Hi everyone, so I've been studying kanji using memrise for around a month now, and I've come to realise that it's a complete waste of time having to type up the answers. Does anyone else feel the same way?

you mean there things out there other than Anki?!!? :o

What exactly were you studying using memrise? Unfamiliar with it I did a search and reached this point:

http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/kanji/

uisukii Wrote:What exactly were you studying using memrise? Unfamiliar with it I did a search and reached this point:

http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/kanji/

I was studying Heisig's remembering the Kanji. I bought the book but it was too boring.

squarezebra Wrote:you mean there things out there other than Anki?!!? :o

I think I might have to start using Anki even though it looks so plain and boring.

LittleRedRidingHood Wrote:

squarezebra Wrote:you mean there things out there other than Anki?!!? :o

I think I might have to start using Anki even though it looks so plain and boring.

It is plain, and it is boring... but it appears to work for me

[ファブリス]

There's also a Reviewing the Kanji website o_O

ファブリス Wrote:There's also a Reviewing the Kanji website o_O

Yeah, but that's too easy. People don't want to take the easy route, they want to make it as hard and frustrating as they can, burnout, and re-enforce the idea that Japanese is too hard to learn for a gaijin...

uisukii Wrote:

ファブリス Wrote:There's also a Reviewing the Kanji website o_O

Yeah, but that's too easy. People don't want to take the easy route, they want to make it as hard and frustrating as they can, burnout, and re-enforce the idea that Japanese is too hard to learn for a gaijin...

I think its too hard like a stonewall. most people don't want to sit chipping and chipping away at something till they get somewhere so they look for silver bullets. In the real world outside academic bullshit I believe consistency and hard work and effort are the keys to success.

To get where I want to be next year hard work is the answer and that is painful.

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:In the real world outside academic bullshit I believe consistency and hard work and effort are the keys to success.

Yup.

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:hard work is the answer and that is painful.

It's only painful if you make it painful. I just "finished" RtK volume 1 in some 15-16 odd days, which included hundreds upon hundreds of often frustrating reviews and many, many hours of learning new kanji. The process involved a lot of time and by the end of the day my mind was a strange mess of squiggly lines.

Was it painful, though? No, because at the end of every day, while aimlessly pandering about Facebook, I noticed different kanji (my Facebook account is set to Facebook Japan) which I studied, was able to write them out with a simple glance, and based on context could gleam an elementary meaning out of the kanji. That flicker of understanding is like the momentary dance of fiberglass and curling breakwater surfers spend 95% of their time and energy in order to catch.


Spend five hours out in the water and even one nice, smooth, long ride makes it not only worth while, but it keeps you up thinking about those effortless movements the night after the session. There is no reason language ought be any different. It's not the 95% effort you put it which is the focus of your time spent, it's the 5% enjoyment that means more to you than anything else at that moment.


That's not painful, that's bliss.

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:I think its too hard like a stonewall. most people don't want to sit chipping and chipping away at something till they get somewhere so they look for silver bullets. In the real world outside academic bullshit I believe consistency and hard work and effort are the keys to success.

To get where I want to be next year hard work is the answer and that is painful.

...with the right methods!

A simple obvious example is studying RTK using physical flash cards or using Anki, it's doable in the former, but will require much more hard work for obvious reasons.
Actually, I think this applies to everything in life, even in the more complicated things, no input = no output but what is in the middle makes a difference: input (hard work, consistency, time,...)-> [Model (methods, choices, tools,...)] -> output (what you want to achieve)

@LittleRedRidingHood RTK can be boring, maybe too boring for some people, and for others it can have some fun, but it's still not an easy task not to burn out while doing it. If you find it too boring even while using stories from here, maybe finding another way is a better for you.

Thank you for your advice everyone.

@undead I am enjoying using the stories on here. Although I'm not using the book. I'm using the stories on here alongside memrise.