Coming Soon And Codenamed “Kuma” – Advanced Japanese Study Materials

by 47 Comments

For the last month I’ve been working hard on advanced materials for TextFugu. During that time, some changes have happened in my mind, and one way or another (I’ll explain in a second), it came to be that instead of an advanced section for TextFugu, we’ll be putting out an entirely separate resource. If all goes well, you’ll be able to lay your sweaty fingers all over it within the month, possibly sooner if you’re a member of TextFugu already.

I also wanted to announce this new (yet unnamed) product early because I wanted some help from any of you intermediate to advanced Japanese learners out there. More on that at the end of the post, but I was hoping you could tell me a bit about how you study your Japanese in certain situations.

Before we do that, though, here’s a little bit about the resource. We’ll call it “Kuma” because, well, I have no idea, but there are several bear pictures in the prototype version.

Intermediate / Advanced: Materials will be stories and articles in Japanese. Each will include an audio recording by the native Japanese speaker who wrote it as well as an English translation.

Variety: One thing that I thought was really important was that there was a large variety of authors writing the stories/articles. Right now there are about 25 different authors and well over 100 articles/stories, and I’m hoping for that number to grow for both of those things over time. As you become more advanced, it becomes more important to learn using different types of people. Men, women, younger, older, different viewpoints on life, different dialects… All these things are Japanese, and if you don’t hear and study with all of them, you’re only learning one type of Japanese. I want to cover many types of Japanese for you.

Flexibility & Simplicity: The goal of “Kuma” is to provide the materials. What you do with said materials is up to you. The more advanced you are at Japanese, the better you should be at knowing how you study best. I want to provide materials that allow you to study the things you need to study most. Need listening practice? Grab the audio and put it on your phone to listen to. Need reading practice? Go for it. Need to practice speaking? Why not try language shadowing? By keeping things simple, you have the flexibility to do what you want. TextFugu is more about hand-holding, “Kuma” is more about letting you do what you please.

It Is A Paid Service: Before you ask, yes, it is a paid service. Heavy discounts for early adopters. I haven’t decided on the final price point, but it will be similar to TextFugu when at full price. Probably will be a discount for TextFugu users, kind of like how WaniKani has a discount for TextFugu users.

Current TextFugu Members Get It Free: If you’re a Forever member of TextFugu before “Kuma” goes live, you’ll be getting a Forever account of “Kuma” as well. Obviously “Kuma” was supposed to be part of TextFugu before it grew into the monster size that it is, so it’s only fair that you guys get it for free as well. Monthly members at TextFugu will also be getting some free time on “Kuma” as well.

Bears: It will probably have bears. Bears are pretty cool.

I was really surprised to get as much of a response as I did from native Japanese speakers interested in making materials for advanced learners to study with. I was hoping to find one or two people. I ended up with around twenty-five. The amount of materials is still blowing me away, and it has caused this to become a very large project, much bigger than I thought it would be.

Right now I’m at the stage where I’m trying to create a template that will work for all or most of the materials, and this is where you come in (I hope!). Say you are given some Japanese text, the audio that goes with it, and an English translation… what do you do? How do you study with it? Let me know in the comments below for one hundred fugu points, redeemable for good karma at your local Buddha Bank.

Oh, and as for when you can use it… well, it will go something like this in terms of priority:

  1. TextFugu Members
  2. Wanikani Premium Members
  3. Tofugu Newsletter Subscribers

So, if anything, be sure you’re subscribed to the newsletter so good things will happen to you. I’m hoping for the first invites to be sent out within a month. Don’t forget to tell me how you’d study with these materials in the comments below. It will help me to design a better lesson template!

  • AlJAf

    Hellooo! Just wanted to say that I think this is a super fantastic idea and it’s very fitting that it’s a separate enterprise from TextFugu. So I’ve spent last year learning Japanese in a formal setting and finished that year where most studying was in the form of either speeches/role-plays or reading texts. Having reverted back to a being a self-learner, I always look back on those texts I studied – I feel that useful texts are the hardest things to come by (newspapers can be boring/have not got into the groove of that and the dorama script learning you’ve posted about takes a while and is totally different to studying a text).

