Haha! First post after jpod101.com.

The season 2 idea with a mix of revision and new stuff is interesting. It’s difficult to strike a balance between the needs of all the listeners, some who are roaring ahead, while others struggle to keep up the learning pace. For myself, it’s somewhere between these extremes. Some days the lesson seems easy, while on other days I can hardly figure out what’s going on until I read the pdf. This is more usually due to not knowing the vocabulary for the lesson, rather than the grammar point.

Keeping up with current lessons, while finding time to go back to revise earlier lessons is becoming a more difficult tradeoff, as the number of lessons increases. Part of me regrets that the number of new grammar points each week will decrease, while the other part of me acknowledges the need for more revision. Hopefully at some point, enough will stick to make the move to the intermediate lessons a realistic possibility.

I thought the Manga cartoon with the interactive speech bubbles was a great idea, albeit difficult to do on a regular basis. But that doesn’t really matter. Variety is the spice of life. There’s nothing wrong with having occasional one off ‘guest features’ and indeed this adds to the excitement.

iLove was great fun and more importantly gave much needed speaking practice. As a result I’m now singing (badly) several songs (usually when driving - I hope no-one can hear me). This is also introducing me to new grammar points and often regional dialects (which is giving me real problems in translating ) .

I wonder if we could try a community audio play as a future one-off project. We choose parts, record individual lines and then splice them together. As the play would only have a few parts, there would be multiple teams producing competing entries. I guess the difficulty would be organising suitable collaborations; there’s always some unfortunates left on the benches when the teams are picked.

Hum… Maybe people just record the entire script, doing all the parts and then jpod could make one or more edits, choosing suitable characters for each part. There could be multiple versions so that noone gets left out. - That might work.

What above a short story competition for the advanced learners? They could use all those advanced written only language features in a story of (say) 300 words, 500 words? Or maybe have people write plays, the winner of which could be the basis of an audio play collaboration.

Anyway, these are just some random thoughts which may (or more likely may not) have merit.

Alan

Yes, Season2 is a very good idea.

I thought last week that the last beginner’s lessons were of JLPT3 level, and that newbies couldn’t follow so quick. I thought you should have beginner A (or *) lessons and beginner B (or **) lessons.

And one more time, you saw the problem at first and try to solve it! The time of reaction of the team is impressive.

I think the level of JLPT2 is good for intermediate lessons.
And perhaps are there some advanced learners who would like some advanced lessons (one each month?) to have a little stress!

It could be interesting also to develop some special young beginner’s lessons with a slow progress, like at school. Children cannot learn the 2 volumes of Minna no Nihongo in one year. Perhaps through mangas?

Thank you for all that good work!

Hi Mina-san!

First of all, I must say that I agree with the previous comments on many points.
I think that “Season 2″ is a good idea, because it may allow newcomers to feel part of the community more quickly and more easily: according to me this is a very important point, because it’s the sense of being a great community that makes JapanedePod101 what it is (excuse me Peter for quoting your words, but what you say it’s the plain truth!).

Indeed I’m realizing that, while listeners who are following JP101 since the very beginning may have no problem at all in keeping the pace with the lessons, many new listeners could have serious problem in understanding what’s going on around them.

I think that in any case the organization of lessons is meant to evolve into a more differentiated one, in order to meet the needs of listeners having different level of knowledge of the Japanese language.
In fact I suppose that step by step JP101 will settle to a situation of podcasting along the week some lessons for (completely) beginners, some for intermediate-level listeners and (why not?) some for advanced-level listeners.
As for me, I’m mostly interested in intermediate-level podcasts, because I like very much when you speak among yourself in Japanese: I find it very useful to improve my understanding of normal-speed spoken language, and indeed what I’m aiming at is to understand the commonly spoken Japanese.

Maybe the most difficult thing will be to find a balance among the various levels, but I’m sure you’ll completely succeed also in this challenge, as you always do.
Since the very beginning, you made an awesome job and you podcasts have become better and better day after day. I feel that your improvements lately have taken place with an astonishing speed, and it’s amazing how you are able to cope with all these quick changes.

As for the other features you mentioned in today’s show, I think they are all useful and interesting, because they all add a touch of variety to the show: and surely variety is an excellent means to keep away boredom!

