supports your morals
Helping!
Such a good friend. So proud
What’s going on? I have very crappy internet at the moment and I can’t see the video in the first message.
But, yes, I agree with what you said.
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I was replying specifically to this post of Aniki’s.
I didn’t watch the entire video, just the bit about why Wanikani is worse than Remembering the Kanji, but apparently the video talks for 20-some minutes about why RTK is the best, then ~3 minutes apiece to diss on WK and Kodansha Kanji Learners Course
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あ、なるほどね！
アニキさんが挙げたアイディアはいいと思います。
私も、最初に、自分で気に入った内容を習いました。
ただし、最近、サルコさんが言った通り、普通の復習で手一杯なので、(時間の余裕もあまりないし)一時やめていたのですけれど…
因みに、WK exporterとか言うツールがあると思います。
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Sorry we are the best in the nation? No hate. Peace love and durtle doves.
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I watched the video and instantly did a search for RTK reviews. The very first review says you don’t learn readings, just recognition as others have mentioned. That wouldn’t work for me.
The SRS of WK makes me study and teaches readings and context and vocab. I use KKLC alongside it for some mnemonics. I intend to go through WK 1-60 then KKLC depending on how good my reading is at the time (and how much effort I want to put into writing). I’ve been doing WK for a year and can now read really well - far better than I ever imagined. I would never have done the amount of study I have simply by relying on my own motivation and a book.
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Hmmm… The guy seems didn’t go through WK. It’s perfect for me since it gives a lot of great mnemonics, yes it’s weird ones but you know the stranger the better to stick, and if it doesn’t stick you have down below a box to write whatever you want.
Now being SRS is the best thing, so you don’t burn yourself quickly and quit, it’s becoming a routine in my daily life, plus it’s an interacting product, for me it’s better than just reading a book with thousands of useless explanations, like Heisig’s one, truly I couldn’t bear with it.
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It’s not just how you like to learn though - I imagine most people don’t have time to spend 10 hours a day on Japanese. Most people have, like, jobs, or other education, regardless of their motivation and ability to concentrate. Even if I had the time, I wouldn’t want to spend it all on Japanese.
It’s all very well to say “well you can go much quicker if you spend 10 hours a day on it”, but if that’s not possible or desirable for the vast majority of your audience then it doesn’t add much to your argument. (I’m bashing on the video, not you!)
Also, I would argue against your:
There’s nothing to stop you doing that with WaniKani? You can’t really pull another resource into the argument and then say “well you couldn’t do this with WaniKani”. Because you could. And you’ll probably find it easier because you understand the readings.
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Like I said, it depends on your learning type. I couldn’t learn ten hours a day for several months either. But the problem (or the adventage) with wanikani is its rigidly controlled and very unflexible teaching system. It takes you by the hand and says “you will learn xx items within this month and NOT MORE.”
That’s fine if you need strong boundaries and a firm hand that structures your learning process and controls you progression step by step. But it’s also unflexible and doesn’t allow yourself to adapt your learning routine to your current situation, motivation or intake rate of the given material.
It also means that the regular wanikani student will need much more time before he will be able to start reading actual text material (if you follow Kouichis suggestion that would be around level 20 which means in the best case after 5-6 months).
As a wanikani student you can surely try to learn a core deck simultaneously, no problem. But as your Kanji recognition develops much slower than with a more flexible learning approach you will get lots and lots of vocabulary with unknown kanji (incorporating a considerable amount of unknown radicals). Meanwhile Wanikani teaches you some very uncommon and potentially useless vocabulary to make sure to cover most of the important readings while not spoiling or incorporating higher level kanjis.
All this is very inconvenient for me (and only for me, I don’t try to generalize this topic). I want to be able to actual use my newly attained knowledge and start to work with real life material as soon as possible. If that’s your goal, wanikanis teaching approach will put some serious barriers into your way. It’s not the fault of the program per se, but before you begin with your personal learning routine you should at least be aware that there is other (much cheaper) learning material which can help you to attain your goal faster (depending on YOUR personal learning type).