    So this is how I’d go about it: I’d listen to the audio once (or a couple of times depending on the difficulty of the text) without script (until I have a gist of the passage). I would then listen to the audio with the script, underlining unknown words, kanji and grammar. Would then go through the script decoding unknowns and looking things up on the internet as necessary (including cultural references/maybe some history etc.). Finally when everything is understood, I would relisten to the audio. Probably would only resort to the english translation as a last resort (definitely shouldn’t be in the first study session.. understanding of some complicated grammar structures sometimes sorts itself out after a good night’s sleep ;)).

    But anyways, this sounds like a really exciting deal! Please include lots of japanese fables and folk stories e.g. the Crane Wife/historical texts/passages on cultural items and generally things that can teach you about Japanese history and culture!!! E.g. you could have find a passage on Hokusai. I remember in one of my classes, the text was all about gestures – comparing hand gestures in Japan and the rest of the world. I thought it was a pretty silly topic on first impressions but actually in hindsight it was quite useful! That up-down (palm to the side) thing Japanese people do when they’re trying to get through a crowd.. hehe wouldn’t really have realised that this is the done thing. Anyway, lol I know you didn’t ask for comments of the content but anyway, I’m chou excited kekeke.

  • rabideau

    i think i fit right in with the intermediate/advanced crowd you’re talking about here, and i was trying out textfugu on a monthly basis until just last week. unfortunately, i just couldn’t get into textfugu because of the pacing…

    but i absolutely LOVE wanikani.

    so here’s my suggestion for a listening activity:
    1. give a japanese listening activity and an input box for users to try their best at transcribing the japanese as they hear
    2. highlight any transcription errors for the user, so that they can listen again and fix their errors
    3. give a second box for translation once most (80-90%) of transcription is correct
    4. display english translation at user request

    this takes time, but even one activity like this a day would be terrific.

    as for readings, i think simply supplying a translation box for users to translate as they read would be a useful way to check their understanding as they move along.

  • Dave Terhune

    First off, I really like this idea. Especially the part about lifetime TextFugu members getting their lifetime membership extended to it. But I’m pretty sure I would have paid for it even if you hadn’t done that. In other words, I like your products, if you haven’t guessed already. :)

    I would probably do something similar to what I did with the alien visit dream story at the end of TextFugu:
    1. Plug the Japanese text and audio into Learning With Texts
    2. Listen to the audio and try to follow along with the text
    3. Look up unfamiliar terms and enter their definitions/readings
    4. Try to read it again
    5. Now look at the English translation to see how close I got
    6. Study the unfamiliar terms and grammar points (probably make Anki flashcards for this step, as the LWT study/test feature isn’t as good)
    7. Every so often, return to the text and try to read it again
    8. Be surprised at how much more I understand
    9. Repeat with further texts

  • besterthenyou

    Hi, as a member of TextFugu, I can’t wait. Anyway, here’s how I study:

    If it were me, I would find an author I like. From there, I would read what they write. I would listen to the audio, but more for the sake of being able to. I would then find someone who’s entertaining to listen to. I would listen to them in my spare time, be it on my iPod or my computer, etc. Also, I would then compare it to the English translations to see if I stumbled, and if so, where. A few days later, when the finer details have left my head, I would go back and read it to test my reading comprehension (thanks WaniKani :D).

    Also, I would (for the translation) put the Japanese and English side by side. Then there should be a word-by-word translation under each of the words. Or something like that.

    Maybe also a way to export vocabulary lists based off of the words used, so that I can practice. It would be useful if I could check off which words to export though. Maybe you could flag words you have trouble with, and “Kuma” would suggest translations using those words to help you get a hang of them.

