WaniKani on The Tofugu Podcast: Japan and Japanese Language

Time for a WaniKani ad. Please feel free to skip this bird if you like. For those who are not familiar with WaniKani, WaniKani is a kanji and Japanese vocabulary learning platform where you can learn 2,000 kanji and more than 6,000 vocabulary items within a little over a year. And today, Nick will share his story about using WaniKani. Hey, Nick. Hello. So I started studying grammar when I reached Wani Kani level 10. And being familiar with the kanji included in beginner textbooks before I even opened the first pages was one of the biggest benefits of using Wani Kani. Mm-hmm. Wani Kani is really good at making the bridge to grammar study easier to cross. Because by the time you reach level 10, you already know many of the kanji and the vocabulary that you might find in textbooks like Genki One or Minna no Nihongo, which in turn allowed me to focus on the context of the grammar points. and how they get arranged in sentences rather than trying to decipher each word or each reading of a kanji. That was really challenging in the beginning, but Wani Kani really made that a lot easier. I felt able to skip the kanji and vocabulary lists in Genki and dive right into the grammar points. Because I knew I was going to get closer and closer to enjoying the native material and graded readers, which was really my goal from the start. And I think it's the goal of a lot of a lot of learners as well. That's true. Would you recommend Wanika users to wait until they hit level 10 or so to start their grammar studies? Yeah, I think it's a good level to start at. You have a lot of kanji and vocabulary under your belt. As a customer support agent, putting my customer support agent hat on, when I have users or learners who ask me when they should start grammar, I just say whenever you feel ready and whenever you want to dive in. Because if you're doing Wani Kani and grammar study simultaneously, I think you're in a really good spot. That's true. Yeah. I think it's up to you after all. Yeah. If you know more vocabulary, that's great too. You know, that's an advantage that you don't get. You don't have to look up every word you run into, I guess. It makes things so much easier to decipher. Yeah, totally. Thank you for sharing your story, Nick. And so if you're interested in using Wani Kani, the first three levels are free. So be sure to try the trial levels to see if it works for you. And if you end up really liking Wani Kani, you can use our special coupon code. It gives you a 25% discount for monthly and annual subscriptions. It's KEDO, K-E-D-O, or uppercase. And you can redeem this code until the end of June 2023. And the discount lasts for one year. So check out Wanikani. Now let's get back to the episode.