I am mostly happy with my experience here (still doing the trial). However, there are two issues which make me hesitate to commit fully.
I waste about 10-20% of my time typing in the reading of words/kanji when the meaning was asked for and vice versa. The visual clue is just not working for me once I focus on the Japanese text.
More annoying is having to type the English translation of more complex expressions and having to prefix verbs with “to”. I am not here to learn English and I do believe most people here have no difficulties distinguishing verbs from nouns. I know that you can add your own answers but this is time consuming and also not fool-proof since more complex expressions can have plenty of reasonable translations. To me a multiple choice option for the English translation would be very helpful.
I used a reorder script so reviews always appeared with meaning and reading back to back. Faster and you won’t mix up which one comes first.
Yeah, but it just is what it is. The site needs to assess accurate comprehension. Anything less would decrease the effectiveness of learning. Multiple choice would be wayyy too easy. Then you don’t have to conjure up the answer on your own and can just get by if you recognize it in a group of wrong answers. When you’re reading real Japanese in the wild there’s no multiple choice. I used the undo script for times where I actually knew it
Thanks. I have the same question as KanjiLearner2010. Could you tell us which reorder script you are using?
As for the need for accurate assessment. I agree with it as long as the Japanese spelling is concerned but Japanese expressions rarely have a unique or best translation to English. So it is in case a difficult if not impossible task. Having to remember that “力いっぱい” is one of “With All One’s Strength”/“Full Power”/“As Hard As One Can” and not “With all my might” is besides the point as far as learning kanji is concerned. Here a simple multiple choice question testin approximate understanding could make learning/reviewing quite a bit faster.
Ideally we would have an option of choosing either the current method or multiple choice.
Dunno what Vanilla was using back when he was going through WK, but Back to Back works now. Might need a read through recent(ish) posts in the thread in case there’s some hotfix for it, can’t recall exactly…
The crabigator would beg to disagree, 'cause WK does work with its system. And I’d definitely not replace typing with multiple-choice because of the reasons given prior by others.
The Self-study Quiz script can display all acceptable answers, often enough there are more than what is shown in the UI.
Not sure what you are trying to say. What I am suggesting is having the option of using simple multiple choice questions to test approximate understanding to avoid having either
to add countless synonyms
to memorize some of the suggested translations
The first method is too much work, the second can be rather detrimental to making progress here in case you have studied Japanese before and have learned other translations.
Just to make sure: I was trying to suggest optional multiple choice
As far as " WK does work with its system" is concerned, I think if you are starting from scratch then I would most likely agree but having to memorize translations of vocabulary items you know well is somewhat off-putting.
I did start from scratch, so… yeah, there’s that
Now, while it’s true that I discover additional meanings when reading or listening, the ones that WK taught me are still valid (and related) so… no complaints, so far at least.
If WK’s translation is a meaning you were aware of, there shouldn’t be a problem.
If it’s a new-to-you meaning, is it not worth memorizing? And there’s always the option of adding your own preferred answer.
I’ve seen a few other SRS systems (not many, mind you), none had multiple-choice… must be a reason for that
While it may work for learning a language, typing on some and MCQ on some would be troublesome to implement, not to mention WK users’ reception. And just for “you know well”?
Also, I don’t think WK team wants to make things easier. More accurate, maybe, but does it?
Honestly, there are things that are difficult to map to an SRS system.
Did I remember that this was “funeral”? Nope.
But do I know the answer is “funeral”? Yes
Because I know it’s definitely not the other two.
Now sure you could say “it’s too easy because there are only 3” but then the question becomes how many answers do we need for it to become ambiguous enough? If it’s a lot, the time spent reading could be just spent typing.
The other thing could be “it’s too easy because the answers are too dissimilar” but that would mean having to make a list of answers for each possible word, and doing that automatically could lead to accidentally picking synonyms (something which happens in this app I got a screenshot from all the time)
At that point implementing a good multiple choice option is more effort than just letting people make synonyms. I make lots of synonyms. The words I practice on WK stick a lot more than the words I practice on that other app.
Oh and actually, WK can be quite lenient when it comes to typing in the meanings.
For example, because it just now got in my queue: 掛ける - the ‘official’ answer is “to hang something” but also just “to hang” is accepted. And there are lots more like this.
BunPro vocab SRS on the other hand is much stricter:
漏れる - “to leak out” is accepted, but not “to leak” (say you do think “to leak out” but want to speed things up when answering)
I didn’t mean to say that typing out english answers is a 100% accurate way to assess comprehension. I was saying that multiple choice is a very bad way of assessing comprehension and coming up with the answer yourself is far more preferable.
Again, you can just mark stuff correct that you actually knew. If there is an anki style addon for wanikani you can use that too. But if users were prompted to select from a list of possible correct answers it would significantly harm learning.
I use Anki mode in Smouldering Durtles app for most of my reviews. It saves time and gives me the freedom to decide whether I know the item in question or not. There are times when I can’t fully relate with the provided English translation because I might relate to it more in my native language, or I might have already seen that word/expression in Japanese media enough times so as not to be bothered by the English translation anymore.
With that said, even when I do reviews on PC, it doesn’t really feel like an issue having to type the English. It may have been when I started, but eventually I just got used to the drill. And for any silly mistakes, there is always the “Undo script” coming to the rescue. I get what you are asking though, but it is unlikely that WK will implement something like that, as explained by others above.
I am aware of the limitations of using multiple choice
I was not complaining about having to learn new meanings but rather having to memorize specific ways of phrasing to me well-known words or phrases (even more so when I already know good translations in languages other than English)
I was hoping for an alternative way to review meanings (looks unlikely based on the responses so far)
my typing skills are pretty awful
I will have a look at the available scripts to see if I can come up with a setup I find not too painful.
Thanks again.
You can add whatever you’d prefer to type as a “user synonym” this work also to customize kanji concepts / alternative and radical names.
I do not recommend the following
but you absolutely can not do a vocab lesson for it not to show in the review, you only need the radicals to unlock kanji and kanjis to level up. However understand that this will undermine a lot your learning through WK.
A big WK weakness for a part of it userbase is that once and item is in the reviews it will stay until burned. You can lighten the workload by choosing what and what not to add. Userscript like “WaniKani Word Frequency Filter” can help you decide what to add.
Clozemaster has the option of selecting among multiple answers over just writing the full answer. It’s definitely vastly easier that way but it’s still practice, and if the alternative is not doing your reviews because you have too many of them and you’re not in the mood that day I think it’s well worth it.
It’s true that you won’t get multiple options when reading real Japanese but you’ll have a meaningful context instead, which is sometimes even bigger of a help.
