Debating whether or not to leave

WaniKani
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Heya, wanikani user of about a year here, a year ago I bought lifetime feeling this is something I would use long term but ever since I’ve found resources that have made me reconsider, the main reason I use this platform is for radicals and kanji to supplement my regular vocab learning, but since then I’ve discovered RTK which teaches radicals and kanji at like 10x the pace plus you can write on top of it, and for the vocab, well, I already use anki, and since this site makes you write out the vocab the reviews take about twice as long, especially since I’m using kaniwani on top of it which makes my reviews basically double, trying to see if there’s any reason to still use wani or to just cut it out and save myself a good 80 daily reviews or so, what do you guys think?

EDIT: also personally, in terms of fun wanikani reviews are the least fun for me right now since the required writing out of the answer makes it sluggish compared to regular flashcards and I’m seeing a lot of radicals that I already know but with different names

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IMHO having multiple sources is ‘a good thing’ to help reinforce your learning - and since you have lifetime WK you can always put it into vacation mode and then come back later (which is what I am currently doing).

I found RTK to be much less useful to me than WK, because IIRC it did not teach vocab and pronunciation nor did it have ‘sentence context’. It did teach ‘meaning’ of sorts - but I found the menmonics that it offered to be even less useful than “Koichi”, “Jourm”, and Mrs. Chou.

I do want to restart my Japanese learning, though, and intend to do it through a combination of WK as well as Maru Mori, Renshuu, NativShark, and other resources, along with textbooks, reading, listening practice, grammar practice, and more.

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I do like to have multiple sources although even then I’m not sure if WK is providing much value to me at the moment, the mnemonics in RTK are sticking well enough for me to learn 20 new kanji per day or so, which means I should be through the jouyou within the next 3 months, as for vocab I have anki, and for pronunciation, honestly I’ve done okay just picking it up as I go, I see a kanji I learned in a piece of vocab, I flip it, look at the reading, realize oh hey this kanji can be read as this, and then it sticks decently enough. But yeah instead of like deleting my account or something putting it on vacation mode until a future date where I feel I might get value from it again is better, but honestly, I don’t know if I would come back, because if I did, WK would be rather behind my level at that time probably, and there’s not really any catchup test stuff to place you at an appropriate level, gotta slog through the ones you haven’t done yet.

Even if I just want specifically to study kanji readings there’s probably better ways than grinding through all the stuff on here that I don’t need just to get what I want

I’ve also built up a small subsection of leeches here that I probably have a better shot with forgetting here and relearning elsewhere

Honestly I feel like I’ve just outgrown the need for wanikani now, but I’m a bit hesitant to cut off immediately something I’ve been using for a year now, want to make sure I’m making the right decision and not missing some potential value.

I wanna see what people would do in my situation

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True enough - WK is probably best done in sequence, and if it feels like you’re going ‘backwards’ because you’ve already learned the material then it may not be useful at all.

What it comes down to is that any of those resources, whether WK or RTK or whatever, are not ends in and of themselves, rather they are a means for getting to a desired level of proficiency - and if you can do that sans WK, there’s no reason to force yourself through it (unless you have a tendency toward ‘completionism’).

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Yeah I do have a bit of a completionist tendancy sometimes, I used to dream about what it would be like to be at level 60 in the few people who finished it, at the time I thought people didn’t finish it because they fell out of love with the language or didn’t have the will to keep going, I didn’t realize it might have been because they just didn’t need it anymore and moved onto other resources, it does feel like I’m betraying my past self, but at the end of the day I’ve gotta remember these resources are a means to an end and the only value they provide is if they’re useful to you
But I also do get easily paranoid and I’m worried this might be a bad decision because of some value in my time here that I just can’t see right now, honestly though my pace is so slow on here that I have more burned items than some people that are like, 10 levels higher than me

there probably is value in keeping in touch with the community to some extent, wanikani has a lot of book readings and other fun stuff, but I can just keep a bookmark for the forums for that, I don’t need to do wanikani itself to access the community

One thought I had though is I don’t know many other places that give mnemonics for readings, not just appearance and how to write a kanji, any such recommendations for resources focused on that and cutting out other unnecessary for me stuff would be appreciated though, honestly, if I could have wanikani, but with all the vocab and radicals cut out, and just mnemonics for kanji readings, and with a pass/fail flashcard thing instead of typing, I’d probably want to at least give it another chance

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Hm, interesting position!

