Newbie Quizzes - Why only Kanji?

[matchettc]

Hi all,

I'm restarting learning Japanese with vigour after a long break. The last time I learnt was at SOAS in London but I only had time to complete 2 terms. I'll be going there again in September but want to revise and start learning earlier. So I'm toying with the idea of a 6 month subscription. Shame the trial doesn't let you trial the premium iTunes feed. I've actually been a listener of the podcast on and off since day 1. I have all several hundred of them waiting to be listened to properly.

Anyhoo my question. I'm racing through the Newbie lessons. Although they are easy for me I wanted to use the quizzes along with hiragana practice to get back up to speed ready for beginner again. Even though the on-iPod lesson notes are romaji only the Content, Vocab and Grammar quizzes are all in full kanji. That's just stupid. Really, for newbie level it should be romaji available until at least beginner and even than at that point to have hiragana and katakana as the 'easiest' level of reading. Having written questions as kanji is of no use.

I can't find the thread I saw this in (otherwise would have added to that existing topic) but somewhere a jpod101 staffer suggested those quizzes were for more advanced kanji literate students to come back to later. There's 2 things wrong with this:
A - Advanced students are hardly likely to come back to hajimemashite lessons are they?
B - You haven't provided any quizzes for the newbies!

Rant over...


Chris (5 days left in trial)

[watermen]

Hi all,

I'm restarting learning Japanese with vigour after a long break. The last time I learnt was at SOAS in London but I only had time to complete 2 terms. I'll be going there again in September but want to revise and start learning earlier. So I'm toying with the idea of a 6 month subscription. Shame the trial doesn't let you trial the premium iTunes feed. I've actually been a listener of the podcast on and off since day 1. I have all several hundred of them waiting to be listened to properly.

Anyhoo my question. I'm racing through the Newbie lessons. Although they are easy for me I wanted to use the quizzes along with hiragana practice to get back up to speed ready for beginner again. Even though the on-iPod lesson notes are romaji only the Content, Vocab and Grammar quizzes are all in full kanji. That's just stupid. Really, for newbie level it should be romaji available until at least beginner and even than at that point to have hiragana and katakana as the 'easiest' level of reading. Having written questions as kanji is of no use.

I can't find the thread I saw this in (otherwise would have added to that existing topic) but somewhere a jpod101 staffer suggested those quizzes were for more advanced kanji literate students to come back to later. There's 2 things wrong with this:
A - Advanced students are hardly likely to come back to hajimemashite lessons are they?
B - You haven't provided any quizzes for the newbies!

Rant over...


Chris (5 days left in trial)

To answer your questions:
A. Even tough I am not really advanced student, but I think my level is around the lower intermediate level, I do find it fun to go back to listen to those hajimemashite lessons, it is a very good revision. Those lessons are very good. I will still go back when I am more advanced.

B. Quizzes? You can actually go straight to beginner lessons, they are the real beginner lessons. The newbie lessons are not progressive, and they are not really newbie. But they are very good companion for the beginner series 1.

If you really want to improve your Japanese fast, listen to all 170 beginner lessons, that will bring you to lower intermediate level.

[matchettc]

Thanks for the advice and I'll see how that goes. The early beginner lessons that do have quizzes do indeed have romaji.

However JPod101 should be sorting out the newbie quizzes anyway. They are premium content and that means that outside the original 7 day trial they are paid for content. If I see paid for content that is lacking in quality then I am less likely to pay for it when me trial ends.

[Javizy]

I haven't tried any of the quizzes, but maybe they use kanji covered in the lesson? If not, try using Rikaichan since it reads them for you. It does seem kind of strange that they would be in full kanji without any kana. As for the romaji though, I'd get off it as soon as possible. It only takes a week or so to learn kana, and then you just have to put up with being a slow reader until you get used to it, which doesn't take too long.

[matchettc]

No seriously they don't even cover hiragana in the lesson. It's newbie lesson numbers 1 and 2. The lesson notes on the iPod don't even have kana. There's no reason to have kanji at this stage - at least not targetted at newbies.

Personally I could cope with no romaji. It would be tough because my kana is very very rusty at this stage.

[markystar]

i can't speak for the old newbie series (i wasn't involved with jpod at that time, and this is the first i've heard of this, so i'll go back and take a look tonight), but the current newbie series provided Kanji, Hiragana and Romaji for the content questions, etc...

take a look here at last week's newbie lesson
http://www.japanesepod101.com/learningc ... _questions

the questions in the iLearning Center should be the same.

if this is an old lesson, send an e-mail to and we'll address the issue as soon as possible. you're totally right, full-on kanji with no hiragana or romaji is like throwing a baby into the deep end of the pool and expecting it to do the backstroke.

marky

[Kitreiki]

I just joined today and I was looking at the newbie lessons. I am also trying to review and then continue learning. The content questions have kanji and no furigana. I don't know many kanji, so I was surprised. I guess the kanji are the ones used in the lesson, but it was a bit unnerving to be staring at kanji when you have just got back to using kana.