{"id":1403,"date":"2008-12-13T01:37:32","date_gmt":"2008-12-13T08:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/?p=1403"},"modified":"2008-12-13T08:55:10","modified_gmt":"2008-12-13T15:55:10","slug":"finished-otona-no-kanji-renshuu-level-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/2008\/12\/finished-otona-no-kanji-renshuu-level-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Finished “Otona no Kanji Renshuu” Level 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After many attempts I finally passed the seventh level tests on Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu Kanzenhan<\/a> (\u306a\u305e\u3063\u3066\u304a\u307c\u3048\u308b\u5927\u4eba\u306e\u6f22\u5b57\u7df4\u7fd2\u5b8c\u5168\u7248) for the Nintendo DS. If you can read the above Japanese and are wondering what \u30a2\u30eb is, that’s my name–Al.<\/p>\n

The first six levels corresponded to how Japanese kids learn kanji<\/em> in school–200 or less a year. The 7th level was a giant leap forward and hence was much more difficult to get through. Not only are the kanji<\/em> much more difficult, on average, than those in the first 6 grades (ky\u014diku kanji<\/em> \u6559\u80b2\u6f22\u5b57), but there are also over 315 to learn and be tested on in Level 7. Ouch!<\/p>\n

Level 8 appears to give users a minor break with “only” 286 kanji<\/em> to learn. Would you believe me if I said I’m not that excited to jump into another 286 characters right away? \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

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The above screenshot shows that I can read kanji<\/em> better than I can write them which is good for me since I rarely have to write them.<\/p>\n

Here are a few more screen shots I haven’t previously shown. I’ll walk you through them in case you are thinking about purchasing this game. Explanations will be below the photos.<\/p>\n

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My normal routine is to do “Today’s practice” (the upper left big button). There you get 5 new kanji<\/em> to learn and practice reading and writing. After doing 4 of these for a total of 20 characters I move on to “Promotion test” (the middle left big button). To pass the test you have to read all 20 of the kanji<\/em> recently learned in “Today’s practice.” The characters are presented in random order and you never know if you will have to provide an on<\/em> or a kun<\/em> reading. The jukugo<\/em> words may, or may not, be the same as those you were given in “Today’s practice.”<\/p>\n

After passing the reading test, I take the writing test for the same 20 characters. Again, the questions are presented in random order. The recognition of my writing is very good by the program–much better than My Japanese Coach<\/a>, but sometimes you are given a false positive if you are slightly off or haven’t drawn the last stroke.<\/p>\n

After completing all of “Today’s practice” and “Promotion tests” for a level (except the final comprehensive exam for a level which is much more than 50% more difficult when it is over 300 characters instead of 200 characters or less) I go into “Weaknesses” (the middle big button on the right).<\/p>\n

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The above screen shows that I cleared out the final 4 kanji<\/em> I previously made a mistake on by correctly writing them this time.<\/p>\n

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Once you have mastered all of your previously missed kanji<\/em> under “Weaknesses” you earn the above certificate.<\/p>\n

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The above screen indicates that you have no previously missed kanji<\/em> to review since the top button is grayed out. The lower button can never be cleared out. It provides short, 10-question quizzes (5 reading and 5 writing) for any kanji<\/em> you have ever<\/strong> missed in the program. If you click on the lower button you see the following:<\/p>\n

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This means that at some point I incorrectly read 260 kanji<\/em> and incorrectly wrote 541 of the 1,322 kanji<\/em> studied so far. You can’t reduce these numbers by taking the 10 question quizzes and answering them correctly. This is good as you can always come back to review these kanji<\/em> that you may now know fairly well without having to wade through the ones that you know really well and never miss.<\/p>\n

The 60% indicates that when I have taken these 10 question quizzes of previously mistaken kanji<\/em> I score an average of 6 out of 10 correct (usually 4 or 5 out of 5 for the reading and 1 or 2 out of 5 on the writing in my case).<\/p>\n

I would like to see the creators (Nowpro) of this program put out a new edition of Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu Kanzenhan<\/em>. While this is the best DS game for learning Japanese that I have tried so far, three enhancements would make it even better.<\/p>\n

1) On the screen showing the on<\/em> and kun<\/em> readings, include a definition in Japanese and English.
\n2) On that same screen include three or four example jukugo<\/em>.
\n3) When a user makes a mistake reading or writing a kanji<\/em> (in any setting including the tests), take the user (or at least allow the user via a button option) to go to the on<\/em> and kun<\/em> reading page mentioned in 1 and 2.<\/p>\n

If you have mastered this DS game then you are in luck. Nowpro is coming out with a variation early in 2009. Advanced students of the Japanese language will want to check out the latest offering in this series: Imi made Wakaru Otona no Jukugo Renshuu Kadokawa Ruigo Shinjiten Kara 5-Man Mon<\/a> (\u610f\u5473\u307e\u3067\u308f\u304b\u308b\u5927\u4eba\u306e\u719f\u8a9e\u7df4\u7fd2 \u89d2\u5ddd\u985e\u8a9e\u65b0\u8f9e\u5178\u304b\u30895\u4e07\u554f).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After many attempts I finally passed the seventh level tests on Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu Kanzenhan (\u306a\u305e\u3063\u3066\u304a\u307c\u3048\u308b\u5927\u4eba\u306e\u6f22\u5b57\u7df4\u7fd2\u5b8c\u5168\u7248) for the Nintendo DS. If you can read the above Japanese and are wondering what \u30a2\u30eb is, that’s my name–Al. The first six levels corresponded to how Japanese kids learn kanji in school–200 or less a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[89,27,94],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1403"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1431,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions\/1431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}