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I wonder why one would need to go any faster than 30 kanji/week.
No, it won’t. There are apps out there that select your JPLT level and show you furigana for the rest of stuff. Reading is much more about grammar than kanji.
RTK teaches you 0 words. What now?
You guys need to understand first why WK even gives words to a kanji learning tool. If it teaches 2000 kanji, it will have to show you words that use all that kanji, not just the most common ones. If you want to learn only the most common ones (for whatever reason), just learn the most used kanji and that’s it.
Grammar. Still, no one is stopping you from starting right now. You already know enough kanji to read simple stuff.
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Do you know how few people make it to the end while going max speed? It’s small, because the number who make it to the end at all is small to begin with.
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Yep, and wouldn’t wonder if most of those people give up way ahead of lvl 20, because they get bored by a routine which takes approximately 6 months before they are at a level where they are prepared for getting in contact with real life material (referring to Kouichis own advice).
I appreciate your replies but am not really interested in discussing this topic any further. The most important thing is that people are able to achieve their personal learning goals. If Wanikani works for them, that’s great. There is no reason for changing anything. But there are also many people for whom this method doesn’t seem to be the best way. I wanted to mention some critical points that could be a problem for some of those students. I am sure that many of those guys who stopped using this website didn’t just fail but rather decided to move to another learning platform, because Wanikani didn’t work for THEM.
I will stick with wanikani by the way, because I noticed that it’s really complicated to switch to Heisigs radical lexica after studying with WK for some time.
@jprspereira: I fully understand Wanikanis approach, thank you very much. Some of you guys should start to accept that some people might take another stand towards WKs teaching system without failing to see the “greater concept”. I am by the way a studied psychologist so I like to think that I know one or two things about learning systems and how the human brain works.
Like I said, Wanikani is great if you prefer highly structured learning sessions. And if you follow the program to its end you should have a very solid and lasting Kanji recognition ability.
Nevertheless there are more efficient ways if you are able to put some time into your studies and if your greatest goal is to start working with real life material as soon as possible. One would be to learn the most common 500 Kanjis within two weeks (covering 75% of the written kanjis in a newspaper article) and use an srs System to learn core 2k, recognizing most of the presented kanjis within those decks. By using this approach you will be able to structure easy text material much quicker and you can also modify your workload regarding on your current success rate.
Grammatic is a whole other topic and won’t be treated either by WK nor Heisig.
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I think most people realize that learning Japanese is just a silly waste of time and go back to their fansubs 
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Getting overwhelmed without even going at max speed seems to be the number one reason people stop, not boredom. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of someone who started from scratch saying they stopped from boredom. Though maybe there’s selection bias there against that.
If someone wants to get to level 30 in 6 months, they can. And if they came to WK with no kanji experience, they’re probably going to feel pretty overwhelmed at that pace.
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Though maybe there’s selection bias there against that.
Exactly.
My bad, you totally convinced me with the “this method doesn’t seem to be the best way” 
Here I thought we were discussing the pros and cons. Silly me.
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Sorry to barge in the discussion like this, but I gotta say this (can’t hold myself :P):
A warm and relatively late welcome to you dear @Aniki!! 
@Saruko thank you for welcoming Aniki to our wonderful family!
@Aniki be sure to stick around, I guarantee you’ll have lots of fun ;).
Cheers!
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I don’t really see your point. It was you who started with “You guys need to understand…”. This implies that your opponents argument just fails because he is not able to see the greater course.
Wanikani has other adventages that I do appreciate and have already mentioned.
All I said is that there might be a more efficient way to get into Japanese if immersion with real life content is your number one priority. In this case I would argument for Heisigs RTK as the more flexible and (depending on your personal learning type) the more efficient learning system. I am happy for every single person who has the feeling that WK is the perfect system for him (or her).
Just stop this “you have to understand…” routine and we are fine.
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