I feel slightly held back

[anon52074655]

I’ve never understood the rush to “learn” the kanji. Whichever way you do it it’s a lifetime’s work so the odd week or month here and there now is irrelevant - in fact the slower the pace the better or indeed a scientifically determined pace is better still.

I did feel a bit bored and that everything was too simplistic at the start. Now I long for only a few reviews and curse myself when I get something from the early levels wrong. Then I remember that I will get it eventually if I put in the effort.

[riccyjay]

@lingonaut7

all the program has let me do is review the same 20 or so radicals that I already had a decent grip on before I started using WaniKani.

This is my favourite part of this particular WK is slow complaint. Apparently, this person already knew radicals like slide, gun, fins and toe before starting. Impressive.

[anon52074655]

Yes it’s nice to read stuff ‘naturally’ and I like to think I’ll be able to do that for all text someday.

[jkarlsen]

A martial arts student went to his teacher and said earnestly, “I am devoted to studying your martial system. How long will it take me to master it.”

The teacher’s reply was casual, “Ten years.” Impatiently, the student answered, “But I want to master it faster than that. I will work very hard. I will practice everyday, ten or more hours a day if I have to. How long will it take then?”

The teacher thought for a moment, “20 years.”

[LucasDesu]

@Leebo

The thing about WK is that it actually asks you to show that you know stuff. My guess is that the average person who thinks they could just jump to level 10 without doing any of those lessons actually doesn’t know all of that content as well as they think they do.

Exactly. Language learners can be notorious for overestimating their understanding of a concept and usually underestimate the usefulness of reviewing fundamental concepts.

@saber1

What I hate is the way it’s just kind of handwaved away intermediate learners, like “If you don’t have the patience for the first few levels, maybe you don’t have the patience to learn kanji.” Just because someone doesn’t have the patience to go through a bunch of stuff they already know, doesn’t mean they don’t have the patience to learn kanji. It’s the sign of a system that could be improved.

However irritating it may be, it’s still true. However to finesse that statement a bit, if don’t have patience for the first few levels, maybe you don’t have patience to muddle through this methodology. Despite being a good resource to learn from, there are far more people who fail to complete a majority of the WK content.

[Gaidheal]

Of course, there’s a lot of nonsense associated with learning Eastern “martial arts”, but I still liked your comment for the sentiment and making me smile.

[Richard-Degenne]

Maybe show a message directly in WK interface for new user, saying:

“You may feel it’s a bit slow. Don’t worry, that feeling will pass soon.”

[Gaidheal]

You mean like the link that tells people to read the FAQ?

[Richard-Degenne]

A link’s not enough. Nobody clicks the FAQ link. You need to put the message right in front of their face.

[Gaidheal]

Indeed… and when you first join there is a bright blue bar, that tells people where to start. Including recommending the guide and FAQ, as I recall. So … tell me again how your idea would work better than a big blue box, that you can’t dismiss for a while, which people still ignore.

Did it work for you?

[VegasVed]

I do think it would help more since you wouldn’t need to click anywhere to get the information.
“It’s slow and the start, and nope, you can’t speed it up. Welcome to WK!”. You could make it flash on the screen every 20 second to really drill it in. .

In all seriousness, while I think it will help, it should not be necessary.

[ginliao]

I understand where you are coming from. But there is a reason why it is the way it is. I have studied Japanese for 4 years in a school, and took (but failed) N2. My second language is Chinese. I felt extremely held back in the beginning (the Kanji are exceedingly familiar to me) but this is the only way that you can be sure that you know what you know. As someone above has mentioned, language learners tend towards overestimating how much they actually know. Starting from scratch will provide you with a firm foundation.

Also, because you are currently at level 1, it can be a bit slow. But it picks up when you go past level 3, it will pick up. In the span of 12 hours, I did close to 200 reviews.

