I’d like to learn kanji and the associated vocab at the same time. Right now I believe the vocab is locked until you reach a certain level? It’d help me a lot to be able to learn both at the same time and reinforce the learning that way.
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The first batch of vocab for any given kanji should become available when you guru the kanji which should take less than four days if you do your reviews on time. You can’t go faster than that, that’s the whole design of WaniKani: introduce the components first, then the kanji, then the vocab.
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The WK method is to learn the kanji first then the vocab. You can’t change that.
However, some of us prefer to learn them on the same day so we can immediately start using the reading and not wait 4+ days. I know I prefer it. You can use something like WKstats to get the list of vocab and stick them into another SRS of your choice. Then it’s like a sneak peek before you officially unlock it in WK. Once you unlock it in WK, it’s up to you if you want to remove it from your secondary SRS or keep it for dual practice.
This is absurd.
I would learn the kanji much better if I already get contextualized vocab (preferably those with the same reading and not the verbs) to go along with it. Right now the kanji just by itself is very bare and tough to learn.
People learn differently and I learn mostly by association.
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If you do your apprentice kanji reviews as soon as they become available, you’ll unlock the first batch of associated vocab after 3.5 days.
If you find that it doesn’t work well for you, maybe WaniKani is just not the best method for you. Given that you’re already at level 22, you’ve covered the most important part of the course already anyway. Maybe push until level 25 or 30 and then move on to something else?
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It’s a relatively minor adjustment and a bit of an arbitrary limitation to sequence the lessons in this way.
I thought I’d top out somewhere around level 40 myself but most probably not hit the full 60. What would be the next step to move on to from here?
By level 30 you can expect 85 to 90% kanji coverage for most beginner to intermediate native content. By level 40 you’ll get to 90 to 95%.
At that point you can just read stuff and forsake SRS completely if you want. Or read stuff and “mine” your own flashcards that will be relevant to the things you read.
At your current level you should consider dipping your toes into native content if you haven’t already. There are many ways to start, from picking something that you already know well and attempt to read it in Japanese to using graded readers. Satori Reader has a bunch of content that you can sample for free for instance.
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If you mean absurd that this is the only workaround, yes, I agree.
But alas it is.
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Unfortunately (and reasonably), it’s difficult to make a course with 2000 kanji and 8000+ vocabulary words also customized for each individual user. The workarounds with scripts and other tools at least offer some ability for that, but it’s probably not going to ever be perfect.
No it’s not really.
It’s probably a feature of jpdb.io but I’ve never used it for Kanji myself (i.e. disable the feature). I never got stuck with jpdb either, just Anki+Yomitan for me (and I don’t SRS for Japanese at all right now).
Alternatively, just WaniKani, but also use Self-Study Quiz script for upcoming vocab alongside the usual Kanji lessons. This was a way I used to do.
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This kanji is level 8. The first non-verb vocab for this kanji (which means the first time you see a kun’yomi reading) is level 30.
WaniKani / Kanji / 草
This kanji is level 5. The first time you see the on’yomi is level 43, the second is level 53.
So even something as “simple” as learning vocab with the same reading type (even if you make it so it’s always kun or always on) runs into issues in the first ten levels because there are kanji where you don’t see the one of the reading types for more than 20 levels.
It also carries a complication that if you don’t require unlocking vocab through kanji, then you could find yourself working on vocab where you have never seen one of the kanji. Let’s say it’s someone new, working pretty slowly through level 3, say 1 kanji a day, and because let’s say they’re working through them in the order they’re listed on the level 3 page:
Day thirteen on the level and they start to work on:
WaniKani / Kanji / 半
The problem? The only vocab is the one where it’s just the kanji, plus WaniKani / Vocabulary / 半分. If vocab is not gated with kanji, they’re given a vocabulary item containing a kanji they won’t be introduced to for another 12 days.
So those are all situations that come up early in WK if we accept at face value that it’s simple to implement the learning path customized for each individual user. There are also very likely to be more. I don’t think changing the base behavior of WK is the answer - with that said, if you wanted an option in the advanced lesson picker to unlock vocabulary items when all of the associated kanji are at least level 1? That’s certainly a workaround that you opt into. Will they do that? I dunno, but if that’s what you’re looking for you can certainly accomplish that using anki and I forget the name of the WaniKani sync addin.
But the main thing I want to point out is all of this is an exercise in something you’re suggesting is easy, to customize the site’s default behavior to the way you want to learn. It introduces complications that I assume you had not considered, and that you might not run into with your learning style, but someone else might have with theirs. And all of this because it may take 3-4 days to unlock vocab, or maybe a week or more if you’re struggling with the kanji, even though you’ll be looking at that kanji in vocab for months to come?
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