The thing that really helps me with preventing burnout is changing the (advanced) review settings when I have a larger backlog. Change it to prioritize higher burn stage. So getting Enlightened first, then Guru II, Guru II etc. I do the amount of reviews that feel comfortable. It'll help clearing the backlog as the time between reviews at higher stages is longer. Your next session may have some words which went from Enlightened -> Guru II, and from Guru I -> Guru II. This method will prioritize kanji that you did remember in each session. Which will tremendously speed up how fast you'll clear the queue.
Naturally, this only works if WaniKani is a match for you. If you're uncomfortable with it, just try another system. Don't fall for the sunk fallacy cost-trap.
Interesting, I actually do the opposite and found it more efficient to prioritize the lower SRS reviews first to keep the new material fresh in my mind and getting them to Guru which keeps the level pace up, and then the higher SRS items like Enlightened are more likely to be remembered, making those reviews quicker for me. Whatever works for each person! Really underscores that there's no one method and we all have to make WaniKani or any method work for our individual learning styles.
yea this is what i need tbh..i find reviews to be inefficient if im only getting content im super familiar with. i need the material i forget the fastest first !
Yeah agree on that.
It's something I've only used to beat down a backlog of no/little reviews for over a week. Since the timers are longer, the items haven't gotten back into the queue yet. It gives me a motivation boost to see the counter go down from session to session.
Hey yk you can do undo on the Smouldering Durtles app or you can install a script that lets you do redos on the web version (lifesaver). In Smouldering Durtles I also use the Anki-style mode so I don't have to type on phone
If you pull new lessons you need to be present for them for the next 5 SRS windows (4, 8 hrs, 1,2,7 days).
If your schedule might not be up for it, don't pull new lessons. Otherwise big piles will keep dropping on you whenever you attempt to do reviews. 5 gigantic piles in a row might cause burn out! Even then doing big piles are easy if you respected SRS windows and can actually do your reviews with ease. But if you are struggling and forget stuff all the time, even smaller piles can cause burnout. SRS windows are not arbitrary, you need to respect them to actually remember what you learned. So freeze your account if you won't attend to it for a while.
If you randomly pull new lessons because you can, don't respect SRS windows, and also have burning items chasing you behind > You messed up.
Again, be careful when to pull new lessons. People keep saying WK is too slow, even on this thread, but I disagree, this happens because at some point you went too fast, more than you could handle.
Yes, I've sometimes stopped adding new lessons for a few weeks and prioritized chipping away at reviews. Then, start slow with new lessons again. Everyone has to find their sweet spot with pace. I'm now settled on 10-12 new items a day. Anything outside of his is just too much or too slow for me to feel motivated, keep up, and feel a sense of progression.
By freezing your acct, do you mean vacation mode? If so... does it really help, or is it just psychological? Like, I've been tempted to use that mode on vacation before, but havent as in the end I know Ill be forgetting a ton and will have to deal with the cards, no matter if they theyre all waiting on day one after the vacation, or take a few days to spool out. I haven't loved the pile of cards after the vacation but figured it's just better to see the reality of it and tackle it ASAP. But maybe that's not how it works...?
It's psychological, the forgetting curve doesn't care about your vacation
But psychological doesn't mean useless, just not having a pile of reviews can lead to less procrastination and negative feelings so it might help to turn it on depending on your perspective on a big pile of due reviews
I purposely took a break on new lessons at level 31, halfway point, so I could concentrate on grammar study and immersion.
I decided to do that because I had spent about a year doing practically nothing but WK and front loading this kanji.
It's been 190 days on that level now, I only have a few reviews every day at this point. But I've made HUGE strides in my actual comprehension in those 190 days because of my shift in focus.
I feel good with this solid 1000+ kanji base of knowledge, I'll probably start back up new kanji lessons soon but maybe just go a bit slower going forward.
Agree here. The number of items in each lesson peaks at lesson 30 and 31, then gradually reduces. I’m finding I need to read more to make memory stick with WK.
