So I hit level 60 around 4 years ago and in that time I consumed a lot of Japanese media to strengthen my foundation. Then I kinda fell out of love with Anime and Manga probably because of overconsumption, and for the last year or two I only watched a show here and there if it interests me. Not much Manga either.
This should give you a reference frame of where my Japanese is at - a solid foundation but not great either. I recognize words better than individual Kanji when reading but recently I noticed looking up way more words than is enjoyable while reading.
To give you another perspective, when I look at Kanji sorted by grades, I already struggle to recognize most of them after grade 2.
So, if I were to restart Wanikani it probably makes sense to not go all the way down to Level 1. Aside from solidifying the foundation even more, there is no point learning radicals and the most common Kanji all over again.
In the end Wanikani is a tool and there a lot more out there. Maybe it makes sense learning differently with Anki or by writing. Maybe itâs better to learn Kanji again before doing that. Maybe there is other media better suited to learning.
Whatâs your take? Start over, and, if so, from what level? Try different approaches? Whatâs your experience after hitting level 60?
My goal is being able to converse and read decently well. Iâm happy if Iâm able to check into hotels natively and read important things on my next trip to Japan without having to translate too much.
They say never say never, but I feel pretty confident in saying that when I complete Lvl 60, Iâm never going back to Lvl 1. Once doing the WK climb is definitely enough and itâs serving its purpose. But should I ever need to relearn kanji, Iâll just choose another methodâŠ
The problem with resetting levels when you already have a solid base is that one might be wasting time taking lessons and doing reviews for items that are still well known.
There are workarounds, though.
One would be level reset plus a userscript like Item Filter which lets you skip reviews, so level progression wouldnât be impaired and the workload might be manageable.
But to what level do you reset? You may target say 40 but might still have L20 items that youâve forgotten.
Another option is to not reset your level, instead using the Self-Study Quiz script to review once all items in a level - if you find youâve forgotten any, you unburn only those (not all items in the level) and then take them through the usual WK SRS reviews. Rinse and repeat for each level, unburning them at a pace youâre comfortable with.
This second one is what I plan on going with once I do finish all lessons (still have a few levels to go). Probably at a slow rate, 5 unburns a day or thereabouts.
Iâve forgotten kanji and vocab taught by WK, and other SRS systems donât really work for me anywayâŠ
Oh I wasnât aware that unburning individual items is a thing! Going through my 7k+ burned items is gonna be a pain, but definitely better than repeating a lot of items I still know. Iâll look into that, thanks~
Well, if you think like youâve forgotten enough, it might be a good idea to start again â especially if you have a lifetime subscription.
Ultimately, only you can decide which would work best for you.
However, I think there are only two reasons not to do a reset in your case:
If you have already found something that works better for you at this stage.
If you want to keep the golden level 60 badge and do not want to lose it if you do a reset and then decide not to follow with it.
If none of those reasons is true â then Iâd recommend trying a reset and seeing if it would help.
In any case, best of luck with your studies and other cativities!
Youâre right, resetting has no negative impact other than the shiny badge. Nothing bad happening if I decide to not follow through
I think the only thing holding me back is not wanting to redo a bunch of stuff I can just breeze through. No way of knowing what level is the cutoff though
It is a hard question. I also took a 2-year break and forgot a decent amount of Kanji + vocabulary during that time. It also depends a good amount on how solid your âfoundationâ actually was. Four years is a decent amount longer, but I still tell you what I did.
I decided against resetting and went with the individual unburn route. I didnât go through all the items and instead tailored the unburns more to my immediate needs.
What I did do:
Consume Japanese to the best of my ability
If I hit a word or vocab I didnât know and think âthat should be on WaniKaniâ I searched for it and unburned
Words/Kanji not on Wanikani I add to my other SRS system after 3 lookups
If I had a rough idea of what it could be I didnât unburn it on the first lookup but on the second (marked it on the first)
Did my normal reviews of WaniKani daily again
I liked the approach since thereâs a lot of vocab and Kanji, that you âforgetâ but you donât need to do all the SRS stages again to bring back. One or two lookups are enough to jog your memory. Itâs amazing with how little time you can get back to a decent level. Also because it was related to what I wanted to consume, the items were all relevant to me and not some baseball vocab I didnât feel like learning again. Another positive aspect is that you also learn to work with other systems next to WaniKani since (actually most by now) many lookups wont be on WaniKani at all.
