I know this might sound a bit strange, but I have really bad short-term memory for almost every kanji I see for the first time. I don’t know already if it’s worrying or hilarious how the first ever practice after the lesson (not even review – just the practice we have after a bunch of 5 items in the learning mode) I see kanjis I’ve learned 2 minutes ago and I already have no idea what they mean.
It’s also not like I just skip-skip-skip during learning. I really do take my time to read the mnemonic, feel it go through me, carefully look through vocab. And then it’s just gone. If it’s not gone by the time of the practice, it is most certainly gone by the first review. I don’t even remember that I’ve ever seen this kanjis before when I do the first review. By my statistics, I fail 75% of kanjis the first time they appear in review. 30% I fail the second time too. Then they finally start going to a long-term memory, and by the time I guru items, I remember them alright.
Do any of you experience similar problems? How do you fight it? I want to try spending even more time studying vocab, and maybe looking for example sentences with the kanji right away, plus maybe writing them down by hand several times will help?
Or maybe it’s only a me problem and it’s a sign that I really need to see a doctor regarding my memory? Let me know please.
Yeah I’m a bit like this too. You need to “convince” your brain that the info is worth committing to long-term memory, and it takes a few review for that to happen.
I don’t think you need to see a doctor. 75% failure for apprentice reviews is maybe on the high end of that, but honestly who cares if you end up remembering most kanji after a few tries.
I think it may also be that you’re still not fully familiar with this kanji thing (assuming that your WK level is representative of your overall experience). As you learn more and more kanji it becomes easier to form associations between them. The new kanji that you learn don’t feel so new anymore.
See for instance this comment I read earlier in one of the book clubs:
Personally I recently learned 噺 for instance, which means story/discussion. It may look a bit complicated but it’s just 口 + 新 (“mouth” + “new”) and the reading is はなし, same as 話. So on one hand it’s new, but on the other it’s just a fairly straightforward combination of things I already know.
Or consider 薪 which means “firewood” which is made up of the grass radical and 新 again.
The more kanji you know the more likely it becomes that any new kanji will just be a variant of something you’re already familiar with.
I’ve definitely been there, and there have been plenty of times where a mnemonic doesn’t click or it’s just a really busy day, and sometimes the mind never truly savored the flavor of a new kanji.
What always, always works for me are two things:
See the kanji in context more than once, preferably randomly
Write it out over the course of several days. Recall the mnemonic as you draw each radical stroke-by-stroke. Whisper its names to the paper it is on.
Maybe the last part is just me Regardless, there are many studies that show you remember things way better if you put pen to paper, and the kanji are no different. So I really recommend writing them when you see or think of them (even just finger to palm will do!)
I have to write things in order for them to stick (and often write them many times). I think it’s because the characters are so different than Roman letters. With Spanish, I can get by with inferring the meaning of words based on words that are close. For Japanese, it’s different.
I have a book where I write down all the kanji, vocabulary, etc that I learn. I find it helpful. If I am learning vocabulary for JLPT in a non SRS practice (like from a book), I’m often write it five or six times to help it stick,
In terms of the kanji sticking longer term, I find that I can read it but can’t remember the shape well enough to write many kanji. When I’m doing homework for my Japanese class, I often have to look up words that I can use comfortably. But I have a feeling that is normal to some extent.
This happens to me all the time. The majority of new kanji, vocab, radicals fall out of my head. Then after trying again and again they stick. Then the earlier kanji come up and then I have to remember them too.
All in all though I feel progress is happening. My wife who is Japanese actually has been complimenting my ability to remember and use the words when using simple sentences with her.
Ultimately however times it takes to remember, remembering and using is the key. I know my Japanese language journey is primarily for the function of being able to communicate with my in-laws when we visit Japan. Studying is fun and learning is great, yet function is the most important.
My husband is Japanese, so I understand completely! I’m getting better, but it’s definitely a challenge to communicate with his family when we’re in Japan! The same thing happens when we meet my husband’s friends. Some speak a bit of English, but they’re often shy about speaking with me. However, we will most likely move to Japan eventually for his job, so I will need Japanese for life in Japan.
By my statistics, I fail 75% of kanjis the first time they appear in review. 30% I fail the second time too. Then they finally start going to a long-term memory, and by the time I guru items, I remember them alright
I think this is the SRS doing it’s work. I had encountered this pattern a lot in Anki for new vocab. In WaniKani, what usually helps for me is to read the mnemonics, or make one up myself if something comes to mind at that moment. There are some good ones and those really help. The bad mnemonics I don’t give it too much thought but sometimes just reading it helps me remember better, most times these are the ones I struggle the most with. Eventually I end up forgetting the mnemonics and just remember the reading from all the reps. Your brain will naturally get better at remembering kanji, and as you get exposed to more kanji, you will notice that some kanji which share the same radicals will also share the same reading.
