[soc]

yea, I agree with remember the kanji by Heisig for kanji study and also lots of reading.

Anyone taking the JLPT this year ? I'm skipping jlpt3 this year and hoping for 2 in the future.

On a startup related note. This site http://www.japonin.com/ has a really nice interactive chat for teaching. Will really improve your speaking. Would be nice to see other languages taking off using a similar design.

Also seems the lots of new language related startups are doing quite well... lang-8, smartfm, and japanesepod101 to name a few.

[harisenbon]

There are a lot of really good resources popping up recently (to my chagrin ;) with a lot of good information to be had.

I do lament the lack of higher-level study materials though. Sites like Tae-Kim and studyJapanese, etc all seem to stop at passive form, with only a slight introduction to Keigo (about 3kyu or early 2kyu level)

I find very few sites that have enough materials to take their users past 1kyuu, which is one of the reasons why I started my site (and still need to get more content up there).

After taking 1kyuu, and starting to work at a Japanese company, I realized that 1kyuu is only the beginning. You really need a much higher level than that to fully participate in a Japanese work environment.

Which is why my next sites are set on the JTest (used to be the Jetro).

[basugasubaku]

Is this your site?

The majority of the "articles" (http://japanesetesting.com/articles) are simply sections from Tae Kim's guide copied verbatim.

Although at Tae Kim's guide is CCL'd and there is copyright notice at the end of each of the posts... it seems a bit wrong to have them in separate posts like this. Why not just link to Tae Kim's guide outright, once?

[harisenbon]

Yup, it is my site, and yeah, I have always felt odd about the Tae Kim guides thing, but as they are CCL'd, I put them in there (of course with attributions!)

The main reasons they're there is: a) they are an amazing source of information for Japanese students. b) I'm currently in the process of creating testing and flashcard packs based around his methodology to supplement his site. c) they filled up space while I started getting original content up. ;)

The articles section of my site were originally an "extra" feature, with the flashcards and testing information based on popular textbooks (without copyright infringing) was the main purpose of the site.

Essentially 'Here's a bunch of study materials based on the textbook you're currently using.'

Of course, as people sign up, and I get more feedback, that's been changing a lot. People are very interested in the testing features, but they also seem to want more articles than I originally anticipated. I'm currently in the process of releasing new articles, (like the Kanji one above), but you're right that having the Lesson articles in with the standard articles seems a bit strange. Perhaps I'll create a subcategory for textbook-based articles (like Tae Kim) and original articles.

Thanks for the advice! I'm always looking for more feedback.

[basugasubaku]

Oh, ok. I haven't registered so I wasn't sure what the site was about. It looked to me like the articles were the main part.

Speaking of which, to find the index of articles I had to edit the URL by hand; there doesn't seem to be a link to them from the submitted link.

[harisenbon]

(汗

There's a link on the right side, but you're right -- that's not very user friendly. laugh I'll put that at the top of my "To Fix" issues. ;)

[harisenbon]

Fixed and Fixed.

Thanks to all the opinions, advice (and complaints) from people, I've made the navigation for guests much easier, and also standardized the login and signup methods.

Next I need to decide if I'm going to allow comments for guests...

[donw]

I'm doing the JLPT 2, but I average around 85% on the practice tests as of about a month ago, so I'm not worried about passing.

It'd be really nice to do the 1, but my scores on the practice tests were embarrassingly south of 50%, and I totally bombed the 1 last year, so I'm doing the 2 this year to at least have some sort of piece of paper that says I've got some Japanese ability.

For finding partners, you might also want to try http://language-exchanges.org/ -- it's not a for-pay site, and doesn't have experienced teachers, but I've found it to be a good way to connect up with people.