I really appreciate how the lesson picker allows me to prevent clustering related vocabulary terms together.
Before I discovered the lesson picker, once I gurued a kanji, I had to learn all its vocabulary 一気に, so I always had 王、女王、王女、王子 pop up in the reviews together. This would tangle them together in my mind. Each word reminded me of the other, so I’m not sure whether my brain properly learned each of them separately.
Now that I use the lesson picker, once a few kanjis are gurued, I pick one vocabulary from each kanji, and after a few hours or days I pick another. So even though 大作、工作、作文、作る were unlocked together, I can learn them separately and give proper attention to each word. I find it both more fun and more effective.
Besides, I’m grateful for the lesson picker because it allows me to ignore kana-only vocabulary. I certainly hope that it will allow me to ignore it forever. (If I need Wanikani to teach me with SRS how to read すみません after 3 months of studying Japanese, then something is very wrong in the way I’m studying )
Heh, I noticed that about the likes of さようなら, こんばんは, はい, いつ, これ, すみません, etc vocabulary that I’ve already picked up from doing the Tango N5 book. It did seem like some of them are coming pretty late relative to about how long it will typically take to get to the associated levels versus the order most other sources present them, but I figured it might just feel that way due to doing the aforementioned independent vocabulary building book.
I personally don’t worry about trying to skip them though since I know them instantly already and thus it only takes a second (or less) unlike most of the new kanji ones that typically take several seconds. Given that the intervals look like 4h, 8h, ~1d, ~2d, ~1w, ~2w, ~1m, and ~4m to get to burned when you already know them, it only amounts to something like 8-10 seconds of your time before it’s burned and I spent longer than that writing this post!
The WK dev team has taken a lot of heat the last 6 months with their recent changes (Katakana only vocab, removing the review summary page, etc.) so I want to praise them for this addition as well. Being able to tailor your experience is always appreciated. I’m someone who doesn’t like to overload themselves because I don’t know when I’ll have a busy work schedule and not time to do reviews, so being able to specifically focus on vocab before taking on those scary on’yomi brand new kanji is pretty nice.
I love the Lesson Picker because I can avoid having too many difficult new words or kanji at once. Before this was available, I would often choose not to do any new lessons at all for a while because I just didn’t feel like learning more than one or two difficult new ones at a time, so my progress was slower. Now I can choose ones I think are easy or that I have already learned somewhere else in addition to my tougher new ones. I love having control over when I learn something difficult. My progress has actually gotten faster. I am really enjoying WaniKani a lot now!
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