Advice from skilled speakers

Hello everyone.

I am studying for JLPT2 next year and I am writing and reading many kanji every night. I am at that stage where I can read most kanji but canft ever remember them when writing them. I understand even Japanese get this problem. I can read difficult kanji mostly but will forget how to write something crazy simple sometimes.

My question is, I work from a flashcard app o use custom cards with and is it best to skip the writing part and just work from the KANJI side then if I can read it go to the next, or is it better to work from HIRAGANA and not move on until I can write the correct kanji from reading itfs hiragana?

What do you think?

Thanks

I was born and schooled in Japan. Then I moved to the U.S. I know first hand that you forget kanji if you don't write it. I can still read them fine, but writing becomes forgotten as time passes. It's not good enough just to read - you actually need to write.

Well, it depends on your goal. Nowadays you write nearly always on a computer or mobile phone so actually as long as you can read and understand the meaning of a kanji you CAN actually write it on a computer where you are writing in romaji and just need to select the right kanji. Thatfs the reason why even Japanese forget how to write kanji.

For JLPT you also donft need to be able to write anything.

But I understand that being able to write by hand is satisfactory AND helps in actually learning the form of a kanji and memorizing it better.

So I guess the answer is really it depends on how much time you have to spend on it. How productive for you it is to learn the writing for being able to learn the reading and if in the long run you plan on writing by hand often enough to make the extra mile worthwhile.

Enjoy studying Japanese!

Just to add to the other two posters, I feel that the skill of learning kanji is very similar to the skill of learning English words and spelling. So my advice to you is to study kanji in a way that suited you best when you were studying vocabulary and spelling of any other language you can now write sophisticatedly.

In my case, my kanji writing and English spelling improved greatly by writing stories and essays. It worked best because, while I hate writing the same words or letters in rows, I love writing stories and essays. So I was motivated to find out and write the best words/kanji to express whatever story I was eager to tell. I'm a Japanese native who graduated an American elementary school, if that helps.