3 month long levels, any suggestions?

WaniKani
#9

I’m the same. I wanna tell you something that other comments might be missing. Is this your actual priority? Like, is learning Japanese your #1 goal?

Because for me, it used to be #1 (or one of the top) goal up to ~level 15. Until then, it took me like 2 weeks to level up, iirc.

Then I started studying university, realized I’m interested in learning coding, working on my body, reading philosophy, studying math, cybersecurity etc. Now my levels take around 3 months. I’m aware of it, I just don’t prioritize it.

So, what I’m saying is, if your levels take so long, probably WaniKani isn’t a priority for you, or you lack discipline / focus. If it’s not a priority, that doesn’t necessarily mean a bad thing, maybe you’re just not aware of other things in your life that take up a lot of time and are more important for you. If it’s the discipline or focus, well then you gotta do something about it, first step is being honest to yourself…

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#10

I try not to worry about it too much. I’m 60 some odd days on level 18. My accuracy has gone way down as I have a number of persistent leeches and my burn percentage success has declined. You can see my level up rate plunged around level 14. But I just figure each cycle from Enlightened back to Apprentice means that kanji wants more time with me, and I have lifetime, so…

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I’ve been slacking off on my よつばと! translation and think that’s part of it (not spending more time searching out learned kanji in the wild).

#11

here’s my accuracy, I think it’s pretty good.
I do not do enough lessons and these comments got me thinking about why. It’s probably because I let my reviews build up too high. When I have to do a block of 100+ reviews there will be less motivation to do some lessons.

I initially wanted to do 10 lessons a day but my review load made me think it’d bog me down. So lately i’ve been in a rut where i just do my backlog of 100reviews and just a few lessons every couple days.
I think the solution I’ll try is 3x or more review work a day and 10lessons, then I won’t feel as bogged down each review.

Level 8 was a outlier - i tried a script to move radicals/kanji to the front of the queue so i leveled up quickly but it left me with tons of lessons.

Reviews per hour? I did a block of 120 reviews today in about 45 minutes.
I think 2 weeks per level sounds pretty fast, i’d like 1 level a month at least.

Yes I’m open for suggestions of scripts if you guys have some favorites.

Thanks for all your suggestions

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2 Likes
#12

You just need to learn how the SRS stages work and time your lessons and reviews properly to effectively manage the level up process. If you’re doing reviews only once per day, its going to take a lot longer, especially if you get things wrong. It’s going to take you over a week to guru something, where it takes everyone else 4 days.

I’d say for the average user, 100 reviews per day would be a dream. During the later levers I was doing over 300 per day, and I do reviews every single hour.

Also, doing reviews once per day throws off the SRS, so you’re going to forget more. The first interval is 4 hours, then the next one is 8 hours after that, then 24, then 48. So things you see once, others are seeing three times.

I don’t mean to say there is anything wrong with taking it slow, but just schedule and manage your time to hit the pace you want.

#13

Keep your apprentice count under 60 and you’ll hover right about 100 reviews per day. Ask me how I know. :slight_smile:

#14

You should use [Userscript] WaniKani Lesson Filter I think. This script will allow you to do kanji and vocab at the same time. This means you shouldn’t end up with a ton of extra lessons in your backlog, but you’ll level up faster and more consistently than you are now. The average level has 34 kanji and 106 vocab items. This means you want to do three-ish vocab lessons for every one kanji lesson to avoid being left with a ton of lessons in your backlog.

Based on the pace you want to level up in, I think you can do less than 10 lessons per day (you can change your lesson batch size in the WaniKani settings or in the Lesson Filter script itself during lessons to make it a convenient number). For you personally, I’d recommend doing 8 lessons a day - two kanji and six vocab. (I’m not including radicals in the daily count, as I usually recommend just doing them the first time you do lessons after leveling up. But you can work them in another way if you prefer.) If a level has 34 kanji and you do two per day, it’ll take you about 20 days to level up, assuming you do reviews 2-3 times per day and have a good accuracy. Even if you do reviews only 1-2 times per day and make more mistakes than you’d like, you should still level up within a month with this strategy.

