Feedback after a month

WaniKani
#41

No system works for everyone, but I really don’t think choosing the order of kanji learning is something WaniKani is ever likely to do, for a couple of reasons.

  1. It breaks the flow of their learning. They teach kanji based on radicals. Some of those radicals are even learned based on other previous radicals. Even though more often than not, I choose my own mnemonics over theirs, the use of radicals is still extremely helpful in learning.

  2. It would probably be an extremely low demand feature. There are probably very few people who would recognize kanji enough to select which ones they want to learn while still needing to study them and also are willing to spend the time and effort customizing their lesson plan.

This is especially true since most people using this site want to learn all the kanji they’ll be seeing anyway, so the exact order isn’t that important to them.

The developers at WaniKani have only so much time, and there are probably many features that would be higher priority based on demand.

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#42

  1. My flow of learning was already broken, which is why I’m giving this feedback. I see a way to fix that, so I’m passing that on.

  2. Of course, it all comes down to money really, if they don’t have enough people use it it won’t justify the time they spend on it.

  3. You didn’t mention this one of course, but I’ll add it in anyway. They don’t want to. :slight_smile:

As for wanting to learn all the kanji, of course I do, just in a different order.

#43

Well, but you’re the one who broke it. If you rename all the radicals, of course the mnemonics don’t work when they come up in the kanji.

I get what you’re saying, believe me, I do. I guess I’m just from an older generation a different ethic, and let me translate what I’m hearing: When it gets hard, I don’t want to do it any more. I think there is a way to do this that will never be hard. If only I could choose the order, if only the prompts were worded differently, if only the radicals had better names… if only.

I guess I just don’t believe there’s a way to avoid doing the hard work, now or later. (Or alternately, that there is a way, but shopping around for it would take longer than just picking one and doing it.) But I’m just a learner too, so who knows? You may be right. I again wish you good luck – sincerely, not sarcastically. Come back and let me know if you find a super-effective, easier way.

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#44

What was it that Henry Ford said? Something like if I’d have asked people what they wanted, they would’ve said faster horses. Feel like that applies here pretty well.

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#45

But howwww are you not usssiinngg this
Does everything you look at just say ゲット！ instead of 手に入れた?

I think that’s part of the bafflement. I think a lot of us wonder what you’re looking at that you don’t see these early level kanji and words, like, every day.

@temeraire
I might or might not have learned なめる from an unwholesome source

:sweat_smile:

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#46

(But when you do, don’t use too many big Japanese words I don’t know yet :smiley:)

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#47

lol

not that the system would change for one person who didn’t understand how it works.

#48

You could still try to learn with WK and add the stuff you want to learn right now in an Anki deck. Or just stick with Anki only to customize everything yourself. I personally couldn’t learn much with Anki as I had no idea what I really should be learning, so WK’s spoonfeeding works better for me. I use WK because I’m lazy basically :stuck_out_tongue:

How much time was spent on Kanji lessons? They’re much harder than Vocab lessons or (usually) radical lessons, and IMO by far the most useful of the three. I usually spend a few minutes on Kanji lessons to find how I’ll remember them, either searching for vocab on Jisho or figuring out a mnemonic. Sometimes, WK’s will actually work too, but usually they confuse me more than anything.

You could also not use any mnemonic and wait to see what sticks. Sometimes you don’t really need a mnemonic if the word is easy enough. You’ll probably end up with a ton of mistakes, but you can learn a lot from them if they don’t end up discouraging you. It’s the “I don’t need a mnemonic. Prove me I do” method or something. Once you’ve failed an item twice you should get one though, you got your proof :slightly_smiling_face:

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#49

I just found this, for any who are interested it’s only 13 minutes and seems to explain why I find learning the way I do better than just committing fully to any of the many courses I have so far tried. This short video encourages to do a lot more of the things that I’ve been enjoying most about learning Japanese so far.

#50

If that’s what you enjoy doing, then do it. There’s not much point for you to study Kanji right now if it feels like nothing more than a chore. While watching TV is mostly useful for listening comprehension, it does expend your vocabulary and can give you useful mnemonics. There’s a few Vocab I remember because some character said it in an anime once. You’ll eventually have to learn Kanji if you want to read virtually anything, but building up your Japanese knowledge to make the whole process smoother may be more productive for you. That’s for you to decide though.

If you decide to continue with WK right now, maybe you could post some Kanji you have trouble with? Someone else’s mnemonics might also work for you, it could be worth a shot.

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#51

Thanks but I don’t use mnemonics or radicals I just remember the kanji and words as they are. It just doesn’t make any sense to me to make up a story to remember for kanji. The only association I want for them is the words or sounds they represent, not random other stories that don’t progress my knowledge of Japanese. To me that’s just taking up extra memory space for something that’s not going to be needed in the long run and I haven’t needed for the kanji and words I’ve learned so far.

