Well, I finally made it. After nearly 4 years of grinding reviews inbetween juggling work, school, and my personal life I’ve leveled up one last time. Truth be told, I never really expected to get this far as I mostly started learning Japanese on a whim during the pandemic, but my studies have brought me to places I never thought possible and wanikani has played a non-insignificant role in that.
Before I ramble on for too long I guess I’ll put my advice/tips for both wanikani and Japanese language study here at the top. Although I would like to put a disclaimer that although I am majoring in second langauge teaching my advice is mostly based on my own personal experience and your experience may vary. The best advice I can give is learn what works best for you.
WaniKani Advice
- Try not to worry about how fast you’re progressing.
While some people manage to progress through all 60 levels at a breakneck speed, this is simply not obtainable for most people. It’s far more important to learn to set a pace and a habit that you can keep up with in the long term. Even though at my pace it took me nearly 4 years to get to level 60 I still found that my kanji/vocabulary knowledge kept up with or exceeded the pace of the rest of my Japanese studies.
- Do at least some reviews every day
That’s not to say you can’t take breaks for holidays or other important events, but I found that doing at least a little bit every day was a good way to keep up the habit in the long term. Personally I found it helpful to incorporate my reviews into my morning routine.
- Shadow the vocabulary audio!
In my opinion, one of the biggest advantages that WaniKani has over its competition is its audio samples for all of its vocabulary items. It might feel silly to repeat random Japanese words to yourself in your room, but it’s a great way to continuously improve your pronunciation/intonation. Pay special attention to pitch accents!
Japanese Study Advice
- Reading, Listening, Speaking, and Writing are seperate skills, and if you don’t practice one of them it won’t improve.
This is becoming increasingly common knowledge amongst language learners, but as it is a mistake I myself made along the way I think it’s important to mention. I put off conversation practice for an embarrasingly long time because I didn’t considered my listening comprehension to be sufficient enough. Truth is, my listening comprehension was never going to reach a point I considered sufficient, I just needed to jump off the deep end and start talking to people.
- It’s always hard in the beginning, you just gotta keep going.
Whether it’s your first time reading manga in Japanese, watching anime without subtitles, or your first attempt at a conversation with a native speaker, your first attempts will probably not go completely smoothly and it can be easy to get discouraged. Your brain is a wonderful complex machine that is especially well tuned to use language, it just takes some time for it to adapt to a new one. Try to stick to material that you can understand at least 50% of while using context to fill in the gaps and you’ll be amazed at what your brain can do almost unconciously.
- If you are taking classes (especially in university) your teacher is a great resource
Probably the most significant choice I ever made during my language studies was visiting my professor’s office hours outside of class. Your teacher is probably the best possible conversation partner when you are starting out. Not only do they know and are able to adapt to your level of proficiency, they’re also (hopefully) non-judgemental and are used to understanding what learners with imperfect grammar and pronunciation are trying to say. Especially if you are taking Japanese for the sake of your career or with the goal of studying in Japan, if your teacher gets to know you they can potentially point you in the direction of scholarships, exchange programs, or even act as a reference if they like you well enough. Please just try not to be overly demanding, they are people too afterall.
With that out of the way, here’s where I’ll post all of my graphs/heatmaps etc. and explain my wanikani and Japanese study journey in a bit more detail.
Stepping Onto The Road
I made the choice to study Japanese during the initial Covid lockdowns in the summer of 2020. Since I was temporarily back living with my parents and didn’t have much to keep my occupied I figured I may as well give Japanese a shot. I had watched a little anime by that point, but truth be told when I started I knew very little about Japan and I don’t think I fully knew what I was getting myself into. I used Tofugu’s hiragana/katakana guide (something I still reccomend to people to this day) and soon after began with WaniKani. Around this time it was increasingly clear that my university classes in the fall where going to be all online so I made the choice to take a break from my regular courseload and instead just take Japanese. By the time I actually started the course I already had completed the first 5 levels of wanikani, something that helped me tremendously. Of course, studying kanji for a month before even touching any grammar is not something I would reccomend, but it turned out fine in the end.
A Short Rest
Alas, after only one semester of Japanese I was eager to return to my normal studies (computer engineering at the time) which unfortunately did not afford me the time to continue taking Japanese in school. I was however determined to keep up with self study until I had space in my schedule again, but life had other plans. Without getting into too many details, I ended up experiencing what some may call a “major depressive episode” which you can very clearly see on the heatmap. Long story short, I discovered the hard way that engineering wasn’t for me. However, I was determined to get back into my Japanese studies, and after one or two false starts I found myself able to keep up with reviews again and I found a renewed motivation in studying Japanese.
A Warm Welcome
I began once again taking Japanese at my university in January of 2022, still unsure about the future of my career, but my Japanese study at the very least gave me a direction walk in, and walk I did. Around that time I made the decision to do at least some reviews every day regardless of what else I had going on. I’ve managed to keep this streak going for 889 days and counting, and during this time I saw my most significant progress in wanikani. It was also during this time that I discovered a passion for language learning and made the decisions to officially change my major to second language teaching with the goal of eventually going overseas to teach English.
The Last Stage
As chance would have it, I happen to be finishing off the last of the Japanese classes offered at my university at the same time I finish off WaniKani and to say I’m feeling a little sentimental is an understantment, so please bear with me. It’s kinda weird to think that something I chose to do on a whim ended up having such a big impact on my life. It’s been a long journey, on which I’ve made countless new friends, participated in Japanese speech competitions, taken and and passed the JLPT twice (N4 and N3), travelled to Japan as part of a cultural exchange program, all with WaniKani being there with me every step of the way. I have a little bit of time left in my degree, after which I plan on applying to the JET program and from there who knows where I’ll be swept off to.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading my long rambling post. I wish all of you the best of luck in your own journeys, wherever they may lead you. May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks.
That being said,
