You have given me much to think about. I especially appreciate the advice to think about the specific question/problem I’m having. That’s been very helpful to recalibrate my expectations. I’ll be reading the threads you shared!
Oh. How do I learn languages? Spoken/immersion. Going from the audio to the written word is not so hard when using the familiar alphabetic system. My spoken Japanese isn’t that strong right now either, so that may be another recalibration for me.
Going to add on here - the sounds sticking gets much better as you learn more kanji and more Japanese because the types of sound combinations that are frequent/likely are more salient in your brain. E.g. after many kanji that sound like ‘しょう’, it’s easier to associate that sound with a new kanji because you’re more used to that being a sound that goes with kanji. At least, that’s what I’ve found as I progress. It can definitely happen at the start that all of the sounds feel random and not at all like words or word parts. I found things sticking better as my vocabulary of Japanese words that I had heard/learned grew a bit so I had a better feeling for common sounds.
I also found on early levels I needed to study more to get things to stick - I did writing things down during lessons a lot more then - again, I think part of my brain getting better at learning Kanji over time.
Finally, I’m sure you know this, but especially after you first learn an item (or generally when it’s at Apprentice 1), it’s really ideal to hit that 4 hour review interval to help get it to stick a bit better in your brain. If you can’t (because of work, life schedule, whatever), you might want a quick way to review the kanji at that shorter than 12 hour interval - e.g. a flash card for the new words that you look at 1-2 times between the lesson and the first review; a note on your phone with the kanji etc. Some people note that they really need a lesson, 1 hr review, and then the 4 hour review, so review their lessons about an hour after taking them to help things stick. Obviously ability to do this varies based on your life schedule, but it might be helpful.
I wonder if you might do better spending more time listening to Japanese before starting kanji. If you can build up an auditory vocabulary, where even if you don’t always know the meaning you can recognize words when you hear them, it allows you to use that when learning kanji (and vocabulary) readings. A lot of the time the way I learn a kanji reading is remembering the word it’s a part of. For example, the way I remember the reading for 才 is by remembering that it’s the さい in てんさい.
Man, that sounds like a really hard task! Hope it’s possible. From my experience I’d compare learning kango as a non native without learning the kanji to chinese bamboo torture
I had that same reaction to the level 10 email. Lesson to burn, if you don’t miss a review, is about six months. I certainly wasn’t working at record pace, but my burns were months away when I got that message. Maybe the average time to level ten is pretty long?
I’ve just started with Wanikani, and one question I have is what is the easiest way to go back and review kanji/vocab that you forgot or failed while you are doing reviews. So far I’ve had a second tab open in my browser and have just been searching for the forgotten item in the list of kanji/vocab on the site… but I feel like once I get to a higher level this will become very inconvenient (it’s already slightly annoying and I’m only level 2).
Is there a better way to do this? Perhaps a script that provides a list of recently failed items on the homepage, or a script that provides a link to failed items you can click while reviewing?
I mean if you fail them consistently enough they will go back to apprentice one and you can set the self study script to tackle those as a way of banishing leeches from existence it’s what I do
If I guru a kanji from level 10 before learning all the other kanji from said level, will the vocab associated with it start appearing in my lessons before I finish learning all the kanji from that level?
By the way, is there any reason the reviews don’t have meaning and reading back to back for kanji and vocab?
Yes, that is what will happen. At least for the vocab that’s on level 10. There could be more vocab to unlock at higher levels, but essentially yes. Vocab is unlocked by guru’ing all the component kanji.
It’s by design. Apparently it helps your memory more if you try to recall them separately, interleaved with other items.
As @jneapan mentioned, that’s interleaving. There have been some discussions on the forum regarding the merits and science behind WKs application of it, but WK does go over their reasoning in the FAQ.
What a handsome user you have there in your example.
Those titles are either hand-picked sect titles given by mods (like Kumirei’s in that picutre, and for many older users). Nowadays, sect titles aren’t common because the Tofugu people seem to spend little to no time here on the forum.
My title, and those of many others, come from badges. There are special badges that were given out for WaniKani Wednesday events, or that mods give you at random for doing useful things on the forum.
I got my Officer Durtle badge for reporting a thread that was going very sideways, for example.
If you have any, you can change your title on the same screen you can choose to set or hide your level icon. Just go to your user settings here on the forum.