Wow! That was a lot of responses to read through. Thank you all so much for your input. I’ve had the Journey through Wani Kani in my “Read Later” list since I hopped on the community board a month or so ago. I’ve also been interested in the scripts people have proposed using. I simply haven’t pursued the top two as I have a dirty secret:
I do 90% of Wani Kani from a work computer. I’ll probably set aside a lunch break to read through the 368 Day Journey, but I am fairly certain installing anything on this computer would be a no-no.
I’m such a bad employee. I have Wani Kani and Bunpro open all day while on the clock doing reviews when they pop up. Still working on memorizing the final bits of N5 before moving onto N4. When I’m not listening to news or music, I watch Japanese Ammo videos. It’s to the point that I see my work as a way to break up my study sessions.
Again, thank you all for your responses. I’ll test the waters with some of y’all study methods to see which bits and pieces work best for me when amalgamating what I need to trigger my brain to work correctly. I’ll only directly respond to a couple of standouts.
@KinokoNeko
It is the point which is why I plan on lifetime subscribing the next it goes on sale. The struggle for me is that I’ll make a mnemonic that I think is memorable, but really isn’t and I have to go back to the drawing board. Like I will only remember part of it or will forget the device I made altogether. The “solid” part of it means that the mnemonic actually works, which is like trying to strike a match to see which one my head remembers.
@Krispy
I’ve always wanted to believe that memory is something you practice, but memory for me isn’t a skill or ability, but rather an adversary I’ve been fighting my whole life. For example, when I was in my teens, I never got in trouble for misbehaving, but I constantly got in trouble for forgetting things. My current job (the one I do in-between study sessions), I do the same thing twice or three times a day, but I actually have an exhaustive step-by-step list on how to perform my job that I consult every time I start again or I will ultimately miss two or three steps.
I do not say this as an excuse (though I admit it boils down to one), but rather something I’ve consigned to a simple reality which I contend with every day. Sure, I could rely on my crutches less like not using my phone alarms and calendars to outsource my memory to a prompting digital device, but that risks forgetting things that I can’t afford to forget outright. I usually write important things down physically so I have the “feeling” of the words I am trying to commit to memory, but it seems more like a crapshoot than a strategy for remembering things.
Do you ever write down your original mnemonics in the notes field? Then you’ll be able to read them again to remind yourself later (and even edit it if it’s really not working for you).
I find it helps to set aside particular times of the day for reviews (I do 3x/day), then my brain can go into “review mode”. I’ve noticed that when I try to do reviews in a different location or different surroundings my accuracy is lowered.
I also read somewhere about using various senses to help trigger your memory - associating particular sounds or scents with a certain memory task. So the idea is that you always do something like listening to a certain musical piece or putting on a distinctive smelling lotion when you study Japanese. That becomes another trigger to let your brain know that we’re thinking about these sorts of things at this time.
what i do to combat leeches is, i make a deck with them on quizlet. 2 cards per kanji, looks like this:
何 reading
何 meaning
a few rounds of drilling, painful, terrible, but it works for me. i dread it every time, but repetition is another tool in your box, and why not use it?
quizlet is not an SRS, so no schedules, no “punishment”. just clean and simple repeated reviews, where you can fail and keep failing until your brain stops resisting.
this is not something i’d recommend as normal routine, but it gets the job done amazingly well for those asshole kanji that defy your most lovingly handcrafted mnemonics and weeks of coming up again on wanikani.
some things need to be done in minute intervals to stick, wk’s hours long timers aren’t always enough.
Do you ever write down your original mnemonics in the notes field?
I don’t know how people do without that and the additional synonym feature. Thankfully I noticed those fields the first day. I’ve got all sorts of rhymes, stories, and examples. One of the most recent Kanjis I have is Area, and I have a whole story of a weirdo riding a scooter swinging a sword loose in the area. The weirdo is for the reading HEN.
