“Skipping” vocab via Lesson Picker?

[TreyE]

Continuing the discussion from Thinking about Quitting, Please give me your success stories to carry on!:

@8bg

Does the new lessons update help, being able to skip vocab? I’ve already started skipping some that seem less useful. Although I try to make sure I have at least one vocab for each kanji. Whether this strategy is wise… Time will tell

I assume this refers to using the Lesson Picker to choose items to learn other than the “skipped” vocabulary. But am I missing something? This doesn’t sound that realistic long-term.

I’m imagining you would select all the items you want to learn and not select the ones you want to “skip”. But wouldn’t they all just accumulate at the top of the selections page over time, requiring you to

1. Scroll down past the ones you’d “skipped” to select the new items; but not just that, to also
2. Reread them in case WaniKani moves an item you haven’t seen before into a lesson earlier than the one you’re doing (as they recently did, for instance, with instance, with 涼 and two of its associated vocabulary items); and
3. Accept that even if you want to skip just one vocab item, you’ll forevermore be locked into manual selection, because using the automatic picker from Today’s Lessons will always choose the lower-level lessons’ items first?

(I just checked that third one — since I haven’t yet done the Level 25 lesson for 涼 and I’m in Lesson 31 now — and indeed, 涼 is in my first batch.)

I feel like I’m missing something, because the help page explicitly anticipates this use case in the section, “Advanced Mode: Lesson Picker”:

Maybe you already know some of the vocabulary (lower-level additions, kana-only additions, etc.) or you don’t want to learn them for some reason (baseball vocab, anyone? ), so you want to skip those items. Having more say over what you’re learning will help you get where you want to be faster, and stay motivated along the way.

Also, later down in the page’s FAQ, it says:

Q. Why do recommended Lessons include a mix of item types now? Shouldn’t I go in order?

The act of mixing the learning of different things is what’s known as “interleaving.” Essentially, learning different types of things right next to each other creates additional (bonus!) connections in your brain, and this added context and connections make for a faster recall speed and strength. And even though it adds a little more difficulty (or perhaps because it adds some difficulty), it is helping you to contextualize what you’re learning which allows for an overall deeper understanding. Plus, learning the same item types over and over gets a bit repetitive, doesn’t it? We don’t want you falling asleep. When additional item types are added, this interleaving will have an even stronger effect.

It seems like, again, skipping just one item means that — if you want to employ this “interleaving” technique — you’ll have to reverse-engineer the picker’s algorithm and choose a variety of items since the Advanced Lesson Picker lists items in type order?

Again, I feel like I’m missing something here. Unless the idea is that skipping any vocab for any reason is supposed to be painful, but not impossible?

[northpilot]

Yes, I think you’d be locked into manually selecting items to study. There’s not an option to hide the vocabulary you don’t want to learn, so they’d always be at the front of your queue.

I have been doing the “interleaving” process manually; I wasn’t aware that it’s a feature. Personally, I don’t think it’s too much work (I just do 5 radicals, 5 kanji, and 5 vocabulary, while defaulting to vocabulary if radicals or kanji are unavailable), though it would probably be much simpler to use the suggested lesson ordering with the option to hide or ignore some items.

Edit: I suppose my use case is skipping vocabulary temporarily, not permanently, which would probably be more annoying. In any case, I do choose all of the items I’ll study manually. The reason I do this is that it makes each level far less daunting. I never have to learn thirty kanji in a row and I never have to make my way through hundreds of vocabulary before moving on to new radicals and kanji.

I think this is much more approachable than doing everything in order.

[TreyE]

@northpilot

I think this is much more approachable than doing everything in order.

“In order” meaning the interleaving order that Today’s Lessons gives you, or “in order” meaning by type?

I’ve personally very much enjoyed the change where I now get only 3–4 kanji in my daily batch of 15 in starting a new lesson, with the kanji and radicals separated with vocabulary — the old system you got all kanji you had the radicals for as soon as you both a) passed the necessary radicals and b) had seen lessons for all the items from earlier lessons.

Now, the automatic picker doesn’t just mix up types, it even mixes new level and old level stuff, which is interesting — that change feels too subtle to have an opinion about already.

[northpilot]

@TreyE

“In order” meaning the interleaving order that Today’s Lessons gives you, or “in order” meaning by type?

“In order” meaning by type, as it used to be.

@TreyE

I’ve personally very much enjoyed the change where I now get only 3–4 kanji in my daily batch of 15 in starting a new lesson

That sounds pretty close to what I’m doing! I am mixing things up with some content from new and old lessons, though. I don’t think this really changes much. In the end, I still have to learn all the items, and I can’t start the locked items until I finish the prerequisites. It’s not like I’m making it more difficult for myself in that regard; it’s just shuffling the order a bit.

[8bg]

Yes, you are right about needing to scroll down past skipped items and the auto lesson serving up older items first. Although since the new feature was added, I’ve exclusively used the manual selection. Perhaps the scrolling will become more tedious as I progress levels, but for now I’m ok with it. Completely agree that WK should have a permanent hide feature, but for now this is a good compromise.

[SteenJ]

Why is it a problem that you have to auto select new lessons? It takes around 5 seconds to do so.
I personally dont want to skip stuff since I use WaniKani mainly to learn Vocab. But it’s cool that the possibility is now here with the update.

[TreyE]

@SteenJ

Why is it a problem that you have to auto select new lessons? It takes around 5 seconds to do so.
I personally dont want to skip stuff since I use WaniKani mainly to learn Vocab. But it’s cool that the possibility is now here with the update.

I’m not arguing with the goals or intention behind the feature, just the implementation.

It just seems weird to me that if you want to skip even one item,

1. You can’t just permanently hide it once but must repeatedly skip it every time you do lessons from then on.
2. You have to always be on the lookout for new items that were previously in lessons above your level but moved earlier, shown among and between ones you’ve decided to skip (especially problematic if you skipped them because you didn’t think you needed to know them, rather than because you already do know them!).
3. You have to give up the “secret sauce” algorithm that the FAQ says mixes a blend of different items to keep your cognition sharp rather than going in order. You don’t have to go in order, either, but your selected order isn’t necessarily going to work like the algorithm’s.
4. If you select an item, see its lesson (the first time on WK you’ll see the item’s meaning), and then decide it’s vocab you don’t want/need, it’s too late unless you quit the lesson and start over with that batch. I mean, I get the “I already know this word” case (although those zip up the SRS ladder and are barely a problem—they’ll take a total of maybe 3 minutes over 6.5 months to burn?). But since the selection screen doesn’t even show the meaning, how does this even work for words you “don’t need”? Are you using an external dictionary to look them up before selecting them?

If you spend just “5 seconds” after you’ve built up, say 20 items you’re skipping, you’ll probably miss a single “new old” vocab word WK moved up to an earlier lesson hiding in between two words you intentionally skipped.