Almost constantly finishing reviews with about 85% accuracy

Hello, I’m at level 27 now, close to 28 and through my time with Wanikani, I would always finish my reviews with about 95% or more correct every time. Nowadays, I usually get just as many reviews that are ready to go to the Burn stage as I do ones that are still in apprentice.

Due to this, I obviously have started getting more wrong, as these are ones I’ve not seen in a very long time. To my other students that are at this level or have been before: Is it normal to start seeing a decline in your accuracy rate at this point? I’ve started averaging about 85% correct, sometimes as low as 75%. It is a bit disheartening at times so I’m curious how it is for others.

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Of course it will vary from person to person, but I think most people tend to have lower accuracy the higher level they reach.

My own pattern follows yours. If there I do a sizeable amount of reviews with a mix of everything from Apprentice to potential Burns I tend to be around the 80% mark.

If it’s only burn reviews, I nowadays sometimes hit around 50%.

One part of it could be that the higher the levels get, the more advanced the vocabulary tend to get. I don’t think I’ll remember things like “Divine Providence” or “Magistrate” when they come up for review after five months unless I magically stumble upon those words numerous times in texts i happen to read. And that is fine with me.

TL;DR Don’t worry about it :slight_smile:

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As soon as school started and I moved into the dorms, my accuracy dropped immensely. Usually I would get around >90%, but now I get 84% on a good day. Studying Japanese isn’t my number 1 priority anymore like it was over the summer, so things like WaniKani get pushed off a little to the side. This Moday I think I got around 69% (~70 items) on my evening review session. I changed my daily lesson count to 10, so now I can manage my time much better, even if I drop a bunch to apprentice.

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Same level, 75 is still really high compared to my scores😉 no but 75 is fine I think. It’s not strange at all that accuracy declines when you haven’t seen a word in so much time

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Don’t feel too bad. I’m usually in the 55-65% range.

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Thanks for the replies everyone. It makes me feel beeter about it. Good to know it’s not just me!

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This trend you’re describing happened to me, too. Part of it has to do with new and old kanji looking similar and mixing them up. Also if you’re starting to do your reviews less often, that might affect your items at lower SRS levels. I started getting lazy at around level 24. ^^

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Same here. Had a motivational crisis around level 25-26 and let my reviews slide to 300+.

Pulled it through it though and now back on track now with about 75-85% accuracy.

I’ve started resurrecting a lot now that I’m reading more and discovering I’ve forgotten kanji.

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The higher you go, the less your accuracy beyond Guru 1 goes. Frankly, I’d thing that something is up if you were constantly seeing a really high percentage on burn reviews.

I agree with everything above and noticed the same myself.

There is one other factor which I think is responsible for some portion of it and that is due to less well chosen synonyms in WK at the higher levels. At the low levels there are so many people looking at each item and complaining that those get fixed.

For example 結婚式 (level 32) has only ‘marriage ceremony’ and ‘wedding’ but not ‘wedding ceremony’. Of course individual synonyms can be added but not before getting it wrong at least once, I bet. There are hundreds of examples, many more subtle. And I have noticed complaining in the forum gets results. I complained about the kanji 存 saying its meaning should be ‘exist’ (previously it was ‘suppose’) and at some point later they changed it!

Not to say it’s all WK’s fault though; it is really harder at the higher levels for the reasons above, but better curated items would give maybe 5% score improvement and reduced workload/anger level!

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I was beating myself up because my overall accuracy fell below 98%, but I can’t use the ignore script at work, so I end up with typos and missing synonym issues, so whatever.

Right now I’ve got something around 1200 Enlightened items sitting around. I am sure I’ve forgotten at least half of them. Especially from 50 and up because I rarely see those words or even those Kanji, many of which I may remember in some way but yet not the word WK wants for them.

Although many can identify with your experience, in the end language learning is a very individualistic process. There are so many factors that contribute to your understanding or lack thereof that you just have to do the best of your ability given the circumstances you’re given.

I also found my accuracy drop as I got into higher levels. I tried not to let it bother me because no matter what percentage I manage to get in WK, if I can’t access the knowledge of what I’ve learned outside of this resource, then my accuracy here is pointless.

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Exactly the same. I’m disgusted with myself at some I’ve forgotten that have come up for burn recently - ones I’ve known for years way before WK! My accuracy was always around 95% but more recently 85% would be a good score for me. My overall accuracy though, via the stats site, is still 94.74% overall with a slightly higher reading score than meaning.

I’m finding myself less likely to review forgotten items rather than letting the SRS take its course although for some I’m particularly annoyed about I will go back and relearn (or learn for the 1st time) the mnemonic from WK and other sources and look up some vocab.

As an illustration, this was my review from a few minutes ago. I actually think I performed better than usual on this one, and it still only netted me 73% answered correctly.

Some of these were up for their second (or perhaps even third) chance of being burnt. It’s just how it goes, atleast for me. :sweat_smile:

Some of the highlights were:

  • おばむ instead of こばむ for 拒む
  • Unconsciously instead of Subconsciously for 潜在意識
  • Reward instead of Prize for the 賞 radical

やれやれ。。。

I generally hit between 70 and 90% for every review. For a while, the wrong answers bugged me… However, say you were hitting on average 70% all the time. For one hundred items, that’s knowing the meaning and reading of 70 items, which is still excellent. The ones I get wrong I rarely get both the meaning and the reading wrong, it’s one or the other. Not the end of the world either. My readings accuracy improved recently after wanikini words started popping up in anki listening cards. Onyomi and kunyomi are called readings which is kinda misleading, they’re pronunciations. I kept messing up the day counter readings like 四日 よっか etc but once you hear them in a sentence and it’s another resource to draw from when doing your reviews. Doing a bit of language shadowing helps too, click on the audio for the reading and imitate the voice. Kill many birds with one stone. Or is it kill one big annoying bird with many stones?

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