  • KaLuLo

    I’m more of an early intermediate, so may not be the target audience, but i think it be great to have the entire audio available to listen to at the top of the post (perhaps with a box to transcribe/take notes next to it). Below that, a link to reveal the entire written text, and for each sentence or paragraph or chunk of text, to be able to click on it and have the audio read (so you can practice your pronunciation along with text and can do one chunk again and again until you get it down). And maybe next to that have a box to write in your translation and the option to reveal actual translation line by line to compare your work.

  • Mark

    Great Idea, looking forward to it!

    I’m pretty much in the target audience, since I’m probably about intermediate (although my speaking skills, not so much haha)

    My study method basically consists of watching and reading a lot of Japanese stuff, and MCDing any words I don’t know. Kuma will be very helpful for me I think since it basically provides reading for me to do this with.

  • Mark

    I have to say I think a translation box would be a hinderance rather than a help; Especially at intermediate/advanced level, you should be aiming to understand without having to translate everything, and on top of this, it would be practically impossible to provide for every nuance of how it could be translated into English (eg. I could say “I went to town by bus” you could say “I took the bus to town”, both of us are right, which do you say is correct?)

  • rabideau

    to clarify, i don’t think an auto-correct of the translation would be a good idea. (though an auto-correct of the transcription would be good for listening).

    i was thinking more along the lines of an empty “translation notes” box that you could populate with your native language as you go along, to keep track of your comprehension. otherwise, it might be fairly easy to gloss over the passage, think you understood it, and find that the correct translation was different in ways you could no longer remember (especially in longer passages)

    i understand that you “shouldn’t have to translate” at advanced levels, but what other metric is there for determining which pieces of a passage were understood and which weren’t, if not a translation into your native language?

  • Altrag

    I’m not sure what I’d do with the audio, but for the text I think it would be great if it would only show one side at a time with an option (click for a popup or something) to translate a phrase/sentence at a time. Not entirely sure what the best way to divvie that up would be without knowing what the source material looks like. What I’m looking at is the ability to read a sentence in one language, translate for myself and then compare my translation to the “real” translation.

    If you want to go the extra mile, include a scratch pad where I can write in my translation prior to reviewing the official translation (so that I don’t have to try and keep an entire potentially complicated sentence in my head at once.) This also opens up the possibility of displaying community translations for further comparison, though I can’t think of any meaningful way to make that beneficial to learning (on the other hand, you can’t discount social pressure as a motivator so perhaps just having the stuff there would aid in learning in a more indirect manner rather than being useful in itself.. who knows.)

    It would also be nice if there was a several “official” translations in order to compensate for the fact that not everybody translates things the same way. For example, I’ve seen even a simple 「はい！」 get translated anywhere from “yes” to “yes, sir!” all the way up to things like “I’ll get on that right away!” Never mind more complex sentences that might have varying nuances depending on the translator. Having multiple translations (especially if they’re done blindly from each other) would help I think.

    And finally, potential for linking up TF/WK accounts. For example, if you include grammar point explanations then those could perhaps be in some way connected to your TF level and make you go through an extra hoop to show things you “should” know (or more importantly, making it easier to realize you’re looking at something you haven’t learned yet and shouldn’t stress over it so much.) I don’t know how well (or even if) TF tracks your progress though so that particular link might not be practical at this time.

    WK on the other hand definitely could be linked in this way to automatically provide furigana for words that the user hasn’t yet learned, and again making the user go out of their way to pull up the furigana for words they should know.

  • Tachypsychia

    I’ll answer your question if you answer one of mine!

    I’d listen to the audio first. I know I have a harder time translating based on sound/conversation and that’s how people talk to each other. I’d try to listen to it, and translate it first. Then I’d try to write it down myself (if that was an option, to hear before I could see it) After that, I’d compare my written answer to the one provided, then again to the english translation to see if I interpreted it correctly!

    My concern with the extra project (although much needed for language study) is how much time you can stretch between all the sites! Tofugu, not so much worried about, but WaniKani content and TextFugu as well! Lots of stuff to work on. As a beginning learner, I already see slight issues trying to sync my learning between the two sites with the kanji.

    Looking forward to the new resources!

