Use the Vocab Drill to review vocabulary and learn new words. The video reinforces your learning in a natural way, as you see and hear each word spoken by a native speaker.

How to use the Vocab Drill

Type your reply in English:

And press the ‘Enter’ key when the percentage turns green:

You can continue to the next word when your reply is 80% correct. This is similar to the accuracy required in a real-life conversation. But try to give perfect answers to get a higher score!

Click on the Japanese words for hints:

To ‘pin’ the hint so it doesn’t disappear when you move your mouse away, click the Japanese word a second time.

If the setting for “Vocab in Japanese script only” is On, you can see the Romaji by moving the mouse over the Japanese word. This will not affect your score:

Press the “Skip” button to miss a word and go to the next one.

Video window

Press ‘Play’ on the video window to hear the word again:

Use the slider to adjust the volume:

Settings

The “Settings” link is at the top of the Vocab Drill. It is also on the My Lessons page and the Lesson page.

Each of these settings is described below.

Default: On
Takes effect immediately: Yes

When selected, the words are shown only in script, i.e. hiragana, katakana and kanji.

When not selected, the Japanese words are shown in both script and Romaji.

Default: Off
Takes effect immediately: No, you must restart the drill.

For example, if the drill has 50 words, you could set “Maximum” to ‘10’ to practice only the first 10 words.

Note that when this setting is used, the maximum score possible for the drill will be less than 100%.

Default: On
Takes effect immediately: Yes

Useful if you want to do drills with the sound off.

Default: On
Takes effect immediately: Yes

When NOT selected, the video will only play when you press the “Play” button on the video window.

This setting has no effect if “Enable video” is Off.