I will be continuing with wanikani as I said until I’ve finished level 3. Who knows it may get better but I really just have to plan to put time into making the visual representations that actually reinforce the meaning of the kanji in my head. I started that a while back after first coming up against similar issues with duolingo and watching this video encourages me to keep building on that. I will need to take time away from other stuff to progress here though, the srs just doesn’t work on its own for me.

#52

So I watched the video you posted and while I agree with some of the things it talked about, I’m not sure I agree about it advocating learning like a child. Children learn through their environment because they have an amazing level of neuroplasticity, and because they literally do not have another language to fall back on. So their options are learn the language, or don’t communicate at all ever. Adults not only do not have the neuroplasticity of children, but they also do not have that same desparation that comes with learning your first language. (On a side note re flashcards, I definitely did have English flashcards/picture cards when I was little, as well as when I needed to expand my vocabulary for important tests such as the SAT.)

As for mnemonics and radicals, brute force rote memorization might work when you’re in the low hundreds, but as the number of kanji start to really pile up, it will just get harder and harder to keep them straight. (Ex, 詩, 持, 待) It takes Japanese children roughly 9 years to learn the joyo kanji with the help of mnemonics, radicals, and a fluent command of the vocabulary. The stories for me personally don’t really stick for longer than a week or two, but they are enough to help me build the habit of associating certain kanji with certain readings.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, but I do hope you are able to find something that works better for you and helps keep you motivated to learn! Good luck on your language learning jouney!

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#53

I’m sorry to hear that, but based on the comments in the beginning of the thread, I’m still trying to figure out what exactly you’re looking for when it comes to learning Kanji. You say WK gives Kanji that won’t be needed in the long run, but… that’s simply not true?

And I don’t believe the beginning Kanji are that difficult to learn at all either. They’re only a few strokes each.

#54

I need to learn all the kanji obviously, the order they are taught here just doesn’t work for me. Based on strokes instead of how much I personally see/use them.

What won’t be any use in the long run is the stories which just take up more memory space and are irrelevant to me. I recognise the kanji quite easily- the english translation doesn’t take long to stick in my head, and usually an ON or KUN to go with it, I just get stuck associating multiple sounds to some kanji. This wouldn’t happen if I was using those kanji each day, and since I am using a lot of kanji each day that I don’t yet know it makes sense to learn those instead of the ones chosen here.

I’m not sure the radicals themselves will be any use in the long run either, I have started using them for looking up kanji and that’s useful, but I don’t need mnemonics to remember those either, and if I had to learn all the different ones presented here it would just waste a lot of my time and memory to do it. I don’t have an issue with the radicals to be clear, they are easy to get through with your own names for them, just saying that they are one of the aspects I consider not much use in the long run- and right now hardly at all.

#55

It apparently can work though. I think it’s the basis for the “All Japanese All the Time” method, although the daily time commitment seems way too big for me. If you’re already spending a ton of time watching anime it could be worth looking into I guess, but I’m 99% sure it’s not for me.

Eventually, I just end up using mnemonics to differentiate similar Kanji like this, although IMO only 待 and 持 really cause problems. Also, why isn’t 寺 (Buddhist Temple) a radical? It seems decently common in Kanji, and should be easier to make stories with than “grave + measurement”. Do we have some other temple radical somewhere?

#56

You mean a WaniKani “radical”? It is later, I believe. Yes, now that I look, Level 11.

#57

Wait, why isn’t it at level 7 then? 時 is level 7, and normally you need to know the radicals that form a Kanji before WK shows you said Kanji, right? :thinking:

#58

Nah later it starts doing a new thing and gives you kanji you already know back again as radicals. That way it doesn’t end up having kanji with a huge number of radicals, because some are consolidated into one.

#59

Yeeeah, don’t wanna kill your fun, but you’re going to hit a wall real fast.

Also, radicals are there to build mnemonics and they make the kanjis an accumulation of tangible things instead of just a bunch of lines. Hell, you can even make your own stories. Beats rote any day. Honestly, you’re trying really hard to justify not using Wanikani. You had the trial levels, you obviously hate the whole concept. Why torture yourself?

Finally, if you really want to only study kanji that you personally commonly see all the time, why not just make an Anki deck? Seems like a much simpler solution. Wanikani is meant to take your hand and guide you through the roughly most commonly used 2000 kanjis. That’s it. If you don’t care about most of the kanjis, then you’re in the wrong place.

#60

You’re framing this as though the mnemonics remain permanently in your memory. They are something to guide you at the very beginning of learning something and then they fade with time. Then you are left with just the knowledge that was encoded in the mnemonic.

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