Hi all, this is my first post in the community.
Thanks to all of you for creating this amazing opportunity to learn kanji in a different format, I think that it will really work for my students.
While I just begun this week, there’s one thing that gets into my nerves and makes my learning more slow and difficult than it should. The problem resides in the lack of human response of the interface. I will explain it better.
When I have to insert a reading and I write instead the meaning, it automatically counts this as a mistake. I think that it is so easy to make this mistake when doing a long string of characters that it should not be like this. Instead we should get a note saying, sorry, you wrote the meaning, not the reading. The same should be done the other way around too I think.
Also another point that happens is when you work with for example the kanji 口. As a radical it is こう as a kanji くち。When I have to review them both, if I write one instead of the other it counts as a mistake and the kanji goes back to beginner…
I find this upsetting and unfair. Is there some solution to this?
The kanji item 口 will accept こう as the answer, and if you answer with くち it does not mark it wrong, because it is not wrong, but it will shake and tell you to enter the onyomi because they want you to answer with the one taught in the lesson before moving on.
The vocab item 口 is different. It is incorrect to read the word 口 as こう, so it is marked incorrect.
This one’s fairly easy to spot if you’re paying attention - the meaning is in English, the reading auto-converts to kana. If you think you’re entering the meaning, but it’s converting to kana, you should be entering the reading. Take a second to proofread before you push enter.
How the heck did i end up replying to the wrong person again?
In time identifying the marks that show what nature the item asked for is will start becoming so ingrained that you don’t have to think about it anymore. That is, blue for radical, pink for kanji, purple for vocab, as well as the text for reading/meaning on kanji and vocab items.
If you just tough it out, your brain will naturally do the work for you!
Im the meantime, yeah, maybe spend a second or two to actually comprehend the question (as we always should before answering on a test ;)) and give your brain the time and information it needs to see the patterns.
Thanks for your help, Leebo, Belerith and Belthazar. I guess that I will have to pay more attention, and wait a bit more for understanding and replying what wani Kani wants. I stilI cannot get rid of the feeling that I am worried about answering what the software wants… Patience… Thanks anyway!
Just popping in here as this is something that I had a lot of trouble with too, and honestly would have probably killed wanikani for me if I couldn’t fix it. I got so caught up wondering if what I was about to enter was going to be marked wrong for invalid reasons that I just didn’t want to do my reviews at all, and that would have been such a waste, as wanikani is an absolutely fantastic learning platform.
What I did was install this great userscript: [Userscript]: Double-Check (Version 2.x), which lets you submit an answer without it being final, so if you are marked wrong but you’ve just made a spelling mistake (or entered a reading for a meaning, etc) you can correct it and move on. This and a number of other scripts (many developed by rfindley, just like this one :P) have made wanikani absolutely amazing, so I’d highly recommend it if you’re in the same boat. Just make sure not to abuse it - mark things wrong if you get them wrong, otherwise you won’t get to review them again properly!
Arigatou gozaimas truandissimo and a big, big thanks to ChillyPepper and Robert Findley you made my learning experience much better. I didn’t have to correct anything yet but the lightning mode, saving one click every time is precious.
But I’m sure many of you would agree that if you’re doing a large review many of us go through them quite quickly. My reviews are usually around 70 items twice a day and for the most part I can power through them quite quickly but I’d be lying if I said I’d never been caught out by mixing up the meaning/reading or radical/kanji/vocab from time to time and it can get quite frustrating.
There was a puzzle we had to solve, and the level-up e-mails contained a single hint in each e-mail. Instead of waiting potentially weeks or even months for one of the active participants in the puzzle-solving to hit the higher levels, he basically reset back one level at a time so that we’d have every e-mail we were missing.
Think you’ve just gotta let up on the go pedal a little bit. Take the time to smell the flowers.
Oh it doesn’t bother me that much that it affects my motivation or anything. I quite enjoy keeping myself to a strict schedule and keeping going this way. But every now and then I have a long day and these kind of mix ups ruin my reviews. For the most part it doesn’t bother me but when it does happen it’s annoying.
I know how frustrating it feels but you definitely start to get used what’s meaning, what’s hirigana, and using the background colors to differentiate between radical, kanji, and vocabulary.
I think around level 3 was when I started to really notice the difference and how to adapt the mnemonic to keep all the different pieces in memory.
Please check the app Tsurukame. It will make you happy. I only review with rhis. It has the possibility to either mark „wrong“ items right, have them appear again without marking them wrong (second chance) or add a synonym on the spot. Often, if I know a word well, I enter the Japanese pronunciation as a synonym (in rōmaji) which at the end is the way you want to go anyway: J-J. Why type in the English word if you know what it means in Japanese.
This app has streamlined my reviewing and learning and is lightning fast. Plus you can review offline.
I love Tsurukame and I’ve been using it for lessons and reviews. The only frustrating part is getting something wrong because of your phone keyboard. I’ve missed a few when I’m not paying attention or mistyping, like はくinstead of ひゃくwhen I miss the ‘y’ key.
