About the review pile

WaniKani
1

I started at feb 22th, doing all the lessons as soon as I can and I do the reviews 3 x times per day, sometimes more often. So far I’m lvl 8 and the amount of reviews is still very doable. The most I had was 235 on a certain day but it varies wildly, for the next days I see that on average 80 reviews per day are coming. I do use a script where i don’t have to type the meaning, only have to answer if I know it which saves a lot of time.

Any advice on things I should be aware of while continuing like this? I’m still kind of afraid that I will suddenly get tons of reviews per day later on. I saw some ‘don’t get apprentice above 100 and guru above 500’ tips, but even when doing all the lessons asap I hardly get above those numbers anyway.

2 Likes
2

I used to do all lessons when they came up. It depends on your level up times, but with about 8-9 days a level, I got around 200-300 reviews a day. It starts to settle down when you start burning, so whatever you get then is around what you will always get, maybe a bit more if your burn ratio isn’t too high.

1 Like
3

Interesting. I thought at level 8 one should already hit 100+ Apprentice items :thinking: . Or you’re simply doing a really good job at managing your pile so big kudos!

I think the way you’re going right now is fine, but be aware that later on, at level 15-20 and usually 20+ when you’re going full speed, it’s not only the Apprentice and Guru items, but also Master and possibly Enlightened items will start coming back. In that case the advice is to possibly slow down to a pace you personally find manageable without feeling like WaniKani is a chore/job. Or that + start getting into reading, studying grammar, etc.

2 Likes
4

If you’re already starting to feel the strain from doing this, I’d maybe consider trying a different approach that spreads out your review load a little more evenly so that you don’t have days where suddenly hundreds of reviews are getting dropped on you. That’s only going to get worse the more reviews you have in circulation.

If you’re trying to go full speed, just be aware that your workload will increase over the course of a full year. So you have to be prepared to put in the work literally every single day with no breaks. By the end, this will likely be at least a couple hours a day, just spent on WK alone. It’s a huge, grueling commitment.

Some people can do this and get through it, but it’s a recipe for burnout for many others. I wouldn’t personally recommend going this route unless you have a lot of Japanese knowledge already, or you have lots of free time every day that you can devote to studying Japanese so that you can balance your studies with stuff outside of WK.

If you’re still committed to going full speed, I recommend considering spreading out your lessons and doing a consistent number of them every day instead of binging. With this method, full speed is still possible with the use of the lesson filter script.

The benefit to doing a consistent number of daily lessons is that it keeps your daily review counts consistent, too, so you don’t have days where you’re getting 80 reviews, and then suddenly 235 (those numbers will get even worse when you’re six months in). This makes it easier to plan your life around WK so that you know exactly how much time to expect to have to sink into it each day, and if something comes up in your life, like if you get sick or go on vacation or get very busy unexpectedly, you won’t have to risk a 400 review day falling on one of those days.

It’s very easy to fall off the wagon with WK if you miss one day and quickly get overwhelmed by your review counts. Some people are able to power through and reach level 60 even with wildly uneven review schedules, but for many others, this workload is unsustainable, and falling a little bit behind easily turns into an insurmountable review pile.

I recommend aiming for a workload that you’re still able to complete even on your worst days, because it’s very likely that at least something will come up in your life during the next year, and you don’t want it to cause you to burn out on Japanese.

5 Likes
5

Thx for the replies all. I think it’s a good idea to spread out more reviews more, I now mostly do them on the day I get them so now I have days where I have to do 200 reviews and other days where I get way less reviews. The 200 review days are not burning me out but I saw some posts from people with 600 or more reviews in the pile and welp… that would be a bit too much to do that daily.

So far it’s going great and it’s all very managable, I was/am just afraid that after some more level an unexpected tsunami of reviews will hit me :wink:

The good thing is that I still will work mostly from home from now on, like most people in my country do after the whole covid situation, that means saving 2 hours of traveling time per day which I now can spend on way more interesting things like studying Japanese :wink:

Besides WaniKani I also do KameSame and KaniWani, I do think I’ll drop KaniWani and spend that time on reading.

3 Likes
6

When I do a pile of new lessons ( yesterday I got 90 new lessons at once) then the apprentice level gets over 100, but then that also quickly lowers again because vocab from the former lesson moves to guru. Mostly it’s around 80 to 100. But I will spread out my lessons a bit more to even the review pile a bit more.

I realize I will also get the Master and Enlightened items on top of that, but I get quite excited when I get those actually :smiley: Got my first 20 into Enlightened today and that felt so good. Now have to wait 4 months to kick the first ones to Burned :wink:

2 Likes
7

Using anki mode is a huge time saver, but I would also be careful because it can give a false sense of understanding. WK’s biggest advantage over anki is the user interface for typing answers.

If you’ve been using the anki mode for a while it would be interesting to compare review time and percentage correct doing it anki style and then regular style.

3 Likes
8

That’s because you haven’t got a long tail of Enlightened and Burn reviews built up.

Let’s say you did 80 lessons today and managed to hit all the intervals to get apprentice 4 the next day.

Assuming perfect accuracy, those 80 lessons are going to come back in a week, 3 weeks, ~2 months, and ~6 months.

In 6 months time, are you going to thank your previous self for doing 80 lessons today? Especially if you decide to do 80 lessons that day again?

The 100/500 rule of thumb also requires less than 20 lessons per day or so in order to have a rate of about 200 reviews per day.

You can adjust those numbers up or down depending on how many daily reviews you can handle, but as you can see from the intervals above, any change you make takes at least a week or two to make a difference.

5 Likes
9

Got it - no more 80 lessons in one day from now in :slight_smile: I’ll stick to a max of 20 then.

1 Like
10

What I do now is say the answer out loud before I press the correct or incorrect button, so in theory it shouldn’t affect the correct percentage, but I’ll turn it off to see if it might matter.

1 Like
11

Just to be clear, I only use the Anki mode for the English meaning, not for reading, I do type in the reading answers manually. I can imagine it’s not a good idea to use the Anki mode for the ‘reading’ answers.
I did my reviews today with the Anki mode off but that didn’t influence the results, only took more time now to type in the English answers :slight_smile:

3 Likes
12

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.