Anki, so what’s Anki? Anki is an downloadable flash card program with some  online Capabilities like reviewing. Anki uses the method of spaced repetition.

Anki is a great tool for grinding away at kanji because using spaced repetition helps you keep everything fresh in your mind.

How it works:

You download the program, (Online review mode is available) then you have a few option’s, create your own “deck” (Decks which are the flashcards) or you can download decks of the internet. The decks can be anything from Learning Japanese, studying for a test or even memorizing instrument cords.

Anki is a program which makes remembering things easy. Because it is a lot more efficient than traditional study methods, you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying, or greatly increase the amount you learn.

Anyone who needs to remember things in their daily life can benefit from Anki. Since it is content-agnostic and supports images, audio, videos and scientific markup (via LaTeX), the possibilities are endless

Some features:

Advanced Kanji  Dictionary look up

Importing ” Decks” into the program

Simple Youtube video of Anki in action

So if your looking for a good program for learning something, not just Japanese definitely check out Anki you have nothing to lose its 100% free

Another good Japanese learning  rescouces seem’s to be on the way according to anime news network:

The Japan Foundation, the organization dedicated to promoting Japanese culture, has launched a website on February 1 to teach the Japanese language through dialogue examples “from anime and manga works popular overseas.”

Among its many activities, the foundation administers the Japanese Language Proficiency Test and runs several language and cultural institutes in Japane and overseas.

The sites purpose is outlined as such;

The aim of this site is to give Japanese learners and anime/manga fans from all over the world an opportunity to learn Japanese in an enjoyable way, using that anime/manga as an gateway to their studies

At the moment the site is very buggy and missing a lot of things mostly because it is not fully online yet. When the site is fully ready it will include a things such as Kanji study and word quizzes.  You can check out the site here: http://anime-manga.jp/index.html

Site seems like it’ll be fun but I wonder how good for Japanese study it will be; at least it’ll beat grinding away at kanji for hours.

For those studying Japanese here is a good program to check out

Source

Follow me on twitter or feed burner for more news!

I will be updating Japanese learning resources from time to time. The first software I will review will be Smart.fm Japanese Core 2000

Smart.fm (formerly iKnow!) is a social learning- and community website created by Cerego Japan, Inc. The website uses intelligent software algorithms to assist users retain facts in memory and increase learning speed. Users can create, manage and share lists of facts to memorize; as well as learn a number of languages. Progress can be monitored with tests.The data is used to automatically plan a curriculum and learning strategy for the users

The Good

First off  Smart.fm Japanese Core 2000 itself is a completely FREE resource. There is no download required to run it, you can register an account on Smart.fm for free and with that account you can add things you wish to study. There is plenty of things you can study not just Japanese, but the program that I will be talking about is Japanese Core 2000.

Simple overview of how Smart.fm Japanese Core 2000 works:

Smart.fm works by the user setting goals, one of these goals is the Japanese Core 2000, when you set your goal you begin to study it. Japanese Core 2000 looks something like this;

After you have set your goal to learn Japanese Core 2000 you have 3 options, 1st to start Iknow, Dictation or Brainspeed each one offers their own specialty, Iknow is the main focus with it you learn Japanese verbs/phrases hiragana/katakana and Kanji.

When you start Iknow you are given 4 option full mode, Kanji Mode, Kana Mode, Romaji Mode, each mode offer’s different things to which the user may want to study and also gauges the users Japanese abilities. When you begin the you can select 5 or 10 items to learn, you practice the 5-10 items by hearing them ( A Japanese person was voiced recorded saying all the phrases/words) and seeing them written.

After practicing the words the japanese hiragana/katakana or Kanji is displayed and you are asked do you know it. If you click no you go back to studying the word, if you chose yes you are required to pick the correct meaning from a list of 5 possible answers.

If you pick the the wrong item you are prompted to study again, if you get it right you move on to the next word. With Smart.fm you can save your progress on your account and continue again later.

The bad

- Although Japanese Core 2000  is a good software it does have some problems, the website itself can be buggy at times and Iknow can experience glitchs.

- I also find Iknow to be more focused towards speaking and hearing and less focused on reading and kanji.

There is a lot more that could be said about Smart.fm, Japanese Core 2000 and Iknow, but this guide/review is just to give your some interest about it and check it out for yourself which you can at: http://smart.fm/goals/19053

This  information was created on February 4th 2010, and may not be up to date in the future.