I had some brain damage as a result of an auto-immune condition, which resulted in frontal/mesial temporal lobe dysfunction, this resulted in problems with the initial encoding of information.
I understand your issue all too well - it often felt like a lack of focus/attention, because my brain struggled to just get the information into short/working memory to begin with, working memory was a bit whack, in the sense that when I would focus on one thing - e.g. the appearance of a kanji, the other thing I’ve learnt, e.g. the reading or meaning, would slip away. Almost like I could only process one piece of information at a time. This made it very difficult to get things into my long-term memory.
I’ve had some treatments that have improved these issues, but I had to figure out a method that worked for me prior to that.
For me, there’s no one solution. I had tried and “failed”, given up, then returned to learning Japanese many times since I first took Japanese in university about 12 years ago.
Regarding WK specifically, I didn’t find the default operation all that useful based on how my brain worked (or didn’t). As such, I came to rely on userscript functionality when searching for a workable method.
The most important one:
Double check - on a new level, I mark all answers correct regardless of pass/fail - until Guru
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This keeps the “recent lessons” and “recent mistakes” sections in extra study separate from one another - I don’t want to see the same entries in both - if I want to do some rote learning of either, I want only new items in one, and only failed items from older levels in the other. I tend to avoid trying to rote learn anything in “recent lessons”, though I might take a run through it if I’m having a particularly poor day. Once you’ve hit Guru without any mistakes, they are removed from “recent lessons” so you can start accepting them as incorrect if you fail them from then on.
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This method allows me to unlock the vocabulary quicker, which is the meat I need to sink my teeth into for my brain to actually memorise things properly, seeing things in context vs. isolation is important to me.
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Always mark radicals correct - a hindrance that doesn’t help me at all, again delaying the vocabulary, and in the earlier stages, the kanji themselves - the naming of these radicals on the site is often completely different to the proper naming, etc. These may be useful later for frequently failed items/visually similar kanji differentiation. It can of course be very handy for looking kanji up in dictionaries as well, etc, but on WK, I don’t find them particularly useful, probably because I don’t use the mnemonics. I presume the mnemonics to be the reason for the strange naming conventions.
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I’d recommend trying to read native materials as early on as possible, because seeing kanji you know in context, again, to me at least, is helpful with retention. Use something like NHK easy, get a browser extension like 10ten or Yomichan, and don’t look up all the words you don’t know at all, just look up compound words containing at least one kanji you do know. This helps solidify its usage, and aids retention. Just skim the articles till you know enough kanji in later levels to actually read them properly.
Extra study - after reaching Guru, incorrect answers will be left incorrect so they propagate into the “recent mistakes” section
- I used to use the post review summary page heavily for this, but I’d open every mistake up in a new tab, I’d look at the readings/meanings, and I’d go through writing these kanji into Shirabe Jisho on my iPad, I find writing to use different parts of my brain and might help store the info better. Additionally, you can see the proper radical names and forms here too.
- I also tend to go over the recent mistakes section several times a day, as for some of these items, rote learning may work better.
- Noticing which “visually similar” kanji you mistake other kanji for - one is often dominant in mind for some reason - e.g. learnt it first, is more meaningful, etc. Figure out which radical triggers the recollection, and then try to remember to observe the other radicals around it more closely to see the differences. Some are more subtle than others, but they are indeed very different.
Mnemonics - Don’t use them at all, not helpful to me.
- Thinking about this right now, I can’t remember a single one, it’s far more helpful for me to see a word in context, though I think I used them when I was in the earlier levels. It’s just one more piece of information I would have to retain - I’m not sure anyone really uses them past a certain point.
The thing about education in general, is that there is no one size fits all approach. WK is a great site, and I’m sure its default operation works fine for the person who originally created it, but that doesn’t mean it will work fine for everyone else. You need to figure out the most efficient way to work around your memory issues - I don’t proclaim that my methodology will work for you of course.
Despite the improvements to my memory after treatments, I still use WK in the aforementioned manner, because that is how it works best for me.
The first time I did WK, I reset at somewhere around 25/26, because I was doing it in isolation, and with the standard workflow - it was time consuming, frustrating, and I basically felt like my memory of earlier levels was being wiped as I moved on to a higher level.
For me, context is everything, the more I see kanji in vocab and compound words, the better my retention - reading is crucial, getting into native material as early as possible this time vs, the idea of “I’ll do it when I know enough kanji” - was very important in my continued success this time.
I also use other resources such as Bunpro and various textbooks, e.g. Genki I/II, Quartet I/II, Tobira, etc. etc. for grammar. You’re not going to be able to read anything particularly accurately without knowing grammar too.
Lastly, be kind to yourself, don’t beat yourself up over mistakes or difficulties, persistence is the key, and when you find the method that works for you, you WILL succeed as long as you keep trying.