This is my plan at level ~15 rn. Hit level 30 at my current pace (9-10 days), then run back to grammar. I paused around N4 grammar and I was finding it too much to focus on both tons of new vocab, kanji that I was unable to understand other than vaguely seeing a mass of lines, and I'm excited to get back into grammar with a much deeper kanji and vocab well to pull from.
I know a lot of people go for even learning, but I've always been best at driving a spike in and getting something super deep, then using that as a crutch to make learning other aspects much faster.
I really need to do this too ... I'm at level 28 rn and I feel like my grammar is really lacking behind. It's just hard getting out of the comfort zone and switching to other means of learning.
The reality is that anki is just the pure and distilled word studying. No twists or bits. Efficiency is of course going to be better than any of the competition. Some people need that extra bit of gamification though. But it'll always be worse than pure GRIND
I don't think this is really fair. It's not only about gamification, wanikani teaches kanji and associated vocab in a specific order, using unique mnemonics that some find very helpful.
There aren't any that do the same though except the pirated one which actually doesn't really work as it shows you shit out of order / before you've even really learned the parent elements
I did the anki deck for heisig like 6 years ago so its been a while but the most common one back then did have stories with it as well as most common vocab (just checked it again)
From what i remember wani kani is basically just that but more gamified. Content seems pretty much the same except you got some extra stats.
Kanji koohi does also the same but even more focus on the stories so you can see highly upvoted stories and can also adjust your own easily
Idk about your deck it sounds like there is some vocab on the back but not actual cards or mnemonics for the vocab (incl. readings)? That's quite different from Wanikani
That's what Koohi is anyway (I made an account quickly to check it out) you can open the dictionary and see some words but that's it. The UI is also a bit rough tbh but hey it's free. However I'd pick Anki over this just because it's offline and has a better and actively developed SRS algorithm, and it's a one stop shop for vocab also.
You mean, with stolen content? And regardless, it wouldnt have the Tsurukame options etc., ways to check stats like on wkstats, etc. It's Anki, a different system. But of course, yes, if you're talking about stealing content, with most things reproducable digitally to some extent it's possible to do that. But the question is, is it a useful system. And for many people, including myself, very much so. Was very happy to pay for the lifetime, one of the best investments I've ever made.
The point is that some really like and find helpful the content specifically produced by wanikani. It doesn't "do the same" (which is something u/Kadrag said, not you, so I was responding to that) if the content isn't the same. That's like saying its completely irrelevant which piano teacher you take lessons with because the keys on the piano are the same regardless.
I mean if you really like every mnemonic and the exact order then that's fair enough. But wanikani isn't the inventor of mnemonic devices nor the idea of unofficial kanji components and from my personal experience personalised ones work way better. But I'm not saying that's the same for everyone.
There is absolutely no single method that works for everyone.
3 of my university teachers all utilized different methods for learning Kanji, all focused on different aspects which they felt were the most important and most efficient for learning.
Human brains aren't all identical. What might be the absolute best method for someone, may very well be the absolute worst for someone else.
I was just sharing my experience and I meet alot of folks who are 2 years into wanikani and have no end in sight. It seems to be a method that works for some but others get trapped into some kinda sunk cost stalemate on endless reviews and guilt.
Anki is what you make out of it. That's why it'll prob always be used until I'm fluent.
I have crazy mining setups for grabbing sentences and stuff or some days I just do reviews and nothing else. I set my desired recall rate abit lower so I'm never swamped. It usually takes 30 mins to do each day.
My main focus is immersion, Anki Is just a tool to pin words and sentences in place in hopes of making the next time I naturally see it easier to understand.
Wanikani offers a fully packaged progression system to recognise and know most common readings of all standard kanji.
It's biggest selling point is prewritten mnemonics mixed with vocab (common and obscure) that will reinforce learnt readings.
