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Turns out asking others about their learning experience was quite helpful so I do it again:
I started on Kanji yesterday and finished reading the pages for the 2-1 Kanji, and I’m somewhat half-and-half on that.
(http://www.textfugu.com/kanji/)One one hand I did the Radicals without issue, i’ve been through those without even the slightest bump in the road. “Looks like someone started spelling out Nine but didn’t finish – memorized”. But on the other hand: Reading through the Kanji pages, I feel that it’s all a bit much. Who Is Ricky and what does he have to do with Power Rangers? It just seems a bit excessive. I ended up finding it distracting, while not really learning any of it, and actually I’d rather just hit Anki for learning this. Anyone else had that problem? What’s your approach? Is WaniKani doing it any different?
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This topic was modified 10 years, 8 months ago by
Xaromir.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.There is no one to my knowledge that’s named Ricky who was actually on the Power Rangers. It doesn’t matter.
The point is to get you to picture a story so that you can link concepts together and thus will more readily be able to access the associated information.
The problem with using someone else’s mnemonics is that the most effective mnemonics are personally relevant. So someone else’s mnemonics won’t be as effective as one’s you create yourself.
If you never liked the Power Rangers, it’s going to be a bad mnemonic for you. If you think to yourself of something similar that you might like, for example Naruto (don’t know if you watch it or not, as I said use your own example) there’s a character called Rock Lee. So you could think of Rock Lee being powerful and relate Rock to りょく. It’s not an exact match up, but as long as it can synch with your brain it will be effective.
Anime is a really good medium for coming up with mnemonics as you have a whole bunch of Japanese names that are more likely to sound like the words you are trying to learn, and just choose key aspects of those characters to create mnemonics.
Your own mnemonics will always be more effective if you can come up with something that syncs well with you. The problem lies in being creative enough to come up with your own mnemonics for thousands of characters and related vocabulary. Even Koichi has this problem, as many of his are really bad.
So yes WaniKani does the same thing, though they also have a space where you can write your own. I use WK and a write a lot of my own, but I still benefit from Koichi as I will use his to give me inspirations for my own.
For the record, I think WK is a hundred times better than what you are getting here, so I would sign up for an account. The first two levels are free, so no reason not to give it a try to see if you like it. Just be aware it’s a very slow start with the first 2 levels, but by about level 5 it’s pretty full on.
AnonymousRadicals are definitely your foundation to remembering the meanings of kanji. The reading(s) of the kanji will then correspond with the meaning in some way. The vocab will consist of specific readings from the kanji, but in the end it’s easier to memorize the vocab as words themselves.
If you feel that some mnemonic is too dragged out or confusing, you can always cut it down in your head or make your own story. In fact, I do that for half the kanji on Wanikani. Of course I don’t change the radicals involved or the names, but I “personalize” them.
I’ve finished all the kanji on Textfugu. To me, it was sort of like a preamble to Wanikani, in which I am now level 44. Textfugu’s kanji learning method is pretty much the same as Wanikani, but while Textfugu has around 423 kanji, Wanikani has around 1635 kanji (Lvl 1-50). Wanikani is also more interactive and organized, and some people create unofficial apps or such that can show your progress and other various things. Of course Wanikani also has its own forum, and unlike Textfugu, you can look at the levels and progress of your fellow kanji learners, which I think is quite cool.
So no danger in trimming the mnemonics down and making my own? Noice! It’s good to know, because from my standpoint I can’t possibly know what is going to be cross-referenced and how much or if I can just use the TF-Internal progression as a guideline for straying from the masters path a bit and not bother with learning all the analogies.
Good to know that Wani also has a “demo”, so to speak. I was curious about it previously.
Edit: Sorry, Tsetycoon, I was responding as you wrote, so I didn’t quite catch it. As I hinted above: I was feeling as if I also had to learn all the mnemonic analogies, which obviously was quite important with the radicals as you correctly pointed out, and I’ve learned those pretty smoothly – I get a word to associate them with, and that’s that, but those long stories and trying to link it all exhausts me more than a simpler approach. As I said: I wasn’t sure to what degree that’s possible.
Though I think I’ll give it a rest for the day, I had a bit of a rough one today anyways. Taking some time and casually looking at it all under a new light today may help me tomorrow.
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This reply was modified 10 years, 8 months ago by
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.There is no one to my knowledge that’s named Ricky who was actually on the Power Rangers. It doesn’t matter.
The second red ranger in the original (American) series was named Rocky…
Odd thing is: I still have my PR belt buckle from when I was little, but I remember sod all about PR. I thought I do a little update: Looking back at it, it feels a bit unfair to blame TF for the issues, kanji are simply on a different level considering there are multiple readings attached to them etc, and I think I went in with false expectations. I RACED through the radicals and expected it to go on like that, but I kind of crashed into a wall there, but I will remain with my statement that most of the mnemonics simply don’t work for me, but that’s not necessarily a problem if it works for others.
I’ve tried Wani just 5 minutes ago, only doing the first 5 mnemonic (because it’s really late) to get a feel what Wani is about. I can see how Wani may be a lot more helpful than working with Anki or only the TF resources. Typing is scary though, because my spelling simply is sub-standard (FF spellchecker ftw), I don’t think it’s a problem but it’s a bit frightening.
Well, after this hurtful crash with reality it’s now time to make some realistic schedules, also considering that I also got other things to do.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.LOL, yes, I’ve found that WaniKani has forced me to improve my English spelling as well. Just be aware that they also use the American spellings, though the British way is usually still close enough to be accepted, as there is an acceptable margin of error with spelling.
Aikibujin wrote:
There is no one to my knowledge that’s named Ricky who was actually on the Power Rangers. It doesn’t matter.The second red ranger in the original (American) series was named Rocky…
All I know is that there was Tommy, then there was a bunch of other jokers afterwards. :P
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This topic was modified 10 years, 8 months ago by
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