  • Paladin341

    It makes me want to shed bear tears, I’m so happy.

  • AMU

    Yay! I have been waiting for textfugu update for so long! Almost got a heart attack when I saw ‘paid service’ then I realized that forever textfugu members get it for free and kind of came back to life…thank you thank you thank you!!!

  • http://www.facebook.com/fredrik.dausel Fredrik Dausel

    This is so nice! I was sad because I’m tight on money, but then it said that Forever members of TextFugu get it for free! Much appreciated<3

  • Hugo Miranda

    Hi. From my experience with visual novels, text and audio at the same time is a very effective study method. But once you run into an unknown (or forgotten) word/kanji its very hard to keep up with the audio. It would be nice to have the ability to control the audio playback.

  • besterthenyou

    Oooh… that makes me think. But making a Tofugu themed comic would be too hard… but it would be cool to see.

  • Joce

    Hello! Unlike most of the commenters here I’m not a Textfugu subscriber but I am currently learning Japanese in university, till the end of this semester. I was initially thinking of self-studying by reading light novels plus the minna no nihongo textbook series, after stopping my formal Japanese lessons in university cos I don’t want it to affect my CAP hahaha. But after reading about Kuma, I think this will really value-add to my original plan!

    This is how I would use Kuma (:
    1. Start with ‘easier’ articles (will the articles be categorised by difficulty? I think it’d be a good idea to do so!) and attempt to read through once, underlining the words I don’t know.
    2. Check each underlined word against the dictionary and note down the reading and meaning.
    3. Double check with the English translation to see if I have understood the article correctly.
    4. Make necessary changes to my annotations.
    5. While listening to the audio file, shadow read the article and try to match the native speaker’s reading speed.
    6. Repeat step 5 until I can read as fast as the native speaker, without the help of the audio file.

    Yup! That’s more or less how I would go about it (:
    I just signed up for the newsletter (: Can’t wait for Kuma to be launched!

  • Jessica May

    Anyways, as a long-time language learner (in Japanese but also in English, which isn’t my first language), I really found out that translating what you read/hear can be a severe obstacle. Actually, to really master a foreign language you need to make sense out of this language itself without using your native language.

    I don’t know if I can explain it well, but when I read a text in a foreign language (say Japanese), I try to grasp the IDEA of what happens rather than putting it into words (or form a mental image of the situation, if that sounds clearer). When I read the translation afterwards, I quickly see if I misunderstood everything or if I got the hang of the situation (and if my version really differs with the translated version, I go back to the text and analyse the sentences I didn’t understand).

    Also, I don’t know how far you’ve gone in your learning but there are a lot of little subtleties in the Japanese language that can’t very well translate in English (like the differences in language speech, the values of some grammatical forms, etc.) So when you really can’t understand a sentence, the best thing to do (in my opinion) is to ‘analyse’ it: is that word a topic,subject, object? What tense is used and why? Which parts determine others? etc.

    Hum I didn’t expect it to be that long, sorry if I got a little too enthusiastic :-$ Anyways, these would be my advice as a fellow language-learner and future language teacher!

    As for the question in the article, I don’t use online ressources a lot so I’m not sure if this can help, but I would either read the Japanese text before and then listen to the audio (since listening is my weak point), or on the contrary try to make sense out of the audio and then read the text. I wouldn’t use the translation unless I really don’t understand the text, and in any case I wouldn’t read the translation and the original text at the same time (because most of the time you end up reading the translation without a glance at the original text).

  • http://www.facebook.com/joao.pegado.9 João Pegado

    HI Koichi and all the others at tofugu.

    I’m a recent reader of your blog, and user of Wanikani.

    I started to have japanese class a couple of months ago, and besides that Wanikani is really effective in the kanji learning area.
    Every day I try to learn something new in the japanese language, from practicing the kana, learn new kanji and grammar as well.

    But I think what would be really helpfull would be, easy reading japanese textes/stories with furigana to help me reading the kanji and as well as some kind of podcasts for some basic listening.

