In MY experience, if you come across a similar looking kanji, you’ll think its the initial kanji and you’ll spend a little while wondering why you’re getting it wrong in the first place.
保証 Guarentee
生保 Life Insurance
生存 Existence
保存 Preserve
Now tell me, do you REALLY want to see these scattered out when you’re not even aware to BE aware of the differences? You’ll keep saying Existence on preserve and so on until you’re able to track down ALL of the ones you keep mixing up (and you might think there are only 2 or three when there are 4 or 5) If these are all on the same level, I will automatically know that these look similar and to pay EXTRA close attention to the kanji.
To be fair you might still have that issue even if they were all on the same level but at least you won’t get it wrong 6-10 times before you finally figure it out.
I don’t know if it’s merely being level 35, but I’ve just studied Japanese for several years, even before joining WK. I guess if you start WK right at the beginning of your Japanese studies when you don’t know many words they’d seem similar.
As everyone else is saying, it’s better to struggle when you first learn them then to see one out in the wild and not know which one it is. Splitting those words into different levels would give you an unnatural context clue (knowing which words are in which level, and more or less anticipating their arrival in your queue, separated from each other) that you won’t have when you read an article, for example.
@spookypixel It’s fine for vocabulary words where the different usages of the same Kanji are being taught, so that there is some context there, it’s a little easier when you’re dealing with multiple kanji+hiragana/katana; I’m simply talking about a situation with strictly Kanji meaning/on’yomi readings, for the most part. There is no need for these ones to be taught at the exact same time, it only adds unnecessary struggle. Yeah, some struggle will happen with learning, but this isn’t one of those situations where it’s beneficial imo. SRS itself adds struggle to make sure you know something, you don’t need to add more in this way.
For me I feel the opposite. There are words that I commonly confuse the meaning and/or reading for. Similar words, dissimilar words. Transitive and intransitive versions of words.
So when I came back from my year long break, I resurrected burned kanji (and I need to do this with vocabulary too) and they have to be at the same time for me. Or as others said, I’ll have a clue as to which one is which, and I need to be able to differentiate them without those clues, because those clues won’t exist when I come across those kanji (or vocabulary) in a test, textbook, or manga.
Learning (or in my case, re-learning) them at the same time is exactly what forces me to pay attention to the radicals, remind myself of the meanings and readings, and come up with new mnemonics if necessary.
If something is still not sticking, there are two things I can immediately think of that you can do:
Write example sentences with kanji. (On a computer so you don’t have to learn how to write it if you don’t want to.)
Actually, I thought of something else. There are things on here you can print to help you with this but:
3. Try learning to write the kanji and as you write it, somewhere on the paper or the back, top, side, whatever, put the pronunciation and the meaning. Maybe on the back you could put some vocabulary words that use the kanji as well, to really cement it.
Just a thought.
There’s also making good old fashion flash cards for those you really struggle with (or Anki, but if it’s only a few, handwritten might make more sense).
Yea, I got that, I still disagree. Maybe I’m looking at this from a different perspective, as I’ve been studying for well over 20 years. I’m just not seeing what you’re seeing as a problem… like I see what you’re saying, but I think it’s a good thing and a necessary struggle.
Also, since no one has mentioned it yet… levels 1,2, and 3 are shortened levels as a sort of “trial” version.
Level 4 is where the normal-length levels kick in – which are (if you level as fast as possible) 2x as long as 1-3.
I believe in the late 40’s/early 50’s they begin giving you all radicals/kanji at once, so if you wish, you could go ham and return to the level 1-3 speed.
Sooo – it felt a lot longer to you, at least in part, because it was significantly longer ;;^^
IIRC, only levels 1 and 2 are artificially shortened. The levels at 46 and beyond just don’t have enough radicals to stop you from leveling up after the first wave of gurus.