So, JP101 ganbare yo!

Carlo

This will be long. maybe only jPod will read it if the spam filter doesn’t eat it.

I always wondered when this point would be reached.
when essentially the beginner lessons have evolved into Intermediate for most purposes.

I like what jPod is doing. The variety of videos, comics, podcasts and blogs is great. And the ilearning center. Miki-sans audio blog is my favorite at the moment. Even if it’s only a sentence or two it’s enjoyable to post 日本語で。　And to figure out real speed real Japanese in a controlled envirnoment.
The biggest and best thing about jPod is I can find Japanese that’s at my level that’s not fairly dull textbook material. And that it’s “live” rather than an archive of recordings.

So where is jPod going?
Revision is a great idea. With my best intentions I just can’t keep up with jPods output. More so now that summer is over and things get busy again for me.
Indeed in terms of grammar point, vocab and kanji, in one 15 minute lesson you cover more than my weekly 1.5 hour class does. And I’m not sure it’s going in completly; although I’ve learnt a lot at jPod.

Some problems I see perhaps.

1. community
the jPodzoku is an important aspect of the experience and primarily it’s expressed through the current comments section and keeping up with the current program. Great except if you can’t keep up with the language instruction the sense of belonging to the community must be weakened. So how do you keep a sense of community.
Also the interaction potential beyond the comments has yet to be fully tapped perhaps. iLove may just be the start of it. If more happens it would help for it to be pitched at multiple levels.

2. On ramps
Where to start when you arrive at jPod. It seems I’m an old timer since I was here before server changes and when Peter-san was half of the voice acting talent. Even so I felt I had to go back and listen to the podcasts I missed. And where to start was an issue.
I have a couple of suggestions.
a. an archive edit.
trim out the news and incidental chat to get a more streamlined juku cram school lesson. I think it’ll make it easier for people to get up to speed and for people to review. Daily shows/ current season the banter and everything is great and part of jPods thang.
b. A map
If there was a listing of grammar points against podcasts in a single timeline document people might find it easier to see what podcasts they could skip. Also for shows that especially need the foundation of specific earlier shows this could be marked.
c. limited core vocabulary for beginner lessons.
This might be too late. I think the vocab I have for immediate use I’ve learnt through constant repitition or repititive contact. Now I realise that natives just won’t keep to the script I have when I talk to them but I also realise it was very clever of my teacher to limit her vocabulary and constantly reinforce core words and phrases. If you think about it everyone here is probably most familiar with greetings and the introductions because we hear them everyday on the podcast.
d. assessment quiz.
hard one to do. but devise a set of questions that when someone gets, say, three wrong it’ll tell you what lesson you might like to start at.

3. linearity and levels
I don’t think you can get away from this. I’ve looked at ChinesePod and while on the face of it their do any lesson you want seems a great idea I found it very diffuse both as a community and as a learning experience. (of course I have zero commitment to Chinese and was just looking to see what it was like, so I could be missing something.) I can’t quite see how anything can really stand alone unless you’re merely learning phrases rather than learning the grammar.
So the linear approach I think is a valid one but I think you need to mark the waypoints.
So for instance beginner high would know te form, adjectives in adverbial form, some plain form constructions. (basically JLPT4) Intermediate would be plain informal forms, conjunctive particles (longer more complex sentences) and so on. OK you have a sylabus lets say it takes 100 podcasts to cover Basic Japanese. Instead of going on to a higher level go back to lesson 1 and remake it with a new dialog. This will do several things. It provides an easier way in for newcomers. It provides revision for those that still want daily lessons. It provides a larger amount of source material for those who want more depth. as they are new daily episodes the sense of current community is retained. Hopefully it’ll be easier to do lesson 1.1 so the jPod team can put more energy into Intermediate for those that have gotten through basic. Intermediate then assumes knowledge and mastery of the basic course and does something similiar with the more advanced grammar points. In parrallel you could have things like Miki-sans blog that just presents material at that level. no grammar as such being taught but standalone pieces to use what you know.

4. Just who are the audience?
I think you need to devise an in depth questionaire for your audience. Figure out audience retention rates, what level they’re studying at, jpod only or as an adjunct to other lessons, whatever you feel you should know to make jPod better.

