Hi. So I’m at level 13, and I have a bunch of leeches from the first few units that’s I’ve found it difficult to shake. Is there any way I can get Wanikani to quiz me just on the leeches?
I know that it’s possible to download something (Tampermonkey? Greasemonkey? or similar) and then add addons produced by various creators, and one of those addons may be able to isolate and test on the leeches. However I’ll admit that I tried to set that up and failed miserably and would really rather not deal with it again. So I’m hoping that there’s a way to do it within native, unaltered Wanikani that I’m somehow missing, or within Tsurukame, which I use on ipad. (Or if there’s another app similar toTsurukame I could download just for this purpose that would also be great to hear about.)
If not, I hope this is a feature that could be added. I don’t really have a problem with the fact that leeches can’t simply be deleted, such as in Anki. But without being able to isolate and spend extra time on them I think it makes it much harder to learn and shake ‘em. I went to the wkstats page and I know I can see them identified there, and perhaps get AI to test me on them based on that list, but I’d much rather go though native Wanikani or Tsurukame for this.
For extra reinforcement, I recommend handwriting and reading the kanji or vocab aloud while writing. Also pay extra attention to the radical composition of the kanji.
In the past, I’ve also made comparison tables in my study log when getting confused between similar looking kanji or readings.
What does selecting “lower levels first” do, actually? Does it force the system to review lower level items before theyre actually due? Or does it prioritize the lower level ones amongst the reviews you already have due? …. In either case I dont think its quite what Im looking for. Im looking to do extra study sessions with the leeches, in the same way you can do them with your recent failures. Or at the least, just see them as a group on one screen and I can study them on my own, hopefully within Wanikani. That said, perhaps I’m not understanding what “lower levels first” does? Interested.
To me leeches are any items from earlier levels that I still haven’t burned because I keep messing up the reading or meaning. Like I’m on level 27 today but still have a couple of kanji and vocab from level 9 that for whatever reason I keep forgetting. Lower levels first lets me tackle those stragglers first during review so I can work on clearing them sooner. But yeah ultimately doing some dedicated study time outside of SRS I found is the most effective for addressing leeches. I’m less concerned about the items from like level 25 that I’m getting wrong during review because I’m still in the learning zone overall.
I use wkstats.com to get a list view of items I have not burned yet from earlier levels.
the “Lower Levels First” setting makes it prioritize lower-level items in the reviews you already have.
I don’t think there’s a native way to view your leeches, except to go through the vocabulary page at the top and scroll through the list to see which ones you haven’t burned yet (but that depends on how long you’ve been using WaniKani)
Oh wow I didnt know I could view the screen like that, that helps. Thanks. Im disturbed at how many lower level items I havent burned, lol.
So… if I regularly keep current with my reviews, by clearing them every day or even every hour on the hour when they come due…. so theyre never really overdue at all….. , then choosing “lower levels first” has no benefit whatever, correct?
Thanks a lot. Yeah, I hear you on the stragglers. I have too many. Like the crescent moon vocab (mikaduki, in wanikani? cant remember it even now), lol. … But if you do all you reviews on time, every day, then lower levels first is of no benefit, correct? I could see how it would be helpful if working through a backlog, but otherwise no… right?
Yeah, Ill have to study them outside of SRS. Sometimes theyre fairly infuriating.
So… if I regularly keep current with my reviews, by clearing them every day or even every hour on the hour when they come due…. so theyre never really overdue at all….. , then choosing “lower levels first” has no benefit whatever, correct?
That’s correct. Changing the review settings only makes a major difference when you have too many reviews to finish in one go. The idea there is that you can spend more time reviewing items you’ve learned recently, which helps your memory. It’s okay to save the enlightened items for the end of the review pile because waiting another week to review those won’t hurt much. Waiting a week for an apprentice item, on the other hand, means you’re much less likely to remember it.
But like you said, if you consistently do your reviews and they don’t pile up, those settings don’t change much. It’s actually recommended to keep them at the default setting because it apparently helps with retention.
Yeah, no benefit to ordering them differently if you always do your reviews completely.
What also helps me is to study them in sentences. Words stick better if I also have a good look at the context sentences and read them ALOUD while studying the stragglers.
Thnaks. Thats a good idea. I should take extra time on the context sentences for those cards. In any case, I wish there were a way to have wanikani create a temporary practice deck for, say, one’s 30 or 50 oldest cards (biggest leeches). It would undoubtedly be helpful and would also fully compensate for the fact that theres no sanctioned way to delete leeches.
As already mentioned, wanikanistats is a great (and very easy to use) resource to very clearly see your leeches. You could fairly easily create a list of them and them use KameSame, which allows you to input your own word list and then you would be getting quizzed twice as often.
With Kamesame, can you see the wanikani mnemonics and info. while studying, as with Tsurukame? That would be ideal. Looks like that might not be the case though.
Item inspector with the Leeches table selected and a Self Study Quiz opened. Clicking on the SSQ button will automatically pop up a quizz window on all selected items.
It shows you all the leeches organized by severity.
It has lots of options to filter further by level, SRS, item type if you desire using the inbuilt filters or your custom ones.
Even the SSQ is customizable as to which types of reviews you want to do and how you want to do them
It also gives you all the ‘hover info’ you’d ever need. Again, it has multiple views which dive even deeper in specific aspects. Here the ‘item studying view’ is selected.
And there’s also the export functionality which allows you to export the leech table to a Spreadsheet, or any other SRS tool of your choosing. (Admittedly this might take some fiddling with the export settings and the import settings of the SRS tool depending on what you want exactly)
These scripts are super powerful and super nice. It takes a little to get used to them, but it’s definitely worth your time!
Indeed. However this is exactly what I was looking for, so I guess I’ll have to revisit installing something like TamperMonkey. For some reason I found it impossible lol. I’ll look into trying again. Thanks…
