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Post by クレイグ (Kureigu) on May 23, 2014 10:21:14 GMT -4
While searching for a way to study only the kanji I wanted on my phone (android), I came across the WaniKani website. It's a system to learn Kanji based on learning the radicals first. You don't learn stroke order, you learn to pick out the radicals that make up the kanji. I really like the approach and am finding it very easy to engage with. The mnemonics are quirky and fun. Of course, there's a price. $8/month or $80/year. I'm not sold yet, but I suspect I might be after I make it through the first two free levels.
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Post by Architect on May 23, 2014 12:29:19 GMT -4
While searching for a way to study only the kanji I wanted on my phone (android), I came across the WaniKani website. It's a system to learn Kanji based on learning the radicals first. You don't learn stroke order, you learn to pick out the radicals that make up the kanji. I really like the approach and am finding it very easy to engage with. The mnemonics are quirky and fun. Of course, there's a price. $8/month or $80/year. I'm not sold yet, but I suspect I might be after I make it through the first two free levels. If you find it worthwhile let us know and we'll add it to the resource pages.
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Post by クレイグ (Kureigu) on May 30, 2014 11:26:11 GMT -4
One week with WaniKani
I've been using WaniKani for one week, as of last night. Time for a review. It's addictive. In short, it's kanji crack. I am constantly checking the timer for when is my next hit. First off, the dry technical part. Every item you are presented is in one of these ranks: Apprentice, Guru, Master, Enlightened, Burned, depending on how well you've learned it. Each item also has a level, corresponding, more or less, to difficulty. - It teaches you radicals. Radicals are purely conceptual. You need to recognize the concept, in English (山 = mountain)
- Once your radicals for that level reach 90% guru, it shows you kanji. 99% of the time, it shows you on'yomi (山 = さん). It's still teaching building blocks. When that kanji is used in a jukugo, 99% of the time, it's the on'yomi pronounciation.
- Once you guru a kanji, it shows you vocabulary. This can either be jukugo, where the pronunciation is usually on'yomi (富士山 = ふじさん), or single kanji, where the pronunciation is usually kun'yomi (山 = やま).
So far, nothing surprising, except possibly the focus on radicals as building blocks, instead of stroke count/order. Wanikani has amusing and, often, slightly twisted mnemonics. The argument that it's better to come up with your own mnemonics because they mean something to you is valid, but personally, I'm not that imaginative. These guys have put a lot of thought into their mnemonics. If one particular one doesn't work for me, I come up with my own. If I happen to know the kanji/vocab already, I skip it entirely. But generally, their mnemonics are much more memorable than anything I would have come up with. Still, nothing revolutionary. Where this site really shines is how they've gamified it. They've reduced kanji learning to almost LEGO blocks of radicals, then added SRS and a hard cut-off to how much they'll show you at a time. You'll be shown new items when you've qualified. Seems to be about a limit of 20 at a time. You'll be shown them in groups of 5. After 5, you get a quiz. If you get it right in the quiz, it gets an apprentice rank, goes in your review bucket and a timer is set. For new items in the review bucket, the timer seems to be 4 hours. Once you get through the new items, you can review, but essentially, you're done until a timer runs out. I've seen timers for as little as 2 hours (mistakes, I think) and as long as 48 hours (the kanji promote to guru review). Most are 4 or 8 hours. After the review, if you hit 90% guru, or if you still have items in your new queue, you'll be given new lessons. If not, you've got a couple more hours to wait. Right now, I am in level one. I am at 100% guru for radicals and 88% guru for kanji (入 seems to give me grief and I couldn't figure out how to use a new Japanese keyboard on my phone, so ended up typing りよく instead of りょく for 力 so those two are a bit behind. It turns out that you do not need to be have a Japanese IME or keyboard - the website's javascript takes care of it, but I did not know that at the time.) My vocabulary is at 100% apprentice since I just got to kanji guru last night. My next review is in 2 hours. I'm hoping it will let me at those two kanji instead of upping vocabulary. I want to see if this is my promotion to level 2. The website has three counters, showing you when your next review is, how many items you'll be reviewing in the next hour, and how many in the next 24. There are also counters showing how many outstanding new items there are you can learn and how many outstanding items are waiting for review. Not surprisingly, those cluster in the morning, and tend to spread out during the rest of the day. As a beginner on the site, things seem a little slow. People who already know a lot of kanji will have a big problem with this - I know there are a lot of comments out there to that effect. I know some kanji, but it's pretty minimal, so it's not bad for me. Generally, I think the idea of forcing you to stop before you're quite ready to is sound. It keeps you coming back. And it keeps you pushing for the next level. The timers and counters are brilliant for cranking up your anticipation. The 48 hour break was too long. According to many comments, this is not an issue as you level up, because you have enough other, older items in the SRS queue to fill in big gaps. A bigger complaint is that if you miss a few days, you'll have a huge review backlog to go through. There is supposedly a review pause vacation mode, but it's not in my account settings - probably subscriber only. What is it missing? Example sentences to see vocabulary in context. This is filled somewhat by duendecat.com, but it's not integrated. I'm sure somebody will create a wanikani extension for it, soon. That's about it. After one week, I'm still hooked. The 48 hour gap lessened my addiction somewhat, but I think it will be back. I think I'm almost done level 1, and the free stuff ends after level 2. I'll keep you posted.
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Post by クレイグ (Kureigu) on May 30, 2014 19:20:42 GMT -4
Woo! Level 2. It took me 7 days and 18 hours to clear the first level. Probably would have been 7 days flat without the two mistakes. You might be able to pull it in a bit by not sleeping, but 7 days looks about right. 83 items up for review in the next 24 hours. Definitely picked up soon as I leveled. We probably won't see anymore 48 hour waits.
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Post by BostonGo on May 31, 2014 18:13:35 GMT -4
I might give it a try.
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Post by クレイグ (Kureigu) on Jun 8, 2014 21:05:18 GMT -4
やった! Level 3. 9 days, 3 hours. A bit longer than getting to level 2. I was looking at a Japanese movie cover the other day, and decyphered it. Pretty happy with myself. "アナと雪女王。" Yeah. Not a hard translation. I guessed that 雪 is ゆき。 I worked out that "女王" woman king must mean queen. If I had thought a bit more, I should have figured out on my own that it was pronounced "じょおう。" I'm learning and having fun. So I subscribed for a year.
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Post by クレイグ (Kureigu) on Jun 18, 2014 21:43:57 GMT -4
Level 4. Ten days. And I got my first bunch of stuff from Level 1 to the master rank on Sunday. 9 days is probably about right, but there are a couple of kanji that I find pretty similar: 今、分、公. こん、ぶん and こう tripped me up more than a few times. I think I have them straightened out now. I think level 4 might take a bit longer. There are a couple kanji where the mnemonics, mostly for the on'yomi are not sticking.
To test the kanji button: クレイグ Yeah, it works. Would be nice if the kana tables were sorted a bit better.
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