ToKiniAndy.com 2022 Roadmap

Apr 07, 2022

Beginner Japanese (Genki 1 and 2 level)

We have received many requests for an Anki flashcard deck for the grammar points we covered in Genki, retaining the color coding we used in the streams. We intend to begin working on this in Q3 of 2022, with a release in Q4.

Intermediate Japanese (Quartet 1 and 2 level)

This year we will finish Quartet 2. Upon finishing it, one of our first tasks will be creating tests for each of the 12 lessons in the Quartet books. We will aim for 1 test every 2 weeks, starting around mid - July. This means that Quartet 1 tests should be completed in mid to late September, with Quartet 2 tests completed in mid December.

We are also considering releasing simple exercises and challenges for Quartet, similar to our Textbook Practice videos and Challenges which are available in the Genki course. 

Review By Grammar Point Sections

The “Study by Grammar Point'' course has been renamed “Review by Grammar Point”. This section will be aimed at quickly reviewing grammar points you struggle with. We will cut Sentence Practice videos down to just 2 or 3 sentences. The goal will be to use these JUST for shadowing practice and challenges. Practice Exercises will be cut down to 1 or 2 exercises. Listening & Shadowing we will remove entirely from this section (it will remain in the Genki 1 and 2 courses, of course). We will add links to the FULL lessons in the EXTRAS section of each grammar point, in case you’d like to delve deeper into them. These changes will help differentiate this section from the rest of the website, making it more of a hand-held quick review of each grammar point. After we complete these new changes on the current N5 track, we will move on to creating the N4 track, and hope to finish that up sometime in Q4. 

Immersion Content

Our main focus for the second half of 2022 will be immersion content. Encountering the things you learn in REAL content or out and about in life is EXTREMELY important for retention, so we want to make sure you have LOTS of material to facilitate that. 

Currently, we are releasing lists of free graded readers giving you their relative Genki/Quartet grammar lesson level, and Yuki is working on short comics and stories with included audio. We’ve already released the first 5 of her comics in the Immersion section. 

Our vision for this section is MUCH larger than that though. In Q3 or Q4 we intend to begin commissioning native Japanese writers to write short stories and content for each of the Beginner AND intermediate lessons. Imagine multiple hours of listening/reading material for each and every lesson. We want to create stories that span multiple lessons encouraging you to get through those next few grammar points, AND single lesson stories/content so that you can feel a sense of accomplishment WITHIN each lesson. 

We intend to have audio recordings for ALL of this content so that you can get listening practice as well as reading practice. We are also considering short natural conversation pieces between natives for listening practice in each lesson. These could hopefully introduce common daily phrases and conversations you’d run into in your first days visiting Japan.

This project will begin in earnest in Q3 or Q4, and will likely continue for all of 2023 and beyond. 

YouTube

In June 2022 we will be wrapping up our Quartet Grammar series. We do not plan on doing an N1 series at this time. It is my opinion that by the time you are ready to get into N1, you should be consuming content primarily IN Japanese. 

Thus, I will be continuing to cut up old grammar content into more bite-sized lessons. A major reason for this is it allows me to discover where I made mistakes. These mistakes will determine what grammar points I need to RE-cover in new videos. We will begin making those new grammar point videos as well. 

Our MAIN focus on YouTube will be more GENERAL language learning content. For example, we intend to cover methods of studying, with experiments comparing the effectiveness of different types of content. There should be lots of other surprises as well!

2023 and beyond

The above projects, especially Immersion Content, will continue throughout 2023 and likely beyond. 

We are currently in the process of formulating what JLPT courses would look like. They would likely be stand-alone courses, separate from the current membership, that are fully hand-held. The intention would be to guide users to a guaranteed passing score (and a refund if a passing score is not obtained). This would be accomplished through curated immersion content, vocabulary, grammar study, exercises and challenges. Depending on your schedule, the course would be divided up into exactly what you need to do each week to get a passing score by the time of the test.

We want to have 95%+ of what you need WITHIN the course. The earliest we will be able to begin testing a course like this will be around Q3 or Q4 2023. We will likely begin testing a JLPT N5 course at that time, with an N4 course to follow shortly after. 

Conclusion

Thank you SO MUCH for your support these past few years. We will strive to continue creating content that can help you on your Japanese journey, and give you a step up in your quest towards fluency. 

 

Sincerely,

Andy & Yuki

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