You can quit Wanikani, but you shouldn’t stop learning Kanji. Transition into some Anki deck or something.
Learning Kanji purely through immersion sounds like a very slow endeavor, and it’s not like you’re missing just a couple hundred of them to complete the Joyo set.
Luls, I’ll definitely check it out. If you made a 2 hour video there’s bound to be something in there there that will help me out a lot.
I mean, literally everyone I know who learned the fastest did exactly that I believe, so while it may sound slow to you I’m not sure that’s actually the case. By that, I mean they didn’t learn kanji in isolation. They just learn words, and if that word happens to contain a kanji they just memorize that as well.
Hopefully! There’s other questions asked in the thread I answered, but if you have anything else you wanted me to elaborate on or say more specific to your situation just ask. I’m always around here.
I’m fairly convinced it’s not, and it actually only feels slower, because your progress isn’t as neatly measurable as it is through something like an SRS, and because you’re not just learning kanji but also everything related to said kanji (vocab, nuance, grammar maybe, whatever’s present in the context where you learned a kanji, …) so if you’re trying to go by only “kanji knowledge” (what even is that, really?) it might come out slower, but you’re learning the language as a whole faster.
And in the end, isn’t that the goal, really?
My take on this as a professional teacher who has studied language acquisition…
Yeah, that might just be me then. When I tried immersion before doing Waninkani I only ended up knowing around 100/200 kanji and that was over a long period of time (around a year probably, can’t remember). Granted I wasn’t reading for hours on end every single day, but I was fairly consistent.
Comparing that pace with learning the 2000 kanji from Wanikani in two years and it was definitely faster for me, and I’m pretty sure I even dedicated less daily time to Wanikani than I did to reading back then.
Yes, this is something leebo and I have griped about quite a bit while on discord calls playing rocket league, but the whole idea of “learning kanji” is just very inaccurate. You’re really more just familiarizing yourself with a piece of information and nothing more when it comes to what wanikani offers.
But yes, in terms of actual reading ability, I know all to well that “knowing” a kanji never amounted to much. Its value is in ease of memorization for words and lookups perhaps. The only problem is the added value you get on the side of ease of memorization of words really ends up not being all that different from the alternative after you’ve learned a couple words that use the kanji anyways. So overall, honestly I don’t think you get much added value, so when you consider the time and effort lost that could be put elsewhere, I don’t think its notably more efficient, if not worse.
It does segment the process, however, which makes things feel easier. For some people, being able to break things up like that is a big deal and very appealing. I just am sometimes taken aback when people think that things like wanikani are efficient and fast teachers while still being easier than the alternative. 虫が良すぎる. In reality, its sacrificing efficiency for ease, although for a few reasons it does make you think you learn more than you really are ime.
Hmm, yeah its hard to comment on this. I just don’t know anything about your routine, so I can’t say anything really. Did you use srs? I tried to make it clear with an edit, but what I meant was that people learn just the words and memorize a kanji as a piece of the word essentially rather than separately. So they are still srsing words and stuff, just not kanji and their reading/meaning. If someone added 20 new words a day then there would be like 1500 kanji in their deck if they read something like ようじつ for a year. So I mean, even at a slower pace of like 10 it would be a good amount.
And from a numbers perspective, you could say that the person who did 20 a day would have 1500 kanji which is less than the 2000 kanji than you can do in a year on wk, but…I would say that 20 words a day from ようじつ while reading through it would put you at a far higher reading level than level 60 + srsing the full core 10k honestly despite both the amount of words and kanji being significantly lower.
I actually put WK on pause once I hit level 30 to focus more on immersion. I started my own anki deck with things I come across and have a kanji deck where I put in kanji that I come across often enough but still don’t know from WK.
WK just started taking up too much time and stopped being enjoyable for me around lvl 27, but I wanted to atleast “end” (who knows I might start it up again) on the halfway mark.
It’s served me well I think,WK gave me a very solid base with Kanji but at this point I feel that pin pointing the missing kanjis I come across serves me better than just racing to “finish WK”.