The FAQ is very helpful in explaining the logic behind this method of learning Kanji. I have been searching for many years for a tool that will help me learn Kanji best, and this has been the only one that I felt was effective (short of studying in Japan).

So be patient. It will get better.

[heisamaniac]

Made me chuckle, thanks good person

[ccookf]

@saber1

As it stands, I just can’t recommend WaniKani to anyone who’s even finished Genki I … the time investment is just too much for any serious learner.

Do you not realize how hilarious this sounds? WK can be finished in a around a year, with most of the Genki I + II content (and much more) being covered within a couple months. Compared to the investment needed to learn Japanese these numbers are incredibly small. At this point it’s not even a matter of being patient for a few levels. Anyone who isn’t patient enough to deal with WK probably isn’t patient enough to successfully learn another language.

@saber1

And people say “But SRS!” Well then, give people the option to take a quiz without going over the lessons first. If someone knows a kanji or radical without ever being taught it, stands to reason they don’t need to go over it four times before unlocking the stuff it’s connected to. Keep it in the system, but skip it right to Guru instead.

So I’m going to ignore the part where a bunch of users cheat the system and cause problems. Instead, I’ll look forward to the complaints from people who are stuck waiting for a handful of kanji at level 5 because WK doesn’t cater to their classroom/textbook/program. One week later a bunch of those users will complain again when they get bombarded with a couple reviews at once because they plowed through everything instead of pacing themselves. Since they’ve clearly already “learned” this material that just means those items will give them nice spikes in their reviews until they get burned. Nice.

While there are a lot of complaints of WK being slow the staff have made some reasonable changes to alleviate the issue. Considering that many users here have had some sort of background studying Japanese prior to starting WK I don’t really believe that putting the time and effort into an accelerated program would “exponentially increase the number of people who could gain from WaniKani”. If anything, I’m happy the impatient people were weeded out by something so trivial.

[saber1]

@oryantge

Where is the cut off though? If you know at least 50% of the kanji from level 1 to 10, and 80% from 1 and 2should you start at level 1 or Level 3 or Level 10? Just because you know some doesn’t mean you know all the vocab and readings. I dunno. It’s complicated.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. Create a quick placement test that gives you an approximate estimate of your current level, then give people the option to skip things straight to Guru if (and only if) they get them right without looking at the lessons first, and only for those first few levels.

This is just one potential idea, but I won’t accept “It’s completely impossible,” since it doesn’t seem to be a problem for any other language school, or any other tool for learning Japanese on the planet.

@saber1

If they’re that level of “smart” they probably didn’t retain most of Genki anyway.

The problem people have is that if they did retain most of Genki, WaniKani is basically completely useless for the first two months. And there’s no logical reason it should be besides “But SRS!” and “Well if you don’t like it, then too bad!”

If WaniKani can’t think of something, they should just admit on their FAQ, “We’re not smart enough to create a placement test for WaniKani. But if you keep using our system, we do think you’ll really like it eventually!” Which is true, anyone can eventually learn from WaniKani, but you’ll never convince me that someone who’s finished Genki II needs to spend two months getting to level 8–no matter how little they retained.

@LucasDesu

Exactly. Language learners can be notorious for overestimating their understanding of a concept and usually underestimate the usefulness of reviewing fundamental concepts.

This is why placement tests exist: so that you can gauge someone’s level in a way that’s difficult to fake.

@LucasDesu

However to finesse that statement a bit, if don’t have patience for the first few levels, maybe you don’t have patience to muddle through this methodology.

And if WaniKani phrased it like that, I would understand. But the FAQ doesn’t say “then maybe our program isn’t for you,” the FAQ says “then maybe you don’t have the patience to learn kanji,” which is completely ridiculous.

WaniKani is definitely an amazing program, and an awesome resource. Even at level 10, I feel satisfied enough with the difficulty, even though I still know around 40-50% of the kanji and vocabulary that come up. The problem was the first few levels, where I literally knew things so well I would type them in Japanese and then get momentarily confused when I was asked for the English translation–in my head they were one and the same. Being asked to do this once is bad enough, but four times? Come on. Anyone with two brain cells can tell this isn’t necessary. It’s why every other resource on the Internet offers a placement test of some sort.

