So, whenever I get lessons, (whether its 1, 10, or 60) I sit down and do all of them. The way I do my lessons is I write them down, Kanji, what they mean, how it’s pronounced, and what type of reading it is (kun’yomi or on’yomi). I don’t typically let lessons sit longer than I have to. Is this wrong, should I be spacing them out? I typically struggle with some that are close in meaning or very similar in appearance (i struggled with cow and noon for like a week…) but after seeing them 2-3 times I’m fairly accurate. Would I benefit from taking smaller chunks at a time and working on them and then doing new stuff more spaced out. Would it take longer? Would it help my retention? Would it help my recall? I just started using KaniWani but I am not trying to cheat myself in my learning. I want to learn quicker but I don’t want to make things harder for myself.
So I guess TL;DR and overall question: Should I space out my lessons, or is doing them all at once going to work out the same / better?
You’ll be fine doing them all at once in the early levels, but keep in mind that your accuracy will probably be low at first until you review them a couple times. I’d suggest thinking about slowing down once you get past level 20 though, unless you’re really feeling confident about it. Your workload increases as you get higher level, so adding a lot of new items into your rotation all at once can be really overwhelming. I usually do 5-15 lessons a day, but only if I can manage to get my reviews down to zero.
I think it’s better to space them out! Especially when you level up you can be hit with an overwhelming amount of lessons. It won’t take you any longer to level if you space them out, as long as you do it strategically. For me that always meant doing all the kanji lessons within 2-3 days of levelling up, and then doing around 15-25 vocab lessons per day. That’s if you want to go at max speed! (It means that you’ll be doing lessons pretty much every day, but better that than doing 60 lessons in one day and being overwhelmed and then not getting new lessons until three days later, imo).
I think it depends on your learning style/personality. I mostly did my lessons all at once, but I also took a few long breaks of not doing any lessons OR reviews
You can do whatever you want, but if leveling up as fast as possible is a concern, you can still do that while spacing it out. Just make sure that when you level up you immediately do all the new radicals (and whatever else. I don’t use ant reordering scrips so I do all new vocabulary up to the radicals, well). Then you can do the new kanji the next day, the rest of the vocabulary the next day, and it won’t slow you down. You just have to do the new batch of kanji that appear when you guru the radicals right away.
Doing that, you’ll still go at top speed while being able to break up your reviews a little so they don’t always drop a minimum of 100 at a time.
I have a lot more free time (smaller time throughout the day) so I do reviews basically as they pop up. My only long session that typically balloons to over 40 every day is after sleeping which is just unavoidable. I knock those out before I go to work and then check every couple hours to keep it lower. I’m literally 1 kanji away (2 hours to go) from going to level 5 and getting all new radicals just in time for my day off tomorrow. I figure I’ll keep my options open as I continue to go up in the levels. I’m trying to stay within a level a week because I want to be able to start my grammar in December. Not that it’s a rush (My current level is going to be 8 days and a few hours), but that’s the pace I’m trying to keep around.
You are able to install a script which brings the lessons for Radicals and Kanji to the front of the line, which means you can get the ones which control your level-up speed out of the way ASAP. Then I usually do the vocabs in batches on the days “in between”, when I’m working on getting my already learned radicals and kanji to guru status, because they don’t control my speed in the same way.
But! Don’t let the vocabulary pile up. Get it all done before you level. Some people have run into serious problems by abusing the reorder script to delay vocabulary. It wrecks them later on.
ACK! Yes, that was for sure implied. Actually DO the vocab, just on a different day. I just don’t like when I have new radicals, but I also just unlocked 30 vocabs and I have to wade through the sea to start working on the new level. This particular person sounds like doing new lessons is not a big deal for them, so it’s less likely to become a problem.
For me personally: My current pattern is to log in and do about 10 lessons every day, along with all my reviews once, maybe twice per day if I can. This does mean I level up slower than I did pre-reset. BUT, on days when I get new radicals, and when those radicals become new kanji, I go ahead and do all of those (more than 10) at once.
I just learned of the scripts today actually. Never used 'em. I don’t want to reorder anything because the more mixed up my reviews are I feel the more I have to pull on my brain and the more I have to focus on the actual symbols. Like when I’m doing reviews for level 4 and a level 1 or 2 comes up I have to really remember it. I’m sure that will make it easier in the future as the amounts and levels go up, and maybe the scripts will help then, but I do so much with WaniKani and now KaniWani, as well as KanjiTree, that I want to really work on my recall instead of recognition.
