Tutorial

The Lesson planner is the key to controlling which lessons are included in exercises, and the lesson planner uses the dictionaries listed in the Flashcard dictionary list to do its work (you can view this list by selecting Flashcard dictionary list... from the Preferences submenu of the Text menu). Thus, if you change the dictionaries in the Flashcard dictionary list, you will also change the lessons shown in the Lesson planner.

To bring up the Lesson planner dialog (shown in Figure 1 below), select Lesson planner... from the Exercises menu. You will see lessons broken down by year and lesson numbers, the number of words in each lesson, an indication of the types of words in each lesson, and the name of the dictionary in which the lesson resides.

Figure 1. The Lesson planner dialog

In the default setup (ie. JWM's settings when it is shipped to customers), there are two lessons set to used - the ticks in the Use box of the Lesson planner indicate this (Note: The default setup is only for illustrative purposes, since all users have different study needs. Please see the full list of dictionaries shipped with JWM to see which ones may suit your needs). To look at the list of words included in any lesson, click the multi-colored icon and the words will be shown in the Output list. For example, the three words in the first lesson are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. The Output list showing the three words in the first lesson

Doing exercises
To start lessons, simply select Start flashcards from the Exercises menu. The exercise dictionaries will be scanned and various words selected automatically for presentation. Note: since you can't have the help dialog open whilst doing exercises, please read these further instructions before trying out the exercise system.

The exercise system will randomly present words starting with their Japanese Kanji or with their English definition. Thus, you will be automatically tested both on your recognition of Kanji, and your recall of the Kanji which corresponds with an English definition. JWM learns about your Japanese skills by the feedback you provide by pressing the Right, Wrong and Skip buttons during the exercise process. These buttons become active when your input is expected.

An example of the Exercise dialog is shown below. On the right side of the dialog are the Success bar (which grows faster the more words you get right) and the Exercise timer (which rotates once per hour and provides immediate feedback on how long you have been exercising). The Speedkeys (which correspond to each of the feedback buttons) are shown below the buttons, and to get information about any Kana or Kanji, simply click it when it is displayed.

Figure 3.The Exercise dialog prompting you to write down the Kanji

In the example Exercise dialog above, the English definition is displayed, and the prompt indicates that a Kanji will be displayed next. At this point, you would be expected to write down the Kanji which corresponds to the English definition, click the mouse (or press a key) to display the Kanji and then compare your answer with the Kanji shown. If you got it right, press the Right button, if you got it wrong, press the Wrong button, or if it the first time that the word was displayed, press the Skip button. The Exercise dialog would now look like Figure 4 below.
Figure 4. An example Exercise dialog

If there are multimedia (eg. a sound, picture or note) attached to a word, then the button corresponding to it will become active. In the example above, there is a sound and picture attached to the word, but not a note. To listen to the sound, press the Play sound button and press the Show picture button to look at the picture. If the Show note button was active, pressing it would show the attached note.

On the right side of the Exercise dialog you will see a bar marked 'Success' and a clock marked 'Timer'. These indicators provide feedback during exercises, and are reproduced in Figure 5 below.

Figure 5. The Success bar and Timer clock

The Success bar grows substantially when you get answers right and grows a little when you skip a word. The more you get right, the faster the bar grows. When it gets to the top, it flips color and starts again at the bottom.

The Timer clock has a sweeping minute hand. It does a full revolution each hour that you exercise, whereupon it flips color and goes around again. It can help you to organise your study period. For example, you might like to study for an hour at a time - the clock gives you an immediate indication on how you are progressing toward that goal.

To get information about any Kana or Kanji shown during flashcard exercises, simply click it and detailed information about it will be displayed.

JWM learns about your knowledge of each word from your answers, and adjusts future exercises accordingly. After words have been exercised for a number of sessions (usually 3 sessions, with the Normal emphasis level set), the word would move from Learning to Mastered status, and then come up less often. Mastered words are mixed in with words you are currently learning, providing you with automatic revision of previously learned Kanji and vocabulary. This saves you an enormous amount of time and effort over the long term, since you never need to track back over old vocabulary and Kanji lists. No other study system in the world offers this powerful facility.