Whatever you do it’ll be interesting. It is new. When I think of any course I’ve come across it’s a finite set of lessons that repeat. (NHK springs to mind. Any tape and book course. Any school/college course just does the same thing year on year with little variation. ) So the open ended challenge you’ve set yourselves is amazing and very interesting.

Ganbatte!!

Hey M8 i am her for the first time and lisning from litele Japan ( Sweden ) im hapy to her this new whay to get musik.
Pleas sopp talking so much play som music. But downt be sad kep on Rocking

I like the idea of a season 2.

But, will it be as gripping as Season 2 of Lost was?

I think Belton’s questionaire is a good idea: which level have the subscribers? (Assuming that you already have decided to do a Season 2 for yet non subscriber newbies)

2 interesting things on chinese pod:
-the different levels (easier to do in japanese as the JLPT levels are clear)
- the “lesson archive” grammar index filter

Hi everyone,
as usual, jpod crew proofs to be smart and quick to solve issues before they become problems.
Hm… I think to decide, it’s most important to know the level of current and to-be listeners. For the current listeners, I agree with Belton, a questionaire might help. Maybe, jpod could also simply check the results in the learning center you are not to publish those, understood ? to have an idea of the level of that part of the listeners who are “actively” studying.
For listeners-to-be, maybe, statistically, they are more likely to be at a basic level than advanced - I think that in every language-learning context, you have more people at low levels than at high levels. But I don’t know anything about japanese, so I might be wrong

I myself am at the barely-beginner level (I’ll try to pass JLPT4 this year). I started around may, when I discovered jpod. I don’t have other japanese lessons, and I have obligations during the whole day - japanese is just a hobby, meaning I cant’ spend much time on it even if I would like to. I couldn’t catch up with all lessons, so I skipped some to follow the actual lessons - leaving gaping holes.

So, of course, I opt for a “Season 2″ ,
for an ever-increasing grammar bank (please please please), and for

BASIC GRAMMAR LESSONS

(i don’t know if anybody besides me would appreciate them, but I would like them very, very much - Ok, I need them very very much:???:
Sorry, I don’t want more intermediate stuff (but I seem to be alone on that one ), but talk to me again in a couple of years

Season 2 sounds like a nice idea. I also agree with sean somers that there should be more intermediate / advanced lessons. Now the intermediate lessons are hardly once a week, because iLove will replace it often too. How about release iLove instead of a beginner lesson, we have many of those already. Keep up the good work.

Why not introduce a new level - Advanced for all those who feel the intermediate level too undemanding for them. Season 2 could be a little like it was at school in my time, when at the beginning of the year a quick recap was made of what had been covered the year before and then one went on to the new work. Those beginners who feel happy with what they have learnt as a beginner could progress to Intermediate Level and those who feel the pace is now getting too fast for them could repeat the course, with a different dialogue, if possible to make it more interesting. Perhaps there could also be a really basic level, which would include the extremely valuable Survival Phrases. Maybe the videos, comics, news, culture etc could be combined into a kind of weekly magazine.

I agree with Belton that it would be helpful to be able to download just the core elements of the lesson for quick repetition as often it isn’t until the vocab and grammar points have been explained that I can fully follow the dialogue, even though the Audio ine by line is very useful.

However that said, I think you are doing a tremendous job and thoroughly admire all the expansions you have made and the community you have built. I will certainly support you in whatever you do.

I listen to your podcast either at home, or on the train to work in the mornings! I don’t listen to many podcasts, but yours is a can’t miss. It’s really helpful and motivating.

Revision is the biggest gap you have in your whole podcast system. Re-editing the earlier material seems like it would be a chore. I really like the idea of going through and doing more stuff the reinforces the earlier lessons while continuing to plod along.

I feel that the beginner/intermediate levels aren’t defined, and neither is the syllabus. I think these are two areas that you can improve as far as telling the community. Some of the beginner lessons are quite easy and some are really difficult.

I think your core audience has to be people in the in the level 4 JPLT to the 3J PLT areas. Most textbooks are geared this way, and most people are in this bracket.