    Cheers,

    JP

  • http://thepretentiousgamer.blogspot.com Rachel

    Whenever I read Japanese along with its translation, I get stuck on verbs. I’d love to read about a grammar point, and then read stuff that has that point (and nothing harder). It’s really satisfying to understand every word and how they’re used in a sentance… but that hardly ever happens in the wild ;;; (so maybe links to relevant grammar topics, like “what are all the “re”s in this verb about.”)

  • AlJaf

    Totally agree with what you have written! I think learning Japanese on a personal level (learning to understand) is totally different being able to translate Japanese. I think a person can have very high comprehension yet also not be able to translate into English prettily. And what you’ve written about the subtleties is very very very true Jessica May! Lol to have to try and include the subtleties of some grammar forms would be a nightmare. The subtleties would definitely either get lost in translation or end up in some weird English that one would never want to have taking up brain space..

    And anyway, once you get to a certain level in a language, don’t teachers usually make an effort to zone out translation into English/other language? Obviously.. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t translate into English but essentially the higher up the learning ladder you go the less you should be using it. So it would end up that eventually (or ideally) to prove comprehension you would explain the story in Japanese using your own words.

    Other things to add:
    You could possibly make comprehension questions to answer at the end of each passage and have model answers available somewhere..?
    Or attach a word-list or grammar-list for each passage (things that someone at that level would not know) that is to be studied/looked over before reading? i think the word/kanji list would definitely be useful (especially if split into common/uncommon words, so if you want, you don’t have to spend time learning words you won’t often meet)!

  • Jon

    Yes. Yes! YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSS! This sounds awesome! The main thing that stops me from practicing my Japanese is because the difficulty of stuff I find is just all over the place. I don’t know if I’ll be able to read a sentence in 20 seconds, or if it’ll look like squiggles to me. If I know I won’t have to look up every single word and grammatical structure I come across, I’ll be much more likely to read it. But if it’s too easy, I’d probably think I’m just wasting my time (unless what I’m reading is legitimately interesting). It doesn’t help that I tend to overreach in terms of difficulty.

    I think you should put a sample up, like you did with Tofugu. Not every story, of course, just 2 or 3. If it seems nice, I think I’ll be quite likely to spend money on it. This all depends on the price, of course. Some things on the internet are worth spending money on, but some things are just too expensive (and I’m a bit of a cheapskate). I’d love to purchase those Japanese Graded Readers, but they’re not cheap.

    While I’m at it, if you’re putting a lot of bears in the book, you should include a picture of Teddy Roosevelt riding a bear with a flamethrower of doom. Well, maybe not Teddy Roosevelt, so maybe use that famous Japanese swordsman guy that beat another guy with an oar (or something like that). I can’t remember his name, but I’m pretty sure it starts with an M. I think he was even in one of the articles here.

  • http://twitter.com/arterismos Arterismos

    Ahhh! This makes me motivated to pick up the pace on Textfugu. I’m still at beginner-intermediate level.

  • http://twitter.com/shollum Shollum

    It’s great to hear that y’all are adding an intermediate/advanced resource to the Tofugu family of institutional rebellion products!

    As for the question posed: if given those materials, I would probably listen to the audio while reading along without looking at the translation first, then reread it again in more detail to catch anything I didn’t understand (possibly while replaying the audio). Then I might put the recordings on a device (if that’s allowed) and listen to them at the gym or something as review.
    I think that the English should be hidden by default, whether in a ‘spoiler’ function or otherwise. It’s hard not to look at something easier to read when it’s right in front of your face.

    Also, will the translations be like translated articles, glosses, or what? I personally think glosses would be better for getting used to Japanese grammar patterns, but translations might give a better idea of phrase nuances.

    By the way, I’m mostly focused on reading and listening (with reading being the priority), if that helps put my thoughts into perspective.

  • Miss N’Donna

    I’m so excited for this! I guess I’m an “intermediate” learner now that I’ve completed my first “intense” year of Japanese, and I could always use an extra learning resource. I have a forever account too with Textfugu, so I’m going to need this. Thank you!

