I’d start the kana track immediately and make the most basic stuff free like the first few kanji levels. You could have a tool that teaches Hiragana and Katakana, which is needed to use WK at all, and use all the really beginner words there. That would get total newbies through the door even earlier. Obviously make it so you can skip straight to kanji and a more advanced kana level. A simple questionnaire on joining would put you where you need to be (with the option to customize after the fact).
Is this actually a good way to start learning? Maybe not but the current approach doesn’t seem concerned about that either.
In an ideal world they’d make sure the thing we’re actually here for is as good as it can be before rolling out other features, and they wouldn’t force said other features on us when they do.
I understand what you are trying to say here but I think it is a little misguided. They could, lf they so choose, run them in parallel. N5 would be done at level 15 -16, n4 at level 27 and n3 and n2 at level 50. Just like it is now. Also if you don’t see a reason to learn n3-n1 why did you not stop at level 27 since that covers all of the kanji though n4?
I think however, they should reorder them in terms of frequency or JLPT. Or at least give that option. i cant see a reason from a business point of view not to grow and evolve. They have build something wonderful. But sometimes things need to change. having a kanji track and a separate vocab and grammar track makes sense. Hell, they could have a combined track in JLPT order if you want to be like Batman and Get Nuts…I have to think that would be immensely popular. Especially with all the competitors that are starting to pop up and gain traction. One of them will eventually eat their lunch if they do not evolve. And I think the intro of kana words is their first step in doing that.
What I think is happening here, and I could be wrong but I don’t think I am, is they see what their competitors are doing and realized that they have to be more than just a kanji learning site. So with the rewrite of their code base, inserting the kana words into the existing systems was easier than experimenting with writing a new track. It is also why i think they choose such simple words. Its something they needed to tinker with in a forward facing manner, but they wanted to do it in a way that introduced the least resistance possible. (I noticed since I bitched about transposing katakana to hiragana that has completely gone away. Or maybe I am just not seeing it)
What they have done wrong is not communicate what they were doing with us. Which is their right. But as someone that has spent time doing comms they could have handled it a lot better. After the 15th thread of "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!!!11!??? they could have, and honestly should have said:
“Hey, we hear you. WE should have done better communicating with you over your concerns. We were testing new ideas for the site and we needed to do it in a way that generated user data. That is why we choose such simple words. We wanted to test this in a way that caused the least interference to your overall experience. Obviously, this was not the case, and we would like to apologize. WE made a mistake by not better communicating our intentions. But know we are working to make WK better, even if it means removing a feature to make it better in the future. Lastly, I would like to say that whilst I cant give a detailed roadmap to what our intentions are at the moment, in broad strokes we are exploring and working on a new vocab track. As we have stated we want to focus not only on learning kanji but also reading and seeing them in context. To accomplish this we need to start teaching kana vocab. This is the reason you are currently seeing Kana vocab. WE understand that this is an annoyance for some of you. For others it has been a welcome addition. But, we would like to reiterate this is not a permanent change. It will revert back in the not so distant future. So we kindly ask you bare with us and continue to give us feedback. I am also sure you have a lot of questions. I would like to take the time to answer many of them now.”
Again, maybe I am giving them too much credit here. Maybe I am way off base as to what they are actually doing. And even if I am, a message similar to the what i just wrote would go a long way in quelling the the discontent.
It makes zero sense whatsoever to get to level 30 wanikani without N5 level grammar and even less sense to get to N4 only by level 60. In doing so one would have ‘burnt’ a huge amount of kanjis before having any opportunity to use them (without above N4 level grammar one can’t read any material where any non basic kanji shows up), so it is likely that by the time one gets to more advanced grammar level and is hence able to read more advanced material with more advanced kanjis such kanjis will have been forgotten as there is no such thing as ‘burning’, and that is the one feature I wish wanikani would abolish for good.
I would argue one shouldn’t even start wanikani before getting to N5 level, or for sure don’t get past the first 10 levels. Avoid getting past level 20 without having a grammar level of at least N4 and so forth.
I don’t think WaniKani has much overlap with JLPT levels beyond the wanton to understand context sentences. As long as one knows hiragana and katakana, it is possible to use WaniKani as a standalone and/or supplementary tool. I would even say that makes more sense, because the moment you combine WaniKani with something else, WaniKani’s rigid design will start getting in the way.
In its current form that would be difficult to achieve. WaniKani would have to have a whole separate set of card/page templates for kana and grammar which perhaps don’t rely on mnemonics and contain more in-depth explanations.
But then we’re diluting WaniKani’s strong and useful focus on kanji with something that might not work in the first place.
There is no such thing as too much learning. One can forget things studied a long time before, or just enjoy the confirmation they do indeed remember something. Anyway the first words are easy but it comes a point where kana only words can be challenging even for someone with higher levels of grammar. Since the transition between too easy and about right is not the same for everybody it makes sense to include everything so that everybody can benefit from it. For this reason my only criticism about the introduction kana only words is that there aren’t enough of them, and that they stopped at too low level. I hope they introduce plenty more of them and in particular more challenging ones as well as the simpler ones they started from.