The biggest flaws imo is the time it takes (1-2 years depending on daily routine) and absolute lack of anything else. It's just kanji and vocab most of which are useless to beginners.its a paid sub when free alternatives exist. And it's biggest flaw is how it'll take over your learning life eventually unless your very strict about taking it slowly. First few months are easy and then you get 250+ reviews a day and lose all will to live. The scheduling is non customisable.
No you cant make your own. It gives you like 6000+ words to also practice. A lot (not the majority tho) of them are n1 sorta obscure or even worse (archaic) .
As someone who’s restarted WaniKani back to level 1 from 20 something, you start to get burnt out and doing reviews gets hard sometimes. You put it off for just one day and then it quickly snowballs into a week, a month, months, and even years.
Sometimes you won’t always have motivation to do your reviews or lessons, discipline is required to beat WaniKani for sure.
Me to a point. Wanikani took up basically all my time for studying and it burned me out. I was also not in the best mindset at the time (its better now) so when i took a day off it ended my studying motivation. Im just restarting now 1 1/2 years later with a better study plan than Wanikani grinding ;)
Yeah it's definitely important to not value one method too much, and just do a little bit consistently. During my wanikani break I listened to more podcasts whenever I had free time and my listening ability has never been better.
I’ve had decent listening because i watch a lot of japanese content but because i mainly used WK as my primary study method (because of the time sink) i am lacking the grammar i need to be able to immerse properly. That is what i will be changing this time around.
Its best to stay from the WK forums and all of the speed runners. There are a lot of people in the community trying to play wanikani, not learn Japanese.
University and at times getting bored of wanikani, I went into the trap of basing all my japanese study on wanikani, which made it hard to see any real progress in learning the language
I didn't have any issues until I skipped a week when I had a family emergency all of a sudden the review pile was insane and the whole process got backlogged pretty hard.
You basically just have to 'hell week' yourself back. As soon as you let the review backlog push back your lessons, it snowballs fast. I should have it all fixed within a couple more levels, but that's intentionally doing 30 new lessons every day.
Levels 19-24 took me like 30-90 days each to get through after clipping along at a 12-15 day pace. Push through it. I'm now back on that faster pace and things are smoother. It happens.
My tips:
1. Use an extension or other app that lets you reorder your reviews so that you're reviewing the lower SRS items first. This keeps your pace up and ensures that the new items stay fresh in your mind during the initial learning stages. This is helpful if you can't seem to get new items to stick because they get buried in the review order and you don't get to them fast enough.
Prioritize doing all reviews, but I also found it helpful to ensure that I'm doing lessons every day, too, because the new vocab reinforces the kanji in a way that makes you forget less and keep the pace up. There's a sweet spot for everyone.
The difficulty in levels can be uneven because we all learn differently and some things just don't stick. Some levels have a high number of "irregular" or weird readings, or the mnemonics just don't work for whatever reason. (Seriously, some of the mnemonics are just phoned in, have no binding logic, and say things like "This kanji has the radicals for stool and sheep. Your friend Koichi likes stools and sheep!") The quality and difficulty of the presentation can vary, so push on and ride it out. You eventually hit some levels that are smoother for you
Perhaps it would help to cap your lessons and reviews per day? I know we often want to just gogogogo when we hit a new level, but maybe if you leave it at 10 lessons per day, regardless of how many are available, you'll find it more sustainable long-term.
I hate to say this but this is unfortunately purely a skill issue. I do not go to bed until I finish all my reviews, and my average time on a level has been around 8 days. I went from level 1 to level 42 in about a year.
I don't bother with motivation, if I have reviews pending before I hit the sack I just cannot sleep.
Hi yeah ofc, it's a 3d party app called smoulderingdurdles for a website called wanikani. Wanikani teaches you kanji and vocabulary with mnemonics (short stories or pictures for memorization) and uses a spaced repetition system which basically enforces you to remember!
Anki mode is absolutely bonkers on it too if you have the discipline to mark yourself wrong. I can absolutely rocket through my reviews when I'm on the ball.
