Anyone else frustrated by the redundant vocabulary? I’m irked I have to take time to learn +する forms of words I already learned. It’s a waste of time to learn both 妥協 and 妥協する。
I’m also really tired of all the synonyms. I get it, there are supposed to be like 3 or 5 whatever words per kanji but I think I could progress through WK so much faster with 1/3 of the redundant vocab pruned.
+suru forms take almost no time to learn, and if you know the root vocab word then they’re basically free items. I love coming up on them in my reviews and lessons.
Complaining about synonyms is silly. You need to know a lot of those synonyms anyway – people complain about the vocab not being useful, but these words occur in writing with a decent amount of regularity. Doubling up on structured kanji reinforcement + learning a word that you’re likely to see anyway seems like a win to me.
The usefulness of the vocab is a secondary concern. The real reason the vocab is in there in the first place is to help cement the important readings of the kanji in your head. That’s why there’s so many literary and uncommonly used words included as well.
I would also like to get rid of the する pairs. Learning different words (even if they’re “synonyms”) doesn’t bother me, as learning and expanding vocab is one of the reasons I paid for WK; I don’t see how that is a problem with progressing through WK though, given that you don’t need vocab to level up. If you’re not interested in learning vocab you can use the reorder script and skip it (I would advise against it, but you do you).
It’s not always obvious if a word can or can’t take する. Some words you might expect to can’t. But of course, since WK isn’t consistent, and only some that can take する get those words, you can’t assume that because they didn’t give it that it means it’s not possible. Still, positive proof is nice for the ones that do have it.
I’m fine with many synonyms, but it’s annoying that they are often grouped into the same level. For example level 13 has lots of vocab for “feelings”, so all the synonyms become very noticeable. It may be good to see them together to pay more attention to the details in the reviews, but when they come back at Master or Enlightened I can understand the frustration.
How many times have I heard around the forums that WK isn’t for teaching you Japanese, it’s strictly for learning to read all the Jouyou Kanji? I feel like that goal could be accomplished much faster if you only had to learn 1 word per reading per kanji instead of like 2 or 3.
You can reorder lessons and/or reviews. I actually use it to learn vocab first after leveling up, but I guess most people use it to go straight into radicals and kanji so they can level up faster.
Take a look:
I don’t think the reorder script accomplishes Kinako’s desire to keep some vocab exemplars selectively removing others from the lesson queue. You can remove all vocab from the queue, but to the best of my knowledge you can’t remove all of them.
I suggested the reorder script to completely skip vocab or to jump straight into radicals/kanji after leveling up, I never said they could use it to selectively remove items. Since I don’t have a solution for what they need, I figured this is the next best thing.
I mean, the reorder script can effectively remove all vocab from your queues. They’re always gonna be there, but they can be moved to the end, and you can freely move through WK without doing any of them.