give us an undo button. at the beginning i also though ācheatingā wouldnt be the way, but if the app is an active hindrance to your learning progress and is killing your motivation, then maybe thats okay afterall. in the end, the system has to fit you, and not the other way round.
burn candidates should get put in a separate review pile, so if you want to learn newer items and progress your level normally, you can. instead of wasting time again and again on items you actually already know. 4+ months is a long enough time to āfall back into the same habitā, no matter how much you swear this time you wont get the rendaku wrong, ultimately wasting your time later on once again.
I never thought i would write a topic here, but i guess i had to vent a little. to make wanikani āworkā for me again from now on im also gonna ācheatā so i can finally learn some new kanjis again. looking back at the wasted last months i tried to deal with the burned waves and leeches i just feel robbed of my time and also money. my personal experience.
The standard approach to leeches would probably be: use Anki and suspend or delete them. Any product that forces a predefined deck without a way to suspend cards will have issues with leeches.
I also started off thinking that I didnāt need an undo button because of ācheatingā and then after about 5 months I gave in and got an app with it and itās so much better. Tsukurame (the third party IOS app) also has review reordering, which I used when I had burnout in March to recover through my reviews more mentally efficiently.
It is unreasonable to expect to go all the way to level 60 without hitting the wall at some point. It sounds like you just did that. There is no point at blaming the app. You donāt remember those words, period. You need to accept that burning items is hard and it is OK to make a mistake and get stuck for a while.
I already hit the wall before at level 22. When I look back at that time, I really didnāt know any of those words. Cheating wouldnāt help me at all. I spent 4 months on the same level just doing reviews, but at the end, I caught up with my level and now I remember those words.
It is frustrating when you have to admit you need to slow down and not progress, but keep your goal in mind. Getting to new level isnāt some magical point when you sudenly know more, it just opens more lessons.
burn candidates should get put in a separate review pile
No, if you make a lot of mistakes when reviews are mixed, that means you only recognize the words in isolation. The goal is not to burn items. The goal is to learn them.
I remember the rendaku in this one because I checked all the vocab related to å½ and I noticed that only heaven and China have āgokuā, all others are ākokuā.
Thereās one more: neighbouring country at level 40. I only know because I was looking up exactly these same koku/goku exceptions yesterday. It seems Rendaku is a bugbear for many of us.
The media context sentences userscript has helped me so much with leeches like this. I really need to hear a word repeatedly in context to remember the correct reading.
Thatās pretty much what wk is though. Learning words in isolation.
@rayden96 I recommend reading more so that you see the words in context and they stick better. Tadoku or graded readers can be a good place to start if you donāt feel comfortable jumping into native content. Even 1h spent reading at this point is probably a better use of your time than 3h on wk or srs
The words being in the proper context makes a world of difference.
Eternal WK leeches wouldnāt bother me at all while I was reading. And now that I reset from 60 to 21 to refresh some of my kanji knowledge that wasnāt used enough, Iām failing WK reviews on kanji that Iāll know the meaning and reading of without hesitation when I encounter it in the wild.
On WK, you have to recognise visually similar kanji in a way that just doesnāt happen in a book, since the story context guides you to the right answer. Without that context, I am making some very embarrassing WK mistakes. Repeatedly.
If you want to do something like pass the JLPT, you have to be able to successfully distinguish visually similar kanji, because theyāll test you on that. But if the goal is reading, progress to reading asap and see if leeches are still a problem there. Using kanji is the goal, and not perfectly recognising them in a vacuum doesnāt actually have to be a problem.
Here are a couple things from my experience that might possibly help, if youāre not already doing them.
For readings:
Listen to (or watch) more Japanese in whatever format you most enjoy. Do reviews with audio on. Say or mouth the word when you get it right.
I find it interesting that Iām significantly better at getting readings right than meanings, which I credit watching thousands of hours of subbed anime.
Spend less time on each individual review. Treat them like flashcards, not a final exam. Fail fast, hit the keyboard shortcut (I think itās āFā) to glance at the correct answer (and say it out loud), then hit enter and move on. This will make the whole review session faster and less tiring.
