Definitely, you’re right about growing more confident and intuitive over time!
Yes, many of the Jitai fonts I use are like that.
I’ve compiled a list of over 70 curtailed fonts over in the Jitai thread and included a Tampermonkey export as well as a notepad version so anyone interested can simply paste it in and not have to do it one by one like me
@naevyah@exolstice
Would you guys mind tweeting @voidedpigeon asking when he’ll implement SRS in Kanji Study? It’s in his backlog but if enough of us tweet, he might bump it up.
I write everything down since Lv 1. It has definitely slowed down a little bit the process, but I don’t do any lessons unless I can write things down. If I don’t do it, it’s like I’ve not done the lesson at all.
It also helps to write mnemonics and use them until the reading and meaning might not longer be consciously lingered with it.
So far, 3 and a half notebooks. I really hope to finish WK before I finish the 4th one, but with 1300 items to go it seems very unlikely to happen.
Whether is it helpful or not, I think it really depends on your goal, as it has been stated above, and also the best studying method for you. From what I understand, some people might have a visually facilitated way of learning, and that might include (or not), writing things down. For some, hearing new vocabulary for example, might be the best way to study. But unfortunately for them, learning Kanji has a visual component. I think that if you feel your memory is enhanced by doing it, don’t stop.
I’ve been using Kanji Study on my phone but I had no clue that you could set it up to sync with WK. I would love it if you could walk me through how to set that up. I suppose I could do it manually…
Wow. After more than a year, I’ve tried Skritter. It’s much prettier than it used to be and much worse of a writing experience. Definitely not going to recommend it anymore. Kanji Study’s writing pad feels so much nicer.
Three years into my study of Japanese, I have just recently started learning how to write it. Until now I felt like there was an opportunity cost associated with it - that any time spent on writing practice could be better served doing something else.
There is truth to that of course. At the same time, perhaps if I’d taken to writing from the beginning things would have stuck better. Not sure. Will have to see what I think a bit down the road as I get more practice in.
I made an Anki deck to test me on writings of kanji (and radicals) as I learn them on WK. Even though I’ve been told that it’s a waste of time and could interfere with WK’s SRS. To be honest, while it’s very time-consuming, I found that it helps me better visualize kanji and actually improves my retention. I didn’t learn stroke order specifically at first but I’ve always looked it up while learning to write a kanji and tried to remember the order in which radicals go, so now I have a pretty good batting average when it comes to stroke order. (Another plus is getting to write like Yagami Light all the time )
I am old-school. I made a flashcard for every radical, kanji and vocabulary word for WK levels 1-30. Each card had both readings, vocab words and my personal example sentence or two. Index card ordering person at local Officeworks must have seen the spike in sales over the 2-3 year period. Now I know my kanji writing skills are pretty good but of course they can still be better. I can’t believe how much practice it took me to write quickly but there is only one way to do it, bulk processing, practice every day !! Impress your sensei !!
yes, keeps me from forgetting characters and works in the muscle memory aspect. I am also gonna try to incorporate active recall by writing the english meanings on a separate page and ‘quizzing’ myself after a certain period of studying/writing kanji. I learned that this can be a very effective method for solidfying material in long term memory.
From a retention perspective, I can understand why you would want to write them down.
But let’s be real here, you are never going to write in Japanese out of pure necessity. And if you’re one of the rare few that actually needs to, it probably won’t be too often. We live in a digital age, so there no harm in learning how to type Japanese vs learning to write it. I think the only time I ever use a pen these days to write english is to sign a check when going out to eat.
When you read the kanji in native material it will surely click. So I feel like writing to help with retention is fine, but that’s pretty much it.
I have been keeping a book of all new lesson items, writing down the radicals, kanji and vocabulary as well as meaning and pronunciation since the beginning. I bought a kanji writing book to show me how to write each character, and also check in Tangorin, on line, which shows the stroke order for each kanji, this is very useful. I keep another book in which I write down all the review errors. I then spend some time after each review session practing writing down the ones I have made smistakes,