Postby MichaelMcDonald » December 15th, 2008 8:15 pm
Since you can only vote for one, I chose 'Japanese', although I use 'Japanese Flip' almost just as much. In fact, I've recently started switching back and forth between the two: after seeing a word in Japanese Flip that I don't know or remember, I switch over to Japanese and look it up, reviewing the separate kanji characters in the word and their separate meanings - especially useful is Japanese's usage examples in other compounds.
I find this a really efficient way to study new words. I'm only on JLPT level 3 in Japanese Flip, but I've been stuck recently so I'm hoping this new approach will help me. I'm also using Japanese to finally read some manga books in japanese (宇宙戦艦ヤマト), looking up basically every single kanji word - but usually understanding most of it, which was my original goal in starting to learn japanese in the first place just 11 months ago. Japanesepod101.com definitely gets most of the credit for getting me hooked and keeping my interest up the entire time. I took JLPT 4 last week and I'm sure I did really well, again thanks mostly to japanesepod101!
m.