The Kanshudo Blog
Welcome to the Kanshudo blog! The most recent entries are displayed here; click on any headline to read the full post. Older posts are linked from the bottom of the page.
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You may also be interested in recent additions to our reference library of Japanese grammar and POI (points of interest).
Here's a quick round-up of new features and improvements we've made over the last couple of months. Of course, one of the biggest was covered in our last blog post – the new Kaneko Misuzu section of the Reading Corner, along with the new feature article on her life and works. However, we've also made a host of other improvements, so here's an overview.
Study recommendations and betas
We've added a few new features to our flashcard system:
- More options for forgotten cards: you can now create sets with only forgotten cards, and can now add forgotten cards directly back to review instead of study
- Create word flashcards by usefulness + your mastery level: now you can instantly pinpoint words you don't know or want to review
- Copy flashcards from one flashcard set to another
- Review flashcards across all sets: in the 'My flashcards' table (below the 'My flashcard sets' table in your flashcard index), there is now a review option, which will enable you to review all your cards without going through them set by set
- Reprioritize reviews: reviews piling up can be very disheartening, and we can now take care of that for you! The reprioritize function will adjust timing of your reviews so you have a manageable number each day. The reprioritize function will appear automatically on your consolidated flashcard view (accessible underneath the list of sets on your flashcard home page) if needed.
Suitability analysis
We've added a very useful feature to readings in the Reading Corner: a personalized analysis of the words and kanji in a reading, showing you precisely what you know and don't know, and enabling you to create flashcards or a Quick Study session based on your selection. The new 'suitability analysis' is in the 'Kanji and Vocab' section of each reading.
Joy o' Kanji essays
As always our partner Joy o' Kanji continues to produce high quality in-depth essays on individual kanji. In the last few weeks, the following new essays have been added:
- Joy o' Kanji essay on 袖
- Joy o' Kanji essay on 紺
- Joy o' Kanji essay on 渓
- Joy o' Kanji essay on 蓄
- Joy o' Kanji essay on 汎
- Joy o' Kanji essay on 蔽
Study recommendations and betas
Our AI study recommendations continue to improve, and we are working on a number of features related to how recommendations are chosen, as well as some new recommendations. If you have any suggestions about your study recommendations as you work on your study sessions on your Dashboard, please let us know.
We have several new games and a major new addition to the system approaching beta stage, so if you are interested in helping to test any of our betas, please let us know.
We are delighted to announce a major new addition to Kanshudo – the poems of Kaneko Misuzu, one of Japan's most famous and enduring children's poets. Kaneko's poems are a fixture in Japanese schools, and a wonderful way to study Japanese. We are very pleased to have partnered with the creators of Are You an Echo?, a bilingual anthology of Kaneko's works, to bring you some of her works on Kanshudo.
To learn more about Kaneko, start with our detailed feature article on her life and works, Welcome to the magical world of poetry by Kaneko Misuzu! When you're ready, visit the new Kaneko section of the Reading Corner, which features eight of her best-loved poems. As with every study piece in the Reading Corner, you can follow the Japanese at your own pace, with or without furigana or English, and you can quickly tag any words or kanji as favorites for later study.
In addition, you can now watch videos that are automatically synchronized with the poems. Following each sentence in Japanese as you hear it spoken is a great way to improve your listening comprehension and speed up your reading. Videos are currently available for two of the poems: Are You an Echo? and Bee and God.
Because reading material tends to incorporate kanji and words of all difficulty levels, we have added another great new feature: personalized suitability assessments. At the top of the 'kanji and words' section of each reading, you'll see a new table with a summary of the kanji and words used. The table shows you totals of kanji and words that you already know and that are new to you, as well as an assessment of how difficult the material you don't know is compared with your current level. This will help you decide which readings to focus on. We also use these suitability assessments when deciding which readings to show you in your study tasks on your Dashboard, so you can just sit back and let Kanshudo choose readings for you automatically!
We hope you enjoy these wonderful short pieces by Kaneko Misuzu, and we'd love to hear your impressions!
We hope 2022 is treating you well so far! We've had a busy January, and we'll be announcing some big new features soon. In the meantime, here's an overview of several new features we've introduced recently.
Mastery heatmap
We've added a new way to understand your mastery scores for kanji / grammar / words, which will be especially useful to more advanced learners as it will help you identify gaps in your knowledge: your mastery heatmap. The heatmap shows your average mastery score for every usefulness level for kanji, words and grammar in the same chart.
Your personal mastery heatmap is a new section in your Dashboard (just after your Mastery map).
So now you have three ways to visualize your progress with Japanese:
- The mastery 'wedge' graphic at the top of your Dashboard, which shows your progress with kanji / words / grammar and study points within your current mastery level
- Your three mastery wheels (kanji, grammar and words). Each wheel has one ring for each usefulness level, and each ring shows counts of items by (your) mastery score
- Your mastery heatmap (also in the Dashboard), which shows average mastery score for each usefulness level
Flashcard improvements
- On the home page for any flashcard set, the colored counts of cards in your current study set, needing review, forgotten etc are now links, enabling you to view the actual cards with a single click.
