Idea for improving wanikani

[megrim2020]

In the reviews, how about a new type of review where it shows you the english word, and we have to type the word in Japanese? only for people that would have the japanese keyboard available, so you would need to turn it on

[kuchikopi]

try kaniwani! warning, it’s significantly harder and even more reviews. Lol

[prouleau]

This already exist. See www.kaniwani.com

[ghostofshikaji]

or kamesame!

but yeah, combined with wanikani it can very quickly get overwhelming. i prefered using those two mentioned platforms only for items that i already burned on WK.

[Maharetina]

You say that now, but once you have a bunch of “criticism” and “judge” etc., you’ll be glad you won’t have to do that

[ctmf]

Right, the well-known “young woman” problem. But I think if someone sat down and did it from the beginning, rather than just reversing wanikani items, it could be good. Combination of making the prompts longer so they really only match a few or one of the synonyms, and accepting alternate answers.

That’s straying pretty far from WaniKani’s core mission though, and probably would work best as a companion/sister app like kaniwani.

[megrim2020]

I just realized what problem you are referring to.

[ctmf]

Lol, yes I guess I should clarify, I have no problem with young women.

The problem is, when the prompt is “young woman”, what wanikani item do you answer?

[ghostofshikaji]

i think last time i used kamesame they at least had a “yes but we’re looking for a different translation” - prompt or so they also show (user) synonyms and word type (noun, adverb, etc …). i remember it getting to a point where it wasn’t too annyonig anymore but it’s been a while

edit, yeah:

This answer won’t be scored as incorrect, but the review won’t be marked complete until answered correctly.

[ctmf]

Yeah, that’s really all they can do if they’re sticking exactly to the prompts from wanikani and reversing them. But that’s clumsy and frustrating. It would be much more work to design a question where fewer of the synonyms worked and all matching ones were acceptable, the way real life works.

[Maharetina]

But in real life, words don’t translate 1:1, anyway.

[Mrs_Diss]

when i was trying them out, kamesame was much better at handling the “young woman” problem than kaniwani. if you answered with the “wrong” young woman, they’d not count it as wrong, and when the review came round again tell you that you’d already answered it that way.

and if you had two “young woman” in your review session, and you answered the worng one, they’d actually count it as a right answer for the other.

[Gorbit99]

Btw, just as a different viewpoint.
You don’t really want to “translate” words in your head when talking, because it’s a slow process, you want to associate the image itself with the japanese word, kinda how you do in english (or your native tongue) already. Especially because of the “words don’t translate 1:1” issue. This is the sole reason nobody tells you ever to just go and translate all the text into another language to gain fluency, they just tell you that you should read or watch something.