Am I super slow or something?

WaniKani
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I’d like to start by saying I do all my overnight reviews when I wake up, and do every review the hour it becomes available. Though every now and then I take days off. I’d say 25/30 days I do all my reviews

wkstats shows me at 18 days for median level up time and 26 days average. I’m wondering if this is slower than average? I experimented with this level and did just 5 new points per day instead of 15 and I’m on day 27 at level 22 still without having done every kanji once yet, and this is like way too slow for me. But when I was doing 15 per day more recently, I was doing my best and it showed it took me 18 days per level for levels 20 and 21 at that speed. Other than the first few levels that I redid (I restarted several times from level 1), 18 days was my record. And that still felt really slow. I’m not sure if I should try the cram session feature to speed up my learning. I know it’s not a race but if I can be doing this more optimally then I would like to. I’m not sure if getting to level 60 by the end of this year is feasible or not. My restart date to level 1 was July 2023. I want to be finally done with wanikani lol.

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No idea what the average looks like but it doesn’t seem absurd. At any rate what matters is how you feel about it.

If you want to go faster you may consider reordering your lessons to prioritize radicals and kanji. Using an undo script to avoid silly typos that set you back a few days can help as well.

Also remember that you shouldn’t aim for level 60 before you start venturing outside of WaniKani, even right now at your level you have a strong kanji basis that will let you engage with simple content.

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Of course, gotta say the usual of “It’s never slow if it’s not slow for you” and “the best pace is the one that you enjoy”, but honestly it does sound a tad slow considering you do all your reviews basically immediately.

I guess the important question is what your accuracy is like. Iirc, if you take 10 items a day, most levels you should be able to finish in like 10-ish days, with the minimum being a bit below 7. So the only thing I can think of is that you fail your reviews a lot, which of course will slow you down. A good accuracy percentage is anything above 80%, if you fall heavily below that, I’d try to ask yourself why that could be. Are you failing meaning questions or reading questions? Why is that exactly, what doesn’t click?

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i’m going through wanikani a 2nd time currently so this may be skewed a bit. my average and median are both just over 7 1/2 days for level up. i’d say 10-12 days is probably a good healthier pace than mine for most people.

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Comparing with this thread, it looks within average.

For speeding up, Self Study (script or some kind of Anki export) can help with accuracy, in addition to Double Check for stupid typo. Another factor aside from accuracy, is whether the reviews go down to zero everyday (or how often).

Also, do Radical lessons immediately, and finish Kanji lessons before all Radicals get to Guru.

Now, reading more carefully, isn’t this another Level 22 horror thread? And don’t just restart.

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Are you doing some immersion alongside your Wanikani sessions? If not, I highly recommend you to start reading / listening Japanese material as a big bulk of your daily practice.
Remember that Wanikani is the tool, not the purpose.

If you are feeling comfortable with your speed and don’t feel like increasing your lessons, as long as you enjoy it and improve, I would not care that much.
I read from experienced Wanikani users that the levels 0-30 are much more important than the 31-60; this means that at 22 you should already be able to slowly read some simple novels / manga without too much trouble, so I would focus on that instead than on more Wanikani.

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For what it is worth, with 12 lessons/day (and a little bit of help/cheating depending how you look at it) I level up every 14 days, with ~100 daily reviews at 80-85%+ accuracy.
Been doing this for the last 12-13 levels or so. Might be slow for some, but it’s good enough for me :man_shrugging:

How I go about it

First day on any given level is a Sunday - I only learn radicals that day, doesn’t matter if it’s only 5 of them or 15. Just so as to have one “easy” day per level :blush:
For the next 8 days, I’ll evenly split the total number of kanji in the level - usually this is 4, but could be higher. This ensures the next level is unlocked by the 12-13th day, so I can start it on the corresponding Sunday.
While I have kanji to study, I fill in the rest of lessons with vocab up to 12.
In the last 3-4 days per level once the kanji are done, this results in 12 vocab items/day.
A few vocab items will be leftovers to cover in the next level - that’s okay, because it takes time to unlock new vocab from the upcoming level.

