Am i Too Far In?

So im Currently level 14 Close to level 15 and i keep feeling like i could be going faster learning some other way. i started using wanikani in april in combination with bunpro as my main learning resources. On the side i watch youtube in japanese and read easy manga or books in japanese. i feel like im going slow on WaniKani but when i think about switching to different resources i think about how i would have to catch up to my current knowledge or i would be wasting my time. Could you recommend different study methods or someway i can learn more efficiently?

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I recommend keeping using WaniKani for kanji, but also studying grammar and doing reading and listening practice in parallel. In other words, I’d recommend continuing the way you are doing right now.

But in any case, best of luck with your studies! wricat

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Sounds like you’re doing it right to be honest

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I agree with this. Maybe viewing Wanikani as your main resource is not right, in the sense that SRS while integral to learning a foreign language won’t be the core of your everyday. It’s kind of like a habit that sits outside your main study habit, which consists of grammar and immersion (and pitch accent and output if you are focusing on those two). At least that’s how I view it.

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Why do you think you’re going slowly? Do you feel you spend too much time on wanikani and not enough somewhere else? Or you feel that your japanese doesn’t get better fast enough? What do you think is your weakest point that you want to improve? Maybe these questions will help you figure out better how to rebalance your learning focus.

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I think its because im going faster in other areas and slower in wanikani do to its limit.

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Thank you!

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Yeah you might right i do kinda of view as one of my more prioritized resources.

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I kind of view it like the stretching before exercise. Definitely has to be done, but it’s an assistant to the main work. Though wanikani is my most consistent study material as well. :sweat_smile:

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Interesting that we have somewhat different appurroaches trunky_rolling
I’ve always considered WK to be the core of my everyday Japanese studies – something I would do even when I don’t have any energy for anything else… Something to keep me doing at least some Japanese every day…
And yet, overall, our appurroaches don’t differ that much – we both agree that it’s impurrtant to do both WaniKani and other studies trunky_rolling
As for which to purrioritize – that depends on the purrson trunky_rolling

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I guess this is more a matter of semantics though. I personally don’t view Wanikani as particularly hard. I do it everyday, but I don’t regard it as ‘work’, so if I have done nothing but Wanikani on a given day I regard that as a day I didn’t study Japanese (not that this is a problem).

This is what I mean by not a core part of studying. It’s because I don’t view it as studying. Might be a funny way of putting it now that I write it out.

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Nyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaruhodo! trunky_rolling

Well, yeah, this is certainly a difference in semeowntics. I purrsonally consider WaniKani to be studyng, though I can see where you are coming from trunky_rolling

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By faster some other way, is that faster for learning kanji? Could you explain a bit what you mean about needing to catch up?

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Just wondering, do you use the lesson picker to do all your lessons when they become available, and do you do all your available reviews every day (or potentially multiple times a day)?

I don’t necessarily recommend doing that, but it would certainly increase your pace if you’re not doing that already.

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I’ll chime here and say that I did that and even at WK’s max speed it wasn’t keeping up pace with my advancements in all other regions. The only issue is that the workload per day massively increased, the amount of raw typing to get past the cards. But the learning on WK’s end wasn’t really changing all that much by speedrunning it.

I can definitely relate with the feeling of WK being too slow. Especially if you’re gaining a ton of knowledge through immersion means already.

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It sounds like you’re going full speed on WaniKani. That means learning like 2000 kanji in a year. I don’t think it’s slow at all, compared to 99% of the people learning Japanese. I know that for example the Japanese classes at my university only go through 450(600? low number) in their first year.

Going a bit slower than your max speed will also make it more sustainable in periods of lower motivation and enthusiasm and prevent you from dropping off!

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Probably not. OP started in april, at max speed they would be around level 25.

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As others have said, what you’re doing sounds pretty solid. Personally I’d pick up some additional way to learn more vocab, because WaniKani isn’t nearly enough. Since you’re already immersing in Japanese I’d go with Anki + Yomitan and just learn words that appear frequently in the content you’re interested in. Doesn’t have to be a lot, just learning those high frequency words makes a worlds difference.

Personally I wouldn’t speed up WaniKani. Focusing on WK at first is fine, but the diminishing returns hit pretty fast. Another half hour of immersion will do you more good than another half hour of SRS’ing WaniKani.

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I kind of had the same feeling as you, what I did was extending my study time so I could progress a lot more in a day. That’s the solution to me, putting more effort and dedication so you can embrace more. Though it would be interesting to think about why do you think you are not progressing being exposed to different resources as you do. Sometimes it happens to me that I get that feeling because I am still on the basics, but if I see what I have been doing, I have been learning a lot of things so even though I am still in beginner material I am progressing. Maybe that could be happening to you too?

Also I went to account settings on wanikani and set to max avaible lessons per day (100) since I wanted to progress more. It never throws you 100 lessons btw. So that did the trick for me too

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