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Updates coming soon!
It's been a few months since we've posted an update, because we've been hard at work on some very exciting improvements to Kanshudo. We're delighted to announce that beta testing is coming to a close, and over the next few weeks, we're going to start rolling out the new features and updates. Here's a quick preview! You can try any of these features today by joining the beta program - details below.
- Our biggest update is what we're calling Japanese Mastery Level. This new measure tracks your Japanese knowledge across several dimensions in parallel - kanji, vocabulary, grammar, and overall experience. This is a big step forward from the kanji mastery score, and comes with some great new visualizations such as the Mastery Map (a visualization of your progress as a literal journey around Japan), as well as word and grammar mastery wheels (building on the kanji wheel you know and love!).
- New navigation: we've redesigned the navigation to provide quick access to key functions (at the top) and more comprehensive access (at the bottom) on every page.
- The Dashboard: your new 'home page' on Kanshudo. Once you move to the new navigation system, the Dashboard will be accessible from any page on Kanshudo, and will summarize your mastery progress, your lesson status and other key data.
- Our new AI study recommendations! We are delighted to announce big improvements to our AI - the system that tracks your Japanese progress and provides recommendations for what you do next. The new AI tracks more dimensions of your progress, and offers broader recommendations based on what's available on Kanshudo. It now takes into account how long learning tasks might take you. Plus, study recommendations are now presented in the form of study sessions, which include a set of tasks with a defined time limit, so you can easily manage your study time.
- We're very pleased to introduce Boost, an entirely new study mode on Kanshudo, which is very effective for learning, but has all the fun of our games - because it builds on them! Rather like our Kanji Challenges, Boost presents you with a series of games and exercises for the material you're working on. However, Boost works with any material - words, grammar points, kanji, collections etc.
- Grammar Match is our first grammar-focused game. For those of you studying for the JLPT, this will be extremely helpful, as it will let you really drill into how grammar is used in real sentences. Unlike other Japanese grammar sites out there, Grammar Match comes with a *huge* array of material - we've built a rules engine to let grammar points draw on our full database of 160,000 example sentences.
- Our Travel Collection is a set of useful words and phrases designed for your first trip to Japan. The Travel Collection comes complete with a range of study methods, including flashcards, our new Boost, and more.
- Quick Test is a great new study mode which lets you quickly work through any collection of material and identify what you know and don't know for focused study.
If you would like to help beta test any of these features, please drop us a line via our support page.
Textbook Companion for the Basic Kanji Book series
Kanshudo's Textbook Companion enables you to use all the features of Kanshudo with your favorite textbook. Similar to our own lessons, you can review the words and kanji introduced in each lesson of your textbook, practice drawing the kanji, play kanji and word games, and automatically generate flashcards. Kanshudo tracks your progress, updates your Kanji Wheel, and gives you study points!
Today we've introduced a new companion for the Basic Kanji Book series by Bonjinsha. The Basic Kanji Book series focuses on kanji, covering around 250 per volume.
In addition, the Kanshudo Textbook Companion supports the latest editions of several other popular textbook series: Genki, Minna no Nihongo, Japanese for Busy People and Adventures in Japanese.
Get started with the Kanshudo Textbook Companion today!
Kanji Wheel improvements
Kanshudo's Kanji Wheel is a unique way to visualize your knowledge of kanji. You can instantly see how well you know kanji of all levels of difficulty, and pinpoint what to study next. The Kanji Wheel is a visual representation of your 'kanji mastery', which is also presented as a single score to help you track your progress.
If you're new to Kanshudo's Kanji Wheel and your Kanji Mastery score, check out our detailed guide, or just visit your own personalized wheel to see it for yourself. You can reach your Kanji Wheel by clicking the icon wherever you see it in Kanshudo.
We're delighted to announce several improvements which make the Kanji Wheel even more useful:
- Overall summary data
- Simplified scoring mechanism
- Detailed explanation of your current score
- Graphical illustration of your progress over time
Overall summary data
Many people have asked for a summary of their overall progress - how many kanji have I fully mastered? How many do I have left to study? We've made this very easy: now, when you visit the Kanji Wheel, you will see an OVERALL PROGRESS panel which shows you exactly where you stand.
Simplified scoring mechanism
We've simplified the way your kanji mastery score is calculated to make it more transparent and easy to understand. Previously we used a 'weighted average' score - different mastery levels would contribute different amounts to your average mastery score for a ring. Now we've made that a simple average - your average mastery is what you would expect: the total of each kanji in the ring multiplied by your mastery of that kanji, divided by the number of kanji in the ring.
For a few users, this means that your score went down a few points. However, we've updated all your historical scores to use the new formula, and since you can now track your score over time visually, you can see your relative progress over time much more easily than you could previously.
Detailed explanation of your current score
To help see what you need to do to improve your score and why it changes the way it does, we now provide a summary of exactly how it is calculated. In the OVERALL PROGRESS panel, click CALCULATION DETAILS.
Graphical illustration of your progress over time
How fast is your kanji knowledge progressing? How long will it be before you have fully mastered the kanji? To help you understand this, we've added a graph showing your progress over time. You can see the most recent year's progress directly from your Kanji Wheel - in the OVERALL PROGRESS panel, click SCORE HISTORY. You can also see a summary of your progress since you began using Kanshudo - you'll find a link in the quick view, or you can reach the full view from your account index. Here's a direct link.
We hope you enjoy these great new features, which are intended to help your kanji studies progress faster and more enjoyably! If you have any feedback please let us know.
Reading Corner updates
We've made some big improvements to the Reading Corner, Kanshudo's Japanese/English bilingual reading library.
- We've doubled the number of readings to choose from
- Readings cover all levels - we have pieces for absolute beginners, beginners, intermediate and advanced!
- By popular request, we've added some non-fiction pieces, including news extracts
- We have several pieces by some of Japan's most famous authors
- The index page has a fresh new look, and you can now filter readings by difficulty level, genre, and your own reading progress
- You can now create flashcards from the kanji and word lists for each reading
- You can take a 'Quick Test' for the kanji & words to find out what you already know, and create flashcards only for what you don't
Visit the Reading Corner now to get started!
As always, through our partnership with Satori Reader, you have access to over 450 additional readings, and you can sync your Kanshudo progress.
Obligatory-Gift Chocolate
Valentine's Day is a big event in Japan, but the customs are somewhat different to what you might be accustomed to. To help you prepare for a Japanese Valentine's Day, we've added a delightful new bilingual reading to our Reading Corner:
As well as Valentine's Day customs and vocabulary, this piece introduces you to the core Japanese grammatical concept of giving and receiving, covered in depth in our grammar point, あげる, くれる, もらう - giving and receiving.
The Kanshudo Reading Corner is the perfect way to practice your Japanese. It contains short bilingual texts of various levels and styles, designed to introduce you to useful words and grammar in real world contexts. Try to read each sentence in Japanese first, but then check the detailed annotations and grammatical notes to build your knowledge.
To find out more about Valentine's Day in Japan, you can also read our in-depth article, Valentine's Day in Japan.
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