Now for the helpful/cheaty stuff :slight_smile:
I use the Double-check script so as to never fail reviews while items are in Apprentice stages - this ensures the second batch of kanji and the vocab items are unlocked as soon as possible, so I don’t run out of available lessons.
To compensate for this, I’ll do extra self-study of Apprentice items whenever I have time in a day. For me at least, the WK SRS timings don’t work too well and I need more frequent exposure. YMMV :man_shrugging:

For Guru and Master stages, I’ll allow myself two answers per item again with Double-check. Not for Enlightened or Burn reviews, though.

Recently I also started using Self-Study Quiz for “leech training” with the cutoff value set to 2 - I do at least one run of this daily, and it seems to help as my review accuracy has gone up a little in the last two weeks.

Of course, this pace would not get someone in the level 20s to finishing WK by the end of 2025… I think you’d need a constant 20 lessons/day or even a little higher to achieve this?
I imagine such an amount would take up a LOT of time and effort in reviews, unless maybe one is very close to or at 100% accuracy

But.
Perhaps think about whether it is worth rushing WK?
Quite a few people slow down after L30 (as the later levels are somewhat less useful), choosing to learn new items through immersion (reading) instead. I’m of a mind to do the same, although maybe not as early as L30 but more like 35-40…

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You sound dedicated and I totally understand your feeling. I will tell you my method and you can see if you like it. Sorry for the wall of text, feel free to skim. Personally for me I think it is harder to do the levels lessons split up. I say this because if I do it all at once I immediately am getting corresponding vocab that will reinforce that kanji’s meaning and readings along side learning it.

Here is my method:

Day 1 - A new level. This will now be split into two section 4 days each. 8 days per level. I do ALL the lessons available in the morning time after I wake up. It is overwhelming at first but I do them all at once. They will come back in 3 hours and I will make sure I complete them before the end of the day, the sooner the better though. Now if they come back the same day, don’t do them. Wait for the next day.

Day 2 - The next morning after: I do them again, which is the third time seeing them. The will come back in 24 hours.

Day 3 - The next morning after: I do them again, which is my fourth time seeing them. They will come back in 48 hours.

Day 4 - Two mornings after: I do them again a final time. This is my 5th time seeing them and they will be leveling up to Guru. I immediately get phase 2 of that level’s lessons with the remaining Kanji, and Vocab. Immediately I start the same process as before with my new fresh lessons.

I follow the same method in 4 day cycles. (Until you get to the fast levels which is level 43. Then you can do entire levels 4 days at a time if you want.)

Now I will be the first to admit this is intense. I also recognize that this does not work well for everyone. That being said I have been doing this since level 4 or 5 and it has done wonders for me. I have had some level up times of 2 weeks during times I went on vacation, had family issues, etc, but on average I’m right at 9 days overall. What this has done for me is made me have to have discipline on myself, get actually serious about learning Japanese, and also the speed is fast so I am always constantly taking in Kanji. This method works so well for me. I supplemented this method with books. Again a big commitment and a scary task looking at a novel of Japanese text but I just did it. I started with 4th grade books and worked my way up. My method when I read is I just go, I don’t stop to translate. I want to read it based on my ability. I would look up words that I was not 100% sure I was doing the right reading for. For example if I saw tricky words like 作用 and I might have read it さくよう instead of さよう then I would look it up because I wanted to make sure I was getting the right reading. I went from picking up random stuff throughout the book to reading books and having a full image of what’s going on in my head. Still nothing like reading English books but I saw serious progress.

I call this the banging your head against the wall method because I mean seriously it feels like it. Even if you don’t like this method maybe it will offer you ideas. I don’t think your current pace is slow at all, there are plenty of people who take a lot longer. Ultimately take advice from me and others lightly, and remember that even if someone says they have the best method, the only person who will know what the best method is for you, is you. Good luck!

