Renshuu.org - Study Japanese Online

I just wanted to publicly profess my love for the new Renshuu. I had planned to spend half an hour oggling over my new Johnny's calendar, but I ended up spending that half an hour playing around the new site. Worksheets - genius move. Grammar quizzes - another genius move. The hanko? Fun and adorable! It actually influenced my to buy pro so I could play around with the worksheets and grammar quizzes more than a non-pro user.

Anybody else in love?

PS: This is still 秋子、I just changed my icon.

Glad you like it! I plan on greatly expanding the worksheets in the future, and I've already got several more user achievements to add as well

The new version of the site is awesome! Great job! I hope you get a lot of new subscribers to Pro, it's really worthwhile!

Did I somehow miss "flashcards"?
-Mike

I think she? meant worksheets.

I also think the new renshuu site looks fantastic but it's a bit glitchy. For example, the header to the forum now is all wonky requiring me to scroll a lot. Also, the dictionary isn't pulling up words on the first try and requires a second or third push of the search button. And the font is way too big in the dictionary now making it actually harder to read the words as you're too focused on this children's looking font.

But other than those glitches, it looks good so far. I know I need to explore some more.

PS. One of my favorite parts of the site is the dictionary. If that could be fixed it'd be great. And I totally think you should turn that dictionary into an app. I would definitely pay to have that on my iPod touch without having to go to an internet browser.

Sounds like a browser issue - can you tell me what browser/version you're using, so I can look into it?

In addition, if you can get (either posted here, or emailed me to michael@renshuu.org) a screenshot showing me how you see the dictionary, that'll help me out a lot.

The forums/dictionary/etc. work fine for me, so I have no doubt that I can make them work just as well for you.

The glitches seem to have smoothed themselves out as I can tell. I use Google Chrome as my browser.

For the dictionary though, I know I liked it when before you could just type in one kanji and then click on "beginning of word", "whole word", "end of word" so that in case you only new one kanji within a compound it could still pull it up.

In case that doesn't make sense: Say for example, someone wanted to look up 番組 but could only remember the 番 kanji but knew they'd recognize 番組 if they could just see it. Well, if you just put the 番 into the field it would pull up every word that starts with that kanji so you could find the desired compound you were looking for. That's no longer working now.

1. It might have been that you had a leftover file from the old version that caused the header to appear improper.

2. There was a different visual glitch that obscured the 'allow non-exact answer' option; that should be visible now. I was able to pull up that example that you gave once I checked that option. Is that working for you?

No, it's still not working. I tried logging out of renshuu even to see if that would restart it but if I type just 番 into the field under Vocab Dictionary it only pulls up 番 and つがい. No other fields come up.

And as I mentioned before, are you going to bring back the "beginning of word", "whole word", "end of word" option fields?

That's extremely strange - The two results that you gave come up if the box isn't checked, and a ton of results come up when the box is checked.

Do me a favor if you can - hold down shift and press the refresh button on Chrome (just to the left of the address bar) and see if that fixes it.

To answer your question: the 'non exact answers' field is a combination of the 'beginning/end' options, and 'whole word' is when the 'use nonexact answers' is unchecked. At this time, I'm not planning on bringing it back in the near future; I'll be happy to consider a way to include more advanced functions in the next development round of the site, but one of the main goals of the new version out now was to simplify various areas of the site while trying to maintain as much of the original functionality as possible.

Okay, yeah, the option is there now. Although, definitely slower than it used to be. An unfortunate consequence of the new site.

Thanks for answering my questions though.

I might make some modifications to speed it up. Right now, the 'nonexact' covers a lot of possibilities.

Also, the site does have higher traffic periods from time to time - it happens to be a bit busier now (and over the last 10 minutes) than it is 90% of the time

PS: I forgot! As it notes in the ? mark next to the input field, you can use the * as a wildcard. So..

*番 would be 'ending with 番' only
番* would be 'starting with 番' only
*番* or just clicking the 'nonexact answers' = 'starting or ending'

Double PS: Faster now?

Oo! That's clever. And much faster now. Thank you!

Oops, I did mean worksheets. XD That's what I get for making a post when I'm sleepy. Thanks Michael~

(Yes, I am a girl. 女性ですよ。）

I don't know if everything I have to say will be relevant because I wasn't here for the old version but I really like renshuu.org as it is now!

Before I came to renshuu.org I used to use iKnow. Although it used to be free it became pay per month... something like 10 dollars a month, and they stole all the user created content... You can't even access the site now if you don't pay. What a rip off. At the time I thought iKnow was the best Japanese vocabulary study tool on the internet, and I only switched to renshuu.org because I didn't want to pay, but now I'm glad that I switched. I actually think I've come to like renshuu.org even better than iKnow.

One of my favorite things about renshuu.org is how smart the vocabulary section is... for example, when provided with an English definition for a fill in the blank question, even if your Japanese answer is not the correct one, if the meaning is similar it gives you two chances and switches to multiple choice. Also when provided with a kana reading for a multiple choice question, there is never more than one correct kanji answer with that reading. iKnow was really glitchy with that kind of thing.

I also really like the genki point system (although I'm assuming that was there before?) I feel rewarded for my studies : )

I would say there are only two major advantages iKnow had over renshuu.org... The first is that iKnow works for both native Japanese people studying English and vice versa (native English speakers studying Japanese), so it's really easy to find a native Japanese study partner. The second is that they had a lot of audio content so that as each vocabulary term comes up in a quiz the reading would also play aloud, and sometimes even a sentence containing the term would play as well.

Although iKnow had a few advantages in the past, since it became totally closed off to the public renshuu.org has definitely become my number one! I really want to emphasize my appreciation for such a useful learning tool. I am so grateful for your thorough research and development, and I am also grateful that this tool is available for free. (since I don't use renshuu pro, I mean) Thank you for helping me continue my studies!!

I just wanted to say thanks for your kind comments - I'm always working to improve the site, and I've always got an ear open to new ideas/critiques. Hope you enjoy your time here!

Never used the old Renshuu but the Renshuu it is now is great. Been using it for over 9 months consistently everyday and I don't think there was a day where I didn't use it at all.