Tag: how to

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Settings – Part 2

This, as well as part 1 and options info, is available as a PDF and can also be downloaded along with the 300 Kanji in 30 Days guide on Apple Books (free):

In this final post in the Options & Settings series, I’ll be going over the remaining settings available to you in the Settings app. Once again, the emoji labels will tell you if the setting affects the 🔍Edit view or 📝Study sessions, if applicable.

contextual study setting

📝Contextual Study

What: Contextual means examples. So this set of options controls how you see examples during study sessions. Random makes your examples appear in a random order when you toggle through them. You can use Read & Write Context to turn examples on or off for read and write style lessons and Read/Write Examples First determines if your examples or the card’s normal entry appear first.
Why: This mostly comes down to personal preference about whether or not you want to see examples and, if so, if you want them to appear in order. The important choice might be the First switches in case you only want to see examples for cards that you need extra help with (turn them off) or if you’re systematically trying to study only using examples (turn them on).

kanji examples setting

📝Auto Examples

What: If contextual study is on but you haven’t entered or selected any examples for a card, this will have the app display examples from the built-in examples database. If you have entered or selected some examples for a card, only your examples will be used.
Why: You might find the built-in examples words or sentences to be not very good or not well-suited to your purposes so you can choose to turn them off individually if you so desire.

📝Maximum Font Size

What: The app will usually try to fill all the available space with a font that is as large as possible. You can use Font Size to set the font to be smaller if you prefer. Minimum is about  a 16 point font and Small, Medium, and Large will give you 25%, 50%, and 75% of the normal maximum size, respectively.
Why: I would generally recommend leaving this set to Maximum but you can choose a smaller size if you prefer.

font settings

📝Fonts

What: There are a few different fonts you can use for displaying your card’s kanji entry during study sessions. The first three, System, Print, and Script are fairly representative of the classic styles of fonts normally used on computer systems and in print (sans, serif, and decorative). Brush is a calligraphy style font that can be quite difficult to read. Pop is a novelty font and looks similar to what is sometimes used in manga. Pen is a great font to copy if you’re trying to improve your handwriting. The system font will be used by default if none are selected and you can see the system font at any time by double tapping the kanji section of the card.
Why: You should probably just use whatever is most appealing to you. My personal preference is Pen and Brush can be good if you’re looking for a bit of an extra challenge. Turning on all of them will give you the opportunity to toggle through them at your leisure and might be good for seeing how some kanji have slightly different styles when written versus being displayed on a screen or in print.

font toggle setting

📝Font Switching

What: Auto Font Toggle will cause your cards to automatically switch through the fonts that you selected in the previous setting.
Why: I originally introduced this when I first added extra fonts to the app to show off that fact. However, it can actually be quite annoying if the fonts are changing when you don’t want them to so I defaulted this to off and you can use this option to turn it back on.

due date auto syncing

📝Study Date Syncing

What: Auto Sync will cause your cards’ study due dates to be automatically adjusted when you tap the study tab after missing out on studying for a few days. Sync basically just sets your oldest due date to today and then resets your other cards based on how many days they were due after that oldest date.
Why: It might be more convenient to turn this on if you often find yourself skipping study days. If you turn this off, you can still sync the due dates manually by using the button on the lessons tab.

speech settings

📝Speech Synthesis

What: These options allow you to choose what kind of voice and accent will be used when you choose the Speak option from the long press menu during study sessions.
Why: This all just comes down to personal preference depending on your native language and whether you prefer a male or female voice.

hints and safe search

🔍📝  Hints

What: Show Hints will allow the app to show some alerts that might introduce new features to you from time to time.
Why: I make very limited use of this so I hope it never becomes too annoying. If you never want to see any unnecessary pop-up alerts of any kind then you can turn this off to prevent them.

📝  Google Image Search

What: This tells the app whether or not to include the safe search flag when doing Google image searches from the long press menu during study sessions. It’s important to note that even if you turn this off, your own Google account settings may re-enable safe search anyway if you have it turned on there.
Why: You can turn Safe Search on to help make sure you don’t see any NSFW images when doing an image search. However, knowing that a word might normally be associated with NSFW ideas could be useful knowledge when it comes to using Japanese in real situations so choose wisely.

font cache reset

📝Font Cache

What: Reset will delete the font cache which tells the app how big to make fonts appear to fill the available space on your device.
Why: You should turn this on if you ever notice that fonts appear to be too small or too large so the app can try to recalculate the appropriate font sizes.

That’s it for the settings. Please be sure to let me know if anything wasn’t clear or if something doesn’t seem to work the way you expected or as described.

