Context Japanese - Development Blog
Development updates and insights
Can real news be simplified for beginner learners?
Can we simplify real news stories for beginners so that they can gain access to the language through everyday events? There is little of this type of content available. Perhaps because creating it is difficult. News becomes outdated almost immediately, so new material has to be produced continuously. At the same time, simplifying complex ideas without losing the story is challenging. In this post I will demonstrate my approach to this.
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What should Japanese learners read? Following interests or building variety?
When choosing reading material for language learning, should we follow our interests or deliberately choose variety? It's a question I've found myself thinking about since launching Context Japanese.
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Six months building Context Japanese: Five things I've learnt
It's about six months since Context Japanese went live, so seems a good moment to pause and give an update. Here are five things I have learnt.
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New name, same mission
I decided to change the name of the site. It was a case of now or never really, and an encounter with a Reddit post about the other ‘Yomu Yomu’ app made up my mind. The name was neat and cool for Japanese, but it didn’t really capture the essence of the site, nor did it have the capacity to scale with my vision to expand beyond Japanese as the site grows. I considered a number of options before landing on my preferred choice. The site is now called Context. Here's why:
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How to actually break out of the intermediate plateau (graded reading news)
Graded reading works. The premise is simple: read as much as you can at a level that's comfortable, and your language skills will increase. But most graded readers fail at one thing: content. I built yomu yomu to offer learners fresh, real news — not anime, not manga, not tea ceremony. Articles on business, science, sports, politics. Short enough for daily use. Leveled N5–N1. Here's how to get the most out of it.
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I got stuck on the intermediate plateau for years, so I decided to build my own app
Context-Japanese is my solution to the intermediate plateau. I got stuck and couldn't find content I wanted to read so built my own app
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Unexpected decision points: Language direction
As I got closer to having a mvp ready for consumption important questions arose about what to incldue and what direction to take the product
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An MVP at the Edge of a Release Decision
MVP News started as a deliberately small experiment. The question was simple: could AI-generated content be shaped into short, readable news articles for language learners?
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