Just my 2 Swedish Kroner
Cheers!
I would say the more important part is to train the things u learned so far, rather taking new lessons.I m now 2 months on the same level, since i picked up bunpro recently, and focus rather on reading to support the knowledge i gained so far from wanikani to strenghen it. The fact that i have below 50 apprentice items, and it influences my amount of reviews i get in the future doesnt bother me much, since it isnt that important to know 2000 kanji to begin with, if theres much more valueable areas to invest.
So long explanation short: I personally would recommend to keep and strenghen the knowledge u aquired first.
I was the same, the more i knew, the more i was aware of.
If I were you, I would be keeping on with the WaniKani. LOL, but that is what I’m doing!
I usually know about half of every level from DuoLingo and outside reading. That’s great because it makes the reviews go faster (still horribly slowly for me, though).
I won’t drop WaniKani, because it reinforces what I’ve been seeing elsewhere. It makes me look at things I already knew differently and get a deeper understanding.
I’ve been at WaniKani 1 year and DuoLingo 3 years, and random reading and immersion for 2 years. This morning, I realized that my listening comprehension had “leveled up” again… Now some of the words 'm picking out words are going straight to “understanding” without messing around with a “translation” step! I know it’s because I’m constantly cramming Vocabulary.
But everyone learns differently, and any time it sucks, it can be a deterrent. So keep having fun, that’s #1!
Also… thank you so much for mentioning 自業自得 (you reap what you sow). I hadn’t seen it before. And Vanilla’s frequency analysis was eye-opening!
The research on language acquisition strongly shows, to the point of it no longer being honestly debatable, that language skills need to be acquired in-context, in an engaging and relevant way, and that active study is only useful in that it makes input more comprehensible. SRS timings are a secondary function for assisting in memorization; not a primary.
It would not take monumental effort to add reading exercises and sentence building drills to WK, which would greatly boost the efficacy and value of the service, and help people better retain what they are studying. It would also not take monumental effort to allow people to adjust their own study speed by adding more daily reviews, if they are capable of handling them. I think the slow pace discourages users and hurts business, more than helps in retaining clientele by guaranteeing a controlled minimum length of time to finish the program.
I didn’t even know what SRS was back then, so that’s probably the biggest reason why my pace was so slow lol
Yeah, I don’t doubt that immersion leaves you with a higher reading level, but I wasn’t trying to imply that OP should hold off on it, just that it would be better if he also complemented that with some sort of pre-made kanji (or vocab if you don’t like learning kanji in isolation) deck.
The guy who did immersion for a year has a high reading level and 1500 kanji learnt.
The guy who only did SRS has a low reading level and 2000 kanji learnt.
The guy who did both has (potentially) the best of both worlds.
Admittedly I might have exaggerated how slow it would be to learn kanji with immersion due to my past experience, but I still don’t see how that’s faster than immersion + pre-made srs deck.
Premade decks are just not the best choice past the first couple thousand words is what I was kinda getting at. They’re just a sacrifice of efficiency for not having to pick what you learn. You’re best off prioritizing the words that are relevant to you first and you just can’t do that with a premade.
Long day at work sorry if this is late.
That’s super dope. Thanks for offering to provide some guidance for me. I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can. Tell me if you would like more clarity.
I wouldn’t say that the review count is insane. I have around 90-120 apprentice items at a time while going full speed and right about ~120? or so reviews a day. All in all this takes me about an 1.25 hours a day or something if I was adding new lessons. I totally agree with you on the lost time aspect as well. I don’t mind slowing down if it means I actually understand the language better.
Also, that break down is just for days that I work. On the weekends I have a lot more time for reading and stuff.
This is a self made deck which includes words from anime and books that I read. For anime I only add them if they come up more than once but that’s hard to judge sometimes. For books kinda the same thing but easy to see their frequency because stuff like Koohi.cafe. This was one of my biggest complaints with WK. A word would appear like 5 times in a show but I would be 2 levels away from it causing me to fight back and forth on whether or not to learn it early or just wait. In the beginning I waited, but later on I just gave up and learned what I wanted.
