Summary
It is currently unnecessarily difficult to complete one lesson’s worth of kanji within a week such that I can keep a consistent routine of learning and reviewing (I want to have the same time on Sunday provisioned for each new level’s kanji). I would pay $500 to receive the functionality that when a level is unlocked, all kanji at that level are unlocked. It’s extremely annoying that I still have more than halfway to go in the WK system but I’m held up every week and forced into turbulence in attempting to form a routine due to ~6 stinkin’ radicals (the learning of which might actually be enhanced by learning a kanji application at the same time).
Why it’s not a big deal
This should strictly be an upgrade for WaniKani, because:
- It would move in the direction of better user compliance with their studies (more routine will enhance learning/review compliance).
- Users are still capped by levels being locked, so WK isn’t really compromising their POV to save users from themselves on volume. Learning new radicals alongside the handful of new kanji isn’t a big deal. (perfectly reasonable to lock this feature until after the first few levels as well)
Please consider my offer, and thank you for making a product that I love so dearly. WK devs pls contact me if there’s anything I can do to help make this happen.
I’ll pay $501 to not make this feature.
But in all seriousness, this system has been around for over a decade. It’s by design. Nothing is stopping you from doing self-study in the meantime. The whole point is that you should know the radicals BEFORE you start to learn the kanji, just like you have to learn the kanji BEFORE you unlock the vocab. If you’re learning a kanji with a new radical that you haven’t studied yet, the mnemonic isn’t going to do you a lot of good, and the mnemonics are part of the selling point of WK. WK didn’t invent SRS. You’re paying for the way they’ve organized it and how they teach it via mnemonics.
I started recently, only level 8 so far, but been doing 7 days per levels. I don’t understand your point about routine. You just have 2 points in the week where you unlock new kanji, I’m leveling up every saturday and unlocking the second batch every tuesday.
What you’re asking would essentially allow leveling every 3.5 days, and if I understand correctly that’s basically how it goes after level 42, where you unlock enough at the start of the level to level up, with only 1-3 kanji being locked behind radicals.
If anything, for leveling exactly once per week, the current system works a lot better as you have 2x the time on a good batch of the kanji where you’re afforded to make more mistakes and still get them to guru before the week ends, and then you can use the entire error margin you’re afforded to still level up on the second, smaller batch.
In that case it sounds like I’m unblocked at lvl 42 onward; that gives me more hope then, thanks for that info.
If anything, for leveling exactly once per week, the current system works a lot better as you have 2x the time on a good batch of the kanji where you’re afforded to make more mistakes and still get them to guru before the week ends, and then you can use the entire error margin you’re afforded to still level up on the second, smaller batch.
I’m not following you on this; my bottleneck isn’t making mistakes, it’s having the time available for me to knock out reviews in a way that lets me nail the timing to stay on weekly pace. If I could just learn the entire kanji batch in one go (say, Sunday morning), then I feel way more confident about my chances to stay on pace and not miss review times for work, family demands that pop up. It’s just not enough margin for error in the scheme of needing two batches with a minimum >3 day separation.