I’ve tried to do some research on this one but I haven’t found a situation that is quite comparable enough to mine to base my studies on.
I’m about 140 words in to my first 1000, but my retention is beginning to dip. This is because I switched the way I graded myself. Essentially, the issue I was having is that I could recognize the kanji but had no clue how it sounded, so I started covering the kanji and then only showed myself after I could identify it by sound exclusively. It’s really hard for me to learn that way, and so now my young answers are only at about 65% in stats since I’ve made the switch.
My question is, is this a logical way to be grading myself? I want to be able to conversate and I figured that not knowing how kanji sounded would hold me back in that regard and I was also worried that by not knowing the sounds I would be equating them to English concepts exclusively and that this would handicap me down the line. The issue is that my learning has gotten a lot more frustrating and takes more time doing it with no visual to accompany. There are also several cases where I wouldn’t be able to guess via just sound or just kanji, but with both I can get the right answer.
Am I thinking too far down the line on this one? Will I eventually pick up the sounds if I grade myself on meaning with the assistance of seeing the kanji beforehand? Do I just need to grind through the sounds the way I’m currently doing?
1 comment
I’m not sure grading is the right word? I don’t quite get what you mean. Are you referring to the hard/easy/very easy Anki grades or to self-evaluation or something else?
As you are on your first 140 words, I’m assuming you are a beginner. I don’t know if you have reading Japanese as a top priority, but as you only mentioned being able to speak Japanese as a goal, I’m really confused as to why you are focusing so much on kanji? My opinion is you are making this harder for yourself than it has to be. When you say sounds, are you talking about the readings of stand-alone kanjis or the sounds of full words? The sounds of the words are so much more important than the kanji (the character), even if your top priority was to read. I think most people who self-study learn the words in kana and on top of that, build a repertoire of kanji of the words they want/need to know how to read the most at the moment. I’m no expert so I don’t want to say this is the one best method, but have you considered this approach?