Level 60 (well kind of) post and my (admittedly overly critical) opinion on WaniKani

I tried my best but can’t replicate the same look. Would you mind to share 1-2 real cards as a shared deck file? You method looks interesting I really would like to give it a try. Thank you.

I think other people have done a good job of arguing why the vocab is really important so I won’t belabor that point. That said I do agree that there is a small but significant fraction of words that are a waste of time. All the する versions of words, also stuff like 缶ビール. Really, can + beer means “canned beer”? I continue to wish that WK had a feature to remove vocab you’re not interested in so you don’t waste time reviewing it over and over again

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pls dont remove suru verbs and easy vocab, its whats keeping me sane

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You could use an android or iOS app that permit reordering to finish your journey if you wish to.
I do not agree with your point on vocab, but to each their own.

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Hmm, do you mind if I ask what you mean by this? Are they noticeably lower quality or… somehow different feeling? Just curious.

Overall, hey, as long as you’re making progress on learning Japanese, anything you want to use is fine. In fact, we all need a post-WK plan for the many more kanji and the like we have to learn, so good on you. I don’t think WK is mandatory by any means, but up to this point at least, I think it’s been the best choice for me. The only way I want to push back a little is just to ask, do you think this would have been a reasonable way for you to learn from day 1? I think there’s a very good argument that after level X, at some point, your time is better spent bailing on WK early when you know how to learn kanji. Others here who know more about Japanese than me have made this same argument.

But getting that handheld practice on learning and applying radicals has been extremely valuable to making kanji feel approachable at all, at least for me. I know you emphasize not life time so maybe you don’t fully disagree? But there’s a tendency sometimes for people who have gotten further in Japanese to not recognize how much they needed the early stages. Like, immersion is totally the best way to learn, but you need a foundation first, and when you come across anyone who says to skip every bit of basic study and just immerse to “learn like a child” or some nonsense, you’ll find that almost of them say “I spent a long time in classes first and got nothing out of it!” That’s not you; this post is more reasonable – but I believe there are only a pretty small portion of people who can tolerate just making anki cards the way you did without a period of, perhaps not Wanikani, but being walked through with some sort of similar learning system.

While I find your overall take a little overly harsh personally, I will say somewhat along these lines, it seems tons of people fall into the trap of focusing entirely on WK to the detriment of everything else, whether that’s the fault of WK taking too much time or something, or just another expression of how Japanese learners sometimes fixate too much on learning kanji in general. Probably somewhere in the middle? So we do somewhat agree on that conclusion about it eating into people’s efforts elsewhere. Similarly, “what Wanikani level do I need to be to do X?” is such a common question that it would perhaps be nice if WK took the time to briefly explain to someone starting what more they need to do and what kanji knowledge is and isn’t actually going to mean. They’ve done this elsewhere on Tofugu, but a brief explanation at the start of the journey for new members might do a lot to clear up misconceptions.

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Sorry if this has been brought up already, but with regards to the idea of creating an anki deck instead of doing vocabulary in WK … If vocabulary is so easy for you, I don’t see how answering the card five times (probably takes a grand total of 50 seconds) is more effort than creating your own anki deck from scratch.

Maybe it’s just a question of what type of effort feels good to you? Like, to you, answering WK cards repeatedly feels like a waste, while creating a deck feels constructive? To me answering WK cards repeatedly feels like “phew, one more anki card I don’t have to make!” :joy:

I guess it’s worth adding that I dislike answering SRS cards with a whole list. Having to list every reading of a kanji on one card, to me that would feel like a waste of effort. To each their own!

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I think it’s kind of weird to complain something isn’t a good value for money when you used scripts to skip most of the content.

The free trial of WK makes it very clear that most of the content will be vocabulary.

If you’re just going to blow through all the levels by cheating, what was even the point?

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It just sounds to me like you aren’t really interested in knowing Japanese, but just want to memorize the kanji. Kanji doesn’t exist in a bubble-- vocabulary is how it’s used, and even if you know the meaning, you won’t necessarily know how it’s used in context, as it’s not necessarily a direct translation from each kanji, nor will you necessarily know how to pronounce it.

I get that you’re suggesting simply adding vocabulary you want to learn to other SRS that you like… but… why? I just don’t get how you feel like it’s a better use of your time to create all these extra decks when the vocabulary here is meant to help you remember the kanji. Just learn the vocab here… and then go on to learn new vocab via your favourite SRS.

You said yourself you felt your post was overly critical of Wanikani, so none of what I’m saying is intended to berate you. It’s just … it feels like you’re missing the point, which is bewildering, considering how far you’ve come-- but then again, not, since you said yourself that you quit trying to learn the Wanikani way relatively soon into your progress.

