My understanding of WK is that its first aim is to teach the kanji. Why, then, are kanji which have not been introduced in the lessons, yet used in the context sentences, not accompanied by kana to show the readings so that the student has that easy help to learning those kanji? Yes, one can figure the readings/meanings out by using, for example, Nelson, discerning not-yet-introduced radicals, a suitable electronic dictionary, whatever. Nor do those kanji even appear in that lesson’s associated lists of kanji/vocabulary. So many books mean’t for students conscientiously provide at least footnotes, if not kana, where it is reasonable to assume that they would be a real time-saving help. Yet with WK, although there are time, money, and personnel to fuss with colors and reformats, there are no advances in the learning aids obvious to competing companies. Every software revision number conceals finally acknowledged failures to talk to users. Errors, oversights, misunderstandings of WK, and so on are , of course, due to my own sub-par familiarity with WK or its user-provided tools
I think kanji that appears even though it hasn’t been introduced in the lessons is not teached in WaniKani.
It probably should have furigana, though.
Don’t only the old sentences have kanji that haven’t been taught yet? People complained, so, they went back and added simpler sentences that don’t use kanji from later levels to each word (up to level 20 so far, but with plans to keep going).
They left the old ones there, because it doesn’t hurt to have more advanced sentences too.
As far as I’m aware, there should always be at least 2 sentences on those items where you can read all the kanji.
Have you seen this script?
Early introduction of kanji from later lessons would seem to me to be a useful familiarization tool. My habit is to record many new kanji, practice them, note the on- and kun- readings. The context Ss are my daily study to further my grammar and familiarity with how clauses are handled and to keep a sense of whether my competence is improving. Ss 1 is a warm-up, 2's may take a thought or two, 3's can be real advances for me. I don't ask that anything be simplified from native educated Japanese.
I read your comments and what you pass on from your books. You don’t seem to me to look for a leg-up or any kind of “affirmative action.” I don’t think they socially promote people from 57 to 60 just as an appreciation of participation in those first 57. My respects.
nope. The first sentence is usually only or mostly known Kanji. But the second and third sentences usually have unknown Kanji. I suggested they put in audio clips of the sentences. Would solve the problem and provide audio readings of the sentences.
Thank you for your note. I have never spent any time with API… I will take a look.
Yes and yes. I would certainly pay a small add-on charge to have supplements to WK. Thank you.
Huh?
If you have examples, that would be good, because I think their stated intent was what I mentioned, and this way they’d be able to fix it. They did move things around in the overhaul, which could have taken things out of the original order. But then, okay, there’s at least one sentence with all previously learned kanji.
I’ve been monitoring the new vocabulary, and I noticed that you are right, the kanji in at least two of the sentences is familiar, with occasional exceptions. I’m pretty sure each of these sentences have kanji I have not seen. Although I suppose I may just not be remembering them.
As I said, if you get examples together, you can let them know so they can fix it. They’re usually pretty responsive to emails.
Huh, indeed. There was a continuation bar in the middle of my post that showed additional material I put in but for whatever reason was not apparent to you. Now vanished with the news cycle.
The easiest way to “add kana to unfamiliar kanji” is to install a browser extension that shows a dtionary entry on mouse-over.
I’m using this one for FF https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/rikaichamp/
Thank you, I hadn’t seen this script either. I always felt like this should be a built-in feature, though.
The thing about this approach is that it’s very useful when reading Japanese on other websites, but as an educational resource, I feel that Wanikani should tell you when you’re not supposed to worry about if you know a kanji or not. I often find myself wasting time with context sentences trying to figure that out.
Likewise, if it shows you a sentence in which you’re already supposed to know the kanji, it should shame your sorry butt for not recognizing it, instead of just having you use a plugin to read it and go like “oh, that”.
Yeah, ideally WK would use Bunpro’s approach (who use WK’s api 
).
But that’d probably be a big change in the code.
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