Is WaniKani not hard enough for you? (listening comprehension)

WaniKani API And Third-Party Apps
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My primary goal in learning japanese is to understand someone speaking it, therefore I thought:

Why not let WaniKani read me a word and I have to type in the meaning (or write out the Kanji).

I made a prototype as a Chrome Packed App today, that does just that.
If you would like to try it you can get it here http://db.tt/b8P5zRtD

Of course there are some words that sound the same but you won’t know which one you are expected to enter … oh well.

How To:
Save the file (right click and “save link as”). Then you have to open the Extension Manager (chrome://chrome/extensions/) and then from your download folder drag and drop the file into the Extension Manager Tab.

Edit:
Updated the Extension to work with SSL and other changes that happened with WaniKani over the last year.

4 Likes
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Welp… sounds fun. Thanks, I’m giving it a go.

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Huh…intriguing. I’ll have to look into it when I have a minute.

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ampaze said... My primary goal in learning japanese is to understand someone speaking it, therefore I thought:


 That is not MY primary goal in learning japanese.
WaniKani should remain flexible and open to all possible goals rather than getting down to fit a single person's particular goal. :)
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Chrome isn’t letting me download it from that link you’ve posted. It says that I can’t download applications or extensions from this site. Do I just need to change my settings, or is there somewhere else that I can get this?

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notjames116 said... Chrome isn't letting me download it from that link you've posted. It says that I can't download applications or extensions from this site. Do I just need to change my settings, or is there somewhere else that I can get this?
You have to open the Extension Manager (chrome://chrome/extensions/) and then from your download folder drag and drop the file into the Extension Manager Tab.
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Thanks, this should be really good. I’ve always struggled with comprehension.

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Thanks a lot, I also felt like my listening skills needed some improvement, and this might just help with that! Of course there’s the problem of similar words being difficult to distinguish outside their context, but it’ll have to do for now! =D

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ampaze said...
notjames116 said... Chrome isn't letting me download it from that link you've posted. It says that I can't download applications or extensions from this site. Do I just need to change my settings, or is there somewhere else that I can get this?
You have to open the Extension Manager (chrome://chrome/extensions/) and then from your download folder drag and drop the file into the Extension Manager Tab.
 Yup, that did it. Thanks for the help! (And for the extension; this is pretty cool.)
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Juichiro said...
ampaze said... My primary goal in learning japanese is to understand someone speaking it, therefore I thought:


 That is not MY primary goal in learning japanese.
WaniKani should remain flexible and open to all possible goals rather than getting down to fit a single person's particular goal. :)
 Why do you think he made an app?
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Glad you like it so far! It’s quite hard isn’t it? 

Anyway I made an update with a few tweaks and a “show answer”-button.
The download link is the same as before. And now it looks like this:



Keep on listening!

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This might be enough to force myself to download Chrome again.  But I hate its UI with a terrible passion :(.  Why does every app feel the need to skin itself and otherwise screw up its UI in such as way as to be inconsistent with the rest of the system (at least aesthetically.  Bonus points when its also does screwed up things functionally as well.  Looking at you, Trillian’s cut-and-paste!)

Edit:  Then again, Metro.  No amount of weird skinning could come close to the clusterf*** that is trying to smash a mobile UI onto a desktop.

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Altrag said... This might be enough to force myself to download Chrome again.  

The reason it is coupled to Chrome is that I don't want to use a webserver and at the same time still need to get around the browsers Ajax Same Origin Policy (to find the audio file for a word).
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Very good job on the app. It complements WK perfectly. I will be using this a lot between reviews.

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Yes!
Totally awesome complement to the WK reading reviews!

Thank you so much for the effort.

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I love it so far! But I can see it can be addictive with no assigned session time.

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Hey, I’m having a bit of a problem.  The extension installed fine, but when I try to start it, it gets stuck on initializing and never actually begins.  Is there an API key I’m supposed to enter?

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The page bugs out on me once in a while. Not too sure why, but I get stuck at “Loading new word…”. It seems to happen every 20 words or so (Totally random number I threw there, but happens frequently).

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Thanks for making this! It’s very helpful and efficient. :slight_smile:

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rlgreen91 said... Hey, I'm having a bit of a problem.  The extension installed fine, but when I try to start it, it gets stuck on initializing and never actually begins.  Is there an API key I'm supposed to enter?
 Yeah, you should enter your public API key found at the bottom of your settings page http://www.wanikani.com/account
That way only words you learnt on WK would come up.