I have just started WK already being at an N2-ish level and having completed RTK years ago.
The point of using WK for me is to master 音読み readings which I am not solid enough at.
I am at level 3 and it is naturally extremely obvious stuff. I set the max daily lessons to 100 a few days ago, and it is very manageable as there is not any new knowledge at this point so I can rush very fast through the many reviews.
Now will this backfire and create a burden for later even if I reduce the amount progressively?
I’d like to avoid losing a couple months on doing reviews for nothing but would rather not shoot myself in the foot for later on when it will match my actual level.
The way this SRS system works means that the content you learn in lessons is going to be repeated a lot before you can attain a burned status and have it exit your review flow. I don’t know how long you can even maintain a 100-lesson-per-day pace before you dry up on content, but you could try if you wanted to and are prepared
Just keep in mind that 100 lessons at once (and proceeding to do the following reviews at optimal times and with correct answers) is going to end up as ~500 reviews throughout the week- and plenty, plenty more beyond that. If you were doing that consistently, your review backlog is going to be unprecedentedly massive and quite tedious to cut through (especially with extremely easy content). When it gets into later SRS stages, that’ll mean there will be giant spikes of hundreds of reviews on top of everything else you have more recently taken on as well. Its your call if you want to deal with that
If you want to keep making fast progress as you’re already comfortable with a lot of the material to the point of not needing reinforcement- it’s worth noting that vocabulary does not impact your level-up speed as it is not required (whereas radicals and Kanji are). If you click the advanced tab on the dashboard, you could skim through and be selective with what vocab you add to your reviews and just ignore the rest- maintaining pace and not having to deal with a bunch of stuff you already know. And/or conversely, I think it would be worth checking out some of the userscript options- as something like the Anki mode toggle could make giant review mountains way more manageable since you wouldn’t have to waste time and potential typos manually typing in each answer
It ultimately comes down to how much time you’re willing to sink in on a daily basis, but if you’re trying to be optimal and brisk to get to a more compelling level of content- I’d definitely weigh options to ensure you have a more focused path
Congrats on returning to the language. I set max daily lessons to 100 around level 4 and am now level 8. I do reviews in the morning before work, during lunch break and then before bed. The only times I’ve had more than 100 reviews due was caused by travel/tending to other obligations. Each time the reviews have ballooned it has created an unpleasant experience. You can probably handle it and the unpleasantness will be less given your experience.
Having the max daily lessons set to 100 doesn’t mean I regularly see 100 lessons available. In my experience the highest number of lessons are only available at level up. For example, I had 100+ lessons available upon reaching level 8.
I notice that I am happiest when “Recent Lessons” figure is around 60 so I try to maintain this number. I have never done 100 lessons in a day, at most 40. I have no prior Japanese experience.
WaniKani may not be the most efficient method for you if you’re already at an N2 reading level and only interested in onyomi readings. Sometimes the primary WK reading for a kanji is kunyomi because it’s more common. The vocab is also a mixed bag. But if you have time to do 100 lessons a day and the subsequent pile of reviews from that then by all means どうぞ.
it is a bit hard to judge indeed as the first levels are beginner level, but I like the approach a lot so I felt it would make sense at one point.. If it doesn’t get me months to get there which I can’t tell really.
well 100 reviews each day is totally ok for me as long as they are easy, I am sure having more than a hundred will get tedious at some point though.
I am worried I cannot control the review amount later once I get more challenging material coming as it could be too late in the process.
Is there even a risk to get way more reviews than 100ish though as the amount of studied items pile up?
good tip for the vocab selection I’ll look into that !
