しあわせ

LingQ is another site that is based around learning through flashcards. It takes a slightly different approach to WordChamp however. The underlying philospophy here is the natural acquisition of language through reading and listening.
The idea is that you become receptive to a language before you can become active in it. You learn from examples rather than studying the specifics of grammar. Vocabulary is seen as the most important tool for communication and understanding. Oh, and having fun.
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An Internet flashcard web2.0 application.

Flashcards are a good way to learn new vocabulary. However there is always the task of making the cards and deciding what cards to make. Computers make the process easier, and I’m a great fan of iFlash, but it would be nice to be able to find sets of ready to use flashcards.

Enter WordChamp as a solution.
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I was asked this question by a classmate a while ago.

It’s something I’ve wondered about myself. There are essentially two main strands to any language; Vocabulary and Grammar. Grammar is the structure and Vocabulary the specifics. You need both. You can only get so far by knowing the words and pointing. Or trying to slot the Japanese words into English grammar structures (which would lead to very weird and unintelligible sentences.) But knowing the grammar structures but not having the right words to slot in is equally frustrating. So let’s assume you can learn grammar structures, how can you learn words to express what you want.
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にほんごをまなぼう　Lets Study Japanese is an interactive site based around school activities made by the Japanese Ministry of Education.

It is almost completely in Japanese. There are some English explanations of what to do, but otherwise it’s an immersive program. You click on pictures and you get a dialogue or a description written in kana and spoken to you in Japanese at the same time.

Both polite Japanese, the masu desu form, and casual plain Japanese is provided. The children mainly speaking plain form and adults polite form.

It sems to be mainly a teachers resource but I’m sure most students would be able to navigate it by themselves and learn new things. You might need to know your kana, but even then you could read along with the audio to improve your kana and there are learning kana screens as well.

sections include
15. じかんわり（jikanwari - timetable) for telling the time and dates
4. からだのなまえ（parts of the body)
3. トイレ (toilet)
10. きゅうしょく (school lunch)
11. そうじ (cleaning)

There’s a lot of vocabulary here presented in an interesting manner, it’s worth a look. I’ve learnt some new words already.

It needs shockwave and java I think. On my setup some of the voicerecording modules don’t seem to load, but you might have more luck. Also some directories seem to be missing. It also uses frames as well as shockwave which makes it hard to bookmark sections unfortunately. The last update was Heisei13 which I think is 2002 so it’s a bit dormant perhaps.

Anki
暗記 [あんき] (n,vs) memorisation, learning by heart.

This is a flashcard program that was written by someone specifically to help him learn Japanese. It’s free, and runs on Windows Linux and Mac. Apparently there’s also a version for mobile phones but I can’t find or comment on how that works.

As sample card decks there is vocabulary for various JLPT stages and Heisig kanji learning system. I think the help files could be better and his terminology clearer but it’s fairly simple to make your own decks and add to decks. Pictures and sound can be added.

There is also a dictionary lookup of online dictionaries but the ALC site doesn’t seem to work for me. It might not like my browser. (The error is in Japanese and I can’t really be bothered to figure it out past だめ or 禁止 or whatever it’s saying. )

The main benefit of the program is “spaced repetition”. This is where cards are shown to you at the ideal time for you you to memorise them. There’s no point in reviewing a well known word so the program tries to show you it just before you forget it. — There’s better explanations on Anki’s site.
Its hard to evaluate the method by which the program does this but I’m willing to trust it.

I use iFlash on the mac at the moment and really like it. It also has spaced repetition based on a score. Anki might be a replacement as iFlash has become a little dormant. (however he’s promising an iPhone version when development opens up on that platform which’d be enough for me to get an iPod touch perhaps.)
But at the moment I think I prefer iFlash’s list view; which alllows me an easy overview and multiple card sides; which allows me to store notes and examples easily. However this might be possible in Anki as well.

Finally Anki has pretty good statistics features to chart your progress which would be a good incentive to learning I think.

Check it out!