I think a goal for season 2 should be completely covering areas where students can close close to a person around the 3 kyu level. A big revision will help. I think this is something that is long overdue and should happen more. Even periodic quizzes. I’m sure these would take less time to produce than the actual lessons, and would give you guys some more time off or time to prepare the other lessons.

I would also like to see more of an option to give the dialogues in at least hiragana (I hate romaji) when pushing the middle button on the ipod.

Many of Beltan’s comments are spot on.

A roadmap on the home page with what was grammar points and what vocabulary was covered in the lessons would be great for people that want to review too. Imagine a time line where someone could come to the site, put their mouse over it, and then quickly see the grammar point, vocabulary covered. It would enable the listener to go, “Ah..I know that, skip. Too easy, skip. Wait, what’s that? Got to go back to that one.” If you chose to implement, hopefully this is still a free feature.

In the paid section, hopefully you could also offer PDF’s grouped together in chucks. For example, lessons 1-25, 26-50, 51-75 etc, instead of having to download each one individually.

A format change would be nice occassionally too. Instead of starting with the conversation, it would be nice to start with the vocabulary, give the listener a taste, and then go with the conversation (a method used when teaching English, preparing the listener for the conversation with the tools/vocabulary needed to understand or help understand. Some variety would spice things up from time to time, with no additional planning or work for you guys.

That’s all that I can think of right now.

Troy

P.S. Could you answer the question, what happened to Kazunori that was part of the team in the early episodes?

I like Belton’s ideas for the on-ramp. Sifting through the grammar and word banks, I’ve often felt that something like an episode index was missing.

As for Season 2, I think it’s a pretty good idea. One of JPod101’s biggest weaknesses has been the lack of repetition. The podcasts add new words and ideas fairly quickly. Taking additional time to focus on remembering what’s already been introduced would be beneficial. There’s obviously already some repetition as the podcasts build upon one another, but it’s not very focused and may not happen for a couple of weeks or even a month. When that happens, I find myself thinking “Aha! We’ve already had that word. When was that?” again emphasizing the need for an index.

I think the repetition would be most effective if it happens within a week of the words/grammar/concepts’ introduction. That would really firm up what I, the listener, should know before moving on to the next lesson. As I already said, the lessons are pretty fast paced (at least for me) and without the repetition, I find myself missing a lot that I probably shouldn’t.

OTOH, I think that it behooves us listeners to do some repetition on our own, whether it be through going back and listening to older lessons, quizing ourselves in the Learning Center, reviewing the notes we’ve taken from the lessons, or what have you.

I don’t know if it’d be possible to retroactively tie some newer episodes in with the older ones. Maybe if there was some sort of index, people just starting out could see that there’s a later episode that ties in with the one they’re currently listening to, so they could jump over to that one and work with that as well. A better introductory page would be needed to introduce people new to how this is all laid out. Perhaps also an introductory podcast that people could listen to first, although I don’t know if it’d be possible to keep that on top for people finding jpod101 through iTunes or something.

As far as community goes, I think most of the community happens in the comments of the podcasts. This sort of leaves the latecomers like me (I’m on Beginner Lesson #89) out of the loop. If it were a thread in the forum, people would see if I’m asking a new question about an older episode. As the comments, I don’t know that anybody still monitors the older comments. That might be something to consider.

私　の　２円　です。

Hi Mina-san and JP101

I read everyones suggestion and they all seem great ideas I agree with some but not with all of them ok! I’m a beginner so I definitive want Season 2 because i just have three months here and I’m really needed it because I’m missing alot! and its very hard to catch up with the speaking!

About more intermediate lesson I think its fine the way it is because we are more beginners here than intermediate listeners if they want more intermeiate lessons then make a special corner for them that say intermediate listeners only!

I would tell you what really needs to stay and what you need to add up:

definitive stay: ilove, anime comics from Justin, Miki’s blogs, audios, i learning center, Kanji corner, free content, basic content, premium content, Japanese Culture Classes,Lessons (Beginner)News Survival Phrases, downloadcenter, ask Yoshi-san, help center,etc

what you need to add and remove: have a ichat to ask and chat with JP101 staff the same to the listeners so we all get to know each other, have comments/questions thread for each lesson, remove the forums only certain persons go there to comment, instead of that put more Japanese stuff like pics, history, national anthem, all about Japan I definitive want to know everything about this beautiful country! have jpop, jrock, jhorror, video games sections!