Ive reset twice both around lvl 25 or 26. I just hit 25 for the third time and this time im not as burned out but im gonna pause trying to advance levels and work on a big backlog of vocab. I was only focused on kanji and radicals so if there were some days I didnt have any new lessons for those I just wouldnt do any so im pretty behind in vocab. I wanna work through that a bit and work on the kanji currently in my rotation. Both times I reset around this level because I started getting a lot more kanji that looked similar so id just be in a cycle with some kanji where I level them up a bit then forget them after a while a reset the progress so id just be seeing the sames ones forever and adding new ones on top
i cant post on the community because i havent create reputation here. i am confused on one fact since i got the idea of learning japanese. i dont know any structure of how to learn japanese. i cant learn japanese with gpt. because it eventually forgets the pace and gives information in a minimal format. i even now getting that i dont want to learn japanese or any language with ai. i dont learn japanese with a structure from the internet free resources.
I’m pretty sure the strategy around learning here its to take things slow. WaniKani forces you to be speed limited to better concrete things and while it sounds like you don’t need that really helps some people with long term memory. I think ultimately it becomes a question of what works for you and for many that’s WaniKani. It’s possible they are trying to draw out more money from users but unlikely considering the creator has referenced these studies in the past.
I believe that a lot of people don’t want to think about what to study or how to study they just want to log in do the study then move on. WaniKani provides that.
I work at a school that teaches computer programming and I am often asked why would someone pay to learn programming when you can self teach. The answer is the money locks you in since you are fiscally invested now, you don’t need to think about what to study next or collect any questions etc, and it’s a crafted experience.
While I agree you can tune jpdb, Anki, literal flash card, etc for free there’s something to be said about simplicity
Again I go back to my prior point. Learning programming is extremely easy I could probably teach you C in like 1 month yet students pay $30k per semester at my college to learn from us in a structured way. Self teaching programming is a million times easier than learning Japanese because there are an obscene number of resources in literally every language yet they still pay us for the same content.
The mnemonics on JPDB are dookie (or missing altogether) and are only for meaning, and there is no deck that has consideration for building up kanji complexity and reinforcing the kanji, and gives you no ability to actually input the answer or test reading/meaning separately which is better for memory
JPDB simply doesn't do what Wanikani does, even if you argue the benefits outweigh what's missing or that what's missing is worthless, it's just a different approach and software really
I'm at 600 and something 🤣
Better now I use a proper app. Yeah for redo!! So many lost time because of typos..
Also doing some marumori.
One of my problems is I'm so afraid of burning myself out that I don't do lessons when I actually could.
The thing that really helps me with preventing burnout is changing the (advanced) review settings when I have a larger backlog. Change it to prioritize higher burn stage. So getting Enlightened first, then Guru II, Guru II etc. I do the amount of reviews that feel comfortable. It'll help clearing the backlog as the time between reviews at higher stages is longer. Your next session may have some words which went from Enlightened -> Guru II, and from Guru I -> Guru II. This method will prioritize kanji that you did remember in each session. Which will tremendously speed up how fast you'll clear the queue.
Naturally, this only works if WaniKani is a match for you. If you're uncomfortable with it, just try another system. Don't fall for the sunk fallacy cost-trap.
I also need to stop the OCD that to need to finish ALL the reviews, let it for days i do have more time if needed.
Interesting, I actually do the opposite and found it more efficient to prioritize the lower SRS reviews first to keep the new material fresh in my mind and getting them to Guru which keeps the level pace up, and then the higher SRS items like Enlightened are more likely to be remembered, making those reviews quicker for me. Whatever works for each person! Really underscores that there's no one method and we all have to make WaniKani or any method work for our individual learning styles.
yea this is what i need tbh..i find reviews to be inefficient if im only getting content im super familiar with. i need the material i forget the fastest first !
Yeah agree on that.
It's something I've only used to beat down a backlog of no/little reviews for over a week. Since the timers are longer, the items haven't gotten back into the queue yet. It gives me a motivation boost to see the counter go down from session to session.