@OmukaiAndi
Not a bad idea. I have been avoiding Flashcards to be honest as I hate assembling the decks. I just need to get off my lazy butt and find them. Im sure I saw a link for a few in one of the FAQs on the boards.
My method at the moment (at least for Kanjis) is to utilize Kanji Tree on my phone for studying. I have a Note 9 so I can use the pen to draw the lines to get a feel for the Kanji beyond the on’yomi/kun’yomi drilling in WK.
I have the same problem every time I get a new wave of kanji!
So, you’re a level higher than me, but I hope I can still throw some advice in here!
-I read somewhere on the forums to keep your apprentice count below 150. This has been a HUGE help for me. Counts above 150 and I can’t keep things straight.
-Also, I sense a little bit of “imposter syndrome” in your post; a feeling that you’re not actually successful, that it’s a fluke and you secretly should be getting “F’s” this whole time. I’ve done this about EVERYTHING my whole life (thanks a lot, mom). Level 7 feels small compared to 60, but you have to learn a TON just to get to 7! And I’d bet you didn’t have all this vocab memorized from college (and if you did, that’s incredible!). You’re obviously a very hard worker and have been very successful in your life.
This, a lot. As we like to say here in Australia, “don’t shit on yourself”. Everything seemed overwhelming at that level for me too, but when you’re climbing Everest don’t worry about the summit, worry about the next step. Glance back every now and then to see how many steps you’ve taken, too. There’s no finish line, and you can always learn more. Enjoy what you know, anticipate how good it will feel to know more.
That’s about as much feel-good as I’ve got in me haha
Hmm… wasn’t so much that as a like a healthy does of “Oh! This is where my GENKI foreknowledge might start falling a bit short.” I believe in the mantra “Fail Faster” firmly since I write a lot. First drafts are always gonna suck. No reason to get down about it, but a good dose of reality grants some perspective on how to avoid such problems in the future. This was just abnormal for me since if felt like I just couldn’t seem to absorb any of it. I tried to force it through and gave myself a headache, like how you try to start a car that just won’t and you flood the engine (that’s a thing right? I know nothing about cars).
The only thing I’m truly down on is my ability to remember things. I know I keep harping away at this in my responses, but just for some perspective on what I mean by memory struggles: when I am in an interview for a job and am asked what my greatest weakness is or similar questions along those lines, I always answer memory. I don’t wanna get lost in the weeds here, but I don’t feel too bad not remembering things I am studying. It hurts in the moment cause I hate seeing those red “Apprentice” boxes appear, but that is to be expected. But when I am asked to perform a task and I forget to do it 5 seconds later as I’m walking to go do the thing I was asked to do, that’s when I get down on myself.
It’s perfectly doable to keep up the pace even without any of the api reordering things (I use vanilla WK to stop myself from abusing the reordering stuff and so on). Up until two or three weeks ago I was doing a routine with reviews at 6am and 9pm and lessons at 5pm. As soon as Radicals and Kanji where available I would get my lessons to zero in one go (usually around 30 ish lessons at a time) then do vocabulary lessons on the inbetween days making sure they were all done before the next batch of radicals/kanji. Using this routine I went through levels 7 to 11 at lightning speed.
But be warned this method is only effective if you stick to it everyday. You cannot miss a day as your review sessions are around 100 a time so if you miss one the next review will have two hundred and so on. I got sick three weeks ago and neglected to turn on vacation mode while I was ill. As it stands right now I have 630 reviews with around 50-90 reviews being added daily and I’m struggling just to keep my review pile from going up. And I work full time and am also doing an online Japanese course so I don’t exactly have the five hours or so it would take to get my reviews back to zero in one sitting (on average I do around 120 reviews per hour).
So basically it’s possible to do it at the fastest pace and keep it up if you set out a schedule but make sure to turn on vacation mode if you know you’re not going to be able to do your reviews because otherwise you’ll be inundated with them.
P.S. sorry for the long rambling post. It’s getting late here in Japan
