Advice for us low-levels?

WaniKani Tips & Tricks
#41

Wow, quite a few people who really wanted to chug through wanikani. I personally took it really easy in that case. I never did more than 15 lessons a day and did not reorder them so I always had a mix of kanji, radicals(till a point), and vocab. I found this method much easier to really pick up and internalize a lot of the kanji especially since the vocab came along with it rather than a 2-3 days later. Without reordering I also didn’t level up in the shortest possible time, this made sure my vocabulary didn’t have a huge backlog, while also keeping it in close proximity to the kanji that unlocked it. I still finished all 60 levels in less than 2 years, so I’m not sure I really lost that much time as compared to (I think) the 1.5 years or so that you could speed through the whole thing if you levelled up as soon as possible.

Definitely +1 to remembering the existence of vacation mode. And you have to keep up whatever rhythm you are comfortable with. Once you fall down the slippery slope of skipping days, you are quickly going to get overwhelmed at higher levels. I have a friend who did just that and he’s now given up stuck somewhere around level 28. I’ve suggested that he reset himself to a lower level and give it another shot. Let’s see if he comes back.

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#42

Sorry to be dumb, but what is a leech? (Besides those things that suck your blood)

#43

Leeches are items that just don’t stick for whatever reason. These leeches suck your enthusiasm and will to continue.

https://community.wanikani.com/t/Team-Leech/14389?source_topic_id=18194
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#44

It depends on your mindset. In my personal case, Im 26 and really regret that I didnt start learning japanese earlier.Actually, I despise the time I already wasted in my life with useless stuff. I wont waste more time. If today I can study for 3-4 hours a day, I will study for 3-4 hours a day because in the near future I might not have time to study that much. Also, 15 lessons a day is not a slow pacing. You are probably on the average pacing. If Im correct, you probably leveled up once every 10-11 days. Almost 3 levels/month.

#45

Thanks very much! I have a few of those which drive me dilly. Every time I get them wrong, I look at what I have got wrong and try to absorb them. It is a slow process, but I persevere.

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#46

Agree with your points but I am curious, how do people define “abusing the overide/ignore script”?

I personally use it all the time, but I do have set rules:

  1. I will always ignore radicals that I get wrong. Without exception.
  2. I will use it on Kanji/vocab if 1) I knew it, but hit the wrong key and 2) its in the evening when ive come home from a long shift at the hospital and my brain is fried. I knew these Kanji/vocab but my brain just isnt working properly at that point.

For that second point one could argue that I wont remember it well enough because i dont really know it that well. Im in this for the long haul - I will eventually learn that Kanji whether I want to or not through exposure/reading. As such I see Wanikani as an acquisition process with some consolidation rather than the be all and end all to learning Kanji. As a medical student I am used to remembering a lot of information, but more importantly im used to forgetting a shit tonne of information as well. But experience tells me Ill know it in a few days anyway…

My point is dont avoid the oveide/ignore scripts if you are worried about it being ‘cheating’. Just justify to yourself why you use it i think and as long as it aligns with your goals, go for it :slight_smile:

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#47

2.2) Would probably be defined as abuse. You shouldn’t trust that you ‘know it’. The ignore script is good for typos and weird radical names.

But anyways, if you get to level 60 by overrides and don’t know the kanji, the only person you’ve cheated is yourself. But if you’ve efficiently gotten to level 60 by using the override scripts and have learned the kanji, more power to you. You shouldn’t let tools or systems get in the way of your learning.

That said: the ignore script? Thar be dragons!

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#48

I think most people would categorize overriding a wrong radical before you’ve guru’s it as abusing the script. The point of the radicals is to help you remember the kanji and they can’t really do that if you don’t remember them.

But if you get 本 wrong because you said book and not real on the burn review, yeah everyone should override that.

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#49

It gets extremely tempting to abuse it and that temptation only goes higher as you level up. Let’s say you have an item that you had no problem with up to enlightened. But, it finally comes time to burn it and your memory is a little fuzzy so you give a mostly right, but ultimately wrong answer. You know that the item is going to go back down to guru and not only take all that time to level back up again, but will also add to your pile of more frequent reviews. The temptation to go, “Oh well I was only slightly wrong so maybe I should override it.”, is going to be there. It’s just a script that should be used responsibly at your own discretion. If you abuse it, the only one you have to answer to is yourself.

