I think that it would be useful to have Complete Beginner versions of other videos in other difficulties, particularly the Beginner ones. I’ve watched most of the Complete Beginner videos and feel like I understand most of them so they aren’t even N+1 anymore. When I try many of the Beginner ones however I am completely lost. I think it’s mostly down to the vocabulary that many of the Beginner videos expect making then harder than N+1 for me. By Complete Beginner I mean slower speech and more comprehension help like drawing or pantomiming so that I can start integrating the important words for the topic.
I really love Comprehensible Japanese and I’ve already learned so much. I just feel like this is an opportunity to close a gap in difficulty.
I think this is a good idea, but I would also encourage you to push through the beginner videos even though they are difficult. I am at about 130 hours and did all Complete Beginner videos twice before starting Beginner videos and still had a gap. I am now reaching the end of the Beginner videos and I understand them much much better now. This is just my theory, but I think when starting the next level you almost go back to that feeling of when you just started, that feeling of not understanding much. I have watched a handful of intermediate videos and am starting to feel like I could make the jump there.
Anyway, sorry for my long reply, I’m not sure if any of this is helpful to you. Good luck in your studies!
I’m by no means an expert but if it’s the slower speech that you are wanting, I have found slowing the videos down to x0.75 works well. It slows it down enough to be more comprehensible yet rarely distorts the sound to an noticeable level.
I think I am in a similar position to you. Superbeginner is comprehensible now, but beginner is often above me. I also doubt I cold understand the sperbegnner videos without the visual cues and context.
Hi Steveさん👋
Thank you for your suggestion!
Our developer, Ben, is currently working on a feature to sort videos by difficulty within each level. We’re hoping this will make it easier for users to transition to the next level😊
I came to the forums hoping I’d find that you are working on that feature. Sorting by ease would be an amazing feature that would really help us find videos we are ready for. Do you have an idea of when it will be ready?
P.S. This website is awesome. Thank you for your hard work!
Some time in March, probably. It’s a feature that I’ve wanted for a long time, so I’m excited to finally be making it soon, as long as no new priorities come up.
Thanks! I’m super excited for it, and if you need some beta testing let me know :). I’m a software engineer myself, though more on the management side the past few years. I want to see this app thrive both for me and everyone else!
Until we get a ranking system, I’ve found sticking to the “Whiteboard” topic has been best for me in early Beginner after finishing Complete Beginner.
Whenever it’s a teacher just talking to the camera (even with pantomiming) I am getting lost too quickly, so watching mostly this topic keeps it comprehensible.
Specifically, the following factors are considered:
25% - How fast the teacher speaks
25% - How long the sentences are
15% - How often words are repeated
10% - How rare the words are (however, rare words are considered less difficult if they are repeated a lot in the video)
10% - How long the video is (longer = harder)
15% - “Other” (proportions of different parts of speech that have statistical significance when predicting the level, like the て form of verbs)
We would like to also consider how many visuals are in the video, but that would require us to go through all of the videos , and the current system does a good-enough job anyways.
Thank you so much for implementing this, Ben! I’ve been really looking forward to being able to sort videos by easy! I just noticed that the difficulty rating doesn’t show up on the watch page for the videos themselves - if that’s something that’s possible to add, it would be really nice to include it in the video info. If it’s too difficult, totally understandable!
I started over at the easiest videos and overall I think the system is working great! The one thing I would change would be to increase the weight of how rare the words are. I feel like the biggest thing that trips me up when watching a video is the percent of newer words. I’ve noticed as I’ve been working my up from the bottom again the ones with a large amount of new words stick out like spikes of difficulty in the middle of a gently increasing incline of learning .
If I had to pick what to take away from I would pick speaking speed at least up to a point. No matter how slow the speaker is speaking if they are all new words I’m still not going to understand. That’s just my personal experience though, I’m sure you can see a lot more data on this than I can.
Anyways, I know from personal experience how sensitive sorting weights can be but I wanted to give some feedback after using it for a bit. Thanks for all your hard work!
I found that difficulty within a level can vary dramatically, so having a finer grained value is super helpful. More importantly, I now have the confidence to try a higher level (especially because after the recent adjustments, it looks like I have already seen some of the harder videos!).
I wanted to leave a little feedback to help improve the algorithm. From my personal, and very subjective experience, difficulty comes from a high density of words I do not understand. An isolated word is often accompanied by an explanation and this is great. But when there is a rapid succession of words I do not know, I quickly get lost.
On the other hand, length of the video seems to have almost no effect for me. A saw a video that recently got bumped a level, but in my mind it was still considerably easier than all other videos at that new level.
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, and the current system does a good-enough job anyways.
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