Is there any real benefit to this, particularly given the vocab-backlog potential, versus the built-in option to order lessons by subject (radicals first, then kanji, then vocab) that was added earlier this year?
Apart from possible accuracy issues that others mentioned, there is the burn effect.
In the first few levels, I did 10-ish lessons a day. So getting those back for the burn reviews isn’t so bad. In later levels, I learned all available radicals and kanji at the first opportunity.
I’ve yet to see those stacks boomerang back to me, but there is a chance those burns will push my daily review load higher than I want it to be.
So unfortunately, I have yet to find out how much I’ll regret my choices! But it’s something to potentially consider.
Although: even though I do relatively big batches at a time, I keep my Apprentice queue between 100 and 150 at all times. That has proven to work best for me, so hopefully it will make the load of the burn reviews bearable.
Fiddle with things until you find what works for you!
I’m sure my attitude will change in 10 levels, so I’ll reference back to here when I’m level 15 to see how foolish or correct I was. But I just burn through reviews and do all the reviews that are up as they come up. I’m checking them fairly frequently, doing them within the hour they come up and so they don’t pile up. For how long that will work? I have no idea. But all the different methods to approaching the kanjis and radicals is very interesting. For me personally it hasn’t affected me to hold off because any time there’s something to do on WK I’m doing it. And now, if there isn’t I’ll check KaniWani, or I’ll go do KanjiTree, or soon I’ll work on vocab. I think once things get more hectic (when my review totals get to 250+ a day) I’ll start structuring my studying a little better so I can focus on vocab and grammar exclusively some days without bothering doing radicals for example. I’ll also eventually get into writing once I start my grammar because I feel like trying to write now is useless because it’s just symbols that have meaning only in their description whereas with grammar they have context and purpose beyond what can simply be provided by WaniKani.
As I’ve progressed in my Japanese studies, WK has fallen a little lower on my priority list when compared to things like grammar and reading practice. That tends to happen for many people. And in that case, it’s definitely ideal to space out your lessons so you aren’t flooded with massive chunks of 100-200+ reviews throughout the day. It doesn’t matter as much in the first few levels, but keep in mind that your workload is going to be constantly increasing as you level up and progress towards burning items.
i don’t think the sheer number is the problem, but the amount of information you try to take in at once per item. maybe cut the fat.
learn 1 meaning and 1 reading each. it’s irrelevant if it’s kun or on right at that moment, and it’s not so important anyway… you’ll naturally know after you get some vocab for them.
you can also do them more economically: do the radicals only, then the kanji over the next 3 days, and all the vocab (the words you get refer to the prior level, so they should be relatively easy).
then the new kanji, after the radicals are guru’d… at this point, the kanji you got earlier should also be good, or even guru’d, if you did them the same day (for which there’s no need, space them out a little).
the point of wk is, that you take in only as much info at once as you really need. memories grow stronger with more connections, but you first have to have an anchor, a tiny item, to which they can all connect: the meaning and reading, then more meanings, more readings, then words they come up in, then new kanji of which they are part or with which they share similarities, and so on. if you try to do that all at once, you overload.
For me, yes. As I said, I’d like to work on the most time-sensitive items first. When I just moved from level 4 to level 5 for example, I unlocked about 30 vocab items for level 4 (let’s say), as well as the new radicals for level 5. If I do the ordering “by subject” then the level 4 stuff still comes first, so I have to progress through all 30 items, then do the radicals. If I want to go quickly this means doing about 45 lessons that first day. It takes 3-4 days to get the radicals to guru level and the same again for the kanji, and so I find I often will run out of lessons by the end of a level, and have a 2-3 day “wait” to get new items. If I can do the Level 5 radicals first, I can spread out the level 4 vocab during these “Waiting” days to keep my lesson learning consistent, and level up sooner, get more vocab and radicals, lather-rinse-repeat.
TLDR; it keeps things more consitent, I don’t have lesson-heavy days and no-lesson days.
I prefer to do the previous level’s vocab first personally, so I guess it depends on your studying style. I tend to remember Kanji readings far easier if there’s some vocabulary I can associate it with, so it’s best that I do vocab lessons right as they’re unlocked, when the Kanji are still fresh in my mind. A good amount of vocab lessons require virtually no effort anyway (next+year = next year? Shocking!), so they don’t waste much time for reaching the radicals. I don’t mind leveling a few hours slower if I can make sure I won’t get terrible accuracy on Guru Kanji.
Also, doing all my lessons the first day means I get the next 3 days to slack off