Hey yk you can do undo on the Smouldering Durtles app or you can install a script that lets you do redos on the web version (lifesaver). In Smouldering Durtles I also use the Anki-style mode so I don't have to type on phone
If you pull new lessons you need to be present for them for the next 5 SRS windows (4, 8 hrs, 1,2,7 days).
If your schedule might not be up for it, don't pull new lessons. Otherwise big piles will keep dropping on you whenever you attempt to do reviews. 5 gigantic piles in a row might cause burn out! Even then doing big piles are easy if you respected SRS windows and can actually do your reviews with ease. But if you are struggling and forget stuff all the time, even smaller piles can cause burnout. SRS windows are not arbitrary, you need to respect them to actually remember what you learned. So freeze your account if you won't attend to it for a while.
If you randomly pull new lessons because you can, don't respect SRS windows, and also have burning items chasing you behind > You messed up.
Again, be careful when to pull new lessons. People keep saying WK is too slow, even on this thread, but I disagree, this happens because at some point you went too fast, more than you could handle.
Yes, I've sometimes stopped adding new lessons for a few weeks and prioritized chipping away at reviews. Then, start slow with new lessons again. Everyone has to find their sweet spot with pace. I'm now settled on 10-12 new items a day. Anything outside of his is just too much or too slow for me to feel motivated, keep up, and feel a sense of progression.
By freezing your acct, do you mean vacation mode? If so... does it really help, or is it just psychological? Like, I've been tempted to use that mode on vacation before, but havent as in the end I know Ill be forgetting a ton and will have to deal with the cards, no matter if they theyre all waiting on day one after the vacation, or take a few days to spool out. I haven't loved the pile of cards after the vacation but figured it's just better to see the reality of it and tackle it ASAP. But maybe that's not how it works...?
It's psychological, the forgetting curve doesn't care about your vacation
But psychological doesn't mean useless, just not having a pile of reviews can lead to less procrastination and negative feelings so it might help to turn it on depending on your perspective on a big pile of due reviews
If freezes the SRS timer on items. So when you get back you won't have a mountain of reviews piled up.
I purposely took a break on new lessons at level 31, halfway point, so I could concentrate on grammar study and immersion.
I decided to do that because I had spent about a year doing practically nothing but WK and front loading this kanji.
It's been 190 days on that level now, I only have a few reviews every day at this point. But I've made HUGE strides in my actual comprehension in those 190 days because of my shift in focus.
I feel good with this solid 1000+ kanji base of knowledge, I'll probably start back up new kanji lessons soon but maybe just go a bit slower going forward.
Agree here. The number of items in each lesson peaks at lesson 30 and 31, then gradually reduces. I’m finding I need to read more to make memory stick with WK.
This is my plan at level ~15 rn. Hit level 30 at my current pace (9-10 days), then run back to grammar. I paused around N4 grammar and I was finding it too much to focus on both tons of new vocab, kanji that I was unable to understand other than vaguely seeing a mass of lines, and I'm excited to get back into grammar with a much deeper kanji and vocab well to pull from.
I know a lot of people go for even learning, but I've always been best at driving a spike in and getting something super deep, then using that as a crutch to make learning other aspects much faster.
I really need to do this too ... I'm at level 28 rn and I feel like my grammar is really lacking behind. It's just hard getting out of the comfort zone and switching to other means of learning.
I quit for this kinda reason.
I did rtk to learn writing and recognition and now doing just vocab in anki. I made 100x progress in 6 months than I did 1 year in wanikani.
I love the idea of wanikani but the reality sucks tbh.
The reality is that anki is just the pure and distilled word studying. No twists or bits. Efficiency is of course going to be better than any of the competition. Some people need that extra bit of gamification though. But it'll always be worse than pure GRIND
I don't think this is really fair. It's not only about gamification, wanikani teaches kanji and associated vocab in a specific order, using unique mnemonics that some find very helpful.
