I know I’m just inviting trouble – and the irony is that I don’t have a horse in this race since I haven’t used the WK SRS even once – but I’m just saying… part of why people want to focus on kanji only… is because they want to start reading ASAP and learn in context. I do think that it’s somewhat wrongheaded to approach Japanese thinking, ‘First I’ll learn all the kanji, then I’ll be able to read.’ I don’t front-load kanji or vocab myself, with the exception of last-minute N1 cramming (was pointless, honestly, though I passed thanks to my kanji and grammar knowledge) and rare words I’m challenging myself to memorise. However, I do see how having a rough idea of what each kanji means before encountering a new kanji-containing word can help with learning it – I’m essentially doing that by using my Chinese kanji knowledge when I learn a new word containing familiar kanji – and I think that’s what a lot of people are hoping WK will do for them.
Yes, there aren’t many kana-only words yet, but
- Users have been promised more of them, for better or worse, meaning people will have to face more of those in their lesson and review queues
- Working through additional tasks you have no interest in – even if they’re really easy and can be quickly finished – can be very frustrating over time, especially if you have to repeat them, and that’s not counting the need to get them right to eliminate them permanently ASAP (typos and non-accepted answers are a killer)
If there’s anyone who doesn’t believe me on point #2, just go try Duolingo for a language you’re no longer a beginner in. Being forced to clear items you already know, when you’re anxious to get to new knowledge, is not fun. Obviously though, this depends on your personality and how you approach learning Japanese, but I can definitely see why some people wouldn’t like it, particularly if they don’t have much time for Japanese every day.
The difference here – which has been raised elsewhere – is that kanji mnemonics in WK build on each other, so it can be argued that knowing the earlier mnemonics is necessary to use the rest of WK. It’s much harder to argue that for kana-only vocabulary.
Again, the problem here is the fact that it’s taking so long to make these words optional when they’re supposed to be optional (as per what the WK Team has said). Changing the vision of WK is fine, and adding more kana-only words is fine, but there needs to be consideration for what users want and need, along with what they’ve been promised. Even if we acknowledge that kana-only vocabulary can be a good thing – though I’m still going to tell you as a native Chinese speaker holding an N1 cert that most of my struggles with Japanese have been related to verbs written in kanji with unexpected readings, not kana-only words, onomatopoeia being the only real exception – the fact that advanced users are getting words like これ in their queues shows the way they’ve been inserted into the system leaves much to be desired.
Anyhow, I guess this is why I don’t usually bother with SRSes, especially ones I can’t control. I’d rather get a context-rich resource to build my basic knowledge, then sweat it out looking new things up while aiming for maximum understanding so most of it sticks. I make mnemonics if I need to, and then I move on. Eventually I either stop forgetting the word, or I stop encountering it in my textbooks/in the wild. But maybe that’s just me.
In the meantime, guess I’ll be a little more insufferable and suggest this one more time, for the people who don’t want kana-only vocab:
I would do it myself, but like I said, I don’t use the SRS. Current things I’ve heard:
- Reorder Omega
- Third-party apps like Tsukurame (or something like that???)
If need be, I’ll go make a separate thread for it so hopefully this discussion will finally go somewhere…