I got my Forever membership at a massive discount, but when you consider how much a regular textbook costs and how much more content it has, I *still* wouldn’t say I’ve had my money’s worth XD Well, I guess Koichi’s presence around the site, willingness to interact with users and accept feedback, fairly regular updates, and giving great personal and thoughtful advice via email added to the value of the site back when I started, but with the state of affairs now, recent buyers are getting even less (despite there being slightly more in the way of lessons).

Here is a quote from Koichi on WaniKani:

I’m going to take a break first. I’ve been working on the next revision of TF for a while now, and it’s quite different, and still has much to be done, so I’ll probably focus on that while I take my WK break. [posted 4 days ago at http://www.wanikani.com/chat/wanikani/3278/page/1

I’m sure it will all pan out (hopefully!) but I hope its sooner rather than too-far-in-the-future-later.

A girl can dream!

Any way, I’d think I’m going to stop worrying about that for now. I’m only on Season Two so I still have some time to deal with that!

“The only definite way to learn Japanese is to take a class.” – Who is Jacob and what is he playing at? That sentiment (since you paraphrased I don’t know *exactly* what he said) is completely untrue. Obviously there’s no one best way to go about it and some people like taking classes, but the idea that you *have* to take a class to learn Japanese is ridiculous; don’t listen to him :P

Everybody is an “average Joe” when it comes to language learning, I doubt many people have “natural-born talent”, like they have some god-like skill for it that others don’t – all the polyglots (people who speak multiple languages) I’ve seen on YouTube aren’t proficient with those languages because of “talent”, it’s because they were passionate and dedicated and hard-working. Of course, once you’ve had some experience learning languages you get better at it, but in the beginning you’re no more or less skilled than anyone else (probably a few exceptions to that, mind you). It bugs me that so many people are like “I’ve always wanted to learn language XYZ” but when you say “Then why don’t you? :D” they respond with something like “Oh, I’m not good with languages” – I’m thinking “Well have you actually even tried? Are you just basing that off the fact that once upon a time you sat in French class at high school for a couple of hours a week not paying attention and you’re not fluently fluent now?”. The other main response is that they don’t have the money to pay for a fancy class or buy Rosetta Stone or 100 textbooks or a flight to the country, and that is such a shame that they’ve been made to think that way.

Classes aren’t inherently bad but there can be some disadvantages and I don’t think they should be solely relied on. You have to put in the work on your own outside of class if you want to see improvement; it seems some people think “If I just go to class and sit there for the appropriate number of hours, I’ll be good at Japanese” but that’s not how it works. You might get an inflexible teacher who just wants you to do it their way, like how they might get you to learn kanji by writing them out 50 times in a row because that’s how they did it at school; that may work for some people but for a lot it won’t. The other thing with classes is that everyone has to go at the same speed and learn the same things, you don’t have the freedom of choosing what you want to learn and how much time to spend on it: if your class is learning keigo and you don’t think it’s that important, or if you want to cover more new vocab words each time, you don’t always have that choice (just depends on the class).

I’ve probably said more than enough here, I’m sure you get the idea :P And don’t get me wrong, I go to a class myself for maybe 50 minutes every week but it’s really only supplementary to the main bulk of my studying which is self-led. I can see why people might like going to class but don’t think it’s the be all and end all.

Mister – Word

Just came back to the site after a year hiatus. Glad to see my lifetime gets me into etoeto, otherwise this thread would be rather disheartening.

I’m starting from scratch as I have a new computer and was only part through season 3.

Sounds like I shouldn’t bother with the Kanji here and should instead use WK.

If anyone still posts here that uses it, should I skip the kanji and simply slam through the seasons here to get into etoeto and then start working on WK, or should I start on WK now, while working through TF?

Assume I know nothing about Kanji (not exactly true but it might as well be for these purposes).

• This reply was modified 11 years, 1 month ago by  Aikibujin.

Unfortunately EtoEto hasn’t been updated in almost 4 months either.

I don’t use WK, don’t I understand it is active and well used. If you have it use it for kanji, rather than the kanji in TF.