Thank you for clarifying your philosophy.
I completely share your view on words.
Most are swiftly learned through context, at least at my beginner level.
In contrast to Japanese, words– mostly– don’t carry essential pronunciation information, so they don’t seem like a core necessity for Hanzi acquisition.
I mistakenly left it in this paragraph (building on a different point), which might look like I’m disputing the basic merit of word study. I’d discard it, but I can’t seem to find the edit button.
1. For your current 20 lessons/day configuration, what sort of proportions do you view as ideal?
The ideal situation is one where I can adjust the word/character proportions based on the ebbs and floods within my language learning.
- If I’m gearing up to tackle an episode of 佩佩豬, I’d like to have the option to flood my feed with a couple baker’s dozen prioritized characters related to the content (barring words altogether, temporarily). I face the content with some half-baked comprehension, and I’m left reviewing the characters after. Fun.
^(same goes for post content consumption character prioritization floods)
- If I feel like I’m sinking too deep into de-contextualized Hanzi study, I’d turn up the word bandwidth (eg. 20 words/day) for a few days until I feel like I have a grasp on the learned material again.
- On an average day of study, I’d probably go for similar proportions to what HH offers now. 2-3 words lighter, perhaps.
The first two examples are more or less hypothetical (and illustrate extremes). As a new learner, I’ve no way of knowing how my approach will morph over time. Nonetheless, the freedom to play around with different approaches (within an otherwise fairly structured program) would be huge. Not only in a practical sense but also when it comes to the basic enjoyment factor.
Even if left unused, the proposed word knob would discard the sense of a completely imposed learning structure— which can be demotivating for some.
(I’m assuming—) People will use HanziHero in different language learning contexts, and with varying goals.
For some, this may be a less soul-drenching (and more effective) direct alternative to Heisig.
In this case, for example, building any kind of practical comprehension would only be a nice bonus.
The goal, in this case, could be, to build a system of character memorization and recognition as fast as possible. Disregarding most nuance in favor of building a very broad, though scantily built, Hanzi foundation.
It’s fair to argue that such an approach would be objectively less effective at teaching you the language. That doesn’t bar the potential fun factor a Hanzi-grind like this could bring to some people, however.
Perhaps this hypothetical user is the underwhelming minority. But accommodating this type doesn’t seem to take much away from the regular user (unlike the dangers of allowing higher daily limits, for example)
- When you say “I understand that proportions will even out over time” what are your referring to exactly? Are you referring to the fact that there will be proportionately more characters over time due to all the components being learned?
I was (mistakenly) referring to the current total number of characters and words. Averaged out.
I failed to factor in your goal of having 8000 vocabulary elements in the final version of the application. Please disregard this comment.
My apologies for somewhat yappy of a message. I hope I’m making sense.
Thank you for the update!