WaniKani doesn’t because, well, the only logical reason I can think of is hubris. Their radical system is just so amazing you absolutely must go through it from the beginning no matter what. Don’t get me wrong, it’s decent enough, but it would be much more useful if people could actually use it to learn right from the get-go, instead of just pretending that no one using the system has ever studied Japanese before.

[saber1]

@ccookf

WK can be finished in a around a year, with most of the Genki I + II content (and much more) being covered within a couple months.

If you’ve never studied Japanese before, that’s great! If you’ve already studied Genki I and II, what’s the point? Those two months could be spent actually, you know, learning things.

[ccookf]

I’m sorry, but if someone is seriously considering the first 5-20 levels of WK pointless because you know a portion of it’s content then maybe they don’t actually care about the WK system. That’s time to be building up an understanding of mnemonics, common terms, and common readings, many of which being components to vocabulary in later levels. Spoiler alert: Most of this stuff ain’t covered in Genki.

Also, Genki is a joke. It’s a fantastic starting point, but in the grand scheme of things will only get someone around JLPT N4, which is kind of meaningless. It’s the equivalent of those little ribbons they give out to everyone for participating in field day.

If you aren’t learning things from the first few levels you’re either too advanced for WK or are too shortsighted to make the most of WK has to offer. Regardless of perceived proficiency there are plenty of ways of integrating WK content in Japanese studies beyond the internal review/lesson systems.

I doubt most users here remember kun/on readings for most of the terms as well as accurately distinguish between transitive/intransitive pairs in the long term, know the stroke order for or practice writing most of those terms, have the ability to recognize them under different fonts, can recognize all of those terms by sound, accurately recall all of the parts of speech for a given term, or practice conjugating them. Those are all things that can be practice starting from level 1 either on WK itself, through the use of userscripts enhancing the site, or through the use of tools linked to/provided on the forums. Oh, almost forgot. There’s a ton of terms, readings, and meanings for kanji not covered in Genki/WK. I regularly compare multiple resources (including WK) against each other to deal with the insanity of Kanji/Japanese.

Anyone who has gone through Genki I + II already (again, such a hilariously low hurdle) should either take this time as a relaxing start or as an opportunity to review and enhance their knowledge.

The point is that I think you’re advocating for something questionable at best to benefit people who probably can’t take learning into their own hands, are diligent enough to make effective lesson plans to enhance their studies, or capable of making the most of resources available to them. I think the potential consequences in terms of both development time wasted and the user dissatisfaction far outweigh the potential benefits (read: profit) to be gained from implementing such changes and that dedicated learners will breeze the easy content if they perceive the rest of the content to be valuable.

If someone thinks their time is too valuable to lose a couple months (at worst) waiting on content and don’t find value in the mnemonics then WK probably isn’t the right learning tool for them. People who want to bypass these systems should look into other solutions, like Anki, Houhou, or ye old pen and paper flashcards.

[Leebo]

I knew about 500 kanji when I started WK, but making real progress beyond that was really difficult. I didn’t have any good system for keeping things fresh and moving on to new stuff.

I’m very glad I didn’t have someone telling me not to do WK back then, because I would be shocked if I could have gotten to where I am now with another tool. I tried tons.

It’s only wasted time if you waste the time. There’s loads of other stuff you can study, and it’s good to review the old stuff anyway.

[strangelearner]

Trust me learn to embrace the system and the system will embrace you!

[felix330]

What many people here disregard is that while it’s true that Genki uses a very different approach to learning Kanji, Textfugu doesn’t. I learned all the Kanji there, using the same mnemonics and the same basic system as Wanikani does. Maybe there should be some kind of “I did Textfugu” test or something.