Anyhow, good luck in your studies, and I hope you get where you want to go!

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With all due respect, while I don’t really agree with some of the OP’s conclusions… they talk at length about using a J-J dictionary, learning words in context, etc. This seems like a total mischaracterization of someone who is, in seemingly good faith, criticizing WK’s methodology for teaching vocab, so they started skipping the vocab lessons on WK. That absolutely doesn’t mean they’re straight up skipping learning words.

I mean in the end their complaints are core enough that it does seem they would’ve been better served totally dropping WK sooner, but I think it’s sort of sidestepping their actual criticisms to focus on “well why did you stay with it this way?” then. But if they really hate the whole way the review stages work, or typing input… I don’t think we need to ask them to reiterate why they didn’t go through that process 6000 times, heh.

Of course, the topic could’ve gone without their sudden theory about why the WK staff chose not to improve the system with the exact priorities they would prefer, heh.

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I agree with most of the replies re: vocab. It seems very strange to me to use WK for as long as you have, but purely for kanji, and not really put the effort in to learn 75% of its content.

I agree with a few of the criticisms, though – particularly, that it would be nice to have the power to ‘turn off’ or forcibly skip certain words that are so familiar or obvious that there is only marginal gain from reviewing.

Separately, I’m not far enough along to judge this well yet, but I’ve read that WK vocabulary is not typically chosen with much effort to emphasize how commonly it is used, which sounds rather unfortunate to me. Still, I have trouble believing that another 6,000 vocabulary words won’t be very helpful for working towards general fluency, and, as others have commented, I rather like that the vocab reinforces readings – and, in many cases, is the only way that WK introduces a particular reading (especially for common Kun readings, the “Kanji” reading more often seeming to be the On one due to frequency of jukugo words, I guess).

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Basically, the priority goes like this:

Pick a pool of vocab that reinforce readings of kanji you learned + new readings that you didnt see > from that pool, priority leans towards useful vocab, though some oddballs are put there (if anything, probably to make the learning be less monotonous).

Since the first priority is a balance of words to reinforce + new stuff, common words that have readings which are already well known aren’t picked, and some wackier stuff may be added so you can have more than one item to learn a specific reading. Still, lately theres been a trend of trimming very rare vocab and implementing more common ones, so there’s still a goal to make your vocab feel immediately useful even after the filtering

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but I’ve read that WK vocabulary is not typically chosen with much effort to emphasize how commonly it is used

TBH I think this is nonsense. probably 95% of the words on WK are listed as “common” in Jisho, the reason you hear about this is a few people loudly complaining about 1 or 2 specific uncommon words (out of over 6000 vocabulary items). Even my gripe about する duplicates constitutes about 100 items or about 1.6% of the total vocabulary

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Tbh, not saying anything about your opinion, but these are the lessons/reviews where I go “yesss, I’m getting a freebie”, and it’s quite nice when you’re reviewing very hard items and suddenly you get one that just makes sense (a rare treat after 20 levels).

I don’t like vocab reviews either, but not because I don’t find them useful, rather because I’m a lazy git who hates work.

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I see. I guess it would be nice to be able to set certain vocab to burned status so you wouldn’t have to go through the full review process, but I like having to do them the same way as kanji for now.

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Love the vocab. Wish there was more. I come across so many of them in my reading and podcast listening.

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I’ve been using WaniKani for 7 years, and although my progress is admittedly slow, I will finish this program and once I do and even now I will feel a huge sense of accomplishment because I didn’t “cheat”, I did every single review that came up even when I had to slug through a huge backlog of reviews. I put in the work. I found the vocab valuable because I’m learning a language and you need vocab for that. Learning a language takes an enormous amount of time and I’m not sure creating shortcuts would help me. The vocab helps reinforce the kanji learned. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I think you might feel a greater sense of accomplishment if you took your time with the program and slugged through that backlog though.

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I’m at a similar level and looking for more reading material. May I ask what you’ve been using for reading practice?

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I think Vocab could stop at enlightened or master, or just take less space in WK. It’s a good critique of the site, though I’m not sure how it’d be changed

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I’m still at an early level and have really appreciated the vocab so far. I don’t really mind the time that vocab takes. If it’s easy vocab anyways, then it isn’t really an issue and the SRS will naturally push it further out just like everything else. If the vocab is harder than that and I can’t clear it, then clearly it’s something that warrants more review time, which the SRS will naturally account for. If there’s any issues with the way vocab is presented by WaniKani, I think the SRS takes care of it just fine. I have the time to take a couple more seconds answering easy vocab.

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I’m reading よつばと! and posting translation attempts in my study log, like this, to practice my grammar understanding and get feedback.

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