It seems like once you get past level 20, there is a nosedive in the example sentences given. I think three was a decent amount that showed the versatility of a word without becoming overwhelming.
However, only one example sentence is not very helpful in my opinion. Am I alone in thinking this?
I hope I don’t come across as entitled or ungrateful, I’m just a bit disappointed and was wondering if perhaps there will be more of the three example sentences given in future levels that I have yet to reach.
I believe they used only have 1 example sentence for all levels, but then they later added two more for the first 20 levels. Revamping the context sentences does not seem to be a priority for WK.
I recommend going and looking at example sentences on Weblio, such includes English translations. Note that you should poetically skip past the first few pages of sentences to get to the longer ones
As mentioned, there used to be only one example sentence per word. They added more (simpler) sentences for the first 20 levels a year or two ago, but nothing has been added recently. Given they the added even those sentences, I’d guess WaniKani agrees with your opinion. But who knows if they’ll add more since they are a small company with limited time and resources.
Aren’t those sentences just added by random learners? I think like most English/Japanese dictionaries, those sentences should be viewed with skepticism.
No that is just the Tatoeba corpus I think. Weblio’s is pulled from random dictionaries or other sources. They list their sources. Though Tatoeba is one, and I always ignore those.
Thanks, this is actually very helpful. I’m glad y’all mentioned Tatoeba in this thread; I’ve been using Jisho.org for improving my understanding of the vocab, but they only use Tatoeba example sentences.
I’ll definitely be using Weblio’s provided example sentences from now on to determine how to use these words more naturally (barring the Tatoeba sentences).
From a development perspective, you have to understand that they’re a very small team and have to focus their time on what is deemed most beneficial to the community. Most companies face similar development issues.
If they get round to adding extra sentences at some point, then that will be great, but they also have the reality that once you hit level 20, you’re probably interested enough to be looking at other sources of grammar and vocab examples too. That makes it a lower priority than some other things they may be working on.
As far as uses of their time, I’m fine with they doing what they’re doing at the moment and I’m just happy that WaniKani is such a well designed and extensible site.
Fair enough, and for the most part, I agree with your sentiment.
I was under the impression that they always provided three sentences from the get-go, not that they were a bonus added in later before I became a user.
If any of the developers reads this, I hope my question didn’t come across as a scathing attack on their work ethic. I appreciate this program for what it is, and it has well exceeded the expectations I had for it a few months ago.
I am a bit sad that I will soon be reaching the end of example sentence utopia, because I do feel that they add a lot of value. That being said, I can certainly see why it is not a priority. I’ve worked on creating a course for Duolingo, and creating thousands of example sentences that are supposed to sound natural and be instructive is difficult, borderline soul-crushing work.
… and, as others have suggested, there are alternatives out there. On top of Weblio, which I use quite a lot, another good resource is Youglish, which searches YouTube subtitle files for the word you’re looking for, thus giving the additional benefit of listening practice. You usually won’t get translations, but I suppose one can think of that as kicking off the training wheels.
