Serious Language Student flash cards offer you the following:

• Users are methodically introduced to 1100+ words of common Japanese vocabulary.

• Progress through the vocabulary is personalized to the user. As the user responds to a flashcard successfully, that card is presented less frequently. If the user needs to review that card, it is presented more frequently. The formula on which the frequency of card repetition is based flows from research on effective learning curves.

• The Flashcards program lives on the user’s device. One does not need to be connected to the Internet to run the program and practice. One is not affected by the speed of one’s Internet connection. One’s progress is recorded on one’s device, so one is protected from the records ever being “lost in the cloud.”

• The Serious Language Student flashcards are designed to make sure that the student not only know characters passively, i.e. can recognize them, but also actively, i.e., knows them well enough to describe them, which in general means knows them well enough to write them. (Are other products restricted to passive learning of characters?)

• For describing characters the Serious Language Student flashcards use the system that has been standard in China for almost 2,000 years, and which was adopted in Japan, when the Japanese adopted characters. It is a system familiar to all Japanese and with which every student of Japanese, sooner or later, must become familiar. The specific system used by the Serious Language Student is the one that was standardized in China in the early 1700s, and which is also the standard in Japan. More details are provided in the Manual. A quick example here is that the character 桜 (さくら) “cherry” is analyzed as consisting of the character 木 (き) “tree” on the left plus six additional strokes. The user of Serious Language Student flash cards will learn this system of describing characters, known and used by all Japanese.

• When learning Japanese vocabulary, there is a tension between learning the most common words versus learning the most common characters. The two are not the same thing. For one example, 的 (まと) “target” is a rare word, but the character 的 with the pronunciation てき is a component of many compound words, especially as a suffix. So, the 1100+ words in the Serious Language Student flash card vocabulary are a combination of the most common words, as measured in a variety of sources, but also, very importantly, all 1006 of the so-called “education kanji,” 教　育　漢　字 (きょういくか ん じ), established by the Japanese Ministry of Education, 文　部　科　学　省 (もんぶがくしょう). These are the characters learned in elementary school by all Japanese children and certainly must be part of learning Japanese for any foreigner. Characters that have both a common Japanese reading, 訓読み (くんよみ), and a common Chinese reading, 音読み (おんよみ), appear at least twice to illustrate both, e.g.,  学 appears both in 学ぶ(まなぶ) “learn” and in 大学 (だいがく) “university.”

• Words are introduced in a logical progression,
  first going from かな (phonetic Japanese) to English, e.g., いぬ to “dog,”
  then English to かな, e.g., “dog” to いぬ,
  then 漢字（かんじ）to English and かな, e.g., 犬 to “dog” and いぬ, and
  finally, English to 漢字（かんじ) and かな, e.g., “dog” to いぬ and 犬.

• Practice is never multiple choice. Understanding, speaking, and reading Japanese are not multiple choice tasks. (The potential buyer should check whether other products use multiple choice.)

• Users can override the order in which new vocabulary is introduced in order to adapt to the order of vocabulary introduction of any teacher or textbook. (The potential buyer should compare whether other products have this flexibilty.)

• Users who are coordinating use of Serious Language Student flashcards with a language course can set Serious Language Student to quiz mode in order to drill a certain set of words with no expansion of vocabulary but staying with the drill of only those words. After the drill or test Serious Language Student can be toggled back to gradual vocabulary expansion. (Potential buyers should compare whether other products have this quiz concentration option.)

• Users can add vocabulary words in addition to the 1000+ words with which Serious Language Student comes supplied. Thus, users working with a teacher or textbook as well as users reading on their own can add to the vocabulary list all the vocabulary introduced by that teacher or textbook or interesting words encountered in reading. Users then practice those added words as part of the Serious Language Student practice. (The ability to add words to the vocabulary corpus appears to be unique to Serious Language Student.)