Learn Japanese Today

So I’m planning on writing a lot of learning material reviews for this site, and this article will lay out my criteria and rating scale. Just look back here if you’re ever confused while reading a review. Anyways, each reviewed item will be rated on the following 5 qualities, give or take (i.e. Price is not a huge factor in websites). Each one will be rated between ichi (1) and jyuu (10), with an overall score at the end. The categories are:

Ease of Use: This one is pretty self-explanatory, how easy the product is to use. For a dictionary this might be how fast you can find a certain word on a page, or for a website how long it takes you to find the kind of information you’re looking for. The information does no good if you can’t get to it.

Authenticity: What I mean by authenticity is basically asking the question, “Is this the Japanese real Japanese people use?” Materials that do a good job of clarifying context for certain words and teaching Japanese that won’t embarrass you will get a high score. Materials that use out-dated words or slang without telling you it’s slang will get a lower score.

Quantity of Knowledge: This category basically means how much you can learn from the product. A pocket dictionary may be really convenient, but it misses out on the breadth of vocabulary offered in larger ones.

Price: If you’re a student like me, odds are you don’t have a lot of disposable income, and even if you do, you want to make sure you get the most out of it. A high price rating means the product is cheap relative to other materials of the same kind. Obviously  this category is not really applicable to websites.

Fun: I feel like fun is the most overlooked and underrated quality of learning materials. If learning isn’t fun, then it’s really hard to make time for it. Why not go up another level on WoW or finish that novel you’ve been working on. High scores will be given to materials that make you want to learn, and I personally think this is one of the most important categories. Remember, TV shows, movies, and music can be learning materials too, not everything has to be a textbook.

Overall: Overall score will be a rough average of the above 5 scores, weighted according to how much each matters to the particular item. I’ll be putting up ranking pages so you can compare  reviews by this score. This will be a good general determinant of how good I think something is, but don’t go just by this number. Consider which of the above categories matters most to you.

Well there you have it, the first review will be coming out tomorrow. お休み !

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