Hypothetical Level 70 Content Update Potential?

[drackyslime]

Hello to everyone here- I’ve been a frequent lurker, often like-r, sometimes commenter, and now first-time poster to these lovely forums. Just about every time I have had a question or curiosity about this site there’s an articulate, informative, and fun discussion already covering what’s on my mind. This time, though, I poked around and couldn’t really find anything relating to the topic- so figured I’d throw my hat in.

This is really just hypothetical, but is there a chance WaniKani will ever do a content addition large enough to warrant expanding beyond the 60-level structure? For the sake of consistency, I’ll just say a new layer bringing us to 70. Something beyond reality, if we can even imagine such…

I’ve wondered about this on-and-off since I started using the site, but lately the idea has been shifted to the forefront for a handful of reasons and it’s had me pondering.

• Firstly, WK Stats has a button that toggles “Not On WK” Kanji- and it’s a fair little chunk of N1-level Kanji all not available on the site. On the charts tab, it states that (by level 60) WK covers 79% of N1 Kanji standards. I know that there aren’t really “true” resources for exact JLPT standards, but if the estimate is still 21% (of 1000+), I think it’s a fair assumption that there’s a decently sized gap here.

• Secondly, just for fun or as a resource while reading, I’ve been browsing around on Jisho- and I’ve increasingly noticed words without the little “WaniKani level X” tag. I’m not implying every word ever needs to be taught on here, but when many still have the respective JLPT level or “common word” tag it makes me believe they’d be worth exploring- especially since many are encountered during immersive learning. I also recently started using Bunpro and some of the newly introduced vocab (and their respective Kanji) aren’t listed on WK when I do a site search to see when/if I would encounter them here.

• Third, at the time of me posting this there has been an ongoing- albeit fairly small- content update, sprinkling in a few new items. As funny as it is adding words from levels way earlier than I am currently at, the curious part of this has been the precedent that new content is curated for the site (this is the first time I can recall this since joining the platform). I knew definitions, acceptable answers, mnemonics, and level placements get edited fairly often, but this is new for me.

• Finally (and the true catalyst for this post) was this paragraph I received on my level-up email when reaching 25.
  

  
  
  I wondered if something like 10 additional levels would ever be explored due to the scope of the undertaking- but that exact scenario has happened in the past. Was that a one time event?

Just off the top of my head, I can understand why this wouldn’t happen. Obviously 10 levels of content is a huge undertaking on behalf of the WK team- they can’t just snap their fingers and snugly put in hundreds of new items, not to mention implementation, maintenance, and all that nonsense. It could also be a bit of a slight to the countless people who’ve worked towards that level 60 milestone, just to have the goal moved back again- or maybe they restarted upon reaching the top and now they have to sift through a bunch of repetition to reach the new. And I do think it’s already a little flimsy and idealistic, but 10 levels of content sure makes it harder to sell the “WK in a year” dream to new users, and certainly makes the monumental task seem even more difficult to newbies. But would that be enough to rule it out?

I want to clarify that me posting this is by no means a criticism of WK or expressive that it is lacking in any way- but the reality is just the scope of this language goes even beyond the wealth of content available here. All of us are here to learn ! And there is a lot to be learned !!

Anecdotally, every other resource I have used for supplemental Kanji learning hasn’t even been comparable to WK. Browsing Amazon or bookstores for Kanji material makes it evident most resources tap out around the ~400 mark if you’re lucky. Just out of curiosity- I’m looking at a 30 dollar set of Kanji flashcards that only has 126 items and no attached vocabulary as an example. Even something like Anki I find to have much clumsier UI, inconsistent content since it’s all fan-generated, no typing practice, less mnemonics and examples, and a general lack of focus comparatively- and that’s one of the most celebrated learning resources for this.

All of that to say I want to be able to lock into WK as much as possible and bask in the consistency and quality standards here. I love and continually do check out other resources as (like any art form) the more places you learn from, you’ll only get more practice and/or new perspectives to draw from. However, the less I have to dig around to fill in gaps is monumentally appreciated.

N1 JLPT is already a goal-beyond-a-goal to most people, but I think it sets a pretty fair precedent of what you’ll come across in extensive immersion with the language. Even if the content is on the tail end of encounter likelihood, it still is interesting and valuable- and “less likely” certainly doesn’t mean never.

If the average WK level has (estimate) 35 new Kanji, adding 10 levels worth to the current 2080 would just about perfectly fill in that previously mentioned N1 gap and bring us just shy of 2500 (which is a stat on Jisho and a really cool milestone to round to). Even if the new Kanji don’t lend themselves to a particularly large amount of new vocabulary, this is a good opportunity to go back and add in some more missing vocab using familiar past Kanji as I mentioned before.

