Making Radicals and Kanji come first

Is there a place that I can update the settings to have the Kanji and Radicals come first in reviews? I’m finding myself bogged in a bunch of vocab and can never level up the kanji and radicals.

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You can install this userscript to do that:

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There is a script which would let you order by type instead of level, but it is not recommended to skip vocab in favour of leveling up faster.

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Being bogged down by vocab might be a sign to slow down or find a different way of studying to make the vocab less burdensome. As you know, vocab is ultimately what you read/hear/speak/write.

To phrase it another way, reordering is going to make the vocab flow in even faster. So make sure to reorder only if that’s your goal.

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The FAQ says that’s done intentionally. By forcing you to pay attention to what the word is and recall it, you remember it better.

Honestly I’d prefer the reverse. In my experience, kanji (both meaning and pronunciation) are easier to recall after encountering multiple vocabulary words using them, and radicals are easier to recall after encountering them in multiple kanji. Sadly that’s not how WK works :cry:

I feel like that might have a bit of bias. The radicals, kanji, and vocab are naturally going to reinforce one another. Of course the radicals are easier after seeing them in kanji, and of course the kanji are easier after seeing them in vocab. It’d still be a lot harder if you were attempting to learn them vocab->kanji->radicals, though.

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Well, it’s hard to say for sure - I can’t forget what I’ve learned and try again the other way to compare.
In my experience, though: I always get kanji reviews wrong for at least a day or two after they’re introduced, unless I know (from having heard) one of the example vocab words in the lessons.

I think you’d agree that most education starts with specific examples before generalizing, right?

I’d strongly disagree, actually. Virtually all education begins with a general overview, then specific examples.

A calculus class wouldn’t give examples of an integral before explaining what it is and the general process involved.

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Rigorous mathematical education is one thing. My real analysis course (21-235) started from various definitions that coincidentally turn out to describe a structure isomorphic to the real numbers.

But for everyone else, no. You start children with counting objects before abstracting to the idea that you can operate directly on natural numbers, then integers, rationals, and so on. And (except for aforementioned course) I’ve always seen integrals introduced by area approximation first.

Both of those are examples of a general overview being introduced before specific examples. You’re teaching a child what counting and numbers are before moving forward. Similarly, while integration has many uses, it is at its core, approximating an area, and that general concept should be taught first.

I am sorry to everyone for not answering! I’ve been super busy and haven’t had a chance to check this post. I thank you all for the feedback. As of right now I think I’m going to stick with keeping it how it is at the moment.

Thank you very much,
Nathan

And that’s why I failed calculus. As I recall (long time ago) the teacher just plowed through the material without stopping to explain what what going on.

I like the build from the ground up approach that WK takes. I’ve tried it the other way (learning jukugo without learning the component kanji first), and at least for me, it didn’t work, like at all.

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I mean, you failed calculus because you didn’t work hard enough to understand the material. Potentially the teacher didn’t help you as much as they should, but in the end you suffer when you fail, not the teacher.

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