2 Likes
#15

for the 1 month per level speed you suggested, you don’t need any particular scripts or anything. however seanblue’s suggestion to use a lesson filter to mix kanji and vocab lessons is good.

the main factor determining your speed is how many lessons you do per day. at 5 lessons per day, it takes just under 5 years to get to level 60. that works out to about 1 month per level.

my main suggestion would be to work on your accuracy. spend time on your lessons. read the sample sentences for vocab. look at the words using a new kanji. study the mnemonic provided, and improve it until it works for you. these are all things which build a network of context for the new item, which will help you remember it more easily. i reckon it takes me 2-3 minutes per lesson.

do your first and second review at the 4 and 8 hour marks. these are the reviews which will take the lesson from short-term into long-term memory. personally, i recommend a zeroth review, just a quick scan over your lessons after about 1 hour.

the amount of reviews it takes to get through WK increases dramatically as your accuracy drops. if you can get your accuracy into the low 90ties, 5 lessons a day should give you less than 60 reviews per day.

but in the end, getting through WK is a matter of sitting down and doing the work. and if you keep on doing the work, you will get there!

頑張ってください

#16

I wanted to go faster than that, so 60 or fewer apprentice was never an option for me.

#17

Join Team Snails 🐌🏖 Team Snails on Vacation 🐌🏖

#18

@seanblue basically gave you the solution. In fact, even if you did 2 radicals per day as well, rather than all at once, you’d still keep the 1 month pace.

But work on your accuracy. When you’re done with lessons and then quiz, do some Self-study on what you just learned and spend time reading the lessons. Getting accuracy above 95 should be doable with enough time spent on the front end.
After all, the better you chew your food, the easier you… digest it. yes, I was going to say something else instead

#19

I was just commenting on the idea that 100 reviews a day is a dream for most users. It’s really just about rate limiting lessons. And everyone’s pace is different. But if you want to go fast, you have to pay the price.

#20

I strongly disagree with the idea of you having to do reviews more than once a day. You can, but you don’t have to. Multiple review sessions per day are necessary for an optimal pace of a level per 7-8 days, but that’s not your goal. A level has about 150-180 items, so if you want it done in a month, you need about 5-6 lessons daily on average. That’s about it.
I don’t feel like giving you advice on how to do your wk stuff, because you know what you need better than I do.

1 Like
#21

How can I see that level graph?

#22

If you mean the level up graph, here : wkstats

1 Like
#23

I think you accuracy is good considering you’re doing reviews only once per day.

If you want to do 1 level per month, around 5-6 lessons a day is good.

Your problem seems to be your reviews, since you are only doing them once a day, it’s takes a long time and you don’t have the energy/motivation to your lessons.
I would suggest to try to do some reviews throughout the day. Do you use the website or an app to do your reviews ? I find it easier to go through my reviews on the app, that way I can do some reviews when I have some down time like while cooking, waiting for the bus, waiting for my code to compile at work :smiley:
I don’t know if it would suit you but you can try it and see if it could help you.

Another lead to explore would be Anki mode to do your reviews more quickly.

I hope you will find a way that works for you :slight_smile:

#24

Yeh, found it cheers.

#25

Did you use a computer to do the reviews? I suggest switching to a mobile device.
You can use Flaming Durtles if you use Android. I found that switching to a mobile app is a way to increase the frequency and don’t have to sit to do the reviews. I rarely do the reviews on a computer now.

2 Likes
#26

I do reviews 1-2 a day, but increase that twice per level: when I get the level up and when i finsh the radicals then I actually put a reminder on to tell me when to do reviews in 4 and 8 hours respectivels to get the first two stage out of the way in the first day.
Furthermore I always do all lessons that are crucial to level up. So assuming you get a level up I will burn through all vocabulary and the radicals for the next level. Then I do the rest over time. This gets me 8-10 days per level. (10 days if I fuck up to many Kanji and get delayed by a whole two days on the last stage)
I recommend doing the reviews in a similar rythm because since I am doing this remembering became a lot easier and I can rush through levels with little effort.
As a reference point I have 114 study days with 11,126 reviews in 35hours.
(to be fair I reset WK, but my accuracy did not change after I passed the point where I was previously)
That is also how I know that doing it slow only demotivates and lets lessons and revies pile up, which is just super unproductive. Trying to finsh as fast as I can really helpoed me in all regards and I would recommend to try it out.

#27

Jesus, I didn’t even know this was possible. I’ve been considering cutting down on how many lessons I’ve been doing, but that’s an insane amount of time. I’m glad I saw this post.

#28

same here,

but I prefer now leaving some batches of review for late evening so I can use the computer to practice with the jitai script and get used to those godawful handwriting as a way of more challenge, usually I get beaten by those :sweat_smile:

1 Like