One can definitely use wanikani on its own, in fact many people get to level 60 and still have no knowledge whatsoever of grammar. The fact that it can be done doesn’t mean that it should be done or that it’s a good idea to do so. If you don’t build grammar knowledge you won’t be able to read Japanese, and if you don’t read you’ll simply forget all the kanjis you ‘burnt’ in wanikani.
I agree using WaniKani by itself doesn’t really make sense if the goal is being able to read in Japanese, however it would also not make sense for WaniKani, in my opinion, to try to be a one-stop shop for all things reading related, because that would require vastly rethinking the core principles behind WaniKani’s design, starting from re-engineering the whole kanji list to align with JLPT or another leveling curriculum.
Right now it’s a kanji-only tool and we as users make concessions in terms of the choice of vocabulary, because the goal is to drill down on kanji readings and meanings. If the “kanji-only” point becomes moot, WaniKani opens itself up to all sorts of design issues, because the concessions can no longer be justified.
This feels like a strawmen, i would use different words here - “spending too much time on learning a thing” which there definitely is, after all thats why we are using SRS - so that we can maximalise how much can we learn in limited time.
This is the reason why physical flashcards are no longer a popular way how to learn it, learning only what you need when you need is much more time efficient and actually leads to being able to learn more. Spending more time reviewing everything doesnt mean its more benefitial overall.
Since its not the same, it would make sense to make this opt in, not force everyone into it.
When you have a full time job, and many other interests and commitments, efficiency matters though. I still spend about 20 min a day on SRS, even after having completed all of WK (save the new additions). That’s summing over all my decks, of course, but it adds up.
We all have commitments (studying, jobs, families etc), anyone spending time discussing about this issue on here (so including me) clearly is not at a point where they have to choose between to study for an exam (or going to work) and learning a few kana words: the time spent debating on the issue on here is already more than what it took and will take reviewing a few times each kana word they have released and will release in the foreseeable future.
So when you read something for the sole purpose of learning Japanese (lets say a graded reader or something like that) do you get irritated every time your eyes go past a word which you consider ‘too easy’? What do you do? Do you delete them and replace them with more advanced words, or just write a complaint to the editor? Learning is learning. Sometimes you happen to revise, otherwise you learn more things. It is all useful.
I am not against an opting out option per se, but I would use the ‘efficiency’ argument so beloved by those against this feature: given the limited resources available in the wanikani team I’d rather them using their limited time to include more kana words, kanjis and other features rather than something with VERY little added value. But if they decide to indeed add this so be it, I wouldn’t complain as I understand some people want it.
The “efficiency” argument could also be applied to the initial batches of kana words - they have little value to anyone who’s not an absolute beginner to Japanese.
I’m sorry, but this is such a silly argument. When you read a book you’re not being graded whether you guessed the English equivalent of the word correctly, nor do you have to repeat this process until you get it right every time for the next N times.
Writing the English equivalent of a word is just a way to assess whether you grasp the meaning of a word. When you read you do that implicitly as you just wouldn’t understand completely a sentence if you don’t know what the words in it mean. And yes, you do it several times as common words will appear over and over again in a text. Possibly more times than it takes to ‘burn’ them in wanikani. I agree that for most people the initial selection of words is too basic, but as I said before you have to start from somewhere, so hopefully with time they will expand the list including more advanced and challenging words, so even non absolute beginners will benefit from the feature.
as long as you understand the word, no conversion to another language is needed
it’s not always going to be English
in your head you can convert it to any number of meanings that match the word
Which are the main differences between reading a book and having to manually input the word in a SRS system and to me personally these differences are substantial. Not to mention that while reading a book you have a choice - you can skip the word. You can even intuit the meaning of a word from context if you don’t know it yet. In WaniKani you have to know it.
I don’t think this argument holds up to reading native content. In native content, the words used are more or less necessary to create a stream of meaning as a piece of one greater puzzle. Seeing 人 in a sentence means that you have to see what modifies it, where it belongs in the sentence, and use it as context to grasp the overall meaning meant to be conveyed. This is an indispensable component to the larger process of understanding long strings of japanese. This is a necessary skill to be proficient in reading japanese and must be trained in its own right through repeated practice of said process. In the context of wanikani, the word itself is not a component to any larger process. It is a standalone entity that you are assessed on and it is that sole standalone entity that is reinforced. Nothing else.
I clicked here just to see what the new words they added today were, but I have to say some of the people writing graduate theses on why they don’t want to do these reviews are probably spending more time on that than it would take to do all 60 lessons at once
Yeah they really need to mix it up going forward, at my current skill level I find that kana-only vocab is actually one of the main hindrances when I try to read Japanese, so I wouldn’t actually mind this kana vocab too much if it actually taught me some interesting words, but this is just nothing.
My eyes might get irritated if the room is considered ‘too dusty’.
I feel that I have properly matched the level of good faith contained in the quoted passage.
