Need more material/study ideas

[scallions]

What’s up!

I just picked up studying this language about a week ago, and am having a lot of fun! I have hiragana and katakana under my belt, and have been doing my WK reviews but I find that between practicing kana and doing what little is available at my level here, I’m not able to fill my study time up with enough material. I try to put in 2-3 hours on weekdays, and will try to push for 4 on my days off. Other than reviewing kana and doing my reviews when I can, what else could you recommend me?

Sidenote: How much does it matter about when I do my reviews? If I’m not studying this, I’m either writing songs or coding, and, if I put my Japanese towards night time, it’s about time for work and I won’t be able to work on my reviews while I’m away. Therefore, I try to do them on daily, rather than in the per hour periods that they’re presented to me.

[mickeyjapan]

I would recommend LingoDeer. It’s a free app that teaches Japanese vocab and sentence structure one step at a time with high quality audio files. Really great stuff - like Duolingo but works much better for Japanese. (Duolingo’s system works much better for European languages and in my opinion doesn’t do so good for Japanese or other Asian languages)

[scallions]

D’oh! I don’t own a phone. Is the service available online?

[zessirb]

I just discovered Lingodeer this past week and so far I find it very useful to learn grammar (although you will have to add some vocabulary to your learning).

Unfortunately it is only available on android and ios !

But they do mention in their FAQ that they are working on a web version.

[scallions]

Well, thanks for the recommendation. I’ll keep it in mind once I get a phone.

[seanblue]

I’d recommend getting a well-known textbook for learning grammar. One popular series is Genki. Another is Japanese From Zero, but if you’ve already learned hiragana and katakana it could be awkward to use because of how slowly it introduces them. You could also try online grammar resources such as Tae Kim, but these won’t really have exercises to practice what you learn.

No matter what you choose, learning grammar is a great way to keep your learning balanced and fill in the gaps between WaniKani reviews.

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Regarding your question about timing of reviews, I’d recommend doing reviews at least 2-3 times a day. The first reviews are supposed to be done around 4 hours after you do the lessons, so waiting around 24 hours is not ideal. If you wait a little extra it’s not a big deal, but going from 4 hours to 24 hours could really hurt retention.

[scallions]

Thanks for the reply.

I had forgotten to mention that I just placed my order for Genki I today! Once that arrives my schedule will be filled. Waiting on my copy of Genki is actually why I made this thread, haha. I’ll check out Tae Kim in a bit, working on some kana reviewing at the moment.

[bolaurent]

If you are a coder, you probably have the skills to run a phone simulator.

[scallions]

Lol. I actually only have about a months worth of coding. One day, though!

BUT, now that you mention it, I could use BlueStacks(I think that’s what it’s called) to emulate LingoDeer.

[JavaSparrow]

For details on how reviews and scheduling works, you can read jp’s ultimate guide here:

My Journey of 368 days (+ The Ultimate Guide for WK )

The Ultimate Guide to Wanikani Become the best version of your Wanikanian self. For newbies: Please read the WaniKani User Guide first before reading this. WK’s User Guide teaches you the very basics. My Guide turns you from a newbie with basic knowledge to a master. However, first, you need the basics. This Guide is really longgggggggg. You can read it all in one go, but there’s no need to if you don’t want to. Think of it as the place to come to when in doubt/need of help. Thanks …

Like others mentioned, definitely start working on grammar. In addition to Genki and the other recommendations, I always like to suggest Bunpro, since it’s all-digital and has SRS grammar quizzes for you similar to WaniKani. They even let you study/quiz your grammar based on certain book paths, one of which includes Genki.

Also, I really like Kaniwani for studying vocab. It’s a free, user-made companion site to WaniKani that quizzes you on the reverse (English → Japanese), and I find that it really helps with retaining knowledge. Just sign up and plug in your WaniKani API key, and it’ll link your account.

[PortCityBricks]

I just started learning Japanese a little over a month ago, and for me, I am really enjoying Japanese Pod 101. They have both a youtube channel and a website, and they have little podcasts that go over grammar and situational type things which are really helping me out quite a bit. I watch a lot of different youtube channels for grammar and such like Japanese Ammo With Misa, Japanese From Zero Youtube Channel, and the aforementioned Japanese Pod 101.

I am trying to spread out my learning to a bunch of different input methods, ie, listening, reading, visual, etc. It keeps me on my toes and most of the things crossover so it is helpful in that respect as well. Hope you enjoy learning, I know I am having a blast with it!