I personally don’t mind the odd unusual vocab for the purpose of reinforcing kanji – but I sure wish they’d point these out. Or for kanji vocab that is more commonly found in hiragana that would also be useful to know. Likewise when multiple readings for the same vocab are presented I wish they’d highlight the more common variant.
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Yeah, part of why I favor WK is because the main type of content I read/watch (pro wrestling) isn’t covered on jpdb or koohi at all, and I don’t know how it even could be, so it’s basically an imperfect fit no matter what I use. I don’t really mind learning some stuff that I don’t use, especially because I feel like learning more kanji helps reinforce other kanji, and I don’t mind overdoing it with kanji if that means rarely having to bother looking up unknown kanji, which can be tedious, but when it comes to kana-only words, there’s not really any benefit to learning random words in a vacuum.
I’d rather learn specifically the words being used in the grammar resources I’m using, and in the pro wrestling stuff I’m reading and watching. And there’s absolutely no way on earth WK’s chosen kana-only words will be selected based on their frequency in pro wrestling, and even if they pick words in my textbooks, I highly doubt WK’s order would remotely match the textbook order, so it just feels like a pointless endeavor to me.
I guess one way they maybe could do it is if they had some sort of grammar teaching/graded reader program setup in tandem with WK that their chosen kana-only words prep you for reading, so at least there’d be one direct application of the words and you could come out of having completed WK basically at N3 level or whatever. But it doesn’t look like they have any plans for adding grammar lessons to WK, at least not in the immediate future, so it feels sort of like we’re missing one key piece of “being able to read the stuff we love to read”.
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I can second that. I live in Japan and it is a word that I have heard used (and have used) often. Not every day sort of common, but often enough to certainly be common. Granted, me being a person that does have an aversion to very hot food or drink, it is probably more likely to come up. Especially late night ramen stops when everyone else has already finished and I am still lifting noodles above the bowl and blowing on them to let them cool down.
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Who states this supposed primary objective, and where? Tofugu themselves said clearly their goal is to teach people read Japanese, not just read kanjis. Which is why they are finally introducing kana only worlds, that by definition contain zero kanji.
The team did. Idk why you’re trying to convince everyone that they’ve never said WK was for learning kanji, but I’m sure there’s even more places that mention it that haven’t been updated yet.
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I am not saying that wanikani doesn’t teach you kanjis, I am saying that this is not their only goal. Their goal is to teach reading Japanese, and they said this clearly in more than one place. Reading kanjis is of course part of this, but so is learning vocabulary even when it does not include kanjis. That being said I am not trying to convince anyone of anything, I just don’t like misinformation so I feel compelled to debunk it.
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I think if you look at the structure of WK it’s a pretty reasonable take to say “this was clearly designed to teach kanji first and foremost, with vocab choices in service of that rather than the primary aim”, and with an implicit assumption that users are getting grammar and lot of vocab from other sources and tools. If you were aiming to teach reading more holistically then I think you’d build something pretty different.
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2000 Kanji is probably the most unaccomplished objective, if looking at higher levels’ content. Not to mention the in 1 year part.
Reading is more accomplishable, at least in some materials. But which materials are we talking about?
Also, it’s not speaking or listening, if we are talking about 猫舌.
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Koichi states it here:
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