I FORGET burned items!

Given that hardly anybody even burns everything to begin with, and most level 60s seem keen to go off and invest in other areas of their Japanese studies (arguably before they even get to level 60), I’m not sure what the point would be. Burning items may be pedagogically flawed if your aim is to remember every single kanji learned on here perfectly long-term, but if the system worked otherwise I imagine you’d be more likely to exacerbate the already existing problem with burnout.

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@Walter-it @twktg
I don’t think the Burned concept it’s any flaw in the system… The flaw it’s not immersing enough, as these are the most common 2000 kanji. So, of course it’s only expected that if you are reading graded readers or material aimed at kids or young audiences in general, well, you will get mostly kanjis that are expected to be known up to that level only, covering for the rest with full hiragana, as it happens in children’s books, or largely furigana as with shounen material.

Eventually you’ll have to move to more adult oriented material to get a correct exposure to those other kanji, or not… I mean, depends on your goals with the language. If someone was striving at reading Yotsuba … well no need to reach and hone level 60 kanjis for that…

I actually don’t intent to sound condescending :man_shrugging:… But WK won’t really teach you more up to a certain point (which luckily I haven’t reach it yet).

I will love to see a guide on “how to wean off SRS based apps for language learners” posted here someday, as I think it’s not really clear how SRS really works (or doesn’t) in a later stage of learning.

Ok… here are some sample pages to show what I mean. I don’t have many books, an adult novel woud have been good to.

Graded Readers (level 3)

小学3年

小学5・6以上

中学以上

A cook book (the only adult reading I have so far :-)

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Getting to the point where you see frequently some of the ‘most used 2000 kanjis’ requires years of study, and you start burning stuff after six months of Wanikani. Considering that it’s shggested by wanikani itself not to even start grammar before level 10 or attempt reading before level 20 or so, it’s clear that by the time you get to a point where you can read material that includes the higher level kanjis you’ll have forgotten them already. This is a clear flaw in the system, and for a further confirmation you can go to the thread of level 60 people considering starting wanikani from scratch.

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When I was little, my neighbor was from Japan. She went home with her little girl to see relatives, and she told me she’d forgotten how to write in kanji. Apparently, everyone gave her super weird looks for only using hiragana and katakana. She knew what the meaning of the words was, but couldn’t reproduce them herself anymore.

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and the response from the creator of WK

Reaching level 60 in WK means… Well… that you spended enough time and did your lessons for those kanji here. And that’s it actually. You could have done vocab or not… use the ignore button like crazy or not… reading while learning kanji or not… etc. So yeah, there’re people who reached that level, and found it insufficient… there’re probably more than did not. :man_shrugging:

Japanese people will forget kanji too… probably not the words related, probably will recognize them also… but might fail at writing (as is the less common practice nowdays)…

In the end, you might not use all kanji learned here, and surely will be fogotten. But that’s no biggie if you won’t use them anyway.

I understand where you are coming from, but personally I wouldn’t be interested in a “very low intensity” version WK of with ~150 reviews per week. If you could add your own kanji and vocab then it would be good to have some old stuff mixed in-between, but this is a totally different construction site :slight_smile:

I’m considering to unburn all kanji in batches and do them again, but mainly because you have a new perspective from seeing all other kanji (adding new stuff to your memory and consolidating stuff really feels different). You see new things in the kanji, can focus on different aspects (I want to get into writing kanji from memory as well, look up more vocab for each kanji, check unusual readings, …), and have a much easier time to feel good by how much you can remember. I’m not worried that I forget kanji before I see them again.

I would even say that you could too fast in WK if you learn kanji that are way beyond your level anyway [doing WK in one year is not that common as well]. What do you need arable land for when you can’t even say “Where is the toilet?” Learning the kanji en masse in the beginning in the hope that you might need them some day just packs dead weight into your brain.

I find @Ncastaneda point interesting that SRS in the long term may not be that useful. Especially because you still don’t know the nuances, collocations, or precise meaning anyway. What you learn in WK is only the very start to get something useful.