Happy Studies!

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Settings – Part 1

This, as well as part 2 and options info, is available as a PDF and can also be downloaded along with the 300 Kanji in 30 Days guide on Apple Books (free):

In this post I’ll cover the first half of kanji Flow’s settings accessible via Apple’s Settings app. These settings affect the entire app (as opposed to individual lessons like the in-app Options) and, for options also available to be overridden in-app, set the default for new lessons. I’ll use emoji labels to let you know if the setting affects the 🔍Edit view or 📝Study sessions, if applicable.

The first three iOS settings are totally up to you; kanji Flow doesn’t require them.

iOS & iCloud settings

Kanji Flow Settings

What: Enable iCloud will sync your lessons into the cloud, otherwise they’ll only be available on the device you’re currently using.
Why: You should leave this off unless you have multiple iOS devices and need to access your lessons on more than one of them.

due date smoothing

📝Max Cards

What: The slider ranges from 0-100 in 5 card steps and sets an overall limit for the number of cards you’ll see in Study sessions. Smoothing tries to even out the number of cards that are due to be studied over the next few days.
Why: Set a limit for the number of cards if your study time each day is limited. if you don’t set a limit, turning on Smoothing here will automatically smooth out the number of cards due for study each day. You can leave this off and still smooth your cards manually from the Study session pop-up menu as well.

Card Sorting Settings

🔍📝Card Sorting

What: Edit – New First will show your newest cards at the top of the list; by default newer cards populate farther down the list. Study – Random is on by default but you can have cards show up in order during study sessions if you prefer by turning this off.
Why: Once your number of cards starts to get very long it might be better to have your new cards appearing at the top of the list. It’s probably better to study your cards in a random order but you may prefer to always see them in order if you’re doing Heisig-style study where each kanji builds upon what you’ve studied previously.

new cards setting

📝New Cards

What: You can turn on Sort Randomly if you want your new cards to be randomized when studying. You can turn Appear First off if you want to see them last during your study sessions.
Why: I usually study from a list and like to edit my new cards in order the first time I study them. If you usually do your editing on the Edit view, random might be better for you. If you aren’t sure if you have enough time to learn a new set of cards every day then having them at the end of your study session will help you get to the cards you need to review more quickly.

review cards setting

📝Review Cards

What: The cards you missed or passed yesterday  will Appear First by default but you can turn this off to have them randomized with your other cards.
Why: I think it’s most important to make sure you review any cards you previously missed but if study time isn’t a problem for you then mixing them all together is probably okay.

study due variance setting

📝Randomization

What: Study Due Variance will randomly add or subtract a day from study due dates.
Why: This will help to prevent cards that were created at the same time (and likely similar to each other) from always being due for study at the same time.

I’ll cover the rest of the settings next time.

Happy Studies!

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Options

This, as well as settings (1・2) info, is available as a PDF and can also be downloaded along with the 300 Kanji in 30 Days guide on Apple Books (free):

I’d like to go over the options that are available in the app (as opposed to settings available in Apple’s Settings app – I’ll cover those in the next post).

The important difference between Options and Settings is that Options affect each lesson individually whereas Settings will affect the entire app. Sometimes, there is both a Setting and an Option; the Setting will be the default for new lessons but you can override that by changing the Option.

Some Options affect the 🔍Edit view and some things affect 📝Study sessions; I’ll include these emoji labels to let you know which.

I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible and just include a short summary of what the option does and why you might change the option (and perhaps give some real-world examples of when changing the option might be helpful).

card sorting options

🔍📝Date and Difficulty are mutually exclusive which means that turning one on will automatically turn the other off.

What: You can choose to sort cards by their study due date or according to their difficulty rating.
Why: You should usually leave these off and let kanji Flow shuffle your cards in a random manner for Study sessions but I could imagine it might be useful to set these options if you’d like to take a quick look at what cards are most difficult for you on the Edit view or if you don’t have much time to study today and want to make sure you can at least get to the difficult cards first. You might also prefer to have easy cards first during your Study sessions if you just want to get all the simple stuff out of the way as quickly as possible.

📝New Cards is also available in Settings. This option allows you to override that default setting for individual lessons.

What: Cards that you haven’t studied yet will always appear first and in order of creation on the Edit view but you can choose to sort them randomly during Study sessions if you prefer.
Why: If you study from a list like I do, having your new cards in order might make it easier to enter new information for each one the first time you study them. You can use this if you always want things to be random.

study options

🔍📝Fav Cards are cards that have been starred and New Cards haven’t been studied (known or unknown) yet.

