I was wondering about this in the top post, is “I’m just looking at a kanji to remember” already rote memorization? If you can still pull that off past the first few levels you have a great memory 
When you don’t remember it rote memorization is to write everything down a few dozen times without thinking about it too much, and repeat a few thousand times for any kanji. I don’t know if this can compete with more effective methods
no it can’t. but you make your mnemonics with the radicals, and changing radical names then leads to incompatibilities down the road. not impossible, but not feasible.
it’s not as easy as it sounds to “fix” mnemonics that don’t work for you, and then it’s probably faster to rote memorize… by drilling them, not necessarily in longhand, but there’s tools for that.
Pretty much this is what works for me.
At level six I started experimenting with drawing. Starting with level seven I began drawing mnemonics for almost all kanji and radicals. Sometimes I’ll draw for a vocabulary term with a weird meaning or reading. I use WK’s mnemonics for inspiration, but sometimes, especially for vocabl I’ll adopt it whollly. Drawing something, no matter who wrote the mnemonic tends to really personalize for it me. The trick is to work the reading into the drawing. I enjoy the process and it can be relaxing. Lessons take much longer. I’m not endorsing this method and I’m not endorsing the notion that leveling up in X days is a worthwhile goal.
Interestingly the verbosity of a mnemonic is a non factor to me, I mean if I was writing it down, sure, but as far as recall goes I don’t generally mind how long it is. For me I want to avoid collisions with mnemonics and adding more details to them helps me accomplish that.
After some decades, I don’t think much about my ADD. I manage it, and I’m grateful for the benefits it provides. When it comes to ADD + mnemonics for me, as long as what I’m doing is something I find novel it can enable hyperfocus. Classically that’s one of the interesting parts about the disorder that can make it difficult to test for, novel situations can trigger hyperfocus causing the subject to mask the ADD symptoms. Similar to the Autism spectrum there can easily be significant variance in traits from one person to the next while still satisfying the diagnostic criteria. I don’t expect that because something works for me that it’ll work for someone else.
We don’t really have a disagreement, but I understood the top post to always skip the mnemonics and just go for remembering the meaning/reading itself.
There are still more methods than mnemonics and rote memorization that you can use.
of course. i only use brute force drills for the stubborn stuff. making 2 cards on quizlet (one for reading, one for definition) takes like 2 minutes, and it’s in my leeches deck.
in some cases it’s enough to know which word a kanji pops up in, then that’s my mnemonic.
To tell you the truth, the only reason I subscribe to WK is so that I can be on a routine study plan.
I throw out all the definitions and mnemonics. I personally think they are terrible. And I wish there was a pretest to skip levels.
When I get new kanji lessons on WK, I go to jisho.org, practice the stroke order in a kanji workbook and study common word readings associated with the kanji. I of course complete the kanji reviews on WK as well.
That said, I am very grateful for WK. Making and keeping up with a study plan is really tough. WK serves this purpose for me, it gives me direction/guidance in my kanji studies. Its great resource and worth the fee.
Mnemonics are great when they work. Maybe one in 200 on WK works for me.
The only time when I go for rote is when I honestly cannot get the mnemonic to stick and I can’t think of another one that works with me. And I really, really don’t like that sort of deal. Makes it a pain to remember. Even when the mnemonics wk has don’t work for me, I try and come up with my own. A lot of the sound things I remember based off like…anime/manga/video game character names and nicknames. Like I suppose thinking of Konpaku Youmu when 名字 pops up is silly but it works a lot better for me than like…attempting to brute force it into me by way of rote.
Rote I don’t like but it’s like a last resort sort of deal.
Why would I write down 至 over and over again when I can visualize a majestic boob grave?
Konpaku Youmu? Who’s that? 
I don’t see what part of it is taking that much time. It takes me 2 seconds to figure out whether the wanikani mnemonic is going to work for me or if I think it’s stupid. From there, do it into the same order as wanikani does - reading then meaning. Here’s a recent example for me…
鏡 - mirror - かがみ
I knew this would be trouble for me because I was unfamiliar with the word verbally, so I have to rely on the radicals and a solid mnemonic. I don’t know the wk one because I knew it wouldn’t work as soon as I saw it. So I thought "I’m standing and seeing, and all I see is gold. Because I’m looking into the mirror of erised (Harry Potter reference; like I said it only has to work for me). But it’s not just gold, it’s gold cars. In this mirror, I’m the god (かみ, again only I have to get this link) of gold car(か)s every time I stand and see into this mirror. かがみ.
