Add on Vocabulary for WaniKani

WaniKani is literally the only system I’ve used (waiting for Kanji Study to get the SRS system in place!) that has worked for me.

Why doesn’t the team expand on the vocabulary to mirror the JLPT levels and sell it as an add-on? I’d def buy that. I just want a one-stop-shop for all my kanji/vocab needs and WaniKani could be it!

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With WK as it is I have had no trouble passing N4 and N3, with little other vocab resources, just my grammar book and language class. I’m not sure how it stacks up for N2 (I am about to find out in a couple months) and N1, but it seems to do well in supporting JLPT study as it is.

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It’s a small team that has also been trying to put together a grammar resource for a very long time already. I think they lack the people and resources to be putting together more mnemonics for something that might not sell well at all.

Kanji learning resource is in demand because it’s more rare to come across. Grammar learning resources are in demand because people are always looking for ways to make grammar easier less booooooooring to learn.

Offering a paid pack for just vocab SRSing means you end up competing with a lot of free resources, and they might have concluded they would not recoup those sunk costs of putting it together even if they had time and interest to do it. :slight_smile:

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Yeah that’s what I thought. TBH I only suggested it because I love WK and I think its literally the best method I’ve ever used for learning kanji, so I thought it would be useful for vocab as well!

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I only used Wanikani for kanji and vocabulary study for the N2. I was level 40 when taking it this year and there were a couple of vocabulary words that I didn’t know, but was able to pass those sections on Wanikani alone. I recommend supplementing with grammar workbooks and reading practice for the test. I passed the N2!!

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What did you do about the kana only words? Or are they not as prevalent on the higher JLPT levels?

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What is Kanji Study?

Kanji Study is an app for Android phones. Its really the best developed app our there, and I think once they get the SRS system going, it will be the go to app for studying kanji using SRS on mobile.

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Honestly, this is very useful news and great to hear. Thanks!

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Holy molly this has a lot of information!
Cheers a bunch for the recommend.


And the stroke order recognition is actually decent,
which I really didn’t think was possible at this point.

Is there a date on the SRS though? It kinda
feels like i’m mindlessly roaming around

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I’ve read the developer mentioning hopefully by the end of the year!

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Darn, guess i’ll keep my ear to the ground then. Because this would really help balance
out my Kanji recall vs recognition ratio, which is horribly one sided at the moment.

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This time around, I don’t remember kana only words, but I remember they were there when I took the same test two years ago. Good question!

Also if you look at the scoring, you don’t need to get every answer correct to pass.

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I’m glad to hear! I also living in Japan now, and thanks to Wanikani, I can read a majority of Japanese throughout the day. Keep up the hard work!

Looked briefly, and it seems as though no one has mentioned Flo Flo yet. You have to add the words yourself, but it makes a super great reading companion. I recommend using Flo Flo alongside your reading. See a word you don’t know? Add it to the queue. Learning a word without context is probably not nearly as effective as first encountering it in the wild and learning it within the context of a story. That said, many people use Flo Flo to preemptively learn a bunch of words they don’t know in a book/story and then reading said book. Hey, whatever works for you.

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It may not be possible for a small team to expand the vocabulary so much which is fair but since the system is already in place it would be easy to offer customizable user-made expansions. Of course these would need to be reviewed by peers to make sure the learning material was accurate. This way if one wanted to offer JLPT expansions for other users to like and add to their studies, they could do so. Could have a rating system to sort best from worst user-made material. It would also allow the WaniKani staff to take hints from the users as to what they should focus on adding next.

In case any of the WaniKani staff are reading this, I’d just like to say, that I too would definitely pay a bit extra for a vocab add on. At the moment I’m using anki for that and it’s not an enjoyable as WaniKani.

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There’s Kitsun. Isn’t that basically this and more?

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Someone might be able to write a script to do this. In the meantime, I recommend Torii which is basically wanikani for vocab and is made by a user here. And they let you categorize the vocab by JLPT level.

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