levels remain unchanged, except that their names/numbers change to accommodate the new level. This is what the names look like after the change:

As of today, I have updated the level labels on Speedanki to correspond with the new naming scheme. You can continue to use the flashcards to practice vocabulary for JLPT levels N5, N4, N2 and N1 as if nothing happened. Your old saved cards automatically appear under the new level labels.

For the new intermediate level N3, we unfortunately don’t have any cards at this moment. Assuming it works like the earlier levels, this is what it takes to produce a card set: someone obtains the test specification, selects a good subset of the words for studying purposes, types in the words in kanji and hiragana, and adds an English translation from JEDICT. A native speaker then fixes the translations and adds an example sentence that illustrates use and helps in memorisation. I am thinking of ways to get this done, but I know there’s no way I will be able to do it myself at the moment. At the same time, I am kind of hoping that someone over at the JLPT Study Page eventually decides to pull it together — or perhaps even one of you!

Thanks for your comments and feedback again, 勉強を頑張ってください！

One of Speedanki’s main advantages over some other Japanese flash card sites is the inclusion of a carefully crafted example sentence for each word. The examples were made for Speedanki by native speakers and represent correct, natural language use, in contrast to fragments taken from a manga or a movie. You can thus be sure that time invested into Speedanki is well spent.

Every word in Speedanki belonging to JLPT levels 4, 3 and 2 comes with an example sentence. But for a long time, we were missing example sentences from most of the level 1 cards (the most advanced set of words). I received quite a lot of feedback from you regarding this, and decided to get it dealt with. In December, we introduced 50 new example sentences. And today, thanks to the efforts of Speedanki user KenH’s mum, we are introducing no less than 538 new example sentences! As a result, most of the level 1 words now come with an example that demonstrates correct use and helps with memorisation. I’m sure we’ll be able to fill in the few remaining gaps before long as well.

So whatever the level of your Japanese, enjoy studying vocabulary and kanji with Speedanki. And please let your level 1 friends know about this improvement as well.

Thanks one more time to KenH and his mum. As always, please feel free to send feedback via the comments below or through email to team@speedanki.com. Btw this was my first Speedanki blog post from Japan :)

明けましておめでとうございます！今年もよろしくお願いします。Last New Year’s Eve I was at the Zoujouji temple in Tokyo, where thousands of people released small balloons to the air with their wishes for the coming year. This year I am in Helsinki, where it’s -15 degrees Celsius and the snow reflects the rays of the full moon. I wish you a good year and good luck in your studies!

As you may have noticed, we’ve added some links to The Japan Shop on the front page, and will be experimenting with them on other pages as well. They’re obviously advertisements. But I’m hoping they might be somewhat useful to Speedanki users, as opposed to being merely annoying, as most ads tend to be in my experience. Whether you’re studying for the JLPT or learning Japanese for other purposes, you really do need to have some offline study materials to complement your online studies. In my experience, shiny new materials also help in keeping your study motivation up. The products featured are not random stuff, but things that I know are good, in many cases because I have personally used them during my many years of Japanese studies.

If you want to support Speedanki, feel free to buy your stuff through these links. The Japan Shop ships internationally with reasonable shipping costs. Our commission is not going to make us rich, but I’m hoping it would somewhat offset the server hosting bill. Also, Clay, the guy who runs The Japan Shop with his wife Yumi, is a great guy and worth doing business with.

P.s. they also have some cheap downloadable audio products. I have the Sound and Action Japanese Instant Download ($2.99) and I’m having a lot of fun with words like びりびり and せかせか at the moment. ^^

Hi all!

So last Sunday the Japanese Language Proficiency Test was again administered in various locations around the world, and I know that many Speedanki users participated as well. お疲れ様です！

There was a big spike in activity at Speedanki during the days preceding the test, especially on the last day, Saturday. Looks like a lot of people indulged in some last-minute cramming! ^_~

Speedanki activity spiked before the December 6 JLPT test

Now we’re living in a post-test quiet phase, as people who studied hard for the test are taking a well-deserved break. User activity and site visits will probably start picking up again in the Spring in anticipation of the next test, which will be held on Sunday, 4 July 2010.

The next test will follow a new design, with five levels instead of four. You can read Japan Foundation’s announcement and have a look at some sample questions and materials here. I will blog more about this change and how it affects Speedanki studies at a later date (short version: you can prepare for the new test using existing Speedanki word lists).

Thank you yet again for your comments and email! Special thanks to Michèle for typo reports.

In this post, I will continue on the topic of “content”, that is, the words, translations and examples that constitute Speedanki’s heart. Last time I discussed word lists, so this time I will focus on the examples. Speedanki stands out among different Japanese flashcard systems for having a great set of example sentences, designed by a native speaker. Examples are extremely important in memorising vocabulary. The example attached to each card can be seen as having three purposes:

1. to help memorise the word;
2. to show how the word is used in context; and
3. to form a connection to one or more other cards that share the same example, further assisting in memorisation.

You could ask why every card only has one example sentence. Multiple examples would surely be beneficial in understanding how the word is used in context. But the primary objective of Speedanki is to help in memorisation. For that purpose, a single, well-crafted, memorable example is most valuable. Details regarding the uses and nuances of words are best learnt through reading and conversation. My experience is that once you have memorised new vocabulary through Speedanki, you then begin to notice that vocabulary everywhere, even though previously you didn’t even know it existed.

However, the Speedanki example base is not perfect. As students of level 1 vocabulary have noticed, many JLPT level 1 words are missing the example sentence. This is an issue that I and Péter spent some time thinking how to solve. We also got some suggestions from you.

One potential solution would be to enable users to submit example sentences. These examples could then be commented upon, rated, voted and so on. This approach is used by, for example, the very nice Japanese Grammar Database JGram.

