Looking for a simple tool to practice reading hiragana and katakana, as many times as you want to?
Well, Tofugu’s Learn Kana Quiz might be a perfect tool for you.
We actually made this kana quiz tool a few years ago as a companion to our Learn Hiragana Guide and Learn Katakana Guide. Since then, many beginner level Japanese learners have used it as a tool to test their kana knowledge, and simply practice reading kana over and over.
There are a few things that we like about our kana quiz tool. And I hope you’ll like them too.
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You can choose which kana you want to practice.
If you are still trying to memorize all the kana, you’d want to be quizzed with just the kana you’ve already studied. Many quiz tools let you practice a set of randomly-picked kana. While these can be great for when you’re already familiar with all the kana. Our quiz tool lets you select which kana you want to practice by the kana column. That way you can focus on only the specific ones you want to practice.
- You’re forced to “try” recalling.
Quiz tools usually give you the correct answer immediately when you get something wrong. Well, our quiz tool doesn’t. This is because we want you to try hard to recall what the character is. There’s no reason to hurry here. Take your time staring and paying attention to the shape of the character. Try to remember how you became familiar with the character in the first place (“What was the mnemonic I used for this kana?” etc.).
- You can identify the kana you’re still having trouble with.
In the results page, you’ll see which kana you had a hard time with. It will show you the kana that you got incorrect, along with the number of failed attempts you made. This tells you which kana you’d want to put extra focus on. Maybe tracing over that kana with your finger would help. Or, if you realize the kana’s mnemonic is not quite working for you, you can even come up with your own way to remember it.
…Does it sound like something you want to try out? Tofugu’s Learn Kana Quiz is available for free out on the wild internet. Check it out!