To add more words to exercises, simply open the Lesson planner and tick the Use box of another lesson. When you next do exercises, this lesson will also be included. The idea is that you progressively add more lessons over the course of each study week, progressively building your Japanese vocabulary and Kanji skills. Of course, you can also add your own words and lessons by editing (or creating) dictionaries and adding them to the Flashcard dictionary list.

Creating your own flashcard dictionaries
To create a new dictionary, select New... from the Dictionary menu. Though it seems that you can select the folder in which the dictionary is stored, the dictionary will always be stored in the 'Dict' folder inside the Japanese WordMage folder (and inside the Apps folder in the PC version of JWM). For this tutorial, you might like to create a dictionary called 'test dict'.

As soon as you create the new dictionary, two dialogs will appear - the Find word dialog and the New word dialog. The New word dialog will be used to add words to your newly created dictionary, so we will focus on this. This dialog is shown in Figure 6 below.

Figure 6. The New word dialog

The New word dialog contains areas for entering Kana and Kanji, the English definition (or definitions in other romanised languages such as French, German, etc.), word type, etc. The numbers entered into the Year and Lesson textboxes are used by the Lesson planner to separate lessons. For full details about how to enter the information required for a dictionary entry, please refer to the section on adding new words.

When you have created your custom dictionary and added some words to it, you will want to add it to the Flashcard dictionary list so it will be included in the Lesson planner. To do this, select Flashcard dictionary list... from the Preferences submenu of the Text menu and the dialog shown in Figure 7 will be displayed. Remove the 'Hiragana sample' dictionary from the list and add your custom dictionary to the top of the list (this will ensure it will be shown at the top of the Lesson planner).

Figure 7. The Flashcard dictionary list dialog

Editing words in existing dictionaries
The Find word dialog can be used to locate existing words in a dictionary, so that they can be edited. To try out this ability, select Close from the Dictionary menu (if you still have a dictionary open) and open the Cartoon sample dictionary ie. select Search... from the Dictionary menu and choose Cartoon sample from the popup menu.

When you enter search criteria into the Find word dialog (such as the Kana of a word, or a Kanji), this information is used when a dictionary search is triggered by pressing the Spyglass button (or pressing Return). When no search criteria are entered, all words will come up in the Output list dialog. Leave the Find word dialog blank (ie. don't enter any search criteria) and press the Spyglass button to see the three words which are contained in the Cartoon sample dictionary. The Output list dialog you should see is shown in Figure 8 below.

Figure 8. The Output list dialog showing some sample words

You may have noticed that the Word status of each word is shown on the left size of each entry in the Output list. Word status is an indication of whether a word is in a lesson set to 'Use' in the Lesson planner. When you click the 'Use' box of a new lesson in the Lesson planner, all words in that lesson are set to Learning status ie. they will be focussed on during exercises. After a number of exercise sessions (and when you get a word right often), the word will automatically be changed to Mastered status.

In contrast, a word you may have previously mastered which you got wrong during exercises may be temporarily changed backed to Learning status to lend greater emphasis to it. This is how the auto-revision system built into JWM works. This entire process is completely automatic, and managed on a word-by-word basis according to an intelligent, adaptive algorithm developed specifically for the JWM software. The process may seem confusing at first, but it really does work very well.

To edit one of the words shown in the Output list, simply double-click it. The Edit word dialog will be displayed (a sample is shown in Figure 9), ready for you to make any changes to the word you like (you can also click a word in the Output list and select Edit... from the Word menu to bring up the Edit word dialog). When you have finished making changes to a word, press the Save button to have it stored.

Figure 9. The Edit word dialog

When editing Kanji, you can move them around within a word by simply dragging them, and they can deleted by dragging them into the trashcan on the right side of the Kana/Kanji area.

Building a new dictionary from existing dictionaries
You can also build a new dictionary by copying words from other dictionaries. To do this, open the dictionary (or dictionary list) from which you wish to copy words, find the words using the Find word dialog, highlight the words in the Output list and select Copy to dictionary... from the Word menu. The words can then be copied directly to your new dictionary.

Advanced exercise control
If you are an advanced user of JWM, you may wish to manage the words included in exercises on a word-by-word basis. To do this, simply open the Flashcard dictionary, find individual words you wish to learn using the Find word dialog and then set their status to Learning. You never need to use the Lesson planner in this case, though the Lesson planner is a much simpler way to manage your lessons.