(Not sure what that picture on the right means, but felt it was appropriate… somehow).
I’ve always been a big believe of putting things out there as early as possible so that early feedback / fixes can happen. So, that’s pretty much what I’m doing here. I have the first 5-ish new kanji sections done and put up on TextFugu (it’s under “Kanji New” in the menu bar) and will be adding to it as the rest of the sections are complete (some of it only needs audio, some of it needs more). I just wanted for people to get an idea what the new Kanji Section will look like and how it will flow. I really hope you like it! I’m pretty nervous about it, it’s very different from before (and I know that people tend to be naturally resistant to change!).
Anyways, here’s what just went down with Kanji “New” and Kanji “Old.”
Kanji “New” & Kanji “Old”
Since Kanji “New” isn’t completed yet, I’ve put all the old (soon to be replaced) kanji chapters in one menu item. This means that if you were using / working on anything from the “old” kanji section, you can still access it for a while longer before it gets phased out. Although the “old” and “new” should go fairly well together (despite being a lot different) I’m hoping this will ease the transition pretty nicely. One last quick note – if you want to access “Kanji Old” you’ll need to be logged in to see it.
Adding Anki
I’m going to also take this opportunity to add Anki decks to the kanji section. In fact, that’s the only option (right now) for the new kanji chapters up there (because, as many of you knew, Smart.fm didn’t play nice with the Radicals images), though I’ll be porting them over to Smart.fm too so you can use whichever one you like best. I know a lot of you are Anki fans, and I’ve been getting into Anki a bit too lately.
Each Kanji Has Its Own Page
One of the really big differences is that each kanji has its own page and “narrative.” I’ll let you go in and read some of it to see how the “narrative” works (basically, the idea is that if you just go through and read everything on the page, you’ll be able to learn a lot without trying too hard), but I did want to say something really quickly about the 1-page-1-kanji idea.
One of the really important things about staying self-motivated is achieving a lot of small victories. The more small victories you can achieve, the more they’ll snowball and the more you’ll want to study Japanese. By putting one kanji on one page, I think I’m giving you more opportunities to have these little victories, which means you’ll stay more motivated to study kanji. When I had them all on one page, I think that was a bit daunting (plus, I couldn’t add all the information I wanted to each kanji). I’m hoping this change will actually help you learn more effectively whether you realize it or not! :)
Radicals Then Kanji, Then Radicals, Then Kanji…
Another big change is the ordering of the kanji and radicals chapters. You’ll notice that there is a radicals chapter before every kanji chapter instead of the “learn all the radicals before you learn any kanji” approach I was previously taking. This new approach makes a lot more sense, I think, and will get you learning kanji a lot sooner.
And A Bunch Of Other Small Changes…
A whole bunch of other things changed as well, but whatever they are they’re so small I’ve forgotten what they are. Things like the addition of audio right on the page (I wanted to make it easier to practice with audio… i.e. I didn’t want you to have to jump to Smart.fm to practice the audio on a word, plus some of those recordings they used were kinda… weird), more quotes, modified introductions, more images, and more videos (you know, to help you rest your brain between things) are just some of the many little changes that happened and are still happening.
So, as I mentioned before, this still feels like a slightly early version to me, so feedback is especially awesome right now, while things are a little more malleable. I do need to catch up on a lot of bounties, as well, but feel free to submit any small errors, etc., you find via the bounty system and I’ll try to be on these ones more quickly especially if they have to do with the kanji section!
Thank you all for all the feedback leading up to this point, too! A lot of the changes were made based off of your comments, e-mails, and forum posts in various places :) It really helps a lot!
Cheers!