On the flip side, most people consider it a must, because if you have an item that is up for burning and your only mistake is that you typed a little too quickly and hit き instead of こ, then that is probably the most frustration you’re ever going to experience on this site.

Edit: Also I see a lot of people saying they override for radicals. But, the thing is those are your lifeline. If you actually need the mnemonic to help you remember, then you definitely need to know what WaniKani is calling that radical. I would never override a radical early on.

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#50

I kind of like the idea of always using the ignore button on radicals though… I never use the mnemonics, I never even read them (I did at first, but I could never remember them after a few days so stuff kept falling back down from guru), so the radicals are just an annoyance and a hinderance on my levelling/learning speed (although you could argue I do use that ~4 days to learn the vocab, so maybe the time between kanji isn’t too bad).

I’m not sure I’m ready to make the plunge installing the ignore script though because I feel like once I use that ignore button once for the wrong reason, it’ll be too easy to justify it to myself more often or even everytime, but I may instead just pull the radicals up alongside my reviews and type in my answer and double check it before submitting. I don’t mind learning them, but they’re really just something extra to learn that isn’t helping me in any way, shape, or form.

EDIT: I also want to add… If you imagine “GURU” as proof that you’ve learned something and then the higher levels are almost like extra credit, it really doesn’t bother you (in my case at least) when something gets knocked back down to GURU from ENLIGHTENED. I’ve done it a few times and it’s a little annoying, but I keep reminding myself that I did a good job even getting it as far as I did and that it’s not holding me back in anyway (it’s not locking up something I need to get to).

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#51

Did you start reading at level 8? How was it? Did you find yourself looking up a lot of words? I’m about 3/4 through Genki 1.

#52

If you’re not using the mnemonics, then that’s a different story and you may as well just ignore them. I do wonder if you’ll begin to use radicals at later levels though. For instance something like 驚 becomes a lot simpler to remember when you can weave a story with poem, winter, and horse. I don’t think I’d personally have an easy time remembering it without them.

#53

Yah, I’m not sure if I’ll use them in the future, it’s hard to tell so early, that’s why I’m hesitant to just say “no more radicals”. To be fair, I’ve gotten to the point where there’s barely even 10 radicals per level, so it’s not really a big deal learning them (I allow myself to quiz and go over things that I’ve only gotten right once - the lesson -, but then after that I let the SRS handle it).

#54

I generally use my phone and set the meaning/reading to appear back to back. It makes reviews MUCH faster, but I wonder if I’m doing myself a disservice.

#55

Just speculating, but my guess is it will make it easier to work with visually-similar kanji in your reviews, so when you’re out and about in Japan it may be harder to differentiate them when they’re mingled together.

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#56

One person has told me that they started reading at level 17-20 and felt somewhat comfortable. I’m trying to play video games in japanese as soon as I’m able to, so I might wait until level 8 to do that. I’m studying a lot of grammar so I think I’ll have a solid understanding of all the basic and some intermediate grammar by the time I get to there.

Still, at around level 8, how much kanji/vocab did you really, truly know when you started seriously reading things that aren’t Japanese nursery rhymes?

#57

Yeah, the hardest thing about reading kanji in the real world is that anything is fair game. They won’t restrict kanji to your WK level.

Take something like 伺

If you saw that in the wild, as a beginning kanji learner, you might think, oh, I know that it’s “what”, because it looks similar to 何.

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#58

There should be some sort of “hump” that once you get over it, you can get around Japan just fine without knowing it, but can ask people the meaning when needed, but I’m guessing that’s more of a grammar and vocabulary “hump” than kanji. But then, if you’re focused on the JLPT, that doesn’t help you :slight_smile:

#59

I think the reason they’re a bit mixed up is related to this. I could be wrong, though.

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#60

+1 for the video. The benefit of interleaving is why I turn off the reorder script when I know I can finish the whole review pile in one sitting. If I need to break down into various chunks, I use the reorder to do them back-to-back, otherwise I can’t efficiently get through the pile.

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