Hi there, still a newcomer trudging along on level 5. Really enjoying the approach of WaniKani, and it’s remarkable how effective it seems considering how alien kanji is to me and I haven’t even touched grammar. That being said, there are a few things I already find myself longing for.
Spoiler tags for Common Word Combinations and Context Sentences. I often find myself looking at these to practice kanji and kana recognition, pronounciation, and meaning. The issue is, the solution is right there next to it! It’s very difficult not to be influenced by it especially for katakana readings, due to the proximity. Difficult to focus on one line while completely ignoring the next.
Discord and Reddit I believe for example have spoiler tags - the tagged text is just a dark box until your cursor hovers over or clicks on it to reveal the meaning.
I’m no web developer, but surely this could be implemented relatively easily?
Is it just me who gets frazzled/tilted when they get something wrong? One here and there is OK but the more I get wrong in reviews, the more likely I’ll get the rest wrong. I’m aware of this and I am calm while doing reviews, but there is something subtle in my brain that is interfering.
I’m wondering if some of us could benefit if, during reviews, WK didn’t tell me if I got name/reading/meaning correct until the end. It should just throw the ones back at me as usual at the end.
Mistakes should still go in the shame box (Recent Mistakes).
There can be a button in the quiz screen like ‘last 10’ in lessons, which would present to you the ones you got wrong again. If you get something wrong at this part, then it can go red and tell me I’m dumb as usual.
Thoughts? Likelyhood of seeing anything like these implemented?
The first point is something that’s been handled by various userscripts. I do agree it should be standard, since it’s nice to try and attempt to read things for yourself before “spoiling” it for yourself.
I think I used this one?
The second… While I understand the frustration, I do think there’s value in hitting that bump in the road along the way when you screw up. The more beneficial solution long-term would be to allow yourself to be okay with making mistakes, since you will make them when using the language out in the wild too. Being able to move on after that without being discouraged is extremely valuable when you’re bound to make them a lot. But that’s just my opinion, anyway.
I think this is the key observation that might help you most to be honest
Basically my comment is in agreement with and expands a bit on this:
Reading your message, I mostly thought, perhaps learning to reframe mistakes will help you most
Language learning involves making a lot of mistakes, and the brain learns and remembers best when it’s in a state of positive curiosity. You mention calm and that’s certainly part of it, and the aim of my comment is to help you get one step further with that. I have seen some people on here have a revelation that when they are kinder to themselves and approach language learning more playfully, like a kid exploring a new game (they just try stuff out and see what works and what is interesting or fun), they learn faster and more easily than before. That’s certainly how I feel my brain is most receptive. Maybe someone with such an epiphany can chime in about what precisely helped them reframe things from negative to more positive. I’m just mentioning it because in your post I see some clues that perhaps you have more negative self talk than positive self talk. I feel fortunate that my parents taught me, for example, never to call myself dumb. I think it might actually be the greatest gift they gave me and if there is one piece of advice I’d give you it is to stop that (even indirectly as above) and replace it with “it takes time, you can do this!”
Examples of word choice that makes me think perhaps negative inner dialogue is triggering your brain out of a relaxed exploratory state
I’m just pointing these out because some people aren’t aware actually that they’re doing this. It’s possible to reframe each one more positively to give yourself a boost.
Level 5 is awesome and shows commitment! I hope that helps a little
I am generally and consciously OK with making mistakes. They have no real consequences, I’ll just get them in my reviews again and more. I am more focussed on the things I get right (which are luckily the majority). The negative interference is immediate and subconscious.
But being BSc graduate who has had these issues since being a young schoolchild, it is unlikely I will be able to just ‘deal’ with this problem altogether (I’ve been trying).
That being said, I understand it’s not WK’s responsibility to make these adaptations for me. But if there are others who struggle like me, this could simply improve our experience and progress.
There is a reason why in education, even if you are doing online assessments, you don’t get your score/results until you’ve at least submitted your work. Tests and exams are stressful environments and most students would become more anxious if they were told the result of each answer as they are going through it. And WK reviews are kind of like mini exams.
I think some of the way it’s handled within WK is also partially a holdover from other SRS forms, like Anki. Though the difference between WK and Anki is that Anki lets you self-evaluate, and it lets you do it across multiple levels of understanding to decide by which factor the cards will be spaced out over time. Again, Hard, Good, or Easy. Note how none of these really say pass or fail.
Some of it is a bit of a part of the system when you have a gameified Level Up system to work around.
It might be worth looking into a Lightning Mode plugin to more quickly surf past without lingering on the resuls as much as the default speed makes you.
I think it still stumbles a bit on wrong answers, basically pausing you from submission instead of a full commit, but in general it speeds up the pace of reviews by a lot so you’ll linger less on faults. It also lets you fix typos more easily. Some consider this cheating, including Tofugu themselves but… Eh. I can’t say I entirely agree with that notion myself.
And yeah, a lot of this stuff has been known and on people’s minds for years. And the closest thing to actual implementation has been userscripts. Some of that is just that WK is made from a very strict coherent singular vision while language learning isn’t really that one-size-fits-all. So it’s not weird to want altercations or anything.