However, I don’t think this approach would be optimal for Speedanki. Instead of one carefully crafted sentence for each word, you would get anything from zero to 20, with varying levels of correctness and pedagogic value. People like us who are still learning Japanese are not really the best people to assess and vote on the validity of the submissions. As a result, you couldn’t really trust the examples to be correct and natural.

I think the best way to go for Speedanki is to get more sentences from native Japanese speakers, ideally with some pedagogic ability. This way, the examples are correct and represent real, natural Japanese, as opposed to something copied from a manga or a movie. Constructing such sentences can be surprisingly hard work, but fortunately a qualified friend of mine is willing to help. Thus I present you, new example sentences for about 50 level 1 words that previously did not carry an example, online now!

I’ll try to entice my friend to make more soon, but to be honest, I expect it will be some time before each and every card has an example. Fortunately, it looks like I will actually be moving back to Tokyo next month, which will hopefully speed up the process. For those who are interested, I will be working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, University of Tokyo.

Finally, for Ken, who found he couldn’t understand many of the words in the example sentences without looking them up, don’t worry, that’s normal. It wouldn’t hurt to add yomigana to the examples, perhaps we’ll be able to add those in the future. Meanwhile, using rikaichan accomplishes basically the same thing.

That’s all for now. 勉強頑張りましょう！

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions we’ve been receiving recently! Rest assured that I read every comment even if I don’t directly respond to them all. Also, I fixed a few typos in the cards based on reports from you; please do mail team@speedanki.com if you spot more, although they should be pretty much ironed out by now.

In this post, I thought I would begin to address the topic of “content”: that is, the word lists, examples, and how to develop them in the future. In this post, I will focus on the word lists, which some people have been asking about. Speedanki currently features 110 words for JLPT level 4, 230 words for level 3, 1092 words for level 2, and 1228 for level 1, with a small amount of overlap between the levels. Compare these to the full official lists (as specified in the JLPT Test Content Specification) from which words for the actual tests are picked. These lists have been made available in a digital form by Peter van der Woude at the JLPT Study Page. They contain 727 words for level 4, 1409 words for level 3, and 5035 words for level 2, with some overlap between the levels. Level 1 comprises approximately 10000 words, but these have not been digitised by Peter. In the actual test, up to 20 percent of the words can moreover be picked from outside the official lists at the discretion of the examiners. In other words, the Speedanki lists feature perhaps 15 percent of the total vocabulary that can appear in a Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

One way to look at this is that Speedanki is suffering from a serious lack of vocabulary, and needs to be brought up to 100 percent. The good news is that Peter has kindly given us permission to use his lists on Speedanki, so we could do that any time (for levels 4, 3 and 2, at least). But I am not sure if it’s the right way to go. Firstly, while Speedanki vocabulary is intended to be useful and challenging, the official lists also contain a lot of words that are less useful (a subjective thing, of course) and words that you are bound to learn from other sources. Secondly, I wonder if using full lists would be pedagogically optimal: what would it do for study motivation if you had 5035 words in front of you for level 2? You don’t actually need to know every word to pass the test. Finally, there is the question of example sentences, but I’ll talk about those in a further post.

Perhaps the optimal solution lies somewhere in between the current lists and the full lists, or in a choice between the two (but this would increase the complexity of the site). What do you think? I would love to hear about your experiences of studying the Speedanki lists and then taking the actual test.

Another story is that the JLPT itself is expanding: a new level is scheduled to be added perhaps some time next year between levels 2 and 3. But let’s leave that for later.

Dear Speedanki users,

I have implemented the long awaited randomization feature for the site. You can switch to a randomized view using the “view by” combobox; selecting the randomized kanji or randomized hiragana option. I have implemented this feature using random permutations, so the cards remain in the same order and you won’t miss any of them. The cards can be re-shuffled by pressing the Shuffle! button or navigating to a different folder.

Thanks a lot for all the comments so far! I’m really happy to hear so many people other than myself and Péter are finding the site useful. To give credit where it belongs, I should mention that Speedanki was originally designed by Quinlan Faris and his Japanese wife. I took over from Quinlan last year when he moved to other projects.

Based on the comments, it sounds like there are several themes we should discuss in the blog in the future:

• Content development, especially level 1 content
• Customisation and user-created content
• Comparing Speedanki with other kanji learning sites
• Loading times and site performance
• New features

In this post, I will focus on some of the new feature requests. One of the most requested features seems to be the ability to randomise the order in which cards are displayed. Fortunately, Péter is working on that right now. It’s going to be better than simply picking a random card from the deck – if you do that, you’ll end up seeing some cards several times and missing some others. Péter will explain how the feature works when it’s ready.

Some of the other features that you suggested include the following:

• Ability to print suitably formatted lists
• Audio clips to practice listening and intonation
• Displaying the number of strokes and/or stoke order diagrams for each kanji
• Showing kanji and hiragana simultaneously when the ‘Flip’-button is pressed

To me, these requests reflect the fact that different people have different ways of studying Japanese and using Speedanki. For example, I myself mostly study reading only. For writing, I almost always use a computer or a phone, so I am not practicing to write kanji by hand (except for addresses and other personal information that you sometimes have to write by hand on forms etc.). I am also not studying listening and intonation online, because I learn those by talking to my Japanese wife, friends and colleagues.

But other people obviously have different needs, and in order to know what direction to develop Speedanki, we’d like to have a better idea of what those needs are. So, let’s launch the first Speedanki poll: “What would you ideally like to study with Speedanki?” Select the options that best match your needs in the left sidebar, and/or leave a comment!

p.s. Michèle pointed out that there are a couple of cards out there with typos in the English translation – if you encounter something that looks like a typo or some other bug, please drop us a message at team@speedanki.com, and we’ll fix it.