You can also just get an anki Deck that does the same though without ever being forced to be stuck on a level
There aren't any that do the same though except the pirated one which actually doesn't really work as it shows you shit out of order / before you've even really learned the parent elements
I didn’t do wani kani itself but how is it different to studying for example heisig order and getting an anki deck fire that? (Or kanji koohi)
You'd be missing all the vocab that reinforces the kanji, and all the pre-written mnemonics with the RTK decks
Kanji Koohi isn't an anki deck, I haven't used it but if it's similar then by all means use that instead, can't argue with the price of free
I did the anki deck for heisig like 6 years ago so its been a while but the most common one back then did have stories with it as well as most common vocab (just checked it again)
From what i remember wani kani is basically just that but more gamified. Content seems pretty much the same except you got some extra stats.
Kanji koohi does also the same but even more focus on the stories so you can see highly upvoted stories and can also adjust your own easily
Idk about your deck it sounds like there is some vocab on the back but not actual cards or mnemonics for the vocab (incl. readings)? That's quite different from Wanikani
That's what Koohi is anyway (I made an account quickly to check it out) you can open the dictionary and see some words but that's it. The UI is also a bit rough tbh but hey it's free. However I'd pick Anki over this just because it's offline and has a better and actively developed SRS algorithm, and it's a one stop shop for vocab also.
Yea i prefer anki as well, the only advntage koohi has is that you can browse many stories becaue sometimes the recommended one just doesnt stick
You mean, with stolen content? And regardless, it wouldnt have the Tsurukame options etc., ways to check stats like on wkstats, etc. It's Anki, a different system. But of course, yes, if you're talking about stealing content, with most things reproducable digitally to some extent it's possible to do that. But the question is, is it a useful system. And for many people, including myself, very much so. Was very happy to pay for the lifetime, one of the best investments I've ever made.
Stolen content? What do you mean?
You can use decks others have made available or make the flashcards yourself and put whatever you want on them.
Also Anki has a whole stats page too thats more in depth than wanikani.
The point is that some really like and find helpful the content specifically produced by wanikani. It doesn't "do the same" (which is something u/Kadrag said, not you, so I was responding to that) if the content isn't the same. That's like saying its completely irrelevant which piano teacher you take lessons with because the keys on the piano are the same regardless.
Oh gotcha.
I mean if you really like every mnemonic and the exact order then that's fair enough. But wanikani isn't the inventor of mnemonic devices nor the idea of unofficial kanji components and from my personal experience personalised ones work way better. But I'm not saying that's the same for everyone.
Same here, fair enough, not the same for everyone. It's a package that works well for many people.
it's not really stealing tbh, wanikani gives you all the mnemonics without signing up if you go to their website
There is absolutely no single method that works for everyone.
3 of my university teachers all utilized different methods for learning Kanji, all focused on different aspects which they felt were the most important and most efficient for learning.
Human brains aren't all identical. What might be the absolute best method for someone, may very well be the absolute worst for someone else.
This is very true.
I was just sharing my experience and I meet alot of folks who are 2 years into wanikani and have no end in sight. It seems to be a method that works for some but others get trapped into some kinda sunk cost stalemate on endless reviews and guilt.
Anki is what you make out of it. That's why it'll prob always be used until I'm fluent.
I have crazy mining setups for grabbing sentences and stuff or some days I just do reviews and nothing else. I set my desired recall rate abit lower so I'm never swamped. It usually takes 30 mins to do each day.
My main focus is immersion, Anki Is just a tool to pin words and sentences in place in hopes of making the next time I naturally see it easier to understand.
What is rtk
remembering the kanji
agree. i learn much more by just consuming a lot of content in combination with anki even though it's more chaotic
I've never used wanikani because it was paid, but can I ask what it's like, what are the pros/cons of it compared to, say, anki?
Wanikani offers a fully packaged progression system to recognise and know most common readings of all standard kanji.
It's biggest selling point is prewritten mnemonics mixed with vocab (common and obscure) that will reinforce learnt readings.