  • Daniel Grilli

    I think this whole project is an amazing idea and could provide a bit of structure and support to intermediate/advanced Japanese learners. I am very interested.

    I try to use iKnow everyday to get my vocab up and every now and then I read an article on asahi.com or something but like someone mentioned earlier, it’s hard to find something interesting (and newspapers have a STEEP learning curve).

    Anyway, the reason I replied to AIJaf’s comment was that I also think some comprehension style questions (in Japanese of course) would be a great idea to go from simply skimming over a piece and thinking you’ve understood it to having to properly think about what you’ve read.

  • Yumi

    Cool! :D

    Well, there’d probably be some new vocabulary in each text, so I’d make a list and Anki of these. Unless you provide it :)
    Then, I’d try to use that vocab, by writing a text about that topic, talking about it (to myself…) or find some more recources on the net. Just get that vocab in my head. Idea for you: You could describe a word that’s in the text and students have to find it. Kinda like Taboo. Or verce visa, you name a word, and students have to describe. Incredibly helpful, cause that’s waht you have to do in real life, if you don’t know a word.
    It would be perfect of course, if there was a forum for each text, so students could talk about that topic using the very vocab it includes and by that learning it. (Yes, I’m a classroom person ^^)
    If there’s any grammar, new or forgotten, I’d also look up that and practice a bit, until I got it. So in case it’s clearly new or unusual, you could explain and create a little exercise.
    That audio is a marvellous idea. Might listen to that repetitevelyon the go or while doing the household. …Learning best while moving and stuff ;) No seriously, having an audio with a text is great, especially in different accents. Will there be different levels as well? (Yeah, I know, more advanced, but there’s like upper intermediate, advanced, proficiency…)

  • Apraxas

    熊プロジェクトはとても凄いですね。

    どうもありがとうございます、こういち先生。

  • Jo Somebody

    I am nowhere near advanced or even intermediate, but want to contribute my opinion and I agree with the ‘other things you could add’ that you’ve listed. Word lists and grammar lists would be good, especially split the way you have described into common and uncommon.

    I hear what you and Jessica are saying about translation, but I still think and English translation of each article should be available (but NOT right beside the original).

    Taking Rabideau’s idea of text boxes and shaking it up a bit, there could be a ‘summary’ textbox at the end for the user to right their summary of the article *in Japanese*, which can then be shared and if necessary, corrected by other users.

  • Jo Somebody

    Yes, I like the idea of a comprehension mini-quiz.

  • Jo Somebody

    Yes to the furigana on not-yet-WK’ed words!

  • Helen

    Here is my (totally unoriginal) massive essay on what I’d do:

    1.Listen to the audio and try to guess what the article was about. At this point it would be great to be able to choose ‘normal speed’ and ‘slow speed’ as well as to pause and rewind.
    2. Look at the Japanese text only (Please can the English be hidden, or I will read it. Seriously. Even if there’s a little icon right by it like on Textfugu,the temptation is too high. Maybe a Japanese only page and a Japanese and English page? I’m also lazy so that would be enough to put a stop to it.)
    3. Try to read it. Come across words I don’t know, highlight them. Look them up.
    4. Make an Anki deck of all the unknown words (if there was one provided that would be super-duper).
    5. Drill that for a few days until I’m pretty happy with it.
    6. Re-read the article, hopefully understanding and enjoying it.
    7. Check the English article to be sure.
    8. Listen to the audio endlessly as I do other things because I am atrocious at listening. (In fact, if there were some kind of audio-based quiz that would be amazing, again with it being even slightly difficult to opt-out and just read a text quiz because *I cannot be trusted*.)
    9. Try to apply the words/grammar/phrases I have learned in Lang-8 entries and on Skype chats.
    10. Review the swathe of corrections this generates :p
    11. ???
    12. Profit

    P.S.
    Thank you for making it free for lifetime Textfugu members. Actually, thank you for making a lifetime option at all, currently the lack of one is the only thing putting me off getting WaniKani.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1090813738 Tami Hz

    I hope I would be able to download to audio so I can listen in the car or doing the dishes. I’m beginning-intermediate, so I’ll be picking out the easiest-looking ones so see how I fair- so if they were ranked by level, that would be helpful. If there is no furigana or romanji for the kanji, I will not be using this service.

