I just logged in to iKnow.jp for the first time this year and I see that they have coupons for both new and existing users. Just wanted to share these in case anyone is interested in trying iKnow.jp SRS for the first time or extending their subscription.
What’s iKnow.jp again?
A web application that uses SRS for learning vocabulary and sentence patterns. Official courses are offered for studying Japanese, Chinese, and SAT English. The Japanese Core 6000 covers the 6,000 most commonly used words in Japanese, and the Chinese Core 2000 covers the 2,000 most commonly used words in Chinese (available in traditional and simplified courses). All words have sample sentences and audio. Most words have also related pictures to help you remember. There’s also courses made by the iKnow community that you can add and study. You can also make your own courses and share them with the community. iKnow is also a good place for shadowing context sentences for each vocabulary item.
But… WaniKani teaches vocabulary, what’s the difference?
The vocabulary learned in WaniKani is kanji based. That’s not there is to it to Japanese. There’s quite the amount of kana only vocabulary that you need to learn. Nevertheless, learning vocabulary from multiple sources is good for your studies. There have been several times where learning the vocabulary from iKnow helped me remember WaniKani vocabulary (meaning and reading), and vice-versa. One good thing about iKnow is that it gives multiple context sentences per vocabulary that you can actually follow and use for shadowing.
There’s a free official app for both iOS and Android:
A tip for those who are trying iKnow for the first time:
Don’t stay stuck studying 1 course! You can add as many courses as you’d like. I’m doing 5 at the moment. Once you have all items started in a course, I would recommend jumping to the next one. Don’t pay too much attention to the % of an item. It will be mastered sooner or later. Just keep learning new words and reviewing as much as possible. Find the right balance for how much you can study/review and the system will repay you enormously. Good luck with your studies!
Screenshots (desktop web app - mobile app looks similar):
Should’ve taken a free trial first before subscribing to see how the service worked out for you. Free month(s) trials are shared in r/LearnJapanese all the time. It sucks that this is happening to you, but you could’ve avoid such situation easily.
I used it for two years both free and paid. Extended my subscription because I liked the service. But then got busy with life. I was still using my previous subscription and never got into the extended one and they wouldn’t refund my money for a completely unused subscription. So yes it’s a rant. But I used to support them and now I won’t because they don’t care about their customers.
Thank you so much for sharing this! I’m always looking for new programs to help me with my Japanese, as I like a large variety of options. I’ve never heard of this one before but it looks really good, and I can’t pass up three free months.
Hey, thank you so much for sharing this! iKnow is a service I tried but placed on the back burner once I started using WaniKani. I appreciate you sharing the coupon, since this gives me a chance to give this another go and evaluate whether I want to include it in my routine in the future.
I’m a fan of iKnow.jp and have used it for years. Because of the ebb and flow of Japanese learning motivation, I ended up buying a lifetime subscription to iKnow, so I can start back up when I like and it’s paid for. the iKnow app is great on airplanes, or anywhere you can have headphones on. Good for shadowing, as mentioned above. I also very much like the rapid-fire quiz. Some complain about the multiple-choice answering system, but this isn’t fair in my opinion. You start off answering multiple-choice questions in order to familiarize yourself with the vocab, but in the same review you work up to typing it in Japanese with no hints. And it’s not as brutal as WK is about typing perfectly. If you know you got it right, but your hand slipped, or your keyboard registered two of a letter or whatever, you can tell it you made a careless error and it doesn’t send you back to the dark place for another 3 days. Makes a good companion to WK.
One more push for those who haven’t see this yet. Learn as much as you can in those 3 free months. It should give you a big boost in your Japanese learning.
iKnow is a service I tried but placed on the back burner once I started using WaniKani. I appreciate you sharing the coupon, since this gives me a chance to give this another go and evaluate whether I want to include it in my routine in the future.