The biggest flaws imo is the time it takes (1-2 years depending on daily routine) and absolute lack of anything else. It's just kanji and vocab most of which are useless to beginners.its a paid sub when free alternatives exist. And it's biggest flaw is how it'll take over your learning life eventually unless your very strict about taking it slowly. First few months are easy and then you get 250+ reviews a day and lose all will to live. The scheduling is non customisable.
I see, thanks. Is it just kanji or also words that you can practise? Can you make your own flashcards as well?
No you cant make your own. It gives you like 6000+ words to also practice. A lot (not the majority tho) of them are n1 sorta obscure or even worse (archaic) .
That sounds like a lot indeed... are they arranged by JLPT or just random?
The kanji are arranged in order to teach you components first and then it builds.
Systems like wanikani and rtk really should need people finishing them to gain full value.
What's keeping you stuck?
As someone who’s restarted WaniKani back to level 1 from 20 something, you start to get burnt out and doing reviews gets hard sometimes. You put it off for just one day and then it quickly snowballs into a week, a month, months, and even years.
Sometimes you won’t always have motivation to do your reviews or lessons, discipline is required to beat WaniKani for sure.
Me to a point. Wanikani took up basically all my time for studying and it burned me out. I was also not in the best mindset at the time (its better now) so when i took a day off it ended my studying motivation. Im just restarting now 1 1/2 years later with a better study plan than Wanikani grinding ;)
Yeah it's definitely important to not value one method too much, and just do a little bit consistently. During my wanikani break I listened to more podcasts whenever I had free time and my listening ability has never been better.
I’ve had decent listening because i watch a lot of japanese content but because i mainly used WK as my primary study method (because of the time sink) i am lacking the grammar i need to be able to immerse properly. That is what i will be changing this time around.
Its best to stay from the WK forums and all of the speed runners. There are a lot of people in the community trying to play wanikani, not learn Japanese.
University and at times getting bored of wanikani, I went into the trap of basing all my japanese study on wanikani, which made it hard to see any real progress in learning the language
I'm at level 14 on my almost 4th month idk if it is harder on your level but can't say I have struggled that much longest unit took 11 days for me
I didn't have any issues until I skipped a week when I had a family emergency all of a sudden the review pile was insane and the whole process got backlogged pretty hard.
oh that's bad, I hope it'll be better
You basically just have to 'hell week' yourself back. As soon as you let the review backlog push back your lessons, it snowballs fast. I should have it all fixed within a couple more levels, but that's intentionally doing 30 new lessons every day.
Levels 19-24 took me like 30-90 days each to get through after clipping along at a 12-15 day pace. Push through it. I'm now back on that faster pace and things are smoother. It happens.
My tips: 1. Use an extension or other app that lets you reorder your reviews so that you're reviewing the lower SRS items first. This keeps your pace up and ensures that the new items stay fresh in your mind during the initial learning stages. This is helpful if you can't seem to get new items to stick because they get buried in the review order and you don't get to them fast enough.
Prioritize doing all reviews, but I also found it helpful to ensure that I'm doing lessons every day, too, because the new vocab reinforces the kanji in a way that makes you forget less and keep the pace up. There's a sweet spot for everyone.
The difficulty in levels can be uneven because we all learn differently and some things just don't stick. Some levels have a high number of "irregular" or weird readings, or the mnemonics just don't work for whatever reason. (Seriously, some of the mnemonics are just phoned in, have no binding logic, and say things like "This kanji has the radicals for stool and sheep. Your friend Koichi likes stools and sheep!") The quality and difficulty of the presentation can vary, so push on and ride it out. You eventually hit some levels that are smoother for you
I unfreezed my account and quickly realised why I let it freeze in the first place.
Lvl 8, 1200 reviews
Bye 🥶
I had the same, and I Just reset it from 8 to 1. I'm taking things slower now and it actually helps me.
I already reset twice (once from 10, once from 8) and I hit this wall again and again.
Perhaps it would help to cap your lessons and reviews per day? I know we often want to just gogogogo when we hit a new level, but maybe if you leave it at 10 lessons per day, regardless of how many are available, you'll find it more sustainable long-term.
