Aside from the bloated first level, where I created an account but didn’t commit to beginning, I have done reviews every single day for over a year, experiencing Wanikani in its pure vanilla form, not taking a single break. As you can see, my pace has steadily increased, and I feel as motivated as ever.
This is a warm-up for my obligatory level 60 post. The next 30 will not take 400 days. Bring it on.
I knew the numbers and 人、口、that’s pretty much it haha. I did know and retain a lot of verbal vocabulary thanks to way too much anime exposure when I was in college, but that didn’t help a lot because I didn’t know rendaku existed, or really understand on’yomi or kun’yomi. No, wk was pretty much my starting point for kanji.
I’d attribute my accuracy to diligently writing down every single lesson item and creating my own mnemonics for every item, using the character mnemonics for shared readings (good old hard gay and charlie sheen, mrs chou, ryou-ing the boat etc) and being consistent with their use. Making the mnemonics up myself using the wk radicals was the best thing I could have decided to do imo, they resonate stronger with me and I often remember them without any prompting (I’ve never written them down, even if I get it wrong I can remember the mnemonic right away).
I also never miss that crucial first 4 hour review. My accuracy has gone down since I started to really speed up at level 17 but it was a worthwhile trade-off. 7-9 day levels maintaining 99% including all the typos and brain farts is good enough for me. Good luck!
