Starting Over From Level 60(Finished)

WaniKani
#40

I’m on level 24 & already it’s taking a toll on me . On the other hand you have already reached 60 & restarted again. I can’t think of anything more painful than that. Having to see through those reviews piling up & having to type everything makes one fatigued & it takes a lot of time & energy.

If i were you, i would spend my time more valuably, since i have already completed level 60 . I would spend more time on obtaining reading materials. or ordering some books or even improving my grammer. It would help a lot in your kanji too. You can’t remember kanji’s because you don’t see it used in sentences . So that’s why reading books or novels or stuff like that will enforce your kanji & you will know how a kanji is used in a context. In that way, you can retain more kanjis in your memory rather than the monotonous time consuming reviews . It will be real boring & you will get tired soon.

#41

It’s a bit disappointing to read that people grind to level 60 only to find out they don’t really know kanji. Makes me a bit nervous if I should do it either. Shame, since I really like this website.

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#42

That’s because a lot of people race to the top. Focusing on quantity instead of accuracy leads to a lot of items that were never learned properly. There are some people who can learn super fast, but most people can not. As long as you take your time and learn at a pace where you’re really learning, you’re fine. That being said, don’t try to be a perfectionist either. Not being able to grasp a few rarely used vocab or kanji at first isn’t the end of the world and WK will teach you those if you let the system work how it should.

#43

I think there are very few people who reach level 60 and do not know kanji well. I started studying for N2 recently and the kanji studying has been very easy from everything I learned on WaniKani.

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#44

I thinks it’s not a bad idea for the people that got the lifetime subscription, however I think there should be an option after reaching level 60, reset specifit items, in a more customizable way. That surely would improve the value of this method for a secod round.

Even japanese people forget kanjis, so it’s nothing unheard of. Depending on posterior exposure the SRS system doesn’t do much… specially if you burn them (and shut down the SRS)

My point, the reuse value of the website could improved with different intervals and selective unlocking (dropping this in the suggestion box right now)…

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#45
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#46

thats great!!!.
That makes much more sense to me. I would definitely consider that when reaching the last levels.

thanks :+1::+1:

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#47

Have you thought about impoting your whole wani kani account into houhou srs?

#48

I never used houhou and I’m not familiar with it.

#49

Its fairly simple just download and use the wanikani code to add all items to srs. with houhou you can add any other items you want from the inbuilt dictionary. Also kani wani is wani kani in reverse. Im using all three hoping they are reinforcing each other.

#50

Actually, I find the WK approach far more effective than the traditional classroom method. I have taken a semester of Japanese at a respected Japanese university, and a less intensive course of about 300 hours combined at my domestic university during my student days. Both courses taught kanji the old fashioned way: draw it a couple of times and try to remember it. Then of course the kanji appeared in the materials, but once on to a next chapter, I couldn’t remember most kanji. Now, three months into wanikani, I have dealt with approximately 340 kanji, of which I can remember most.

Drawing kanji to me is like calculating without a calculator. It is nice to be able to do it, but in modern society it is not necessary. For reading you do not need it, for speaking you do not need it, for listening you do not need it, and for writing typing is faster and more convenient anyway. Another reason why I have given up on writing kanji, is that I’m left handed, making any kanji look like an elementary school kid wrote it.

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#51

Is there a particular reason why left-handedness makes writing elegant kanji more difficult (apart from using a fountain pen of course)? I’m left-handed myself, and I take a few tries to write kanji that I’m satisfied with, but I always put that down to lack of practice more than handedness.

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#52

Because the stroke order is “unnatural” for left handed people. Well maybe I shouldn’t claim this to be the case for everyone, but try for yourself.

Pick some random kanji:

First draw it how you would like to draw it, then watch an animation of the real stroke order.

My biggest problem is that I want to draw horizontal strokes from right to left (towards my hand, instead of moving away from my hand), and kanji have horizontal stroke orders from left to right (the opposite way).

Hope this makes sense!

#53

I do sometimes wonder what lefties had to deal with in ancient China and Japan. The left hand is considered “unclean” by some Asian cultures, so perhaps they were just forced by their parents/teachers to use the right hand. And yet, tategaki is written up to down and then right to left (not the strokes, the kanji).

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#54

Perhaps I’m a generation older, but when I was in primary (years 1 - 6) in the UK in the 70s, kids were still forced to write with their right hand - we did use fountain pens from year 3 onward…

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#55

90s kid here, and we were forced as well

but just maybe its because 3rd world countries are always behind in everything (?)

@northbored, is as @Ncastaneda says… even natives forget

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#56

I was luckily never forced to write with my right hand (also in the 1970s) although my teacher never seemed to approve of the way I held my hand.

I don’t know, maybe approved stroke order is unnatural for lefties, but it can be learned and performed reasonably well with practice. Personally, I find most Japanese people’s handwriting pretty incomprehensible, though I’m sure it’s clear enough for other Japanese people to read. I think it takes years of daily handwriting before your letters won’t look childish whether you’re a righty or a lefty.

Also, while I do try to follow approved stroke order, I don’t think it makes that much (or maybe any) difference in the end to the reader when writing with a pencil or ballpoint pen, as long as your characters look like they’re supposed to. Of course if you take a lot of shortcuts when writing kanji that reflect writing the stokes backwards, that might make your writing more challenging to read. Most Japanese take a lot of shortcuts when writing, and I’m sure proper stroke order and direction helps in that case, though as I said, their writing (including hiragana) is quite often baffling to me.

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#57

It wouldn’t even have to be an ancient society. A British friend of my mother was forced in her elementary school days (in the '70’s) to write with her right hand even though she was left-handed, because “that’s the proper way to do it.”

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#58

Cool video. Reminds me of how most people apparently can’t draw a (working) bicycle from memory:


and

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#59

I was born in the '80s in the US, and my great-grandmother tried to tie my left hand down when I was a baby… My parents were having none of that, and made her stop, but to her dying day, anytime she saw me using my left hand I got a lecture on how it’s a right-handed world, and I needed to teach myself to be right-handed in order to get by in life. To avoid the lectures, I did learn how to hold a fork/spoon with my right hand.

Then in college I sprained my left wrist and ended up learning how to write with my right hand anyway, though I haven’t done it since. I took a couple semesters of Japanese in college as well, and writing left-handed wasn’t any more of a big deal than it is in English, unless you want to learn calligraphy. It’s absolutely impossible to do Japanese or Chinese calligraphy left-handed, because the characters won’t look right. As far as regular writing, though, it’s fine.

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