I worked through about 15 lessons of RTK, but ultimately have found Wanikani more useful to me personally. It was exciting and fun to be able to absorb so many Kanji so quickly, but because I wasn’t learning readings or vocab alongside each kanji, I wasn’t getting a good idea of how the kanji actually work in practice, nor was I able to read the kanji. Additionally, some of the earliest Kanji taught in RTK are chosen for simplicity, but are pretty obscure, so I was getting frustrated being unable to apply them to real life. I did, however, appreciate reading the foreword and the method, which stuck with me and I still apply to my kanji learning.

That being said, I do have some friends who used RTK primarily and have had success. They supplemented by adding their cards to Anki, and making sure to include readings and common vocabulary on the cards.

I think whichever method you decide to go with, the most important thing will be showing up consistently and doing the work. So in that sense, going with the study method you feel more positive about/have more fun with is the way to go! I cannot say I have always been having 100% fun on Wanikani over the years. In fact, much of the daily study has been a slog. But there are a few things I love about this system that are the reasons I have chosen it: I like the quirky writing style, the encouraging level up emails, the community, the gamified leveling system, the stats, etc. All of those features keep me engaged when it’s difficult to go on.

And in terms of the actual Japanese learning method, I love the integration of learning Kanji, Vocab, and radicals at the same time. Once I finish a level, I can confidently recognize and use the kanji in real life because it has been enforced so well. I was amazed doing 17 levels or so before moving to Japan, because what had been indistinguishable a year before became recognizable.

So yes, for me personally, half learning each character in RTK was too tedious for me, because having to go back and relearn readings and vocab in the future was intimidating.

BUT. Go with something that you find enjoyable and interesting! If you stick to it, even if you slow down, even if it gets hard, you will learn to read Japanese. Keep engaging with what makes you excited and draws your attention :slight_smile:

edit: if you choose to go with the RTK route, creating your own mnemonics for readings is not hard to do and will be super worth the effort

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thanks for your really well thought out reply ^^, Yeah it’s true RTK doesn’t teach you those other things, although since you can learn those from other sources I don’t necessarily see it as a problem with RTK itself, and the obscure kanji thing is a little bothersome, but I do like that most of the kanji I’m learning as a result is at least new, and that at the end of the day, once I’ve finished RTK I’ll have all the jouyou(at varying SRS levels), including the ones that aren’t obscure, after about 3 months, and once I have all the jouyou down, I’ll probably have an easier time learning the readings and such than I’d have doing both at once. The sheer speed of the progress I’m having with RTK is making it rather fun for me if a little time consuming, I don’t really like gamified systems a ton myself, mostly I’m just here for the fun of learning the language and learning about the language, levels and stuff have never really done much for me.

Currently with RTK I use anki with it to remember the writing and mnemnonics and stuff it teaches you, but I don’t have supplement cards with it for readings, the RTK book that teaches writing is the first one in the series, I believe they have another which teaches readings, which if I feel like it I might check out after I’m done with RTK book 1.

It would be perfect though to have some supplement resource just for the kanji readings and such since that’s 99% of what I’m on WK for, not the vocab and radicals, I do also appreciate kaniwani giving recall practice but you can recall a word better also by just hearing it a lot in immersion

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Yes that makes total sense! Man, it does feel so good to get through the content faster and experience tangible progress.

You can always edit your Anki cards now or later to add the readings and mnemonics for each kanji, so that shouldn’t be a problem. And it’s a good idea to mix in some cards to your deck for common vocabulary that go with the kanji.

You can also visit the forums or a do a study log for support!

Don’t feel guilty about putting Wanikani on pause for now or forever. There are tons of resources out there, so it’s best to go with ones you click with. You’ll have to do the work either way, so go with a plan you find (mostly) enjoyable and effective.

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Loving the positivity and helpful conversation over here, wanikani forums are so wholesome compared to the rest of the japanese learning community, to be honest though I don’t know how I feel about the prospect of editing 2000 cards, that seems a little overwhelming, as for the vocab thing, I feel like I could just look up some vocab that uses the kanji I learned , and add it to my sentence mining deck.

Honestly I’m kinda tempted to just wing it and see how it goes not learning kanji readings outright but just through exposure, however good or bad of an idea that might be

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(i agree haha, I have had a few unprecedented interactions on reddit)

As for your edit, don’t stress too much about editing 2000 cards all at once. You can go through and make little adjustments when you feel like it, and as reviews come up!

