I do find that training my "English to Japanese" ability has its
benefits. Whenever I want to actually produce Japanese (i.e. do
something that is neither of the things you listed) it is sometimes
easier to maintain a steady conversation flow as I practiced translating
English words into Japanese. I specifically say "words" here, because
you naturally cannot really phrase your responses in English in your
mind and then just translate them 1:1, but if I want to describe a
certain thing, these kinds of questions helped in ensuring that I can
quickly pull up the Japanese words for an item I want to talk about.
Another benefit of this schedule is that it actually forces you to spell out how the Japanese word is written. It does make a difference if you just select via multiple choice しょ vs しょう vs しゅう, but if you have to actually type it you must remember what exactly is in the asked for word.
The
good thing about renshuu of course is that you can just disable this
kind of question type if you feel that it is not testing you on the
items you need. I believe it is even a recommendation of the renshuu
system itself, that you do not try to cover too many study vectors at
once.
Regarding the problem of there being numerous possibilities of what an English word could mean in Japanese, rest assured that renshuu also has a system in place to help you with that. :) When you enter a Japanese word that fits the definition of the English word provided to you, but is not what renshuu wanted to test you on, it will not be counted as incorrect but rather as "correct, but not what I wanted". After you entered 2 different words that shared the same definition without getting the word you are actually asked for, renshuu switches that particular question over to a multiple-choice type of question; so you can prove that you actually know what renshuu wanted from you and can proceed.
So while you might not get the asked for term in the first try, renshuu is acknowledging that you are knowing synonyms. [if you entered a term that you believe is a synonym and renshuu for some reason marked it as incorrect, use the "Problem?" button on the top to highlight this to the renshuu admin. There is a pre-written response for "I believe my response is also correct" or similar already to speed this up. - Of course, you actually should verify if the word you entered is indeed a synonym and you have not mistyped it :)]
Lastly, while the multiple choice types of questions seem to be easier, I am not convinced that they are actually teaching me anything or that the "bonds" these type of questions create in my brain are rather weak.
For example, listening type of question can also be done in multiple choice, but I actually have to force me to first think about the possible answer before looking at the choises I have. I noticed that if I do not look at the answers I am quite often not able to say what kind of word I just heard (not even a synoym sounding similar), but as soon as I look at the possible answers I have a ~99% rate of being correct.
Essentially, I feel that multiple choice proves that I kind of do know the correct answer, but in real life situations [independent of it being a reading or talking type situation] you will not have the benefit of someone explicitely listing you a couple of easily discernable possibilities of which only one is correct - and it is exactly those situations where I fail miserably at listening without looking at the answers :) [working on that one now...].
Phew, quite a wall of text here. In summary:
- I personally believe the meaning -> kana questions do have their benefits, especially when it comes to strengthening the bonds between English and Japanese vocab in your brain
- The beauty of renshuu is that you can decide what you want to learn, and if focusing on JLPTs is your primary goal currently, you can skip the meaning->kana study vector to have a more focused learning experience
- I really like multiple choice questions cause they are quite easy to get right, but I think it is better to have non-multiple choice to really solidify what you have learned so the information is available to you when you need it on the fly
