I am struggling with getting back into the swing of taking notes. What do your notes for WaniKani look like? What about Genki?
It’s easier for me to take notes from a textbook like Genki (and do the exercises and such) because that is a format I’m familiar with. I’m less familiar with trying to take notes from something like WaniKani.
I’m not sure about vocab either - I don’t want to just use flashcards, I also want to write them down somewhere manually.
Edit to Add: Allow me to explain: I have a seizure disorder, and it makes recalling things very, very difficult. So I have been attempting to take notes, yes! It helps things to stick in my brain and make sense. The more repetition and different ways to recall something, the better.
There shouldn’t be any need to use notes with an SRS system. That’s the main point of an SRS tool. The flashcards require you to produce the answer each time anyway, and you can review any item at any time by using WaniKani’s search feature to find its page. You can use other tools like KameSame if you want to review the items from English→Japanese. If you really want to you could just drill out writing the Kanji, but WaniKani doesn’t teach any higher concepts for you to take notes on. It’s just memorization.
I'm not a fan of Genki but here are what some of my notes from Cure Dolly lessons look like.
As I gather more "conjugation"™ modulation knowledge I deemed it useful to keep consolidating it for reference. I may clean this up and print it out later when I feel like it’s complete. I’ve started doing the same with particles.
@RushianAgent Thank you very much! That makes a lot of sense - drilling the kanji is what I’ve been doing for WK, but now my note taking for Genki is going to be clearer as well. I appreciate it.
Allow me to explain: I have a seizure disorder, and it makes recalling things very, very difficult. So I have been attempting to take notes, yes! It helps things to stick in my brain and make sense. The more repetition and different ways to recall something, the better.
That said, WaniKani is still the best system I’ve found for helping me recall things and learn them the fastest!
I think vocabulary and kanji are not really prone to need taking notes. If I needed some reinforcement for WK I’d do something along the lines of drawing like what this user has done: WK Mnemonic "Art" for Kanji Levels 1-7 (Radical Levels 1-10)
i’m sorry too, i didn’t read far enough lol
i just meant that i thought you didn’t have to take notes and this made me think that you do and i was doing it wrong, so i was concerned for a moment
When taking notes, I love pairing WaniKani with Takoboto. Takoboto is my favorite dictionary, I really enjoy the example sentences. So basically while doing my reviews I just write down the words I struggle with and the words I really like, so that I could reinforce them further by adding some context. After I’m done with the review, I look up those words on Takoboto and just write down the sentences I like. Most of the time you can find sentences for any level of difficulty, so you’ll definitely find some nice ones that fit you. Here’s how it looks:
I also love writing down the WK level below each word. For some reason I find it to be a lot of fun. I’m also very curious about the words I haven’t learnt yet on WK so I wanna know the level when I’m gonna study them.
And here’s one of my cats reminding me that I should take a break. xD
I have a similar difficulty and I find that quickly writing down what I learned right after the lesson when you’re on the lesson summary page helps. It looks like this:
I do the same for the kanji and the radicals, but I leave a small blank space between each to fill in their meaning and sound from memory a few hours later to study a little more.
Then the day after, I copy the kanji and radicals to another page, first the all characters, and then I write the meaning/sound by memory next to it like so:
When I went through lvl 1-10 a little less than a year ago, my biggest struggle was slowing down during the lessons. I would read the lesson pages (very very fast) thinking ‘yup, got it!’ But not actually absorbing the content.
This time I am writing out each lesson as I cover it. I take the time to visualise the mnemonic with as much detail as I can, change the mnemonic if it isn’t sticking, check out the KanjiDamage page for useful bits, and so on. I do as much as I need to until I feel that the meaning, reading, and kanji have left a lasting impression on me. (For some radicals that is… two words. Usually if they look like their key word.)
