Checkle: the amazing Japanese study tool

The countdown to my first day at language school has begun, and I'm going to be working hard over the next two months to self-study level 1 so that I can jump directly into level 2. I'm a little bit anxious about it, since I don't actually think my Thai is good enough to skip an entire level of class. I have a pretty wide range of random vocabulary that works just fine in day-to-day situations, but my tones are really poor, and my grammar isn't so great.

Enter the Checkle Memorization Pen Set! This is the coolest little study tool that I found online. It's Japanese, and if there's one thing the Japanese are especially amazing at, it's designing simple, clever tools for various uses.

The Checkle consists of a thin piece of transparent red plastic and a double-sided pen with a teal highlighter on one end and an orange felt-tipped marker on the other. I also picked up an extra orange and blue pen at my local Muji.

When you put the red sheet over your notes, anything written in orange will disappear. This is a great way of quizzing yourself and testing your vocab recall.

Additionally, anything highlighted in blue or teal will be completely blacked out when covered with the Checkle.

It's super simple, but a really effective tool that helps me a ton with my notetaking.

The truth is, I've never been especially good at languages. I have an interest in them, and I've been a language teacher for over a decade, but foreign languages have always been a weakness of mine. This time, I'm taking advantage of every tool that I can to make my coursework successful.

And since I live in Thailand, I have no excuse not to immerse myself in the language, even when it's so much easier to be lazy and default to English.