So I’m going through genki 1 just now, but I’m finding I’m having to spend so much time writing each kanji out, and I feel like it would be so so much quicker for me to just write out the hiragana…
I’m not sure if this would end up being counterproductive in the long run, and if the length of time it’s taking me to write kanji as I’m now starting to encounter them is natural and to just keep going? Or if it’s better to just write the hiragana and work 2x/3x faster?
Also my eyesight isn’t the best so I have to look up each individual kanji and learn their brushstroke each time I see one, and have to do that every time until I know the kanji as well as I know hiragana/katakana.
Any help is really appreciated!
3 comments
Look into stroke order rules and how they’re applied. That way, you can learn to write intuitively even when you see a kanji for the very first time. It’ll take a couple hundred kanji for the stroke order rules to sink in, but it gets easier over time.
Writing kanji initially slowed me down but after persisting for months, I found it helped me read my own writing (don’t have a neat hand) and reading in general. Now it’s a lot easier for me to pick out adjectives, nouns, particles and verbs, and identify different classes of verbs.
It’s tough in the beginning, but you’re bound to see comments by people (myself included) that find kanji helpful. Pure hiragana texts slow you down after a while. My eyesight has been getting worse, but even when it was really good I sometimes needed to use a magnifying glass to see the details of a more complex kanji. Hang in there for the long-term gain.