Successfully blending Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" and WaniKani?

Japanese Language Kanji
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I used RTK in the past, got up to about 500, then fell off at the usual point like many others. Now I’ve forgotten everything. I’ve been using WK for the past 6 months now and loving it, being able to read and guess at more Kanji than before.

But the main drawback of WK seems to be the strength of RTK - writing. Just like RTK’s main weakness is WK’s strength - reading (and a little by extension, speaking).

I’ve read many of the posts about WK vs. RTK, but haven’t seen much about successfully blending the systems; learning both writing and reading at the same time.

The challenge is the difference between the radical and meaning mnemonics - but, has anyone found an effective solution to that?

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Just pick one and be serious about it.

I recommend WK, but generally you should make up your own mnemonics and you’ll eventually get into a flow where the mnemonics don’t matter anymore and you just recognize shapes and readings naturally.

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I’m only loosely familiar with RTK, does Heisig give you anything uniquely helpful for writing? I’d use WK if you like it, and I believe there’s an addon you can get to show stroke order which should help you with writing.

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Since RTK goes from Meaning → Kanji, you’re visualizing the radicals (or “primitives” as he calls them) from the mnemonic story to remember how and what to write (along with the stroke orders).

WK goes from Kanji → Reading/Meaning where the radicals and “story” helps remember the readings and meanings.

So, I’d say the whole RTK system is what’s uniquely useful haha

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The main things that help for writing:

  • each kanji and each component get a keyword, which is unique. It’s based on the meaning, but the point is to have a single English word to act as a trigger for the kanji, so no alternative meanings allowed
  • you go from keyword to writing the kanji, not the other way around (this is part of why the system is one keyword only, so there is a single right answer)
  • the system makes more effort to keep distinct components that are written differently: e.g. WK calls both ⺭and ⻂the “spirit” radical, but RTK keeps them distinct because that kind of “do I draw that little extra stroke” question is exactly what you need the mnemonics to help you remember. Similarly, WK merges 夂 and 攵 into the “winter” radical but RTK keeps them distinct.
  • the book sometimes calls out little things about the kanji that matter for writing (like an extra hook on a stroke)

Since the keywords in RTK and WK are often very different, I feel like you are liable to get quite muddled if you try to do both of them; also it would be rather duplicating effort.

If you’re using WK and the system is working well enough for you to be making consistent progress, I would suggest sticking with it. I have seen people recommend the ringotan app for writing practice, and it has an option for showing you the kanji in WK order, so maybe experiment with that as an addition for practicing the writing of the kanji you’re learning on WK?

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I used WaniKani and learned to write at the same time by building a dedicated practice deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/610839770

Every time I did a kanji lesson on WaniKani I would also unsuspend the card in the Anki deck. It worked well but it does at a significant amount of study time.

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I have been at RTK 500 before, and I stopped at that. Using only mnemonics from WaniKani Kanji, and set up Anki writing deck on Android with S pen. EN => JP, and also include vocabularies; though other setups like Simias’s should work well. (Or far later on that I tried Audio => JP.)

imo, there is only need for a more accurate mnemonic when I have problem memorizing, and indeed writing is hard, and it’s also possible that WaniKani mnemonics aren’t detailed enough (positions; more accurate radicals). Components/parts first rather than stroke orders, and there are indeed stroke order fonts and SVGs. (There are also other sources of mnemonics, such as kanji.koohii and KanjiDamage, but I have never tried those.)

From Anki reviews, WaniKani Kanji pages can easily be access with a hyperlink https://www.wanikani.com/kanji/{{Kanji}}. I can also recommend Wiktionary https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/{{Kanji}} (or vocab). Just always check the stroke order, as it points to Kanji parts.

(I also did Kangxi radical handwriting deck, but I don’t particularly recommend that.)

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