For example I have about 900 new cards in my deck at the moment, and they’re all super rough. When I study them for the first time I usually double check them in the dictionary, add example sentences, and polish them up. Sometimes when I learn new info or hear something I want to remember about a term, I look the card up and make a quick edit. So that at least doesn’t have to be a major project :slight_smile:

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at any rate though I don’t regret getting lifetime, wanikani was great for me for a time when I was fresh into the language, and I’m glad to have supported a resource like this, at the least I still have the forums which are endlessly useful

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when it comes to stuff like that I’d rather prefer to just split it off into a seperate resource, like a deck for readings, as to not add any extra length to the heap of time RTK takes by default, plus then if I remember how to write the kanji but fail the reading that’ll mess with the review intervals

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yes, whatever you find works best for your brain! after (9?) years of study I’m left with a number of patterns that are helping me stay consistent and feel like I’m learning efficiently. So as you experiment, I’m sure you will find those things catered to you!

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I suppose this is goodbye for now then <3

I’m thankful for the feedback of others in this thread helping me come to my decision

I’ll do one more round of reviews on here for old times sake, then set it to vacation mode indefinitely

also still taking any suggestions for other resources lul

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good luck and have fun! don’t be afraid to experiment as you go along~ I’d be interested to hear how your studies are going one day

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Well they seem to be going well so far, I’ve been doing japanese for only about a year and I’m gearing up to take the N3 in a few months, I would probably be at N3 right now but I’ve had consistency issues lately thanks to university, the worst was a 2 week break that I took recently

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Ultimately, we aren’t able to gauge your value with the program better than your own judgement- but if I was in your shoes here, I’d likely continue with it.

For any artistic medium (language included) I have a mentality of “more the merrier” when it comes to learning diversification. It just is a topic and concept so malleable that having a wide variety of sources and methods inherently holds value, even if repetitive. Not to say that the rewards gained aren’t small or sparsely placed in a grand scheme- but sometimes it just takes a little extra push to click, you find something you wouldn’t elsewhere, and at minimum it’ll always serve as extra practice.

Grappling with cutting it off or not, I think there is opportunity to streamline the process, cut tedium, and make it more appealing of a time investment. I can’t speak for it personally, but if WK is proving to be shaky in value, I can’t imagine doubling that investment with KaniWani is doing you any favors (though it sounds like a cool resouce and I may check it out myself). Might be best to stick with just one or the other. You also mention it’s tedious to write out your answers, which user-made “anki mode” extensions for the website and Tsurukame apps exist which negate that necessity. I have experience using both and recommend, often turning it on and off depending on my comfort level.

If you were bleeding money with a monthly subscription, I think that it certainly would be fair to cancel and move on- but since you have this resource at your fingertips at no additional costs I’d try and make the most out of it, though I can understand why you wouldn’t, either. People have mentioned it, but you can always go on vacation mode and come back later. I’m sure you could power through quickly with anki mode when/if that time came, and the extra review never hurts.

Hope whatever you decide serves you well !

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Thanks for your feedback ^^, honestly though I think I feel strongly with some of the advice given beforehand, I feel like my issues I’ve had with WK lately are hurting overall how much fun I’m having with japanese study and leaving less time for other things like immersion and stuff, I’ve honestly been wanting to streamline my study sessions for a little while cuz they were starting to take a while and I felt like I was doing a fair amount of redundant study.

It’s reached a tipping point for me where the idea of continuing with WK until it’s over sounds annoying rather than fun

especially with RTK taking up quite a bit of time, it’s been harder to find time for immersion lately

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dude that’s incredible :smiley: I just passed N3 in December, my years of inconsistency really held me back. I also neglected learning how to read because I was way more interested in speaking, lol, so the N3 took foreva

I really liked the Kanzen Master series for getting me through the N4 and N3! I’m using it for N2 now. Hmm, as for other resources, my main rec is iTalki (or any tutoring service), I’ve been in conversation lessons for a little over 4 years now, and those single handedly transformed my language skills and got me my job as an interpreter

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I’d like to personally take my progress as a sign that I’m doing a lot right, although wanikani being a smaller part of my routine, I don’t know how much difference it’s actually making but I’d probably hedge a guess at not nearly as much as my other resources at the moment, with WK I seem to struggle to even go at a pace that’s fast for WK, I’m at level 13 after a year with 1100 burned,

by the way I’ve really wanted to give italki a try for a while looks super fun, had it bookmarked for weeks now

also wait WOAH YOU’RE AN INTERPRETER? sick dang

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