Jalup Mobile – Speaking Missions & Higher Level Decks
Jalup App 1.0.3 has just been released, and with it comes something I’ve been trying to make a reality for a long time: fun speaking practice by yourself. Reading sentences out loud and shadowing are great practice, but it isn’t getting you to think and talk for yourself. I wanted to try to actually have a full part of the Jalup app dedicated to simulated conversations.
Incoming…Speaking Missions!
Speaking missions take you through a series of situations, where you must react with your own spoken Japanese. Now possible utilizing the iPhone microphone and built in speech recognition, when you speak Japanese, it appears on the screen. This allowed me to create structured scenarios where you have to respond to the other person in a specific way. Not only does your pronunciation have to be correct, you need to actually think up sentences yourself like you would if you were there talking to this person.
I make the speaking situations simple, as entertaining as possible, and guide you towards a bunch of possible answers. If you have trouble figuring out what to say, you eventually are given a hint. If the hint isn’t enough, after a few more tries you are given the possible answers. Even when you have the answer, you still have to pronounce it out loud and get that right, so you are always getting good speaking practice.
The best part is that the speaking missions follow through with what you’ve learned from Jalup Beginner. They only use the words from Jalup beginner, without relying on any outside knowledge. Each mission covers 50 new Jalup Beginner cards, and as they progress, the missions grow in difficulty.
Example 1 (Mission 1-4)
Example 2 (Mission 2-9)
Currently there are 5 missions, with around 10 parts each (going up to Jalup Beginner #250). If people enjoy this, I’ll be adding missions for every new 50 cards from Jalup Beginner, Jalup Intermediate, etc.
These Beginner speaking missions don’t cost anything extra and are fully included when you buy the Jalup Beginner Package through the app. You can sample the first two missions for free.
Higher level decks
You thought I was just going to leave you with Kana Conqueror, Kanji Kingdom and Jalup Beginner? Jalup Intermediate and Jalup Advanced will both be added on the next big update (hopefully within the next few weeks, maybe sooner). With them will come a maximum package for the app, which as usual will give you the best purchase value.
After these, I will start working on the Expert and Immersion decks. These will take longer, because I still need to add all the card links in, and this is a very time consuming process.
Get the app?
If you haven’t, yes :) I could really use the extra support so I can start moving forward with the even cooler things planned (picture recognition, augmented reality, etc.)
Also, if you enjoy the app, I would super appreciate if you could leave a review through the app store. More people knowing about the app and using it allows for more awesomeness on the way.
Download from the app store.
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
Man, this is awesome. I’m super excited. Keep up the awesome work!
Thanks! It’s what I do day and night now :)
As an android user, my dilemma is what Apple device to get now =/
I think picking up an old iPhone might be the cheapest option, but maybe getting an iPad might be more useful for other things as well?
Still unsure =/
If you’re tight on a budget or would prefer to spend the least amount of money possible, I would highly recommend getting the iPad (2018) 32GB. iPads in general have excellent multi-window capabilities, say if you see a word in Jalup but also want to have a Japanese-English dictionary open on the other side of the screen for extra reference. The good thing about the iPad 2018 model is that it is compatible with the Apple Pencil. It will set you back 99 USD but you’ll be able to have Jalup open on one side of the iPad and then your note-taking app of choice on the other, ready to practice writing kanji. Of course, just having the iPad and a notebook and pen ready is also another solution but I think that once you get your hands on an iPad and discover its potential as you use it, you’ll not regret your purchase.
An older iPhone would work fine, but at the very least I’d pick up an iPhone 7. Currently they are on iPhone 8 & X, and this year September may be be releasing 9 or X1?
I plan on fully utilizing the most recent iPhone technology (like AR), and whatever else comes on the way, so you wouldn’t want too old a version that won’t support new features.
Amy brings up some great points about an iPad, so that is also something to consider.
However, I think a small device is more suited towards the “2-minute Anki” technique, where you can easily pull it out of your pocket and do it for 2 minutes at a time. Since it is instant and requires no internet connection, this is a big plus.
Also, the iPad version design of the app isn’t quite fully optimized just yet, and is more of an afterthought. So the size of things may occasionally appear smaller or larger than they should be for the iPad.
Could you consider having the speaking separately priced? I am still going to use your Anki decks as already got from you but am interested in trying the speaking.
It’s a possibility having it separate in the future.
One thing I’ve been considering (once I do some more missions) is releasing an Anki version. It wouldn’t be able to utilize voice recognition, but instead it could just have the possible answers in the answer field of each card. Would this interest you at all or are you specifically interested for the speech recognition functionality?
It’s possible to utilize speech recognition in Anki. Just add a {{type:}} field on the front of each card and use your microphone to fill it out.
Probably wouldn’t do the Anki version as already have so many of your cards to do. I will check out the first part and see how I like it. It convinced me to download your app.