So before I discovered Wanikani, I was trying to learn Kanji a couple of other ways - first with thhe ‘Kanji learner’s course’ book, and with a video series I found on youtube. I was practising writing the kanji I learned as I’ve read that it helps with memorising them.
Now I don’t generally want to write Japanese by hand, for the most part, I’m learning to be able to speak, read and understand spoken japanese, but I don’t think I’ll have much use for producing handwritten Japanes in the future. Since starting Wanikani, I haven’t actually tried writing any.
However, I’m thinking I might add some kanji writing into my schedule to see if it helps with the recall of them in the wild, so to speak. But I probably need to start doing it now if I’m going to do so, because otherwise the number I need to learn to write, is going to become overwhelming as I progress through Wanikani further.
I was just wondering what others thoughts are on this.
I’ll always champion it because it does help me with recognition in my experience- and because I think it’s just a lot of fun. I found the task of such very daunting early on, but once you get the general flow and patterning of how writing works down it becomes almost second nature and you can comfortably infer stroke order without needing to look it up and follow closely every time. If you start now and stick with it, I’m sure before too long the “overwhelmed by quantity to learn how to write” anxiety will disappear pretty fast.
When I do my WK reviews I like to write every Kanji I encounter 3x and with their respective reading and meaning. Serves as a nice little way to engage with them every time I see them in my lineup and add an extra little bit of mental reinforcement. Only takes probably ~30 seconds each if you want an easy and consistent way to implement writing practice.
If there are any apps you can find on your phone, too, it might be a productive way to kill some time if you’re waiting around for something- and even finger/touch screen writing is additive practice.
Jisho.org also has stroke order diagrams and videos for every Kanji if you aren’t already using it as a general dictionary resource.
Oh wow, thats amazing. I can only imagine how much time and effort went into making this deck. Perfect for what I would have wanted too, I think. I was wondering how to make myself have to recall the kanji to write them, without seeing them first. I was thinking of just writing a list of definitions, but of course this, the SRS way is so much better!
For grammar and vocabulary acquisition, I find writing katana, hiragana, and kanji useful. I write down all my new Wanikani kanji and vocabulary. I’m also taking classes once a week, and I write my homework by hand (textbook exercises). I often look kanji up before writing, and sometimes I need to write furigana underneath if it’s a bit mangled but I don’t look up the stroke order.
I really could use Katakana practise too tbh. I already write plenty of hiragana, whilst studying, so whilst untidy (my handwriting is always untidy anyway) I can do hiragana OK, but whilst I can read katana mostly fine, I strugle to recall the characters when trying to write it often, so I really should practise it more.
I have no idea what causes that… Anki is annoying at times. It could be a bug with the Python library I use to generate the deck.
At any rate if you use it alongside WaniKani, I recommend just suspending all cards and manually unsuspending them as needed when you do the corresponding lesson on WaniKani. This way you have the same set of kanji on both sides.
Oooh, I just noticed that I get a different result when I download the deck from ankiweb as opposed to my original version. With my version it starts from 1, with the one downloaded from the website it does start from 4…
If you don’t mind losing your progress you can try deleting the deck from your Anki and import this version instead:
I’ll need to ask the devs why the version processed by ankiweb behaves differently.
I really like the idea of practicing by writing, but apart from occasionally dabbling in it I never made a routine out of it. That is until a few days ago as I built an app for myself that pulls in my studied wanikani items through the api so I can practice writing them.
I tried a few other resources but for me it was a bit too much friction starting to learn how to draw some completely unrelated kanji to those I’m learning in wanikani. Still, the act of writing them does help me a lot though, personally.
I’m in awe of everyone who finds time for this. For me it’s at the bottom of my priority list.
I do see the use though. It’s kinda annoying that I can’t even scribble down some hiragana without using my phone / pc.
I’m just wary of spreading myself too thin–again–focussing on kanji, vocab, grammar, reading, listening, writing…
If you plan on reaching lvl 20 or beyond, it’s probably a good idea to learn writing similar looking radicals and Kanji. It will help you telling apart those tremendously, when you’re not exposed to Japanese daily. For me, it’s not necessary, since my goal has been to master lvl 10 and that’s it.
The concern about it getting overwhelming as you progress is understandable. Still, I’d push back on it a little given what you said about your goals. If you’re not planning to produce handwritten Japanese, the pressure to start now or never is mostly self-imposed, and you can make a clear-eyed call about whether the recall benefit is worth the time rather than feeling like you’re racing a deadline.
I did writing practice fairly consistently for a few months and my honest read is that it helped more with kanji I was already shaky on than with ones I was encountering fresh. The review sessions already do much of the memorization, so writing tends to be more useful as a supplement for weaker entries than as a core part of the process.
If you do decide to try it, keeping it attached to your review session rather than treating it as a separate practice block is probably more sustainable, because separate blocks are the first thing to disappear when you’re tired or short on time.
All good points. For now I’ve just started using the Anki deck that @simias created, but with a low number of new cards each day, just 4, so I’ll see how that goes. I have plenty of spare time so hopefully I’ll keep up with it, but it will absolutely depend on how useful I feel it is.
However I have already noticed that Kanji I can read easily when I come across them, I struggle to recall accurately initially, in terms of writing them, so I think it will be beneficial overall.
That gap you noticed between reading a kanji and reproducing it is something I kept running into during writing practice. My instinct going in was that recognition and production were basically the same skill at different levels of exposure, so if you’d seen a kanji enough times to read it reliably, writing it should just be a matter of more of the same.
but I don’t look up the stroke order.