Learning With Texts (LWT) is a web app that helps you break down Japanese text into smaller parts.

You provide the text (from a website, song, book, etc.) and LWT helps you isolate, look up, and learn individual words.

Pros

• Completely free!
• Export to Anki feature.
• Makes reading through Japanese texts easier.

Cons

• Can be hard to install.
• Confusing interface.

If you’ve ever tried to read some Japanese text, whether it was from a website or an ebook, then you know it can be a struggle. Switching between the text you’re reading and looking up words is a chore, and can derail your train of thought, ruining the reading experience.

Making Reading Easier

This is the problem that LWT tries to solve. By consolidating the text and the dictionary in one place, LWT hopes to make it more seamless and painless to go through foreign texts.

Not only does LWT address a common problem, but it has a lot of handy features, too. Not only can you look up unknown words, but LWT learns over time which words you know well, and which words are new to you. You can also export words to the ever-popular Anki to review them later.

Technical Problems

A big problem with LWT is that while it’s a web app, you have to host it. That means instead of just going to a website and using LWT, you have to set up a server.

This can be a real struggle for non-technical people, and even kind of a pain for tech-savvy people. In a time when most of us are used to apps that install with one click, LWT is a bit of an undertaking.

The interface isn’t especially intuitive either, so even after installing LWT, you might have to take some time to learn all of the features.

Final Word

If you’re willing to put in the time to set up and learn the ins and outs of Learning With Texts, it can become in invaluable tool.

Unfortunately though, I think that LWT is too difficult for most people to install and configure on their own, so I’m reluctant to recommend it to a wide audience. Still, it’s worth a look if you think you can tackle it.