I have been stuck in Wanikani for awhile now. I have spent the last 4 days doing Wanikani for up to 3 hours per day. I took a break for awhile (for the same reason… no new lessons) so I had 600+ items in my queue and I was determined to get through all of them. I’m between jobs at the moment so I can take 3 hours, but I’m worried about when I get a job. 3 hours per day probably isn’t sustainable. 1 hour a day seems reasonable to me, 3 does not.
Another thing to note is that I haven’t got a single new lesson in the last week. Is Wanikani bugged? I want to advance but I’m not getting any new lessons!
Today I opened up my dashboard and was shocked to see that I have zero new lessons and 200 new reviews after completely clearing my reviews the day before. Is that normal?
That is fairly normal. If you were doing all of your lessons at once as they came up (usually 65-90!), then you eventually get this kind of pile-up. Also, you need to have 90% of the kanji reviews get to Guru level (4 correct reviews) in order to unlock more lessons (and level up). As you do the radicals, the associated kanji unlock. As you do the kanji, the associated vocab unlock.
I hope this helps.
If you want your number of reviews to slow down, do less lessons at one time when your next level’s lessons unlock. By keeping an eye on your number of Apprentice (and Guru, to some extent) items, you can control this.
Taking a look at your items it looks like you have 312 in your apprentice queue, which is pretty high! The number of apprentice items largely impacts the amount of daily reviews you’re going to be seeing because these recur most frequently — I recommend taking some time to get your apprentice count down before doing new lessons whenever they get unlocked
As for where your lessons are, they get unlocked when you guru radicals and kanji items, which is done by essentially getting an item correct 4 times in a row, so if you have a lot of leeches consisting of your current level’s radicals and kanji, it’ll take some time before your next level up and new lessons
don’t look at mine! after an absence i’ve finally whittled my 3k reviews to 700~ in apprentice queue looooool this is a nice change of topic from the ‘why aren’t there more reviews/lessons???!!! i’mmaaaa raaaage’
I think @MissMisc gives solid advice with regards to a lower Apprentice count helping towards keeping down the review tide.
About new lessons unlocking:
If you use WK on a device where you can install user scripts, maybe the Dashboard Progress Pluss script can help. It shows you a visual representation of your current level’s kanji and radical progress towards Guru. If you’re wondering if it’s glitched, this can help you track whether the required amounts of words have been Guru’d.
It shows how many items are at what SRS stage in your Apprentice and Guru queues. That way I can easily see how many items are at Apprentice 4. If I’m struggling and bumping many items back down to Apprentice 1, I know I’ll have very many reviews coming up, and I’ll ease up on lessons. But if most of my Apprentice queue is 4, I know they’ll be moving to Guru soon - which means they’re on a longer SRS interval, and they won’t be snowballing back to me in the short term.
It’s late, and I’m pretty tired, so I’m not sure that made any sense!
Thank you all! This is very reassuring. Because my queue has been so large, I have been focused on recognition speed but I know I need to slow down a bit and focus more on memorization.
If you want a better idea of when your next reviews are coming up (and so you can try to not let them clump up as much) you can also search for and add the Ultimate Timeline script (by the same person as Dashboard Progress Plus, the amazing rfindley). Then if you know you have say, 200 reviews coming up, you can decide to do only 50-100 and end the review session early by using the “wrap up” button in the reviews. (Wrap Up takes the 10 items you’re currently half-done, or 4 + 6 new ones, and closes the review when you’re done those 10.) Then you can wait a few hours (or until the next day, if you wish) before you do more, in the hopes to further space out your reviews.
high apprentice count comes mainly from mistakes. rushing through the reviews is good, i do it, too, knowing that failed items push back levelups. this makes sure i actually remember them properly.
take your time when doing the lessons. i had 30 new kanji yesterday, which took me over an hour to learn. i always hit “not yet”, enter synonyms where necessary, look up kanji, sometimes write them down, whatever it takes to make me confident i actually know them.
