Copyright: KingKanji v3.0


KingKanji Help

Contents

Description

Registering

Lesson Overview

Screen Layout

Opening a Lesson

Opening Multiple Lessons

Restarting a Lesson

Changing the Presentation Order

Changing the Lesson Mode

Changing Lesson Tracking

Hiding the Drawing Area

Lesson Strategy

Creating a Lesson


Description

KingKanji is a shareware (30 day trial) Japanese character/word flashcard system for reading and writing Japanese. The most recent version of this program is available at http://www.gakusoft.com. Lessons can easily be created using a Japanese word processor and have the same format as Jim Breen's Edict file, a free Japanese/English dictionary data file. KingKanji is highly customizable and tests users in Japanese or English. Lesson items can be composed of a single character, multi-character phrases, and sentences. Animated character strokes can be displayed for any kana and Joyo kanji grades 1-6. The program learns which lesson items are difficult and emphasize them during Review Mode practice. What makes KingKanji for Windows unique is its writing emphasis, ability to combine multiple lessons into a single one, high customizability, and animated kanji/kana stroke display.

Palm and Windows CE versions are also available at http://www.gakusoft.com. The programs are especially useful for writing practice since they take advantage of the stylus for writing characters directly on the display, similar to using a pen and paper. This is probably the most efficient way to learn how to write kanji – and you can practice almost anywhere with the portable devices.


Registering

KingKanji can be registered on-line at http://www.gakusoft.com/order.html for just $24.95.


Lesson Overview

After a lesson is loaded, the first flashcard's English meaning and Japanese reading are shown. Perform the following steps to work through the lesson:

Write the Japanese in the drawing area with the stylus.

Press the "Show" button to view the reading with kanji.

Tap any of the displayed characters to see the animated stroke order.

Press the "Right" or "Wrong" button based on whether or not the drawn characters are correct. The status will be updated and the next flashcard will be shown.

Repeat the preceding steps until the lesson is completed.

In the default lesson mode, all flashcards are presented once then the ones missed are repeated until all cards are correct.


Screen Layou
Screen Layout

The display is composed of the following elements:

English meaning field in the upper left corner.

Japanese reading (hiragana and katakana) field just below the English meaning.

Japanese reading (including kanji) field just below the hiragana/katakana reading.

Drawing area, the large rectangular area in the middle of the right side.

The Clear button for erasing the drawing area.

Lesson status and title at the bottom of the dialog box.


Opening a Lesson

To open a lesson:

Select File-Open from the menu.

Choose the file for the lesson to be loaded from the dialog box.


Opening Multiple Lessons

To open several lessons at once:

Select File-Multi-Open from the menu.

Choose the files for the lessons to be added from the dialog box.

Note: Only files with a ".kf" extension and located in the

"\Program Files\KingKanji\cards" will be listed.


Restarting a Lesson

To restart a lesson, select Options-Restart from the menu.


Changing the Presentation Order

By default, the English meaning and Japanese reading (hiragana/katakana) are initially shown for a flashcard. The kanji reading is shown after the Show button is pressed. To change the order:

Select Options-Preferences... from the menu.

Select the elements to be initially displayed (i.e., before the Show button is pressed) in the View area of the Preferences dialog box. Unselected elements will be shown after the Show button is pressed.


Changing the Lesson Mode

There are four different lesson modes:

Normal (default): all flashcards are presented then the missed ones repeated until all have been guessed correctly.

Quiz 25: same as Normal except a random subset of 25 flashcards are used in the lesson.

Quiz 50: same as Normal except a random subset of 50 flashcards are used in the lesson.

Review : a highly effective lesson mode that presents often missed flashcards more frequently than others. This lesson type lasts indefinitely.

To change the lesson mode:

Select Options-Preferences from the menu.

Choose the desired mode from the Lesson Mode selection box in the Preferences dialog.


Changing Lesson Tracking

KingKanji normally keeps track of the frequency that a lesson item is missed and emphasizes difficult (frequently missed) items during review mode.

To tracking on or off:

Select Options-Preferences from the menu.

Select or deselect the Track Wrong checkbox.


Hiding the Drawing Area

Select Options-Preferences from the application menu. Then, deselect the Show Canvas

checkbox.


Lesson Strategy

The following progression of lesson difficulty for a single lesson is suggested:

1. Show the kanji and meaning and guess the reading.

2. Show just the kanji and guess the meaning and reading.

3. Show the reading and meaning and guess the kanji.

4. Show the meaning and guess the reading and kanji.

For information on how to update the display see Changing the Presentation Order.

KingKanji provides two effective means of reviewing past lessons. First, open several or all of the past lessons. Then select the Review lesson mode in the Preferences dialog. The combined lesson will emphasize the difficult items. Also, lesson modes Quiz 25 and Quiz 50 will create random subset lessons with 25 or 50 items respectively.

For information on how to change the lesson mode see Changing the Lesson Mode.


Creating a Lesson

To create flashcard lessons you need a Japanese word processor capable of saving files in the EUC encoding format. After saving a lesson, change the extension to ".kf". You can enter an unlimited number of lesson items but I recommend a maximum of 25 or the lessons become too lengthy and are less effective. Placing flashcard files in the KingKanji application’s subdirectory "cards" is recommended since this is the default directory for the Open-Lesson and Multi-Open dialog boxes.

The format for each entry is:

kanji [reading1/reading2/.../readingN] /meaning/meaning2/.../meaningN/

The kanji can be composed of single or multiple kanji, hiragana, and katakana characters. The reading should be the hiragana or katakana reading of the character(s) with multiple readings separated by a single ASCII '/' character.  The meaning is the English translation and should be simple ASCII characters with multiple meanings separated by a '/' character. The spaces, brackets, slashes, and new lines in the file should all be ASCII. It may help to open the included lesson files with a Japanese word processor and examine the structure.  You can download a free Windows Japanese word processor titled JWPce from the Monash Nihongo FTP Archive at ftp://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo or the US mirror site at ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/japanese/monash/00INDEX.html.