And hey, WK is a business- so from that perspective all that new content might get people to jump on a lifetime sub or a few extra months, no? Plus it’ll push the total content over the 10K milestone (sitting at about 9k currently, I believe) and that’s a nice, rounded, marketable number, eh?

Anyways, that’s about all I have to say on the topic at the moment but I would love to hear more and continue discussion. If this idea has already been exhausted then please call me out on it and I apologize for being annoying- but if not I would love to hear any and all perspectives on any of this. Good idea? Bad idea? Plausible? Not a chance? For as much as I like to ramble, I’m sure I overlooked plenty.

Thanks for reading if you did, and happy learning to us all. 頑張って !

*(quick edit after posting) it seems that there are some threads exploring this topic that I missed until my post curated some- guess I’m not great at searching around haha- but they seem to be from 2018-2020ish. Years have passed, maybe worth exploring again? Still, if redundant I (or a mod) are welcome to remove this post.

[pm215]

I think the main issue is that by the time you get to level 50 (maybe even earlier) you really want to be learning vocab (and associated kanji) based on the native material you’re starting to immerse in. A “here is the one single set of items everybody learns in the same order” system becomes a steadily worse and worse fit as it gets bigger: simply adding another 10 levels makes that problem worse. And it would be a huge design problem to turn WK into something that started with firm guide rails and gradually broadened out into something you could tailor to teaching you the vocab you personally need to know.

[mgrice]

The question/comment/suggestion has come up at least a few times in the past. From what I recall, most comments from those at or near the end levels is that by the time you have reached level 60 (or even somewhat earlier) you have, or should have, a good enough framework that there are better and more effective ways of increasing vocab, through reading and consuming native material.

[Omun]

@drackyslime

I’m not implying every word ever needs to be taught on here, but when many still have the respective JLPT level or “common word” tag it makes me believe they’d be worth exploring- especially since many are encountered during immersive learning.

WK is made for learning kanji, and not meant to be an exhaustive vocab tool. WK already doesn’t cover a huge swathe of kana-only words that are essential for Japanese understanding. So trying to use WK as a comprehensive vocab tool would already be tricky and take quite a pivot from their chosen offering.

As someone that made it to 60 in the past, I’ll say what I said years ago in a thread about this topic: I wouldn’t want WK to have 70 levels, and I personally don’t believe it would benefit learners to do so.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time on these forums, especially in the past, and I’ve seen a fair share of high WK level users still struggle with pretty basic Japanese reading and watching. I was one of them, I’d say. At 60, my kanji abilities and my grammar abilities were not balanced well enough to be able to read advanced things in a way that kept all those advanced kanji fresh.

WK is a huge time sink if you’re going at even a moderate pace and it’s hard for busy people to have a long-term study schedule that properly covers grammar, reading exposure, and listening exposure on top of the WK reviews. If people are learning kanji without cultivating their ability to read, all they are doing is learning to then forget due to lack of use.

I think it’s very important for WK to kick birds from the nest and force them to fledge, because it can be very easy to sit in the safe crabigator bubble and do reviews, rather than taking that next step and focussing on kanji through reading.

Also, if you’ve been doing reviews seven days a week for a year or two, you are sick of doing it when you get to 60. Finally having a damn finish line to cross is very important.

TL;DR: WK can’t teach you every word, so there is no real point in trying to make it the be all and end all for vocab, in my personal opinion, especially since it’s already such a slog to get through 60 levels.

[YanagiPablo]

There is this thread, with extra levels 61-75: Wanikani Beyond (more Radicals, more Kanji) - an experiment 🧪⚒️ - #2 by polv

(note some have been added to official WK since then, like 拭)

[simias]

@drackyslime

This time, though, I poked around and couldn’t really find anything relating to the topic- so figured I’d throw my hat in.

I gotchu fam (this is not an exhaustive list):

Comment here if you want WaniKani to add 5 more levels with the remaining Joyo kanji

So. I used to be of the, “If you’re that far along, just make an Anki deck for the rest. You should be able to figure things out for yourself at that point” camp. But here’s the thing: Anki doesn’t work like Wanikani does. Wanikani has a very unique type of SRS. And it goes beyond its intervals and Apprentice/Guru/Etc system. It has a gated system that prevents you from going too far without conquering what you’ve learned so far to an acceptable level. I think that system works particularly w…

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So, I was playing around with WKstats the other day, and I noticed that there are like 200ish kanji that are part of the Joyo list but not taught by Wanikani. When would you guys recommend starting to learn those kanji, if at all?

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Are there plans to add the missing Joyo/JLPT N1 Kanji to Wanikani?

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Hi, I know I’m just at level 6 and I shouldn’t be thinking about JLPT N1 kanji yet, but I’ve found that there’s more than a hundred kanji in the Jōyō kanji list that WaniKani doesn’t teach, Are there any plans to get those Kanji into the app? If not does anybody have a workaround or Anki deck or something whith just those kanjis? Of course I’ll not tray to lear those until Ifinished WaniKani (I hope next year), but just want to be sure.

