Hello, today I decided it was time to finally push forward on my Japanese journey. I am going to start writing grammar rules, new words/phrases, and my thoughts in a notebook to help me. I already have Tae Kim’s guide to rely on for grammar (and some other websites I’ll find in the future, of course), so I’ll be writing notes about that. However, since WaniKani obviously doesn’t have every vocab word in the Japanese language, I wanted to study them on my own. The problem is, I don’t know how to look for these words and I was just wondering if anyone knew if there is a type of list out there that shows any useful words that aren’t on WaniKani. I would really appreciate if someone helped me out. Also, if there are any websites (about literally anything in the japanese language), I would be forever grateful if some people linked them so I can use them to study. Thank you!
You’ll learn plenty of useful words while doing your grammar studies. You can add those into a flash card app or system as you come across them.
Aside from that, once you have a decent grasp on grammar and a healthy pile of memorized vocab, you’re going to want to start consuming native material. With that, you’re going to want to develop a system for memorizing new vocab you come across along that journey.
At some point, learning new vocab is simply going to resemble how you imagine learning new vocab in English. You’re reading, you come across a word you don’t know, and you use your methods to memorize it.
Until then, at least, you’ll rely on things like WK (and other programs / websites / apps that people will link for you) to help you develop a system and a good foundation of vocab and grammar.
Sorry, I’d drop some links for learning resources, but I’m at work and typing from my phone haha.
There are plenty of important words you won’t learn on WK. You could try going through a 10K core vocabulary deck, but if that’s too daunting, you could simply go through some JLPT decks.
I personally use KameSame for this purpose, as it’s very similar to WK, and it has many useful features.
If your interested in using native material to learn, you could take a look at this guide I made that shows how to mine sentences in order to learn vocabulary and grammar.