  • http://twitter.com/bomblol Rick Sheahan

    I think it’s awesome that you are grandfathering in TF lifetime members. After finally putting in the effort to learn grammar and phrasing rather than just drilling kanji, it’s a pretty convenient time for me, personally.

    How I would (and do) approach the type of material you would offer is either to listen to the audio by itself first to see what I can pick up, which is usually not that much. Then I read the Japanese text, which usually offers better understanding by far for me since my reading/writing is so far ahead of speaking/hearing. At that point, I’ll probably read the English text afterwards, regardless- either to verify that I got it right, or to get a handle on what it was saying in the first place if I didn’t understand it well. Afterwards I’ll probably listen to the audio again. I’ll also probably put important concepts, new words or phrases, etc in evernote or an anki deck or a bookmark.

  • Yawnorama

    This sounds good. I’ve finished textfugu and felt that in the end the content thinned out. so this will be a nice addition.

  • besterthenyou

    I don’t think there would be roumaji (no n, and long o, but long vowels usually aren’t marked in roumaji anyway). There might be furigana though. If nothing else, you could download “furigana injector”. It’s free, and just click on it when you need to insert furigana.

    For Chrome:https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/furigana-injector/cbahnmcliajmanjkaolemjelphicnein?hl=en

    For Firefox:https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/furigana-injector/

    From there, just Google it for other browsers (and don’t tell me you’re using IE, if you are. If you are, just stahp it!).

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=603109477 Karu Elric

    All of this sounds really nice, but I am really wondering when the next Textfugu is coming out.
    Any info on that yet?

  • Knicky

    Thank you! Finally! I think I have emailed you about “advanced” materials for at least the last two years. I beta-tested wani-kani and it was awesome but still…needed some Japanese advanced learning materials!

  • spacelunchbox

    As someone said below, it would be *great* to have vocabulary lists accompanying each article.

    Probably would be worthwhile having tags on each article as well, so you can have stuff like #N2, #editorial, or #N1 #diaryentry. Basically any division of levels would be appreciated when going through each article.

  • Niklas Barsk

    Will Bear users get access to or a discount of TextFugu as well? I’m not a TextFugu member since I think I already know most of what it offers but when I sign up with Bear it would be nice to be able to consult some things in TextFugu from time to time without having to buy a lifetime subscription to TextFugu before Bear is released.

  • On the DL

    P4

  • http://twitter.com/FernandoPuch Fernando Puch

    It’ll be very useful to have the text, audio and translation because it opens up multiple possibilities. I might start with the text, reading it aloud, and then compare with the audio. Or I could start with the audio and transcribe it, then compare with the text. I could also start with the English version and translate it into Japanese, then check how differently a native speaker would really say that. ^^’

    Anyway it’ll be a great resource because in Anime/Manga characters don’t express themselves much in the same way as “real” people do. And with songs the lyrics are too poetic. And with newspaper articles the text is too formal and there is no audio.

    Having this resource will probably be the closest thing to having a native tell you their story in person, except it’s better because you can pause, rewind, take your time understand things and look up the jisho etc. (:

  • SilverFen

    I’d probably first see if I could read the text all by myself. If I couldn’t, I would look at the Japanese side-by-side with the English and study the sentence structures and unknown vocabulary. I’d create new lists of vocabulary to memorize based on the unknown words as well as practice new sentence types I didn’t already know how to make.

    If I could read something without the English help page, I’d try reading it aloud myself and then listen to the audio portion to see if I was pronouncing things well or not. Perhaps even use my own recording features to record myself so I couldn’t cheat along the way. Work on my pronunciation of Japanese and get a feel how familiar phrases are said by different people. I would love it if there was a section where common phrases were said by 5-10 different people, so we could hear how the same sentence may sound slightly different when said by different people. Perhaps I could find a way of saying it that is correct, but feels natural for myself. I mean in English there are a lot of ways to greet someone familiarly, not everyone says “Hello” some say “Howdy y’all” or “Hiya” – but all are perfectly valid in casual conversation.