- We've added a new 'retention rate' section to the statistics page for each set, so you can track your current study rate.
- In the main collections of words by usefulness level, there is a new button by each word enabling you to add a word to any flashcard set immediately. Very useful for picking up words you missed!
- We've improved the home page for each set by grouping some of the buttons into 'more action' pop-up menus.
Kanji keywords level-appropriate word setting
Sometimes a reading for a kanji is only used in words that are much less common than other readings. We've now added a setting to Kanji Keywords, on by default, to test you only on words that are a similar level of usefulness to the kanji itself.
Toggle for example sentence English translations
We continue to add more flexibility to the user interface so that you can customize the display as your Japanese progresses. You can now set English translations for example sentences to be hidden by default wherever they appear on Kanshudo. It's in the study settings section of your account page.
Looking for beta testers!
We are hard at work on a couple of big new features for Kanshudo, and we are looking for beta testers of all Japanese levels. If you'd like to get an early look at the features, please let us know.
Happy New Year to you all! We wish you the best for your Japanese studies in 2022.
We have some exciting plans for 2022, including new games, new study modes, new lessons, and more. In the meantime, here's a quick summary of some small improvements we've made over the last few weeks to flashcards and the component builder.
Flashcards improvements
We've made a few improvements to the flashcards system, including:
- Settings are now accessible in a popup on the details page for any flashcard set, so you can make quick changes without leaving the set
- We've added two new automatic card creation options, accessible from the details page for any set: you can now automatically create kanji cards for any kanji used in word cards in the set, and you can automatically create word cards for the key words for each reading of any kanji card in the set
- We've made the handling of forgotten (lapsed) cards more explicit: you now have a setting to prioritize forgotten cards, which is on by default. When you create a new study set, Kanshudo will choose any cards marked forgotten more than a day ago first, before continuing with your default study order choice (most useful items etc)
- The status color code for each card is now included with the card statistics.
- You can now remove a card from a set while studying (using a button on the card statistics popup).
- Mature cards you forget now have a maximum initial review period of a week when you learn them. (In other words, cards with a long review interval - greater than three weeks - will come up again sooner if you forget them and then re-learn them.)
Component Builder improvements
Kanshudo's Component Builder is, we think, one of the most sophisticated ways to look up a kanji available. The ability to draw each component of a complex kanji one by one is often the fastest way to look up a kanji by far. Plus with Component Builder you can draw a component, look it up by name, or find it in a list.
We've added a very useful improvement to the Component Builder: when you have entered one or more components and get a list of possible kanji, you can now view all of the candidates in Component Search - just click the search icon at the end of the kanji list.
Meanwhile, in Component Search, you can then quickly view your results back in Component Builder. In other words, you can now 'round-trip' between Component Builder (a great way to enter any single kanji in a search field) and Component Search (a great way to view lists of all kanji containing any combination of components).
You can access the Component Builder wherever you see the 部 icon, for example by clicking the Quick Search icon at the top right of every page. For detailed instructions, see our how-to guide.
Save 50% on a Kanshudo Pro subscription!
It's that time of the year ... time to be merry, time to celebrate the successes (the end?) of 2021, and time to plan for how to improve your Japanese in 2022!
Kanshudo is here to help! Kanshudo is the broadest and most sophisticated online platform for learning Japanese. Kanshudo will help you master kanji, hiragana and katakana, along with Japanese grammar and vocabulary, as fast, effectively, and enjoyably as possible! Kanshudo is used by over 90,000 Japanese learners, with proven results.
This special holiday offer gives you 50% off one year of Pro access - unbeatable value at less than 10 cents per day! Pro access gives you unlimited use of:
- Our AI tutor and personalized study sessions
- Unlimited spaced repetition flashcards and learning games
- A comprehensive reference library of Japanese grammar
- The most comprehensive Japanese dictionaries online
- Multiple study and how-to guides for learning Japanese
- Optional access to over 400 in-depth kanji essays from our partner Joy o' Kanji
Every year Kanshudo gets better and better, and 2021 was no exception - we added pitch accent support, our new game Kanji Keywords, standalone Kanji Draw and Answer Type, and launched a revised and improved series of Intermediate Lessons, the perfect complement to our Beginner Lessons. For 2022 we have a long list of exciting improvements planned, all of which will be available automatically to Pro members.
Take advantage of this very special holiday offer now: Give me 50% off!
OLDER BLOG POSTS
Kanshudo is your AI Japanese tutor, and your constant companion on the road to mastery of the Japanese language.
To get started learning Japanese, just follow the study recommendations on your Dashboard.
You can use Quick search (accessible using the icon at the top of every page) to look up any Japanese word, kanji or grammar point, as well as to find anything on Kanshudo quickly.
For an overview, take the tour.