I actually never left Japanese just reading wasn’t a priority
interesting, so you can manage to keep control on the number, that is my main concern. I’d imagine statistically the bigger amount of entry you have to review the less control you get. But that may not me that significant in practice
I worded it a little strange, my apologies, but to be clear I am saying that every 100 lessons you do would be 100 items put in the larger review pool (not just 100 reviews total at the end of the day)- and that stacks more and more as you keep doing lessons. Anecdotally I have only been doing ~15-20 lessons daily lately (with a handful of off-days sprinkled in) and my daily review pile ultimately hovers around 200 at minimum
It’s not 1-1 given things like review accuracy shift the numbers around quite a bit, but generally speaking if you’re wanting to put in a pace ~5x what I am right now- those numbers are going to catch up to you probably around ~5x how they end up working for me, so be aware of what you’re getting into
Again, I’m not sure it’s even possible to go at a 100-lesson-per-day pace given how the WK level system works, but if you are cautious about large waves of tedious review piles getting out of hand- that’ll certainly do it. The SRS system also spans a long period of time, so you’ll be having to fight those large waves (assuming you’re not making mistakes) atleast ~5 or 6 months later down the road, and plenty of steps in-between. Personally speaking I wouldn’t attempt that kind of task without some very specific planning and tools as mentioned before
I just want to say the opposite of what @drackyslime is saying as far as advice.
@stephane1234 you sound like you think it will be fine but are nervous about long term. the answer is that it will be fine. the only alteration that doing 100 lessons in one day versus over 5 days is that it bunches up the reviews slightly. right? the SRS system is not dependent on other material in your queue, each item has an individual timer. if you start 100 timers on the same day, they’ll tick at the same rate. if you start 100 timers on 5 consecutive days, you’ll see them come due on 5 consecutive days.
i’ve been going as fast as possible, doing 100 lessons in one day as often as i’m allowed. here’s my “just started level 10” schedule for the rest of the week. as you can see I have fewer total reviews than @drackyslime at the moment, and they’re less evenly distributed (although because the bulk of the ones coming up soonest are early apprentice reviews, they’ll go back through the queue pretty quickly.)
I agree with you on a lot of what you’ve said- my point was definitely somewhat inflated going on the predication that every day you’ll be doing that kind of workload- which is ultimately impossible, but just trying to illustrate the content relationship. My advice was ultimately just to be mindful, plan, and ensure you have the right tools for the very specific conditions of this job- which is ultimately what you were saying as well
That being said, I (respectfully) think that this statement deserves more weight because it changes the workflow a lot more than just what the forecast or a parenthetical addition states
Assume that it’s first thing in the morning, you just did 100 lessons (and these are the only things in your workflow), no mistakes are/will be made, and you want to work as optimally as possible- so you do your reviews immediately when they are available;
Your review forecast will say +100 items in the next 24 hours, for a weekly total of 100- not a large ask. 3 hours later, you go do your 100 reviews- but because the SRS system puts them back in so fast, by the end of the same day you’ll have to do that same batch of 100 once more. And then a day later, and then 2 days later.
By the end of the week- that initial 100 reviews on the forecast ended up being 4x as much as displayed in practice. In a practical setting where things are also pretty consistently being added in, and especially down the road when more things begin to re-enter the cycle it ultimately will end up being a lot to juggle on a day-to-day basis, even if there are more prominent gaps
You mention that doing lessons is like setting a timer- which is true. Even if there is consistency/predictability, the reality is that the more timers you set at once, the more are going to ring at once- and if the primary concern is managability of those timers, that’s the throughline that I want them to be aware of in their approach so they can plan more appropriately
so as a follow up, I have been using WK for a month or so now, set at 100 max daily lessons. And I am unsure if I get any speed benefit from this setting.
What happens is I get a lot of lessons VERY occasionally, but most days zero lessons. Yesterday I even was frustrated to not only have zero lessons as usual but barely have any reviews on a day off (20 I think?).
Is that uneven distribution normal even if you set to a lower number lessons or do they get spread out better with a lower lesson limit number?
In which case I may lower the number, as the point was to gain time but I use WK mostly to get a solid routine as well, so ideally as even as possible everyday which is far from being the case right now.
PS : I have about 100% success rates, but level up in a little over seven days
Yes, if you set yourself up to do all available lessons in one sitting, then all of your reviews will come at once, as well. If you spread out your lessons so that you are doing about the same amount of new lessons each day, then your reviews will also be spread out evenly.
If you’re determined to maintain max pace, then I’d recommend doing only the radicals and kanji as soon as they become available, but then spreading out the vocab words across the remaining days.
Just remember that your number of reviews will continue to increase as you progress, and may eventually become unmanageable unless you have a lot of time to spend on WK. Your success rate is also likely to decrease as your brain gets saturated. The first 10 levels are the easiest.