That all sounds complicated and it might be but I’m not writing it down I’m just creating the scene. The first couple of apprentice views I’ll recite this to myself but by guru I see the kanji, I picture myself standing in front of a long mirror filled with gold cars and it’s there. And this is one of the more convoluted ones, coming up with some random story or idea like this does not take very long at all, and if you repeat it to yourself on the first couple of reviews (less time consuming than getting the review wrong) it sticks.
Making your own mnemonics is less time consuming than providing incorrect answers because you don’t remember.
MYON~
(and her master BOO I’M A GHOST Lass. an addition made because wk forum requires at least ten characters in a post)
take a look at 被 and make a proper story without penguins. not possible, without replacing the penguin, and then all future penguin references have to be replaced, too.
In my mind this method is so much less painful in the long run than putting your nose to the grindstone, repeatedly writing out a kanji dozens of times, continuously forgetting it, getting frustrated etc… or I could just spend a minute or two creating a fun story based on the radicals that is much easier to remember. One that comes to mind is 冒 (risk/dare)–I picture an EYE staring up at a SUN until the eye explodes and blood gushes out due to the sun rupturing it–a pretty RISKy thing to do. For me it’s pretty damn easy to remember a gruesome story like that, lol.
If I need a mnemonic and one immediately suggests itself, I write it down and read WK’s to see if it works better or not. Otherwise I don’t pay too much attention to the mnemonics, and I almost always end up renaming the radicals that are too much of a stumbling block and my own names for them in my mnemonics instead.
You appear to be confusing mnemonics with radicals. Look at the kanji i posted. Stand, see and gold are the radicals. I still use the wk radicals, because they are fine. Its the mnemonics you should make yourself.
Edit: but I might be mistaken. Using an example of a kanji after the level I’m on using radicals after the level I’m on makes it hard to tell.
In fact, Penguin Books was founded on this notion.
no, we’re having a communication problem here.
what i mean is, the radicals here on WK are the pieces we use to make up stories (mnemonics). of course, you can use any story, as long as it works, but if you use the same parts as WK, to make them up, then you effectively replace the radical.
let me show you what i mean.
鳥 and 島 differ by one radical. in WK, the left one would be “fins”, but for me, it’s “fire”. because that’s the actual name of the original radical and works for me. so i can say “you can’t roast a BIRD over a MOUNTAIN, but you can over a FIRE”.
now, fire is persistent for me and it doesn’t matter if WK uses “fins”, but future mnemonics using this radical would have to work with “fire”, if i’d forget all about the WK name for it. i’d have to rethink each and every one of them, or learn “fins”.
do you see where i’m coming from?
now, for fire/fins, this isn’t even a problem, because fire is an existing thing and almost certainly plays a role in every kanji it appears in, in one way or the other.
but do this with “penguin”. there is none. it also almost looks like what Heisig calls “cloak”, it’s just like… a dot away.
and now all this stuff becomes a huge clusterfuck and it’s easier to just drill that ONE damn kanji than to rethink hundreds each time, IF the WK mnemonics usually work for you.
which they do for me.
Of all the examples you could have picked…
WaniKani’s “pelican” radical is one of the most ridiculous. It conflates two separate things:
示 → 礻 veneration, as in 礼 gratitude 社 shrine 神 god 福 fortune 祈 pray 禅 zen
衣 → 衤 clothing, as in 初 begin (cutting cloth) 裕 plenty 被 cover (passive, hence “incur”)
And 被 takes its pronunciation from the its right half 皮.
It’s the radical version of 衣. (Shouldn’t it be a pelican? )
The Kodansha Kanji Learner Course uses sometimes two or three names for the radicals (graphemes there), whatever fits best. I don’t think it’s too troublesome to have two meanings.
Sometimes the WK radicals are not optimal for any kanji that comes up, but coming up with a single perfect radical name for all the kanji you haven’t even learned yet is infeasible. But if you can make up a name that works for you on first glance, why not both?