Negatives of this approach are that you are unburning a lot of stuff for roughly the first month. Itâs a lot of lookups and can feel frustrating at times. After the first rough hump it gets better fast though. I donât know if you have the persistence to work through that initial frustrating periodâŠ
PS.: I donât have solid numbers since I didnât track it in detail but I think I roughly unburned around 1000 items on WaniKani. So I remembered roughly 90% of the items that are relevant to me
WaniKani doesnât teach sentence parsing (grammar), nor most relevant vocabularies, not to mention production. Plus from high LV, back to LV 1 or low LV, will lose benefits of having exposed to most Kanji already. (WK doesnât teach low lv vocab with high lv Kanji, even if you are most probably familiar with the usage.)
If anything, WK is for reading foremost, and barely scratch the listening part. WK doesnât dip into repertoire of vocabularies as much as Kanji, tbh.
Focus on practical things first.
Even for reading part, use a dictionary. If memory doesnât retain, before even starting SRS, think about pros and cons of having SRS everyday routine which teaches only the vocabulary part, out of context, at best.
Even for Kanji, WK doesnât teach all major readings of Kanji it supposed to be teaching. Remaining Kanji is even milder than this in my mind. Larger SRS may serve even the Kanji part better.
Unless, indeed, if you like the WK web app or a third-party app. If you like having level progression and having an END level (to get near at the very least)âŠ
I was reached level 60 about two years ago, but I resent recently. I kind of missed the daily reviews for fun. Since I have the lifetime account, I donât see the harm in re-doing it if you have the time. Also, now the radicals have drawings with them so it makes it easier to remember!
I find myself not having any mistakes at all and just enjoying it. My first time around I didnât read context sentences to save time, but now Iâm just casually going through things for fun.
I say if you have this type of situation, why not go for it?
Iâm sort of in the same boat, though not at the same amount of kanji learned and not at the same level of retention, I think. Iâve been away from WK and my other tools for learning Japanese for almost two years.
I decided to not reset to a certain level because I think progress will be slower than going at it with self study in a controlled way. Youâre bound to remember some kanji and vocab, and even with the ones youâve forgotten you wonât need to start from scratch.
Just for getting back to Wanikani iâd suggest testing your knowledge level after level with a script or app, to see where youâre at. The Smouldering Durtles app is the one Iâve used and it has a lot of options. You can alter the self study test to what to study (radicals or kanji or vocab, or any combination thereof) to only show a specific level range and even to only show items at a certain stage (burned, apprentice II, whatever).
At some point youâll encounter items you canât remember. You can resurrect those items as mentioned, and start learning them anew. And if you feel like youâve memorized them completely again you can still manually burn them again! If you want to resurrect whole levels I suggest using the Burn Manager Script. Iâve been using it the past days and it has some issues with resurrecting more than 50 items at a time for me, but it sure beats manually resurrecting all items.
To supplement WK I think you should look elsewhere for a study method that helps with grammar. I used to have a LingoDeer subscription, but Iâve heard good things about Renshuu and Bunpo. As for vocab, why not make your own lists on Anki for example? Just look up a word or phrase you come across, put it on an Anki deck and start studying.
Iâm not level 60 or even close, so take everything with a grand of salt, but I donât think I would ever reset after level 60 personally. I think your time would be better spent on any alternative. Since you believe you still have a solid foundation, WK I donât think is valuable for you anymore. After level 60 it would seem to me that WK has outlived its purpose. WK gives you a good foundation but itâs just one of many Japanese resources. You could use a custom Anki deck for Kanji youâre forgetting off WK or Kanji you come across when reading. IMO WK is great as a foundational tool but itâs never going to allow you to read everything all the time. WK doesnât teach absolutely everything. It takes a ton of real life practice no matter how you slice it.
Ask yourself if youâre interested in resetting since youâve already gone through WK before and know what to expect, or if you genuinely believe enough of the program seems new to you to warrant a reset. You probably already know what is best for you, I would just trust your gut.
Alright Iâm back at level one. I figured there is really nothing to lose by resetting since I have a lifetime account anyway. If I decide down the line that doing this again is a waste of time I can always just stop. With the early lessons probably going by pretty fast because I can just do all Kanji I know at once, I can focus on the ones I forgot more easily too.
The biggest thing that led me to this decision is that I had tons of fun doing my reviews for two years straight without missing a single day. It was a nice kind of routine I actually miss a lot.
Just as Lesteropolis put it
I say if you have this type of situation, why not go for it?
I also wanna see what changed on Wanikani since I left - got a lot of emails advertising new features and Kanji after all~
I hit level 60 three years ago after a two and a half year âquickâ pass. Then reset to level two aiming to spend more time on grammar (which I did). Made up to level 50 the second time before I took time off for a long holiday - including 4 weeks in Japan which was transformed by my ability to read the kanji! On our return I reset to level 10 and Iâm making an effort to go slow (10 items per day) to really drill it in and get more grammar and listening practice.
Weâre planning to head back to Japan in 2028 for our third Setouchi Triennalle (and some more cycling).