Finally make more changes to the site like improve the faces that are use to post to new ones!( )
change background color to more attractive colors, etc

You see there is alot to do, add, remove and improve to have everyone happy but at the end its your decision that matters but I hope you consider all feedback and lets cross our fingers to see everything we say here in the future! S_R_C

ohhh I see ok it can stay then for people than enjoy forums like you ok! S_R_C

Alan-san,
Good idea! I enjoy keeping up with the community.

Japanese Pod 101 Team: Thanks every so much for the idea of Season 2. I’m a Beginner and I have been somewhat discouraged about my progress! As usual, JPOD to the rescue!! The website and podcast just get better and better! It’s an amazing phenomenon!! You guys are the best!!!

I am at the beginner level, around lesson 60, and I really want to congratulate the whole team for the great job they are doing. For me, as a native French speaker, it is double bonus because I can practise English as well as Japanese !
[For me, it is quite important that the style of the dialogues in English should be accessible — which is definitely the case so far.]

The main problem I had up to know is that I am lagging far behind the current lessons, which makes it difficult for me, as someone wrote before, to really participate in ongoing discussions and feel part of the “community” (this is actually my first post here).
When reading the comments to the daily lessons, I find it frustrating to see so many posts not really connected with the podcast itself but rather with the mood of the contributors on the day they posted their message. This generates a lot of “background noise” and I feel it would be preferable to have a section in the forum devoted to day to day communication among members, reserving the section attached to each lesson to real comments, questions, answers, etc.. that would then still be of interest to students reaching that point some time after.
Concerning season 2, I thing it is a good idea. Initially, I would have expected that at some point, the beginners eventually catch up with the Intermediate sequence of lessons. But of course, in that case, those like me who did not start at the very beginning will always find themselves studying old stuff and never be given a chance to stand at the cutting edge. Since there will always be new beginners joining, I think it will become necessary to build on existing lessons, improving them if required, but not necessarily replacing all of them. One way would be to simply introduce the option to display, as we can do now for “Beginner”, “Intermediate”, etc., something like “Beginner (current year)”, Beginner (year 2006), etc. Intermediate (current year), etc. Some lessons could be unchanged between different years, but others could be modified, or recreated from scratch. Of course, the discussion part for each lesson would be restarted each year.
This would lead to the existence of separate “sub-communities”, as there are different classes in any school, but everybody could take part in the general discussion on the forums.
These are just a couple of ideas but I think that, to establish some kind of “steady state” over the years (long live jpod101 !!), it will be necessary to introduce some connection between the different levels.
I am confident that you guys will find the best way to tackle this new challenge and make an even better Japanese podcast available to an ever growing number of people in the coming years.
Many thanks and congratulations once more.

I have just recently caught up with the lessons as I only began with Jpod101in April. Similar to Jean-Michel, this is my first post as the comments for the previous lessons only seemed to remain current for a week or two after the lesson was published. I never felt comfortable posting to the current lesson’s comments as I just wasn’t there yet.

For new beginner visitors to Jpod, I think the original lessons are so fabulous and progressivly introduce the Japanese language such that it would not be a good use of valuable new beginner lessons to repeat this material. However, as Jean-Michel discussed, enabling and encouraging ’sub-communities’ for the original lessons is a great idea. Perhaps a combination of displaying only recent comments by default (while allowing the option to view older comments) and encouraging the Jpod team and established community to respond to new posts on the previous lessons would work.

Similar to Alan’s suggestion of a ‘10 most recent posts’ page, perhaps a page that allows viewing all new posts would be great. This page could could have user selectable settings to set how recent of posts to view as well as restrict the lessons searched by age and/or category.

For Season 2, I think that revision lessons would be a great idea. However, as mentioned above, I don’t think they should be a repeat of the first season with different dialogue. I think that a good format would be to create new lessons that tie together the key points from a couple of the first season lessons and review key vocabulary while introducing some new vocabulary. The PDF and learning center for these new review lessons could include links to the original lessons in which the reviewed grammar and vocabulary were originally covered.