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the point is that you can’t read advanced material (the only one where you’d find advanced kanjis) in less than one year, starting from zero. And it takes much less than one year to starting burning items.

Either the burning stuff takes much longer, or wanikani is not a product suitable for people starting Japanese from scratch (despite how it’s advertised), as by the time they get fluent enough to consume advanced material they’ll have forgotten already a lot of what they studied on here.

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Yes, but you don’t start burning the more advanced kanji after only six months.

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Ok, I think you’re mixing things here.
First, WK while not strict in following the Jōyō kanji order, it goes on covering gradually kanjis from the 1st grade an beyond.

Here, using the wkstats website you can get this so you can tell how much are you ready for :wink::

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So you will be able (if you haven’t neglected basic grammar and vocab, mostly) to have a good time reading your initial kanjis learned here very early.
Then as your progress (and as showed in the example pages) in your readings there’ll be more “advanced” kanjis (aided with furigana), that later on will drop the furigana training wheels as you move on, but hey! …you’re getting the exposure, try covering furigana meanwhile, so you make use of that kanji skills even with that first readings. As your material gets more advanced, furigana will disapear, except for weird readings.

Dont’ worry about kanji as something that will hold you back to pick up any reading material in the beggining, as probably vocab will be your nro 1 obstacle … grammar can be covered faster, but can really hold you back if you neglect it too much as well.

WK it’s good. It could be better, of course… but you will improve much more adjusting the rest of your activities than any tiny adjusment the WK team could come up with.:+1:

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Java coffee? :coffee:

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You could go to jisho.org and look up the kanji, and it will tell you the different readings and meanings of the kanji. Hope this helps!

and some :snake: tails

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あの, すみません, where did you find these graded readers?

you’re welcome.

edit: holy s they did charge 452 usd for all of them. (not counting shipping fee) Mah lord…

edit 2: that’s absurdly high price you can just get a free genki edition on the internet and try hard learning japanese at your level. then If you really really want to read something japanese then you can try some fairy tales online: 昔話の英語 日本の昔話 1話~10話 <福娘童話集 Hukumusume fairy tale collection> all hiragana, with english subtitle, with illustration :wutsogood: and it’s free OMG ez life

want something stronger? in case some years later when you are a god-like level japanese guy and happen to look back this thread https://www.aozora.gr.jp/

edit 3: oh I forgot to mention the lower intermediate reading levels: NEWS WEB EASY . Don’t panic they do have a reddit sub just for translation news from the site: https://www.reddit.com/r/NHKEasyNews/

wanna try upper intermediate? reading books, novels still very struggling for you?

for man who dares to explore japanese writing and get the nuance behind words and really

https://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/
https://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/

for man who just need some fun and some tears, I guess

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Software developer spotted? :stuck_out_tongue:

Jokes aside, it’s normal :confused: just try to use what you learned. I usually go through my burned items, especially kanji, when I have free time, just to refresh some of them. Also reading helps a lot, especially with the common kanji.

I would like to selectively reset my brain to be able to replay Stains;Gate ; _ ; same goes for clannad…

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www.amazon.co.jp seems to have the best price and reasonably quick delivery in spite of coming from overseas.

Also, I wouldn’t be tempted to order the whole set. I like the Amazon route because you can order them piecemeal. I don’t think most people will benefit from level 0, so skipping that will save you money. Ordering one or two at a time will take the sting out of the high price.

That moment of frustration when there are two resources - one with no kanji, which is annoying to read, and another with plenty of kanji, but becomes quickly incomprehensible due to complex grammar and vocab. This is what makes the graded readers worth the high price.

One of these days, I should re-do the hiragana only stories in full kanji and figure out how to publish as a free Kindle book. Does anyone know if these are all in the public domain?

I recommend @rfindley’s Self Study script!

It’s fantastic!

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I’m not certain, but as the hukumusume stories are pulled by TangoRisto, I would imagine they are.