/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>17268989
I'm at #721/2300 and I can tell you that it has been quite helpful. I can't say for certain that it's the best use of my time, but I can say for certain that it's absolutely not wasted time. As I go I've been adding the key vocab words to a deck; my retention rate in said deck is 93%, with most of my failures being a missed reading over a missed meaning. I was shooting around 80% before. You can certainly make an argument for that 13% not being worth the time investment, but the distance between a B- and an A certainly feels like a gulf.

As you said the 'meanings' of the kanji are quite useless in many cases but even as such I find that being familiar with the kanji gives me an anchorage for the memory of the word itself. If I'm staring at a word I don't immediately recognize in Anki, I can follow a breadcrumb trail of memories starting at the kanji and hopefully leading to the word. If I'm staring at a word I don't recognize that is also composed of kanji I'm unfamiliar with, all I can do is wait for the memory to appear or hit again.

Even if you were to buy the argument that kanji study is a waste of time, everyone can agree that a few thousands or words to pad your vocabulary is progress.