What is "fail review"?

Fail Review is Read the Kanji's way of making sure you go back and answer all previously failed words in a given quiz round. Strengths for kanji compounds or individual kanji are not adjusted during a fail review, so you can fail a word multiple times during a fail review without having it negatively affect your scores. Fail review ends when all the failed words are answered correctly.

I'm having trouble with the Romaji Converter, help!

Our Romaji converter supports a mixture of the Hepburn and Kunrei systems. If you cannot figure out how to enter a certain character, please take a look at this chart:

Some of these kanji are harder than the level I'm studying!

You may notice in the JLPT decks, especially within the lower levels, that some of the kanji that pop up are of a higher level than what is required of the current study level. This is actually something we do on purpose due to a discrepancy between the lists of required JLPT vocabulary and the lists of required kanji. Probably the best way to explain is through an example.

For our example, let's take the word 銀行. 銀行, meaning "bank", is a JLPT 4 vocabulary word. However, only one kanji character, 行, is a JLPT 4 kanji. The other, 銀, is a JLPT 3 kanji.

We have two ways of testing this word. One, we could test it as ぎん行 because, technically, 銀 is not a JLPT 4 kanji. The other option is to test it was "銀行" despite the kanji level discrepancy.

At Read The Kanji, we choose to do the second way of testing. Why? Because the first method, while fine for testing purposes, has the mistake that 銀行 is just never written in real Japanese sentences. 銀行 is the standard form. So to us, asking a student to learn the word as ぎん行 does more of a disservice, as they would be learning a kanji compound that doesn't exist in real life. While ぎん行 is technically easier to study, it just requires a student to relearn it again as 銀行 when they reach the JLPT 3 level, and that just means more work overall.

Therefore, to solve this problem, instead of adhering to the strict JLPT rules, or just always showing full blown kanji all the time, we've decided to try our best to introduce words in the form you would most likely see them written in real Japanese. While this may lead to studying kanji at a slightly higher level than the current deck, we don't believe this is a bad thing; on the contrary, we see it as a fantastic chance to get ahead and improve your reading skills slightly faster than most beginner books would allow. Plus, as our students have chosen to learn Japanese, they are already ready for a challenge, so why babysit them? Kanji is serious business, after all.

What control do I have over the quiz?

At the top right menu, under "prefs", you can set your account information along with choosing among a variety of options to help customize your quiz to your particular way of studying.

The "Cards Per Quiz Round" setting can be adjusted to add or reduce the number of cards in a given round of questions. Lower stack sizes are suited for times when you are studying a deck you are weak at. That way, fail reviews come more often and force more repetition in the study to help you overcome trouble words. Higher stack sizes on the other hand are best used to review a deck that you know quite well, allowing you to quickly go through many cards at a time.

The "Repetition Factor" is a setting that allows you to adjust how often cards are repeated per quiz round. While not the only factor that determines whether or not a word should be entered in the next quiz round, it holds enough influence to allow you find a level suitable to your study level.

Also, you can decide exactly which elements of the quiz to show or hide, allowing for different quiz variations. For example you could hide all the English in order to focus on just the Japanese, or perhaps hide the sentences and do just vocabulary study.

Additionally, you can choose which decks you want to study during the quiz. If multiple decks are chosen, words are taken from each deck evenly through each quiz round.

Why are the kanji in different colors / What is a kanji strength?

Every time a kanji compound is answered and checked, that kanji's "strength rating" is adjusted. A strength rating determines how well you know a particular kanji compound, 0 being the lowest, and 100 meaning a perfect score. All kanji start from 0 and slowly work their way up to 100 each time the kanji compound is checked correct. However, if checked incorrect, the strength rating is marked down by a certain percentage, which lets the system know to quiz that particular word a bit more often. The colors are our quick way to display the kanji strengths so you can visually see your progress with each word.

What is the kanji grid?

The kanji grid is a statistical map of individual kanji strengths. This is slightly different from the kanji compounds strengths mentioned above. Along with kanji compounds, each individual kanji strength is rated as well. This is how we gauge how well you score with particular kanji over all tested words. Kanji are funny in that just because you can read a kanji in one word, you can't claim to know it over all words necessarily. The best way to explain is through an example.

For example, let's say I was tested on the word 銀行 for the first time, and got it correct. The strength for the kanji compound 銀行 would rise to say, 10%. Along with the kanji compound, the two individual kanji strengths also go up. So the strength for 銀 goes to 10%, and the strength for 行 also goes up 10%. So far we have:

• 銀行 - 10%
• 銀 - 10%
• 行 - 10%

Now, let's say the next word is 行く (for the first time), and I get it incorrect. The strength for the kanji compound 行く would stay at 0%, and the strength for the individual kanji 行 would decrease to maybe 7%. So after this word, our stats look like this:

• 銀行 - 10%
• 行く - 0%
• 銀 - 10%
• 行 - 7%

By tracking these statistics and associating their strengths to colors, we can visually give you an idea of how well you can read a particular kanji among all previously tested words.