If you’re trying to get ahead or speed up the SRS algorithm, this is what worked for me. After doing kanji lessons, I always use the Self Study Quiz user script and set it to the current level Kanji. I do Kanji lessons in batches of 5, and after each batch I will review all the learned kanji for that level until I get a full run of correct answers. This helps signal to my brain that the last batch(es) I did is still something I need to remember, not just for the last 2 minutes so that I could pass the quiz after the lesson. It takes a bit more time, but getting the reps in improves my retention. I only did this to maintain my WK level up speed, so if timing is not an issue and you want to spend that time elsewhere, just let SRS do its work and enjoy yourself
Thank you for very amusing examples! I understand that higher-level kanjis might make more sense since they are basically like word compounds. But yeah, I am still on the stage where I get like ear and a stool/support. And then it is somehow “take”. And mind is not doing it’s thing at all, and absurdistic mnemonic (because how can you make it not absurd) does not really help.
Sometimes I google the origins of kanji I don’t get, and it helps a bit. For example, I really struggled with change being a leader and a spoon. Then I’ve read on the internet that it was modified in Chinese from a pictogram of a man and a man upside-down, and it stuck with me perfectly after that. But looking up every other kanji is too demanding . Well, I guess I will have to power through the most common ones, it is expected that concepts that exist for thousands of years have the most evolved and transformed pictograms.
Many of these early, “simple” kanji are actually trickier than average because they have often changed a lot through the centuries and it’s hard to link them to the original shape. It’s similar for the latin script after all, the letter D originates with a hieroglyph depicting a fish…
But the good news is that you will also encounter these basic kanji everywhere all the time when you read Japanese. I remember that originally I would often confuse 化 and 代, but those kanji come up so often everywhere that the confusion was quickly gone once I started reading Japanese.
That’s why I always recommend not dwelling on early kanji (not resetting, unburning etc…) because you should just push forward and get to the point where you start reading basic Japanese. Then you’ll have endless opportunities to revisit these kanji in context.
I feel like a way you could approach this is make the kanji more “personal”. Maybe something that’ll make you remember it much better than the mnemonics that WaniKani gives you, and also try writing it down. There’s this other website called KanjiDamage and I find some of those mnemonics were much easier to remember, though it’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. It would also help if you’re exposed to the kanji you learn more often, could be through extra study on wanikani.
I don’t really have short term memory so I wouldn’t know the full extent, but I think this can be useful for you
By flash cards without waiting (not SRS), but it’s only for new items and recently failed items. (i.e. similar to Self-Study Quiz script)
Another way is not really flash cards, but rather a table with 2 columns – Column 1 JP, Column 2 Reading or English. Try to build some accuracy (like 80%) with 5 or 10 items at a time. Vice versa is also doable, Col 2 Col 1. A separate piece of paper might be used for handwriting (if you are into it).
A thing to support this testing effect is taking notes, which could be revising mnemonics, copying vocab/sentences, or copying something from the Internet. WaniKani supports taking note for reading and meaning separately (though 5,000 chars limit) though for Anki would be editing a note field.
And indeed, even with not that many new items per day (per session), it’s still possible to get burned out by the memorization routine, by trying too hard to remember… And yet, you will be bound to forget things memorized too superficially after weeks. I wouldn’t blame any mnemonics or any memorizing method for this superficiality – get into native materials and immersion would need to follow. (Some grammar basics needed too, which also don’t need to be perfect.)
It’s easy to convince me that vocabs and phrases need memorizing, but not as much as Kanji (and not to mention Radicals), but that still don’t mean memorizing is always easy. I would make the reason to memorize Kanji as vocab-based, and if Radicals can’t memorized, use nearest Kanji meaning instead. Rely on approximation, but pixel perfect.
I have had memory issues for years and have only been learning kanji for a month and a half. Please, if you see this in any other area of life besides learning kanji, consider it a health issue. Then, take the next step and mention this to your doctor. You may not be getting enough sleep, or the problem may be neurological.
I did not see it mentioned yet. Have you tried the “Recent Lessons” option in the “Extra Study” widget? You could use this to do a run through all the items you have recently done lessons for to get extra exposure.
Speaking of this, I could swear that at some point in the past when you finished a set of lessons there was an option to go through them again before moving on (to the next set or returning to the dashboard). But that could very well (likely) just be my imagination.
Work at sentence level and not kanji level.
A brains works by making connections between contexts.
If you feed your brains a richer context it’ll give it more anchors to work with.
So for each kanji you could ask for a simple Japanese sentence that use the kanji.
Eg: 曲 => この曲が好きです。
I find doing this way more efficient than mnemonics and as an added bonus you start working on simple sentence patterns :).
The more personal the sentence the better it works, try to relate to it to a personal level.
When you learn the mnemonic, act it out. Get out of your chair / couch / bed and physically act it out. Say the reading out loud as well to connect it.
Regardless, there are many studies that show you remember things way better if you put pen to paper, and the kanji are no different. So I really recommend writing them when you see or think of them (even just finger to palm will do!)
. Well, I guess I will have to power through the most common ones, it is expected that concepts that exist for thousands of years have the most evolved and transformed pictograms.
