[kumo.it] » hiragana

HiraKata Quiz for iPhone released

kumo — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:49:55 +0000

I have released an iPhone version of my hiragana and katakana quizes. My intention is to link together the web version of the quizes with the iPhone so that you can keep track of your progress and continue your learning, whether you are on the bus or sitting at your computer. It is called HiraKata Quiz and it can be found on the app store here.

Quizes back online [updated]

kumo — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 18:03:15 +0000

UPDATE: well the old quiz should be back online so if there are any problems please let me know! I am going to start documenting my work on the new version of the quizes so let’s see how it goes.

Hello, I am sorry to say that I am putting the quizes temporarily offline. The reason being that they are in definite need of changes and I haven’t updated the code for a long time; mainly because it was too awkward deploying new versions. I am starting to take the steps to simplify the whole process, but it may take a couple of days to return.

As I want to go to Japan this summer I think this will be a good opportunity for me to sort out the quizes and make them more useful for me which in turn should be more useful for you!

Quiz poll results for December

kumo — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 09:15:29 +0000

I think it is now time to discuss the quiz poll results. Thank you everyone who spent some time voting and especially those that left comments. The current results can be seen in the graph below:

The comments that I received were as follows:

…should show results at end of quiz…
…ask real words…
…optional real words…
…keyboard shortcuts…
…show correct answers at end of quiz…

Some notes from the graph and comments:

more than half of you requested that you be tested with real words;
repetitive questions appears to be a problem;
an equal number of you wanted to be able to check your progress and also have the questions adapting automatically to your progress.

Real words I believe have been requested by people that have already learnt quite a bit of the hiragana or katakana and now want to be tested on words that are actually useful. When I try to learn things I tend to focus on one group at a time so I think it would be difficult to find a list of words that only contain ka, ki, ku, ke, ko for example.

Repetitive questions could either be the result of selecting too few character groups so that the questions are always formed from the same 10 characters, or instead the same characters are shown regardless of how many character groups are selected.

Progress tracking and automatically adapting questions can allow the software to automatically suggest which groups/characters need testing and when. However, if the on-screen results are not clear then there is the risk that the users are not aware of their progress and perhaps even the mistakes they have made and need to concentrate on.

I will post on this again later, but if people do have any more comments or want to open up a discussion then please use the comment form below.

Hiragana and Katakana quiz survey

kumo — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 06:40:42 +0000

I have decided that it my hiragana and katakana quiz are in need of some attention, but I don’t know where to start. What better way than a little survey? Do you think that it keeps asking you the same character over and over again (even though you have selected lots of rows) or perhaps it should realise that you have learnt a specific character and that there is no point asking you it again (not today anyway)? I am sure that the following choices don’t cover all cases so please leave a comment instead.

Thank you!

Update: thank you for the votes that have been made so far. In September I will post the results and my plans.

Hiragana/Katakana quiz update

kumo — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 07:09:48 +0000

I have updated the hiragana and katakana quizes and I hope they are now easier to use.

I have split the text box on the question page into multiple text boxes so that there is one for each hiragana or katakana. I hope that this is clearer than the previous version where one had to insert a space between each romanji.

*Click on image*The _results page_ might actually be useful now as it shows you not only how many times you got a katakana or hiragana correct, but also how many times you got the row of characters (e.g. the ‘k’ row with ka, ki, ku, ke, ko) right so you can decide to reconfigure the quiz and choose some different rows.As always, the quizes can be found at “quiz.kumo.it”:http://quiz.kumo.it so enjoy! If there are any problems, or you don’t like how I have changed something, or you have new ideas please write to me on my “guestbook”:/guestbook or at “kumo@kumo.it”:mailto:kumo@kumo.it

Hiragana quiz is back online…

kumo — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 10:58:00 +0000

I used to have some php scripts for learning hiragana and katakana but they stopped working when I changed servers. I took the change to begin rewriting them (in ruby on rails) and finally I have the first version of the hiragana quiz online. It is still basically the same as the old version but at least the code is much cleaner and I should be able to add new features without too much trouble.

Anyway, the new hiragana quiz can be found “here”:http://quiz.kumo.it/hiragana/start.

Good luck!

!http://www.kumo.it/files/hiragana_quiz.png!

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*UPDATE:* The dns problems seem to have been resolved so the quiz is back online again!

Site changes

kumo — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 05:03:00 +0000

oops… something has gone wrong…

My switch from custom html (hand-crufted for NetPositive, Opera 3.x, Netscape 4, IE 5, lynx/links, etc.) to using pre-made software is not going well. Pages are missing, incomplete, and messed up. The hiragana/katakana stuff has just refused to work again.

Only time will tell what happens…

Hiragana Fixes

kumo — Sun, 14 Mar 2004 17:28:00 +0000

I have updated the internals of hiragana quiz and
fixed a few problems that people were having with it. I have tested it, but not
enough so if you spot problems can you please get in touch with me. Thank you!

Hiragana Script

kumo — Wed, 05 Jun 2002 11:33:00 +0000

Finishing off the “learning hiragana”:/japan/learn_hiragana script.

How can this quiz be improved?
it is not easy to use;
it is too slow;
it keeps asking the same questions;
It should test me with real words;
It shouldn’t ask me things that I already know;
It should allow me to check my progress when I keep using it;
Something else…

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