Donate cash for a wanikani userscript game :-)

WaniKani Requesting Help
1

I’ve been dreaming of a simple listening game for wanikani, but I don’t have time or experience to make the userscript myself. (I was a UI developer for 15 years but no longer, and javascript was never my expertise)

But, I’d be happy to donate $222 if someone else wants to take on a fun wanikani script project. Any takers? :slight_smile:

In short, I’m looking for a fast guessing game using the Self-Study Quiz filters but different user interaction.

I want to use it for 2 things… (but it could be used for much more)

  1. Rapid listening practice for “Recent Reviews” (in past 3 hours)
  2. Rapid listening practice for “Leeches”

User interaction would look like this…

For each item which matches the filter

  • Play the audio
  • Display an A/B quiz (one correct, one incorrect answer)
  • Show 2 second countdown

User has 2 seconds to guess the answer (using keyboard shortcuts)

  • Visual/audio feedback indicates correct, incorrect, timeout (i.e, green/red/yellow or bing/buzz/silence)
  • If correct, item is removed from queue.
  • If incorrect or timeout, item is bumped a few items down the queue
  • if timeout, correct answer is also highlighted briefly (i.e. 1/4 sec) before moving on

Game immediately shows/plays the next item, and continues at rapid pace until all items have been answered correctly (even if it takes many times for some items).

None of this has any affect on user’s wanikani data. It’s just a fun way to get used to listening and quickly answering.

Implementation Notes

a. The incorrect item shown could be either a random item from the same filter or a related word. It probably doesn’t matter that much. The goal isn’t to provide a difficult challenge, but rather to train the brain to speedily go from “listen” to “understand”.

b. the interaction was inspired by iKnow Rapid Quiz

c. If you’re familiar with Self-Study Quiz, I’m just interested in the “Vocab Audio → Meaning” type of Q&A, but this plugin could just as easily be used for other Q&A types, making it a pretty handy little game for many things.

Screen Shot 2020-08-30 at 9.09.41 AM

7 Likes
2

Nice concept!

As an added bonus, it would be great if there was an option for the algorithm to choose tricky answers:

  • Same number of kanji, so you don’t end up with easily distinguished answers like 火 and 航空券.
  • Words that share a kanji (公園 and 公営).
  • Words that share partial readings (公園 and 工作).
5 Likes
3

Definitely! Tricky answers would be even better, especially if it’s an option.

Would be especialy helpful for leeches, but even for a general reviews like “Everything in Level 10” or “Everything with 公 kanji” or “Every near permutation of my leeches”. Easy to imagine fun use cases here.

Since it’s rapid fire, it only takes a few minutes to get through many items. Personally, I’d use it after every less or review session to reinforce what I just learned from another angle.

2 Likes
4

Hmm… probably also need to exclude A B pairs with the same pronunciation. That would be annoying :slight_smile:

2 Likes
5

except if they can be distinguished based on pitch… though I would fail so hard on that!

5 Likes
6

Hey @rfindley - Any chance you’re interested in implementing this or collaborating on other language ideas. I’ve been stewing on a neuroscience based language “absorption” idea for a couple years, but I’m finally admitting I’ll never get around to implementation if I don’t find someone to collaborate with…

If not, anyone you recommend?

1 Like
7

I need to finish up the Projections page on wkstats.com before doing any other script work… but yes, I was thinking about implementing this.

As for the neuroscience thing… I’m very interested to know what you have in mind, but I’m not sure whether we should discuss it (I’ll consider it, though). I also have some neuroscience-based ideas that I’ve been working on, and depending how things go this year with my contracting work, I may end up turning the language stuff into a business. There’s still nothing out there that I would consider to be a highly effective natural learning tool for Japanese grammar (and, actually, Japanese as a whole), and I think most researchers are too bogged down in long-standing education theory to see some of the other promising directions that education can go. I really think applied neuroscience would revolutionize education.

7 Likes
8

Agreed - no one has really cracked Japanese for English speakers, but I think it’s possible to do much much better even.

Happy to share ideas sometime. I don’t plan on making a language learning business myself. It’s just a side interest - been living in Japan for 10 years. There’s probably a bigger market for English for Japanese speakers - another market which is not being served effectively.

2 Likes
9

Yup, and that factors into my plan. I have some connections to an English teaching program in Japan, and will likely pursue testing the neuroscience concepts there first. As a native English speaker, it will be easier, faster, and cheaper for me to put together a proof-of-concept program for teaching English. And, once the concept is proven, I’m certain the people testing the English version will be highly interested in providing resources to help build out the Japanese version.

Send me an email.

3 Likes
10

I would definitely support a crowdfunding campaign for this :smiley: :dollar:

11

I’m also interested in this. Wouldnt mind to throw some monies into it. :wink:

12

I’m interested if you’d like to email me. texasbanya at the big g.

13

Glad to see more interest and potential backing for this! I could really use it :slight_smile:

@rfindley was considering an implementation, but I don’t know the timeframe or it’s still on the table

@tetraflu0ride - Are you interested in using it or writing it?

1 Like
14

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.