What: You can turn these on (default), off, or only see these cards. Switching them both to only means you’ll just get cards that are both new and starred.
Why: Star easy cards you already know and then turn them off if you don’t really need to study them but don’t want to delete the cards. Turn new cards off if you don’t have time to learn new stuff today but still want to review. Remembering the Kanji includes a lot of non-JLPT kanji so you can star the JLPT ones and then turn the others off. If you have a test coming up, star those kanji and only study those this week.

📝Study Style determines the order of things you see on the screen during Study sessions.

What: Study Style determines if you see the kanji first or the English first. Set it to random for a mix of the two.
Why: You’ll want to see the kanji first if you’re learning to read or the English first if you’re learning to write. I like to do a mixture of the two. I have a writing lesson I use to sit down and study kanji with example words for an hour each morning. I take those example words and make a reading lesson (you can easily export a list of your examples to import into a new lesson) so I can practice using the kanji I studied by reading real Japanese sentences and review those throughout the day whenever I have a few minutes to study.

📝Kana Style sets how many taps it takes to reveal each card’s hidden sections while you study.

What: Alone means you’ll have to tap 2 times to reveal the card and either of the other settings only require 1 tap.
Why: If you don’t care about studying readings (and I recommend you that don’t unless you need to for a class; readings come naturally with time and vocabulary) you can set your Kana to already be visible (choose the setting opposite your Study Style setting) or appear with a single-tap (the default and my recommendation – choose the option directly under your Study Style choice).

number of cards

📝Number of Cards sets a maximum limit on the number of cards you see while studying.

What: Allows you to set an overall limit and a limit for new cards. These settings work together (e.g. 25 total with 5 new cards and 20 reviews) and override the default in the Settings app.
Why: It’s a good idea to limit the number of new cards you study each day so that you don’t make things too difficult for yourself. 10 new cards might be good when you’re starting out but you might need to do more if you have a test coming up. You can set an overall limit if your total available study time each day is limited. Set either number to 0 for unlimited cards.

Happy studies!

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Fonts

I got a very nice review for the app on May 1st from Jebi-sensei who mentioned some dissatisfaction with the way fonts work.  You can turn off any fonts that you don’t like in the Settings app.  If you turn them all off, you’ll get the system’s standard, sans-serif Gothic font.

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New Lesson Bug

Unfortunately, there’s a bug that prevents creating new lessons. I already put in an update to fix it.  It’ll be out as soon as Apple gets around to it.

Until then, if you really need a new lesson you can copy a lesson to your computer via iTunes. Make a copy of it with a new name and then copy that back to the app. You can then delete all the cards and rename it to whatever you want.

Sorry!

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How to Study with kanji Flow

First, watch the Getting Started video:

You can also check out the linked tutorials’ play list on this post you haven’t already.

kanji Flow offers a lot of freedom in how you use it to study. If you like and use the Leitner system, you can probably make your preferred method of study work within the app’s available options. If you don’t know what “the Leitner system” is or you’ve noticed that the amount of kanji and/or vocabulary you’ve got in your study list is starting to get a bit unruly then I’d recommend that you study as outlined in this post.

You should be using the Flow study method. The app will keep track of how well you know each card and determine when you need to study the card again. Basically, it’s an algorithm managed, increasing interval study system. The more you know a card, the less the app will present it to you in study sessions.

It’s important to keep in mind that this algorithm isn’t going to give you perfect memorization. You’ll probably end up needing to review about 10% of your cards from each study session. That’s okay. You shouldn’t feel bad if you didn’t remember the card. If you never get any cards wrong then you have a perfect memory and really don’t need to be studying all that seriously anyway. Expect to forget cards. If you don’t immediately and confidently know the card, you don’t know it. Swipe it to the left and review it.

You should be using context-based study and (almost) everyone of your cards should have examples. This applies especially to verbs and nouns of a disyllabic origin (double kanji words). Download imiwa? (it’s free) and use it to import examples for your card. If imiwa? doesn’t have examples for the word you’re studying then check out the tip in this post. Simple nouns like りんご (apple) probably don’t really need examples.

If you’re studying reading, read the example out loud being sure to use the proper reading for the kanji between the 【】. If you’re studying writing, get out a sheet of paper and pen and write the example down replacing the ○ with the correct kanji. The point of this is to get used to how the word is used by practicing actually using it. Memorizing the whole dictionary isn’t going to do you any good if you don’t know which verb or word is appropriate to whatever situation you happen to find yourself in.

Good luck and please let me know if any of this isn’t clear in anyway. I’ll be happy to talk with you personally about how to get the most out of your study time with kanji Flow.

Happy Studies!