I hate to say this but this is unfortunately purely a skill issue. I do not go to bed until I finish all my reviews, and my average time on a level has been around 8 days. I went from level 1 to level 42 in about a year.
I don't bother with motivation, if I have reviews pending before I hit the sack I just cannot sleep.
Mid to late 20s has been the hardest part of WK for me so far. But sticking with it has paid dividends.
wait what is this?
It's a mobile app for Wanikani
What's the app name in iOS appstore?
I think this app is only on Android, I just know because I also have it, it's called Smouldering Durtles
On iOS there’s Tsurukame that gives you more flexibility with lesson choices and typos Really recommended if English isn’t your main language
I’m new here, what is that? Can someone explain it to me, please?
Hi yeah ofc, it's a 3d party app called smoulderingdurdles for a website called wanikani. Wanikani teaches you kanji and vocabulary with mnemonics (short stories or pictures for memorization) and uses a spaced repetition system which basically enforces you to remember!
Anki mode is absolutely bonkers on it too if you have the discipline to mark yourself wrong. I can absolutely rocket through my reviews when I'm on the ball.
That sounds so cool, I’ll give it a shot, thanks a lot!
What is this ?
i was 2 month on level 14, and 135 days on level 15.
Ive reset twice both around lvl 25 or 26. I just hit 25 for the third time and this time im not as burned out but im gonna pause trying to advance levels and work on a big backlog of vocab. I was only focused on kanji and radicals so if there were some days I didnt have any new lessons for those I just wouldnt do any so im pretty behind in vocab. I wanna work through that a bit and work on the kanji currently in my rotation. Both times I reset around this level because I started getting a lot more kanji that looked similar so id just be in a cycle with some kanji where I level them up a bit then forget them after a while a reset the progress so id just be seeing the sames ones forever and adding new ones on top
is this wanikani android app? Is there no ios app and how long did this take yo
What is this and should I use over wanikani?
i cant post on the community because i havent create reputation here. i am confused on one fact since i got the idea of learning japanese. i dont know any structure of how to learn japanese. i cant learn japanese with gpt. because it eventually forgets the pace and gives information in a minimal format. i even now getting that i dont want to learn japanese or any language with ai. i dont learn japanese with a structure from the internet free resources.
What app?
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I’m pretty sure the strategy around learning here its to take things slow. WaniKani forces you to be speed limited to better concrete things and while it sounds like you don’t need that really helps some people with long term memory. I think ultimately it becomes a question of what works for you and for many that’s WaniKani. It’s possible they are trying to draw out more money from users but unlikely considering the creator has referenced these studies in the past.
I do agree though jpdb is a great resource :)
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I believe that a lot of people don’t want to think about what to study or how to study they just want to log in do the study then move on. WaniKani provides that.
I work at a school that teaches computer programming and I am often asked why would someone pay to learn programming when you can self teach. The answer is the money locks you in since you are fiscally invested now, you don’t need to think about what to study next or collect any questions etc, and it’s a crafted experience.
While I agree you can tune jpdb, Anki, literal flash card, etc for free there’s something to be said about simplicity
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Again I go back to my prior point. Learning programming is extremely easy I could probably teach you C in like 1 month yet students pay $30k per semester at my college to learn from us in a structured way. Self teaching programming is a million times easier than learning Japanese because there are an obscene number of resources in literally every language yet they still pay us for the same content.
The mnemonics on JPDB are dookie (or missing altogether) and are only for meaning, and there is no deck that has consideration for building up kanji complexity and reinforcing the kanji, and gives you no ability to actually input the answer or test reading/meaning separately which is better for memory
JPDB simply doesn't do what Wanikani does, even if you argue the benefits outweigh what's missing or that what's missing is worthless, it's just a different approach and software really
Oh wow I've never heard of that one, what makes it faster than wanikani when they are both SRS systems? I might give it a try, thanks!
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I’m starting to think you might like JPDB
put all the kanji in a anki deck and brute force them
Okay 🤷♂️ who cares