Introducing Benkyou: a swipe flashcard app for learning Japanese.
I’m pretty excited that I got to meet one of my goals for 2018 🎉! Today I’m releasing Benkyou, a swipe flashcard application for learning Japanese. Use it with your WaniKani subscription to study WaniKani lessons.
You can get it here:
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fm.raf.benkyou
iOS: coming soon!
It currently requires a full WaniKani subscription to use.
The back-story.
I’ve been studying Japanese for a while, and last December I took the JLPT N3 with friends. When I was preparing, I was introduced to WaniKani as an excellent resource for learning Japanese vocabulary. WaniKani is a spaced repetition learning tool that only lets you study at an appropriate pace.
But at the time, we really needed to cram at a faster pace. Flashcards are also more my thing than typing on a screen. I really wanted something that fit my style of studying. I noticed that WaniKani has an API, and at the time I was learning how to use gestures in React Native, so I started building something:
At the time I was really into making apps for just my friends. But enough people have asked me to release this app that I made it one of my goals of 2018.
Functionality.
What it does:
- Enter your WaniKani API key to access all lessons.
- Study radicals, kanji, vocabulary.
- Study in chunks of 20, 10, or 5 cards at a time.
- After a set, you can study just the cards you got wrong.
What it doesn’t do:
- You can’t use this app with a free WaniKani subscription. You need a full subscription.
- This doesn’t do your WaniKani reviews for you. Use it as preparation for the reviews.
- It doesn’t use a spaced-repetition-system (SRS). You’re in charge of your own study pace.
Future plans.
Eventually, I’m hoping to add more Japanese learning resources to this app:
- The ability to create your own card sets.
- The ability to practice typing using Flick Input
- Introduce NHK NEWS WEB EASY content and extract flashcards from their articles.
- Add a dictionary and the ability to create your own card sets from that.
- Reminders to register for the JLPT.
Hope it helps you with your Japanese studies. If you try it out and have any feedback, shoot me an email at rmendiola@alum.mit.edu
