At first I was thinking, I don’t practice handwriting, then I realised I do with srs, then I realised I do a fair amount of handwriting as part of other activities:
Anki cards that I’ve set to tell me to do that, 2) genki exercises back when I did them, 3) writing each kanji a few times when I learn it, and then whenever I do that I write some that I learned in previous sessions, 4) if I’m reading a paper book intensively and keeping a list of words I look up (I keep a little booklet the size of the book I’m reading), I write a mix of kanji and kana depending on what I know, 5) during my grammar course I handwrite any notes, so that includes kanji/kana
I think better when I write, so it turns out I write more in Japanese than I realised
As for me, I go through the kanji on WaniKani and just write a row of every kanji on a sheet of paper. The Stroke order script (too lazy to get the link lol, it’s somewhere in the OP) helps me with learning the stroke order, although Tofugus article on stroke order gave me a really good foundation before starting out and makes it a lot easier for me to memorize the stroke orders.
I personally practice handwriting because I find it to be relaxing, and I’ve heard from people that did handwriting practice that they only very rarely confused kanji that look similar to each other. And my accuracies can never be high enough, right?
Thanks for the correction! I really need some practice with the grammar points that contain そう and よ
Well, I guess I kinda got the meaning right? But DeepL’s version sounds a lot better.
Yeah, that’s the problem when a word has a lot of meaning… I could’ve already thought, though, that “wonderful” doesn’t sound that correct in that context.
Speaking of which, this is where anki is really useful. You can write the meaning / reasings of the kanji on one side and put the kanji on the other side.
Then you’d look at the meaning / reading and write the kanji on paper. Then you check how well you’ve drawn it. That’s what I used to do when I was purracticing writing kanji
As for writing kanji from screen instead of meowmory – well, I think this is not a bad way to purractice either, although, of course, purracticing recalling from meowmory is meowre effective
When I initially learn them, yes. However, later on, I’ll try to recall them from memory by somehow randomly selecting a bunch of kanji meanings and then writing down the kanji from memory.
Purrsonally, I’ve never bothered with strokes, but they are useful. I’ve heard from a lot of people that knowing strokes helps you recognize the handwritten versions of kanji, which often look very differently from typed kanji
Personally I always liked the idea of having some Japanese hint on the front. Like the “write the missing kanji” thingy some kanji apps do E.g. like this:
ひこうき
飛？機
… but I’m not sure I’ll ever actually practice handwriting, seems like too much work
For me, those are two different things. When I do SRS recall, I write the kanji with my finger on whatever surface is around (like on my leg or the table) to remember the exact strokes and stroke order.
The goal of actual handwriting practice on the other hand is to have my characters look more balanced/prettier/native-like. For that, recall doesn’t really matter. The point is to get a feeling for how kanji are balanced and to create the muscle memory and fine motor control necessary for fluent writing. Part of it requires light intellectual effort (understanding what strokes and shapes there are etc.), but most of it is just repetition, and it doesn’t really matter what I write, as long as I write something.
What I did this week for example was write out all N2 kanji from a randomised list. (All 常用漢字 felt too ambitious )
Most fair is to have a sentence, with a vocabulary written in all Kana; and prompting for Kanji sequence.
Currently I do a little differently – having a list of definitions, and a sentence with a blank.
I have Kanji cards, with definitions on the front, but this thing might need some editing to make it work. I would put On’yomi on the front as well, if I have to.
I have always been using S-pen with AnkiDroid. I am no longer using Samsung Galaxy Note, so I now avoid writing on the smartphone with my finger.
A pen and a paper would be a sure thing. SRS isn’t the only way to remember well.
tbh about this one, knowing basics and the characters would usually already be balanced. Knowing stroke orders of each component, and stroke orders of a Kanji would already be mostly correct. (There are exceptions.)
There are particular details besides stroke orders that natives would care, but I know more of these from Chinese’s side, not much from Japanese’s. I don’t have a native to check the writing once in a while.
When I prepared for Kanken Pre-2, I made Anki cards out of the practice sentences in my Kanken Step book. The sentences give you just enough context to pick the right jukugo (the same way they are presented in the actual Kanken exam). (You don’t need a Kanken Step book for this, there’s this website with lots of sample questions: https://kanken.jitenon.jp/ My cards would be 書き取り)
Anki on phone has the option of displaying a notepad, so I would write the answer on there and then check the back side of the card (with the stroke order font). Then I would compare my beautiful squiggles with the correct answer.
But it’s been a while since I practiced kanji recall currently spending my time on studying more vocab / production / listening.
I hear you, but my writing still looks like absolute garbage and I am not okay with that. It’s like when I was a child (and a teenager, took me a while to achieve more or less neat handwriting), even though after a certain point my letters were of course technically correct and even legible, they still weren’t very pleasant to look at. Nothing helps with that except for (targeted) practice.
i mentioned in the thread infinite craft gave me that bad mobile game feel and thats kind of what i meant. at least it didn’t have the predatory pricing stuff, i spent nearly a year addicted to the love live gacha rhythm game
…i’m probably going to play the uma musume horse racing raising game when I feel i’m at a sufficient level and can be bothered messing around with apk files to unlock it
Yeah, my new policy with mobile games (sadly I don’t think this helps much with games like Infinite Craft or Wordle) is to check if they’re on https://www.darkpattern.games/, and if they are, I consider certain qualities to be absolute dealbreakers for me and won’t even pick up a game that has them. Gacha/loot boxes are one of my dealbreakers. I’ve played good mobile games, but have also had really unhealthy habits with several of them, so I’ve drawn some firm lines in the sand to prevent that from happening again.
I find most of the stroke orders counterintuitive, like everything goes backwards from the way it feels natural. I’m getting used to it now, but it’s taken a lot of repetition.
The stroke orders make a lot more sense with these rules in mind, but there are still exceptions to them, and the kanji that don’t make sense, like 右, will make even less sense.
currently spending my time on studying more vocab / production / listening.
I’ll add it to my list of things to read tomorrow.