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Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 8:22 pm
It sounds like the "My Japanese Coach" On the Nintendo DS....
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Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 10:46 pm
I've used yesjapan for years. There's a place where you can choose whether to view everything in romaji, hiragana, full kanji, or progressive. In progressive mode, once it teaches you a character, everywhere from then on it uses that character. There are 5 courses, and each course is broken up into 12 or 13 lessons. Each lesson consists of a vocab section, a grammar section, a Q&A section which basically just has a question and several possible answers using the grammar and vocab learned, a conversation section consisting of several short conversations, and a comprehension section which has a paragraph broken up sentence by sentence, and you're supposed to read it and be able to understand it if you studied the chapter properly. After that there is a flash-based quiz for each chapter. Course 1 also has hiragana worksheets and lessons with each chapter, including vocab words. Course 2 has Katakana, while courses 3-5 have a kanji section in each chapter with kanji vocab.
Every Japanese word or phrase used throughout the site has a sound clip next to it where you can listen to it said aloud by a native Japanese speaker. Many of these have several clips so you can listen to multiple speakers.
There are also some pretty good games and memory aids for the earlier courses though the latter ones are lacking in that department.
They produce a bunch of videos. The ones I've seen are good, but they require a higher subscription option than I have, so I haven't seen many of them. They also have free videos released here and there.
There's a pretty good forum with a knowledgeable userbase, though I feel kinda stupid when I browse it because so many of them are so far beyond my level...
Oh also some of the lessons have culture clips which are pretty interesting and "cool tools" to help you remember the points they're teaching.
I tried to use japanesepod101.com at one point and really couldn't because I was so spoiled by the well-organized lessons on yesjapan.com... You do have to be really motivated because you don't turn in any work to a teacher or have time limits or deadlines, and it's harder to get motivated without the fear of being left behind in a class, but the motivation issues are the only real downside I've found to the site.
Actually, there's one other. Their kanji section needs some work. A lot of times they'll introduce a new word and then tell you what it is in English, but the English word could mean a couple things and they don't specify which meaning... For example... recently I came across this one: "組合 くみあい association" Association could mean an organization of some sort, or to associate with someone... Anyway they said they were working on that and whenever I submit stuff like that with the bug report system they always get back to me so it's not so bad.
I know this got really long but hopefully it'll help some people know what it's like without having to pay for it before deciding if it's right for you.
They have books for their first couple courses too, which contain all the stuff from the site with the exception of the audio and the quizzes. I have one of the books, it's pretty nice to have something to flip through when you're looking for something you learned in the past... but they haven't made them for the later courses >_<
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Posted: Sun Sep 27, 2009 12:40 am
If you consider yourself an independent studier, JapanesePod101 might be the better, while YesJapan would suit you more if you prefer a more traditional school environment. For the price, you get a lot with either site, and there are certainly worse choices to learn Japanese from.
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Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 9:05 pm
kagome_elric I was wondering if anyone has used the online classes at at yesjapan.com ? if so, are they as good as they seem? the free classes are pretty good. I had to find another site to teach me hiragana before I will be able to continue, but there is alot more free stuff than you would expect.
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