    It would be nice to have video of people interacting in simple situations – like seeing how a new student would greet their new teacher vs greeting another student vs greeting a parent. Have maybe some 5 minute conversations where we see video and audio of interactions. I really liked those in my French class.

    If my pronunciation was fairly good, then I’d go with the hardest part for me – listening to what is being said in the audio, and trying to translate it out into English on my own, then compare my translations with the translations online – see how close mine are. Did I really understand what was being said? Having a feature that would allow us to slow down or speed up the audio would be nice as well. Some of us may not be able to understand the speech at full speed, so slowing it to half speed or 3/4 speed may be nice for us.

    It would be fun to also have pictures or something and then an audio that asks us a question about the picture. For example, show us a picture of (from left to right) a pencil, ball, and apple. Then have the audio ask us “What is to the left of the ball?” (In Japanese of course) and we have to come up with the answer. Then be able to reveal the answer which would have the option of being given in English written, Japanese written, or Japanese audio – or maybe all 3 – so we can check our own answers. Picture of people doing things, pictures that ask us to identify objects or feelings people may be having or where they are or are going. Stuff like that. Get us to come up with answers to questions based on a fake situation.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jessamyn.hays Jessamyn Hays

    I really appreciate finding audio to match the text I’m trying to read. It really helps me out, because I’ll have reinforcement from both sides, if I’m missing some detail from either side it gets filled in unless I really don’t know the word. I don’t usually get an English translation with my audio and Japanese text unless it’s some package reader book with an audio disk. Then I’m at the mercy of the tastes of the editor.

    What I like to do is scan the text to see how hard it is comparatively. Then I make sure I’m not going to be too distracted by other things. Then I get straight to trying to read it with the audio in the background. Every time I don’t get something, or get lost or out of sync – I pause the audio and backtrack to the point I got lost. So if I’m just not getting something, I add that something to a growing list of things to go over after I’ve read through the text the first time. The next step is where I write down the words and their meaning a few times, because writing things helps my memory.

    THEN I’ll reread the material at a later date with the audio, theoretically armed with my new knowledge and it should be easier to read. It usually isn’t, but looking everything up again gets it that much closer to learned. The third time I re-read something, I’m usually sick of looking things up, so if I don’t know something very well – tough, I’m contexting it and moving on.

    Now, this is a pretty casual approach and I’m sure I should be making SRS entries with these words or something, but I really like reading more than making SRS entries so I don’t often get around to that. It also depends on how interesting the content is. If I get bored I’m going to wander off and not re-read it at all. Or if it’s too hard and I don’t have enough context to ‘read’ while still skipping words here and there, I’ll put it aside for later. That’s what happened with my Japanese copy of Harry Potter, sadly. OMG the weirdest things are so not child level reading in that – and the katakana on the British words that didn’t get translated into kanji for some reason like “mantle” I spent far too much time trying to puzzle out words that weren’t even Japanese and just gave up without finishing the second chapter.

  • http://www.twitter.com/christaran Chris Taran

    Would definitely love to see conversations. I find them much more helpful when studying than just a single person speaking.

  • Bernardo Coelho

    Dr. Slump’s?

  • Rochelle

    This is fantastic. I can’t wait. And in terms of layout… I’m used to using Rikaichan a lot, but honestly, looking left or right for the translation I need and then the actual material is a bit dizzying. I think it’d be cool to have a gloss beneath (if writing left-to-right) each word-thing, maybe one that does the Ruby-disappearing act if I don’t hover over it.

    Usually, the download for the audio is at the top, but wherever, it’s got to be easy to find.

  • Phy

    Man, that’s in Tanuki Koji in Sapporo. I know cuz I live there… and I’m from Portland. WEIRD.