I try to focus on the Enjoyability aspect of it a lot. I don’t mind being on the struggle bus as long as I am having fun! (and learning)
Japanese subtitles only, expect when I can find any that will work, then its just straight listening practice.
Slice of Life is god teir for me which is a lot easier to understand then something like Fate/Stay Night. That was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy above my level last time I tried it. Other than that I pretty much will watch anything.
Haha, was thinking the exact same thing.
I have a question, just from scanning everyone’s comments rather quickly.
But what I am pretty much catching from your responses is you basically want to use Japanese for understanding anime, manga, and other content as input.
What are your feelings on output though? Do you speak (or intend to speak) the language in the future with native speakers/other speakers of Japanese? (Have you or…) Do you want to visit the country to use Japanese?
Everyone has their own reasons for learning Japanese and I’m just curious what your opinions are on the actual use of Japanese for communication. Because learning the pronunciation of words or vocabulary as we practice here on Wanikani isn’t necessarily needed if you don’t intend to say these words to someone out loud.
Learning vocabulary from specific kinds of media can also sometimes alienate you from native speakers that just have no interest in those things. I’m just speaking from my own experience in the country, but a lot of people don’t necessarily care for anime/manga where I live (or they are only aware of the things their children are interested in, etc.) Hell, when I study kanji at work, some of the stuff that comes up here makes my coworkers laugh or ask questions. I feel like that is the same as any vocabulary list though. I wonder why students have to learn strange or outdated vocabulary in their English textbooks as well.
In regards to your question, if you are enjoying what you are learning and being productive in your immersion studies, Wanikani can take a break. I’ve taken hundreds of breaks over the time I have been using this, because I’m a slacker when it comes to studying. But I am also surrounded by Japanese all day, every day, so immersion takes priority in daily life. And yes, some of the stuff on here is ridiculous, but I agree with many that say you should stick with it till level 40, because by then, you will have the most common kanji under your belt
Anyways, even if you decide to quit Wanikani SRS, you can still continue to hang in the forums and ask questions, so it is win-win!! Good luck!!
I can understand why you’d be slightly frustrated with this phenomenon, but I don’t really see it as a problem. You’re motivated to learn the word… and when it comes up on WK, by that time it might be an easy word for which means you’ll be closer to acquiring it. You’ve already noticed the kanji, recognized it, and now that you’ve made your own deck to start working on, you’ll be fine.
I think the main benefit of WK is that everything is laid out and it is comprehensive enough in the amount of kanji you learn by the end, so you don’t need to worry about organizing everything on your own.
Great! That’s what I’d recommend anyways.
Hi there!
I quit wanikani and I’m going through the kanji taught in elementary schools. I’ll give you my highs and lows.
Wanikani good:
Mnemonics or stories to remember shape or sound of kanji. I’m toooooo lazy to make my own so I often skip making mnemonics while studying kanji. Which means that I often forget the kanji and don’thave a good base of radicals to rely on.
Made JLPTN4 and N3 very easy.
Wanikani bad:
I dont need to remember english translations or go through radicals.
I’m now a review slave to anki for words that I learned on my own instead of the crabigator
Kanji from anime, books etc:
Learning kanji from high frequency encounters lets me get some context and helps my reading, listening etc at the same time.
Wanikani was a great start for me.
Ps. I’m a terrible writer so sorry.
Even if you never plan to output, you can’t really just not learn the pronunciation of words. You’ll be lost if they’re ever not written in kanji. Pitch accent you can skip, the reading you can’t.
Plus, (as someone not very interested in output myself) it is very hard to successfully learn just what you need. I don’t know the mechanics behind it but you learn things better for learning them in multiple ways, and from multiple angles. Somehow it is easier to learn the meaning of a Kanji, if you’ve also learnt to read it, less counterintuitively it is easier to identify a word from listening if you could also produce that word (even if you would do so painfully and with terrible pitch accent!) and if you can call to mind roughly how it looks written down.