Although, if brute force isnāt working and you find that a word you care about is stuck in Apprentice for a few weeks, it can be worth it to take a few minutes of dedicated study, like: reread the lesson, do a Google image search, look at the Japanese Wikipedia article, do a YouTube search, or write the kanji and the spelling by hand a few times.
True, the āproblemā with grouping burn candidates together according to WK/SRS is that they would form their own context that would make them easier to get right. Perhaps Angelodmage intended to say, āif you make a lot of mistakes when reviews are mixed, that means you donāt recognize the words in isolation.ā
Easier to get right is a good thing. Repeatedly getting it right is how you learn, not repeatedly getting it wrong.
Not everyone is a bottom up learner for whom context-free learning works smoothly. Context is something thatās available in the real world and forming a context group is not a bad thing. WK isnāt the end goal. Iād imagine reading is the end goal for most of us and reaching a point where you can move into fast reading is more important than flawless recognition of words in isolation. Adding more leeches doesnāt help this end goal; it detracts from our ability to learn more new words.
Iād rather have an 80% recognition of 6000 words, than 100% recognition of 4500 words. And if Iām reading to myself and canāt flawlessly remember a rendaku, who really cares? Iāll learn to pronounce it properly later as I have done with countless English words over the years.
Agree with this. Wanikani teaches a kanji in isolation that you should actually run into the wild. I donāt know why people donāt ever start reading early and expect to be able to memorize the kanji and vocabulary just forever. This is not a game to get the kanji into the burned category and be happy forever. You are supposed to run into the soon-burned-item so often in the wild that you have no second guesses. Otherwise it is not burned and should be repeated more often.
When I make a silly mistake like you mentioned (Tengoku or Tenkoku) I just keep going and ignore that item. Then I hit F5 and get it right. I donāt feel like itās cheating the system if I honestly feel like I made a mistake for lack of focus or fatigue after X amount of items.
I would say that people learn more from mistakes, and should be less afraid of making mistakes when learning a language. But for reviews, you will get it right by the end of the review session, otherwise the session isnāt done! And getting an item wrong will make it show up sooner, giving you a better chance of getting it right next time. Itās designed to give you a better chance of getting it right.
Exactly! Accuracy really only matters for two things: the current levelās radicals and kanji for unlocking the next lessons/level, and reducing your workload. If I have 300 reviews, Iād rather do them fast with 75% accuracy than do 100 with 90% accuracy and be behind on my SRS intervals in the next day.
True, but the context of a WK level or a batch of burn candidates is an artificial context that does not transfer to real life, which I believe is why sorting is not natively supported by WK. Not to say thatās always the right way for everyone, you just have to use an extension to get that functionality.
Iāve had a lot of leeches. After I saw them in my reviews enough times over days or weeks, I would usually start to remember them without needing extra study time, even if I answered them as fast as possible and was willing to enter nonsense if I didnāt remember right away. As long as you can get to 0 reviews daily and your Apprentice count isnāt too high, you should be good to do lessons. (Apprentice count being a good metric of your near-future workload, along with the review forecast.) A high Apprentice count for me would be above 100, but it depends on the person.
I am doing WK on the phone, small keyboard and big fingers is the recipe for endlessly not burned items. Usually reload with F5, but it can be 10 times per review session, feels like I waste time fighting WK -_-
Maybe we can take a chapter from Duolingo and add concept of lives. You can redo review 3 times per day, if I mistype more than 3 times per dayā¦ Well itās probably on me at that point.
I think there was a thread to propose changes to WK, we should try it. I requested something long ago and they implemented it (took couple of months thou)
Perfect use case for the Double Check Script. About the only downside of that script is that it allows you to cheat yourself, but as long as you donāt do that itās a very nice QoL thing
How are you able to check all the vocab using this kanji? Is this something you can find in Wanikami or Tsurukami? Would love to do this for
ga tsu/ge tsu/su ki -the moon and the month words. Also for all the sun/day options: ka,hi, ni chi, etc.
crazy to me WK still doesnāt have an undo button. I use BunPro and make typing mistakes all the time on there and all I gotta do is hit backspace, put in what I meant to put in, and weāre all good. Not the same here, and it feels almost mean-spirited thatās not an option here.
