People on higher levels of kanji study - I have a question about your experience retaining Kanji, and beginning to read actual texts

WaniKani Requesting Help
10
  1. I tried using the Self Study script a handful of times, but I never had the patience to do even more WaniKani stuff. So let’s say “no”.
  2. I can read stuff, so I’d say my recognition is fine. I do run into things that I learned on WaniKani and completely forgot, where I’m not even sure that I’ve ever seen it before. But that’s bound to happen no matter what. As for the transition process, it’s painful and difficult. I dealt with it by using a dictionary a lot and by getting a ton of help from people on these forums by joining (and occasionally running) book clubs.
  3. I started joining book clubs around level 35. Others have started earlier. It depends on your grammar level and your tolerance for pain as much as it depends on your WaniKani level. When did it become easier? Around level 50. But I also had a lot more practice then.
  4. Definitely not. Most of the time I just read without translating, except when I run into a word I don’t know that’s really important to the meaning of the sentence. Then I’ll look it up to help figure out what’s going on. It’s important to note that I really see words, not kanji. So whether I know a kanji or not is less important than whether I know a word or not.
  5. I don’t do much listening or speaking, so my audio recognition isn’t great. Kanji provides great visual cues for what something means, and you don’t get those visual cues when listening. If you spend most of your time learning kanji and reading, it’s natural that you’ll have a harder time recognizing spoken Japanese.
  6. I’ve never really been one to keep a strict schedule. I certainly had more of a routine earlier on. I used Japanese From Zero for about a year to learn basic grammar and vocab. Then I joined WaniKani and did that for close to a year on its own. Then I started mixing in grammar (again) and reading along with WaniKani. Other than keeping up with WaniKani and whatever SRS I was using at the time, I didn’t keep a schedule. I think it’s very beneficial to learn kanji and grammar at the same time, as you need both in order to read. It’s fine to spend more time on one than the other, as you don’t want to get overwhelmed, but don’t neglect either one entirely.
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