How to self-study Genki items?

I am following Genki I for my studying, and I have a number of levels on WaniKani already.

How can I review Genki I items by chapter? So for example if I’m 4 chapters into Genki I, how can I use WaniKani to review those items and reinforce?

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Koichi recommends you wait until level 20 to start with a grammar textbook. That will allow you to focus on the grammar items instead of the new words or readings. Otherwise, you can install a custom review script and add items as you need them.

This is highly anecdotal, but started studying grammar the same time with WK. When studying the Genki books I didn’t need to memorize the kanji that much since it uses furigana and most of the reading resources for N5 like graded readers doesn’t use that much kanji. Also, you’ll be surprised that children’s books are only written in kana (and I’ve found a reason to appreciate the usage of kanji in Japanese).

Since the point of learning grammar is how to understand a combination of words in the sentence, I just focused on that instead of fussing over its kanji usage. When it comes to memorizing the vocabulary, I just did it the old fashioned way, read a chunk and try to recall before moving onto the next. Since Genki will use those words in their example sentences, that’s how I got them to reinforce, through reading practice.

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You can’t customize WaniKani to give you kanji ahead of schedule, but you can use other SRS systems! I use Anki to review vocabulary for Minna no Nihongo. There are probably premade Genki Anki decks that you could find and download with a little searching. If Anki isn’t your style, there are other programs like Memrise and Kitsun.io that you could check out, though I don’t use either, so I can’t tell you how they integrate with Genki, and I don’t know how they’re priced (Anki is free).

And like @Killua099 said, you probably don’t have to memorize the kanji yet since you can rely on furigana until you learn the kanji in WK. However, that said, I have found it helpful with MNN to look up all of the kanji that I encounter and learn how to write them, even if I don’t attempt to memorize them yet. It helps me remember the vocab if I can connect the reading of the word to the kanji. I’ve found the Keisei Semantic-Phonetic Composition script to be super helpful for deciphering kanji that I hadn’t formally learned yet. I’ve been looking up all the MNN kanji in WK and looking at that script. Even though I’m not actively trying to memorize them early, it does make it a lot easier for me to learn the kanji in WK later down the line, so I don’t feel like that work is wasted.

If you’re using Genki’s 3rd Edition textbook, there’s a link on the page :relaxed:

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