Am i leveling at snail speed? [1 lvl every 1-2 weeks]

Japanese Language Questions
#7

It’s 4 hours, 8 hours, 23 hours, 47 hours to guru. That’s 3 days 10 hours. That’s the minimum time to guru the radicals. But all items reach guru in that amount of time so, that’ll unlock the last few kanji you need to push you into 90% guru for kanji, and take another 3 days 10 hours.

Yes, you do need to get 100% of reviews correct for those radicals and the 2nd wave kanji.

But the other 30 or so kanji you could get wrong for 3 days straight and not impact your minimum level up time. They just have to be done before 6 days 20 hours is up. You can wait a long time to do those lessons too.

And now that lessons don’t require a script to be ordered, you really don’t need any scripts or special effort to do the minimum time.

EDIT: Additionally, you have an hour of leeway whenever a review appears for it to be done “on time.” Say a review shows up at 1:00. As long as you do it by 1:59 it counts as having been done by 1:00. It rolls back to the start of whatever hour you’re on.

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#8

well i have a lot of homework and school stuff so i am basically doing my reviews as i go, in the bus etc ;d
also yeah i learn a bit of grammar but because my exams will come tomorrow i didn’t have a lot of time to study WK, actually learning German (Not my native language) and Japanese which is kinda hard sometimes :smiley:

#9

The fact that lessons are ordered now will probably slightly speed up your progress regardless. It means you won’t randomly get the level-critical items sprinkled throughout your lessons.

#10

Thanks for clearing that up. I couldn’t find that info posted explicitly anywhere on the WaniKani guide or faq, so I guess they’re either out of date or they just use code that differs from their presented explanations of the schedule.

#11

Yeah, the guides are really outdated, but some of the details (like every timespan of one day and longer is actually that timespan minus an hour, or how rollbacks work after a review is completed) were never explicit in the guides. They’ve been mentioned here and there by the developers, and I’ve been doing minimum levelups throughout that time as the parameters changed.

Now I’m at the “short levels” that have few or no radicals, so I can level up in 3 days 10 hours every level. Yay!

#12

I average about 10 or 11 days per level, but it concerns me that the OP is level 4, so might be talking about levels 1-3, which are meant to be shorter (I finished all three of them in a hair over two weeks, never mind two weeks per level).

@Leebo’s advice about going at the pace that works for you is solid. To an extent, WK is designed to prevent you from going too fast (and therefore not retaining anything, which is something I’ve learned the hard way with another language I don’t speak because I “studied” it too quickly), but there’s nothing particularly wrong with going even slower if you find that more helpful.

I say ‘if’ because the theory behind SRS is that the best time to review something is when you’re about to forget it. That length of time does differ from person to person (and from item to item, for that matter), so WK’s one-size-fits-all timings might not necessarily be the timings that work for you, but if you go too slowly for your own memory, chances are you’ve already forgotten it by the time you review it. That’s not the end of the world either (it’s a rare review session where I can remember everything that comes up, and mistakes are nothing but an opportunity to become more familiar with the item), but if you find you have real difficulty remembering a lot of things, you might want to do your reviews more often.

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#13

Levels 1 and 2 have shorter-than-normal SRS intervals, which allows them to be completed in a little over 3 days each, despite having the standard radicals + kanji-unlocked-by-radicals structure. Level 3 is a normal level, so 6 days 20 hours applies there. But this means you can do the first 3 levels in 2 weeks.

#14

I level up at least every 30-40 days. It’s really slow, but I don’t really mind going at that pace atm. That’s just me though. I feel like I retain things better that way. Two weeks is really fast imo.

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#15

I’m averaging about 8 days however Level 4 was a whopping 11 days! No scripts - just as they come.

I wouldn’t worry. This is about learning, not racing.

2 Likes
#16

Dude I’m like averaging 15 days per level now. Lol.

#17

Here is a list of the review intervals, current as at 11 July 2017. (Copy/pasted from “regulars” forum)

SRS Level Next Level Total Wait Review
Apprentice 1 4h - Lesson
Apprentice 2 8h 4h 1
Apprentice 3 ~1d 12h 2
Apprentice 4 ~2d 1d 11h 3
Guru 1 ~1w 3d 10h 4
Guru 2 ~2w 1w 3d 9h 5
Master ~1M 3w 3d 8h 6
Enlightened ~4M 7w 5d 7h 7
Burned - 24w 6d 6h 8
4 Likes
#18

I would say no, since my times are generally 10-20 days but maybe I’m in slow category as well.

#19

na, I’ve been rather slack and have only gone from lvl 8 to lvl 11 (might still be on 10 lol) since may last year!

#20

Same here. I’m on level 5 and it’s been over 30 days. I do too much other stuff to do it any faster. But, I’ll be level 6 within a day - finally - level 5 has been long.

#21

Huh? When was this? Do I have to do something special to order lessons? I just leveled up a couple days ago and the lessons were randomly distributed like normal.

#22

It was today.

#23

Thanks, I didn’t see that. That’s great for getting all the radicals out of the way on a level up.

#24

I usually level up every 9 days (except during holidays like Christmas when I took 19 days to finish level 23). Lately I’m not really focused on quick level-up any more. I want to bring my apprentice level down.

My average apprentice number is around 150, but I think I’d be much happier with < 100. Been delaying my lessons for several days now, finally got it to zero again.

#25

To all who are thinking i did lvl 1 in 4231 days you’re wrong

i did them in about 5 days and already knew all the kanji because i learned them already…
but the slow learning process started first at lvl 4 its getting now faster but still i am not even in the same category as i would want to be…

#26

About 13.8 billion years passed before I completed level 1, but once I got to level 2 I was bookin’ it.