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I think you should go at whatever pace feels comfortable for you.

My pace is very fast and it took a while to get the hang of it, but I can describe the other extreme to you want to know what it’s like…

Disclaimer: my method might not be the best for learning, but it’s just the way I do things. It’s probably worthy of criticism. I’m trying to speedrun – this method definitely isn’t for everyone.

On the day of my level up, I immediately do all of the radicals. Past level 14, this is easy, because there’s usually 8 or less, and a majority of them are characters you’ve already seen.

I then do all of the kanji lessons in one sitting. I spend maybe 3-5 minutes on each character. I close my eyes and spend several minutes experiencing the mnemonic. My mind usually takes me to a memory from my childhood or formative years – this memory becomes the “setting” for the mnemonic. In effect, I’m attaching a “fake” memory (the mnemonic) to a real memory. It’s mentally exhausting and requires intense concentration, but eventually I reach a point where I can feel that I won’t forget the mnemonic.

One hour later, I’ll do self-study on all of my apprentice kanji to make sure I really didn’t forget them.

2-3 hours after that, it’s time for my Apprentice II reviews.

The most I’ve ever done in one sitting was 31 kanji (on level 15). I managed to pass all of the reviews without any mistakes. The lessons themselves took under 2 hours.

In between the Apprentice I and Apprentice II kanji reviews, I’ll go through the list of newly unlocked vocab and knock out all of the “easy” ones – e.g. the ones with intuitive meaning based on the characters, ones with a straightforward reading (usually jukugo with no weird readings or rendaku), kana words, or words that I happen to already know. My goal is simple: I want to have ALL of my vocab lessons done before I guru the new kanji and even newer vocab becomes unlocked. I do the easy ones first and save the hard ones for the next 3 days because I’ve already overwhelmed my brain with all the new kanji.

3.5 days in, all of my lessons are completed and I guru the radicals/kanji and start on the next set of kanji and vocab. There’s less kanji this time, so that’s easier (and the night/day before, I’ll look them over just to have some sense of what I’m in for), but there’s a TON of vocab that gets unlocked. My new goal: finish all of the vocab before I guru the new kanji and level up. Again, I pick the “easy” ones on the first day and save the “hard” ones for the following days. By the end of the week, all lessons are finished and I’m ready to guru the last remaining kanji.

I guru the remaining kanji and level up. Past level 14 or so, it’s not bad because I’m only guru’ing like 5 kanji or something, so not THAT much vocab gets unlocked.

The downside to this method is that you learn the kunyomi for the characters late. My kanji/onyomi reading retention is insanely good, but I tend to get hazy when it comes to kunyomi readings – I don’t spend as much mental energy on the mnemonics, and I also I don’t think the WK vocab mnemonics are as good as the kanji mnemonics. e.g. it took me forever to remember the batshit insanity of the 予め mnemonic – “a raw (nic) cage”. I must’ve failed that review a half dozen times in a row.

Because my lessons come in large “bursts”, sometimes I’ll have days with a “light” amount of reviews in the in-between hours. If I have little to do, I use Self-Study tool + Item Inspector to preemptively do all of my reviews for the coming week. One day I spent a few hours doing 650+ self-study reviews just to keep everything fresh in my mind.

Sometimes if I’m bored (e.g. on a long plane flight), I’ll self-study review all of the 500-something kanji I’ve learned just to see how good my retention is. I usually do this on smouldering durtles in anki mode so it’s quicker.

Other days, I’ll spend time doing self-study on all of my apprentice items to keep them fresh.

Because wanikani has the weird “rounding down” thing, I try to aim for 6 days, 21 hours on each level, but I fail to reach it most of the time.

This method is not for everyone and it risks burnout because it becomes all-consuming. I faltered on some levels, but I’ve mostly been able to manage it so far.

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About 12 - 14 days per level for me even at level 20+

I spend up to 2 hours per day, mostly on the first big batch after I wake up and reviewing all mistakes several times per day