Tbqh, it sounds like you’d be much better off with Renshuu.org
On Renshuu, you can set max reviews per day or per schedule (like an anki deck). You can use schedules for specific jlpt levels if you want or set up a kanji helper schedule for something like a 1000 most frequent words list or whatever you like.
There’s a lot of other stuff you can do on Renshuu as well and it’s free unless you want to support the dev, which you can do through a package that gives you extras like listening to sentences in quizzes and unlocking more kanji writing game levels.
If you do all available lessons when you get them, all reviews as they come, and have a 100% success rate, you will get new lessons every 3.5 days (and level up every 7 days).
WK isn’t well suited for your use case where you already have a significant amount of previous knowledge. There is no ability to skip to a later level and right now you’re spending a lot of time going through content that is probably > 95% very natural to you already.
Take a look at some of the content in the higher levels (use the bar at the top of the page to look at content from any level). At what point is a lot of the material new to you? The 20s? The 30s? Even higher? If you’re pretty comfortable with everything you see through the 20s then this is probably a very inefficient use of your time as it’s going to be several more months of this before you actually get to any significantly new material.
I have tried it briefly a few years back and remember being turned down by the interface but it probably has changed since. But I think wanikani is alright for me even if it is on the slow side as it fills the role of knowledge maintenance anyway which is important in the long run.
this is very hard to estimate as I have done RTK maybe 8 years back and have kept occasionally reading japanese ever since. there is no such thing as you know or don’t know a kanji for the majority of them as you tend to think early in the process especially doing RTK (WK with vocab is more in touch with real knowledge IMO). There is definitely a lot of nuance in-between and it gets even more obvious as you forget the mnemonic stories with time.
I am already familiar with all of them I think they all ring a bell, but my mastery of many of them is not there, and as I mentioned earlier my 音読み especially is lacking on even some basic kanji.
some of them I just vaguely have an idea so there is no ideal starting point really.
The vocab also has room for improvement even at early stages (I just learned a few planets names I had no clue about).
So for now I think I am satisfied with the WK road, just trying to get it more smooth I guess,
There’s a tutorial now on how to use the interface, but I don’t believe it’s otherwise changed.
Renshuu allows you much more control of the pacing, whether you want it to be slow or fast. I’m sure someone has made a topic about the workload at max speed (which is what you’re doing rn) daily. I remember spending hours a day when I was in the 30s back before I quit.
You might want to also check how many kanji readings out of the total common ones are included with WK as well.
I already got the years plan on WK so I am sticking with it, but thanks for the recommandation I guess I would have tried it otherwise. May help someone else reading this topic as well
I think as others have mentioned, at your level, you’re going to be spending lots of time getting through content you’re very familiar with or will pick up really fast. The issue will be with time gating, and you may spend extra SRS time learning non-useful vocab. For new learners, you could maybe justify it with helping to enforce the kanji, but it’s generally considered an inefficient use of time. I would suggest an Anki deck at this point.
You’ll pretty much be stuck at around 7 days per level if you are going at max speed with lessons and reviews. Inevitably, you will have days with no lessons and just reviews - a lot of reviews. I’m on my first fast level(~3.5 days), but prior to this my current reviews average to around 1700/week when aiming for 7days/level. Some days, the reviews are as low as 150, and has peaked at 400 before depending on the level up days. At level 43, it has taken me around 10 months and I’ve yet to complete all of the N2 Kanji according to wkstats . I’ll note again here that a considerable portion of these reviews are on questionable vocab.
Now I understand you’ve already purchased a plan on WK, so if you feel the need to continue with WK, maybe I can give a few pointers on your journey. Be sure to check out this post, as it has helped me a ton
Imo user scripts are a must have, otherwise stock WK is frustrating. Reorder script to review level up radicals/kanji first, undo for typos, self-study to solidify newly unlocked kanji to maintain level up speed… etc. When I’m more tired or am multi-tasking like watching videos/eating/away from computer/between rounds while gaming, I will use the Tsurukame app(IOS but there is an android equivalent), which has an Anki mode to mark answers as Right/Wrong so I don’t need to type. There should be a user script for this as well but I prefer the app.When you get to a high # of reviews, just know that you don’t have to clear out your entire review stack each day. It’s more important to be consistent and work around your time commitments.