I also want to say how much I enjoy listening to Jpod101’s podcasts. This is the only podcast I listen to and I even have my 10 year old son and my wife (native Japanese) listening and enjoying them. I had given up studying Japanese after my son was born (life became a bit hectic). With a planned visit to Japan this Christmas/New Years, your Podcast has provided the perfect vehicle to pickup where I left off and (mostly) re-learn what I’ve forgotten.

Your development of this podcast and website over the last 9 months has been phenomenal. I trust that whatever decisions you make moving forward will be the right ones and that we will remain as entertained, captivated and educated as we have to date.

Thank you.

Michael
Vancouver BC, Canada

I think that a good format would be to create new lessons that tie together the key points from a couple of the first season lessons and review key vocabulary while introducing some new vocabulary.

I really like this idea, too. It would not only reinforce old stuff that for reinforcement really doesn’t need an entire lesson, and it also helps to teach combining constructions which is extremely important for being able to better express yourself.

Some comments:

You need to clean out all the non-relevant comments in the old lessons. The lessons may be ‘old’ to people that have been on JPod-101 from the beginning, however for someone just starting out they are new and vital and many of the comments are old and relevant to the lessons. Also, someone from the team will need to monitor these early lessons for new questions and comments. The early lessons need to be viewed as vital to students just joining JPod-101.

Ramping Up:
In three years ‘ramping up’ will not be possible for someone deciding to study Japanese from JPod-101 for ‘fun.’ The problem that really needs to be solved how not to ignore the new people and keep the feeling of community.

The Second Season:

It’s a good idea. For all of non-students [those of us working 8-14 hours a day] its hard to progress linear. I find some beginner lessons easy, some difficult, though not very difficult. To review past material is ‘good’.

Intermediate are always challenging; some I by-pass as to difficult at the moment with my limited time, and spend more time on the beginner lessons and the new blog by Miki.

The blog by Miki is great. Very challenging but worth the battle.

It is clear that JP101 has to reboot to atract new listeners. If so, I have no problem, will stick around. To keep old listeners, well, you just need to keep it going, simulatenously.
Hey,…, maybe, JP101 has just become a large learning corporation with several simultaneous podcasts, where Peter-san is a CEO and a show host of one of them. No bad, ha?

As usual, I am behind- but still I wanted to put in my two cents’ worth. I began learning Japanese at the end of May and without any previous knowledge. Needless to say I began at lesson one and am dragging on…barely into March. So this very subject, that is, how to not leave us newbies and slow-pokes hopelessly behind, has actually been worrying me for a very long time.

The podcast is, after all, JP101, which implies a class for beginners, yes? Reading the posts I see that there are others like me who take the recreational path to learning- I realy enjoy the no-pressure learning, and the JP101 cast makes every lesson so much fun! I work every day, don’t have a lot of time to devote, hence, I am sooooo far behind! I for one am very pleased that you are aware of the lengthening gap between those dedicated listeners from the beginning who kept up and those like me.

My worry is that someone like myself may not go all the way back to lesson one should they come upon JP101 now or later. Can you imagine not knowing any Japanese and needing to catch up on nine months of back lessons??? So in the future, a potential new listener might just move on. You have to keep adding new listeners to be a continuing success I suppose.

I do sympathize with those who are on a higher level and want more intermediate episodes. I do not mean to be heartless to them! I enjoy listening and struggling with the intermediate lessons, trying to pick up a little, and I also listen to Miki’s audio blog, and get excited because I can pick out a few words

Anyway, I know I am rambling, but I do have at least a small contribution- perhaps when new listeners come on board they could answer a brief questionaire upon subscribing. Those already a part of the community could also do so. I would like one of those questions to not only be what level the listener is on now, but what level they began.

Oh, one other thing- one reason I am so far behind is that I realy enjoy the old comments! I listen to the new lessons but don’t realy study them because there is too much (vocab and grammer) missing. I study on the old lessons and in the comments I see new members tuning in for the first time, names I recognize now in the newer lesson comments, I see the progress they have made, I learn a little about them and feel like I also know them a little. I do not post because the lessons are so old, but this is actually my second post because I only recently got excited to see someone had posted to an old lesson comment six months later!