I’ve been writing down Wanikani lessons (radicals, kanji and vocab) ever since I started out.
Sometimes I think about all the time I spend doing so, and consider dropping that habit to save some time, but I just love the whole process of writing everything down and being able to see my progress on a piece of paper.
Even more so because I’m able to unite two of my favourite current hobbies: japanese and watercolour. I’ve been manufacturing these little notebooks in order to write down my lessons (I’m currently on my third), and I feel like it’s an extra dose of motivation to keep going and it makes everything even more fun.
What about you? Do you like writing lessons down?
Do you think it helps you in your Wanikani path?
Feel free to share pictures of your writings as well, I’d love to see them
If I could write them as beautiful as you, I would! I started doing it, but it was too much of a time commitment for and I couldn’t keep up. I do believe I remember the ones I wrote down better than ones I did not.
Cool drawing! I didn’t realise you did that yourself at first glance.
I don’t write down my WaniKani lessons, because I’m honestly a bit chaotic in my language learning approach. I put in the bare minimum and just do my reviews for the day and then if I feel like I have time to do extra reviews over then next days, I do a few lessons.
Perhaps I should be spending more time during lessons. I kind of fly through them and figure whatever I don’t have down will be cemented through getting it wrong later. Not the most efficent/speedrunning approach, but it’s a way around my relatively low attention span. At least I will still make progress that way, no matter what. I find myself being able to read basic Japanese sentences more frequently, so it is paying off.
I swear my attention span was much better before I got a smartphone. I was one of the last people I know to cave and get one. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t!
I started writing down the lessons because the mneomics don’t really stick I have noticed. In school I also had to write down everything I needed to study to memorize it at all. But my notes are not nearly as pretty as yours. Especially because I went through 2 systems of marking already and I’m only on lv 2 of the lessons. I’m a bit chaotic
Your notebook is so pretty! I mean look how colourful your lesson notes are.
And if that’s what’s working for you, keep at it! Everyone has their own way of learning.
I keep a notebook too, but it’s for the reviews. When I get something wrong, I write everything out, including similar looking characters, related vocabulary and even create a new mneumonic. That way my brain can see it in relation to other items and link things together. It can be time consuming, but it’s more incentive not to get things wrong.
I used to but I think it just takes up time and doesn’t make WaniKani more effective.
I think you should continue writing kanji but not as part of your WaniKani learning.
I’ve done writing with WK a bit. However, it’s a huge time investment, especially if you want to do it the way school kids do it and write a character anywhere from 10-100 times. So I don’t really do it anymore with how much else there is to learn out there, but it is something I want to do down the line. That said, I think writing them can only help with strengthening your memory. So if you have the time, by all means, especially since it ties into one of favorite hobbies!
I too love your notebook and how it looks, but I don’t think the writing of it is more effective for remember than just the forgetting and relearning. I personally find that sometimes two kanji are mixing me up. Usually they are not listed as kanji that are similar in wanikani, and sometimes then I will write down in a Word document the two kanji and words that use them so I can keep them separated. And sometimes there are tons of words that are very similar (I’m in level 42 now and the word for ‘consent’ seems to have many different forms!) and I’ll look the words up on alc.co.jp and try to get a feel for how they might be used differently. So I have that paper, but then recently I went to look for it to add to it and I couldn’t find it. Whoops! So I don’t know how helpful that was!
I write down ones that give me the hardest trouble, particularly when there are two kanji who differ only by a radical or two. Aside from that, though, I feel like putting in too much work takes away from the simplicity of the SRS. Your watercolor painting is very lovely, though!
I’ve never written down my WaniKani lessons, but prior to WaniKani I was learning Kanji from a textbook and wrote out all of the kanji I was trying to learn. It turned me off to learning because it felt like so much more to learn, and I’d get discouraged when I made small mistakes.
Still, if I had your talent, I might reconsider, ha.
Is anyone else irked when people say things like this? “You’re so talented!” I feel like it undermines the effort and practice they put in to their work. It’s not talent (only), it’s hard work. Feels like people who say this think people are just born able to do this but they themselves are not. Trying to make themselves feel better, unable to face the fact they just can’t bother to put in the hours themselves?
I suppose it depends on how you interpret talent. Personally, I view talent as a culmination of ability and dedication. Having talent is the result of all of those two things coming together. When I say ‘If I had your talent’, it’s me more or less saying ‘if I had your ability and dedication’ - it’s not meant to belittle any aspect of what they’ve accomplished, or chalk it up to dumb luck, so much as praise what they’ve done.
My writing looks like a caveman mural.Also, it was awfully time-consuming(I had thousands other things to learn), so I just stoped at hiragana-katakana writing.Can’t say i regret at as also that I don’t.Perhaps, in today high-tech century it’s poitless to be able to write kanji by hand, but it still can hit me at the back of the head some day.
I write down things I’m struggling to remember, and sometimes new lessons, to help get them to stick in my brain, but I typically throw the paper away when I’m done. For me, it’s just a reinforcement tool for that moment in time.
What is done is done. To atone I will purge myself by ingesting very slightly toxic durtle berries and then stand under the ice cold waters of the Secret Kanji falls until I am forgiven by the Crabigator.
I cannot do do lessons when I’m out because I wouldn’t be able to write them down
It takes some time
I’m also trying to write at least 20 (different) Kanji/vocab per page but some kanji have so many strokes that they end up gigantic anyway…(the worst is when two kanji of a word end up with different heights…)
Also, you may know of them already, but if you don’t, check out Wanikani Stroke Order and Wanikani Nippongrammar Extension (both userscripts of the community). Let’s compare them when we’ve both written 8000+ items
I also write my WK lessons sometimes to practice. I usually take the time to write out the kanji with their on’yomi and kun’yomi once per level. It helps me keep from confusing the readings and it’s a fun exercise. It is a huge time investment though!
I started doing it, but it was too much of a time commitment for and I couldn’t keep up. I do believe I remember the ones I wrote down better than ones I did not.