Remaining Jōyō Kanji

Hi everybody! I’ve created a list of the Jōyō Kanji that aren’t featured on WaniKani. I can’t guarantee that I didn’t make mistakes, as I created the list manually. It contains a total of 167 additional characters. I hope this will be of some use to those of you who have learned all the WaniKani Kanji! 乞勾匂丙氾瓦汎臼弐串但冶壱妖抄沃弄肘刹妬宛拉旺采玩股肢苛附眉侯侶勅勃厘咽怨拶拭昧柿柵畏訃倣冥凄剥宵恣挨挫捉捗朕桁畝翁耗蚕袖衷逐逓釜曽唾堆惧戚捻梗 淫痕羞舷萎葛貪僅喉喩慌斑棺痩痘硝煎嗣嗅塞塑嫉彙愁楼慄楷毀溺窟羨腫腎腺蓋虞褐裾詣詮遡頓頒嫡瘍箇箋綻貌辣餌餅嘲畿憬摯潰窯罵膝蔽謁賜賦踪遵儒墾稽緻膳薫薪諦諧醒錮骸麺嚇曖爵臆謄濫璧繕繭顎璽艶蹴韻麓籠 Some of these characters…

Why can't we add the remaining N1 kanji?

I feel like it wouldn’t be too difficult to add a couple per level to the last 10 or so levels to cover the remaining number of N1 kanji not currently covered by WK. I feel like most users would be strongly in support of this.

I agree with what has been said previously: the JLPT/Jouyou lists are not that big of a deal, what matters is the kanji that you encounter in the things that you actually want to read.

The jouyou is realistically neither a subset nor a superset of the kanji you’ll want to know. Just yesterday I decided to learn 翡翠 which has two non-jouyou kanji, yet there are dozens of jouyou kanji I have yet to encounter anywhere.

WK adding ten more levels would mean that the course would teach you a bunch of stuff that, in all likelihood, you’ll have forgotten by the time you need it.

[Vanilla]

As you say, I don’t think it would be bad from a purely business decision.

But from a “helping japanese learners” standpoint, I think the best thing wk can do is get their users to move away from a rigid system like this and apply what they’ve learned consuming native content and getting their new vocab from there. Koichi has told me something similar so it seems he agrees.

As others have stated, this takes place even before level 60 imo. As is, wk is already too long and a good transitioning point will likely happen much earlier for many users. Its hard enough as is for some users to transition off away from the structure, so it feels like just enabling that to add even more content that is going to inevitably be alright at best for them to put more time into.

The jlpt lists aren’t official anyways and 2500 kanji inevitably isn’t even going to work very well with the system. By the time you should be learning a lot of that stuff from a usefulness perspective, you will have a pretty solid base for kanji fluency. A lot of those kanji will be used in one distinct word where its really just worth it to memorize the word and not bother learning the kanji separately anyways. For the 1000+ non wk kanji in words I SRSed after wk I didn’t actually “learn” the kanji for any of them on their own. Its not necessary.

Anyways, I’m not the representative or anything, but as someone who got level 60 and N1 I feel like it would be a poor addition. Like a TV show that the producers wanted to milk for more money and just had it go on way longer than it should have.

[polv]

@mgrice

there are better and more effective ways of increasing vocab, through reading and consuming native material.

My experience with trying to make Anki decks for more Kanji (20 or so more, actually) and also associated vocabularies, was just that. – Attaining vocabularies in advance doesn’t seem to be as good as reading and remembering in context. (Also collocations, phrases, etc.)

That being said, L1-60 Kanji too, should be reinforced more vocabularies, in context. More Kun’yomi, On’yomi, exceptional readings too, at the very least.

Also, after several ten levels, it became unnecessary to learn Kanji in order. You can learn in any ordering. No need to follow WK levels now. (Not to mention radical breaking down can also be better.)

Even if it could be a good business decision to add more levels, it isn’t a particularly good business decision to improve higher half of levels that only few users reach.

[Babyssb]

I might be in the minority here but I’m absolutely in favor of Wanikani adding 10 additional levels. I’d also love for Wanikani to implement more things you see on signs around Japan that may or may not include Kanji. And then just make it a bit more fun and lighthearted by throwing in very colloquial onomatopoeia.

[catwithcookies]

Please no. I’d rather the team complete the radical illustrations and provide human voice recordings for the context sentences. After level 60 I’m going to use the bunpro SRS deck for vocab based on frequency if I ever get there.

[Telechronn]

There seem to be a subset of people who get addicted to leveling up and learning Kanji but not actually learning/using Japanese.

[Babyssb]

And Wanikani would do well to capitalize on that

[qdoot]

Would it make sense to add 10 more levels? Maybe not.
Would I want 10 more levels? Yes. Definitely yes.