Been using WaniKani and KaniWani for almost a month now and absolutely love it. I love the fact that it forces you to produce what your learned. Only downside being the pace… It is soooo slow… I understand that it being slow is part of the course but does it really need to be this slow?
Is there another way to learn that forces you to produce what youve learned? Ive looked into Memrise but it looks like a flashcard srs system? It seem similar to Anki.
What im really looking for is a WaniKani system that lets you study at your own pace. Flashcard SRS studying dosent force you to produce what you’ve been studying so i feel like its not as an effective learning tool.
Been using the Self Study Extension and its great. Only problem being that it only lets you study the material that you’ve unlocked from WaniKani.
It’s probably worth keeping the entire thing in mind when considering the speed. At the fastest pace, it takes less than a year to reach level 60. I’m not sure studying that many kanji in vastly less time would really get you significantly better results.
Have you been doing your lessons or getting a lot of wrong answers on kanji and radicals? Because that will stop you from proceeding to the next levels.
When im first learning them i use the trial and error method… I find that not all mnemonics work the same and it takes a little trial and error to get them to stick. We drill allot in the Self Study Quiz extension and after that there pretty much in there and id like to move on to the next batch but instead i have 0 lessons and 0 reviews… I can only drill the same items in the Self Study Quiz for so long.
@Turok I thought the same thing as you, but his profile says he joined may 13, so I think he was using “a month” a bit loosely. It’s been just over two weeks since he joined, so depending on how far through level 2 he is, he might be going as fast as possible.
@Jrod3008, after enough time on the forums you’ll learn that most of the time it’s a good idea to take Leebo’s advice, especially when it’s about how WaniKani progresses. I know that the early levels feel slow, but having a website put it all in front of you at set intervals is an invaluable resource. There’s a LOT of kanji to learn (I’m only around 20% through), and trying to go through it any faster than the max speed on Wanikani is almost guaranteed to lead to burnout (hell, even going at WK’s max speed will probably lead to burnout). I’d recommend sticking through to at least level 5, and if you really feel that this isn’t for you, others have shared some alternate resources in this thread. Just keep powering through it, maybe use all this downtime you have at the start to learn some basic grammar (I recommend LingoDeer), and remember that the most important part of studying is just showing up. Keep coming back and you will learn over time no matter what.
You should try not to drill too much, as that sort of defeats the purpose of the srs. What level are you on now? If you’re on 4 you won’t get new lessons until you subscribe
im halfway through level 3. I’m finishing level 3 then subscribing. Im waiting on reviews, so i can unlock more lessons. i do the reviews as soon as they come in on my phone or computer. Is there a way to unlock all lessons in WaniKani? is it worth making a post about it? i know its not the point of the site but if you take out the time spent waiting for reviews it should be possible to get the whole site down in a year or less. I understand the SRS system and actually really like it for retention, but it really slows down the learning process. I love the site, but no reason why we cant pick up the pace a little bit.
It already is possible. You can reach level 3 in less than a week. From level 3 and beyond, the levels are a bit longer (still less than 1 week each), but it’s still fast in the grand scheme of things. The reason you can finish in less than a year even though there are 60 levels is because from the mid-40’s and beyond, the length goes back to about 3 and a half days per level at the fastest.
Invaluable indeed, not trying to spend hundreds of hours making flashcards.
Need more vocabulary to do that, so far on Kitsun.io there seems to be a deck for Aria:Vol 1, only 399 items in the deck. Thats supposed to be all the vocabulary and kanji required to read it. I made a post on Kitsun.io asking if there was any prerequisite requirements and to confirm that it indeed does contain 100% of all the vocab and kanji in the manga. The plan would be to learn the deck and then use it to study grammar in a real world scenario.
Not trying to discourage you, but it’s often the other way around.
It’s usually not vocab but grammar that keeps you from reading. Especially because “Beginner Books” are mostly just books for children, which know a healthy amount of grammar but comparably few kanji/vocab.
Also, looking up vocab is easy. Looking up grammar not so much.
It seems youre pretty eager to get started on reading, which is a good thing, but to me it feels like you’re trying to skip some steps along the way.
Completing WaniKani gets you way past JLPT N2 in terms of kanji, I dont think you could get your other Japanese abilities from zero → N2 in less than a year. The speed WaniKani lets you go at is plenty.
It seems like you’re already aware of this, but that’s kinda the point. If you rushed through lessons faster than you are supposed to, you’ll have no hope of remembering everything in the later levels. Like I said before, I’d stick with it for a while and you’ll see how it picks up. Everyone here felt the way you feel now, there has to be a reason we all stuck around.
Eventually yes, but for basic grammar you really don’t need a lot of vocab. Again, give LingoDeer a try, it’s free for the first bit and, unless it’s changed, only $20 to unlock everything for life. It teaches you the material from both Genki books. It also teaches you any of the vocabulary you’d need to know for the lessons. Keep up with that as best as you can once WaniKani speeds up, because the earlier you start grammar the better.
Awesome! Can’t wait to see you pop up more around here. To sum up what a lot of people have said here, just wait. The lessons will get larger, the kanji will get harder, your reviews will be longer, but that can’t happen right away because there needs to be a bit of a foundation set first, which is what the first 3 levels do. Here’s the chart I mentioned earlier, it shows the workload across levels assuming you perfectly burn items (which you won’t, no one does.) I’m sure you can see how little level 3 has compared to the top of the plateau. This isn’t to discourage you, but rather to show that you will start learning more. The most important thing is consistency with your studying, not speed. Remember that.
Try to take the kanji kanken test you really need to review everything you learned here and even more stuff… if you can do it you will get a fancy certificate. Level ten are “only” 80 kanjis …
