At Lvl 56- 1500+ Reviews😬

WaniKani Requesting Help
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Hello hello, to all those who are reading this (thank you, by the way).:wave:

It was originally my intention to journey to Japan this summer, a plan (now postponed) that empowered me with the goal to attain Lvl 60 before the trip. I did the best I could to make progress, leveling up every ~1.5 weeks & working hard to keep my review count at zero. I kept this up for several months, as my time needed to keep my daily review count at zero increasing. Unfortunately, I was previously unaware of the advice of keeping one’s apprentice count at no more than 100. :expressionless:

What this all resulted in was me reaching lvl 56 (where I am as of now), and receiving 300+ review daily (about 1 hour per 100 reviews for me to complete). Such a number was unsustainable with my schedule, and so I have limited myself to only about 100 review & 5 lessons each day.:no_mouth:

What such a change has resulted in is a gradually rising pile of 1500+ review. And, because of this, my apprentice count is rising, as I am less able to regularly review critical items with a workload this big. As of now, I have an apprentice count of 629 items, and its rising with each passing day. Yikers. :anguished:

I’m so, so close to the end goal, but it seems that I am simultaneously being pulled father & farther away. I suppose this inquiry is a means of me asking the fine folk of the WK community for advice when I am lost on what to do. Here are some possible paths I have thought of so far::thinking:

A. Simply continuing what I’m doing and hope the storm ends soon.
B. Resetting my progress X amount of levels and hope that such will clear things up a bit (but what level? I’ve never tried this before
)
C. Forfeiting lvl 60 and writing down the remaining Kanji for reference when my subscription expires (beginning of summer-ish)

I’m ok if I don’t make it all the way to lvl 60, I’m rather satisfied with all the progress I’ve made thus far, and am ready to put my Kanji & Intermediate Grammar skills to work & do some reading/writing/speaking. Of course, I would love to obtain lvl 60 if I can, but I don’t see that happening at this rate of increasing reviews- the kanji I need to review in order to progress to lvl 57 are buried in 15+ hours of review items. :confused:

I thank you for reading this far! If you do have any tips, advice, or even just encouragement, I am grateful! :slightly_smiling_face:

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I would go with option A, but with 0 lessons each day instead of 5 until you reach a total review count of 200 or less.

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Good job on making it to level 56! That in itself is is a big accomplishment. As for advice, I think a helpful thing to remember is that the real learning in WaniKani comes from doing reviews and reinforcing those items in your long term memory. I think in terms of the best learning, completely stopping lessons (at least until you chip down on your review pile) and doing only reviews would be your best bet. However, you should also consider the value you are getting from the time you’re spending on WaniKani. Like you said, you could also spend the time working on other skills.

In terms of WaniKani, though, I think that having your review items enter long term memory by doing reviews is more valuable than having items in lessons enter your short term memory. Good luck and がんばっど!

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From what little experience I have, I think cutting off your lessons and going with option A would be best because 100 reviews per day with 0 new lessons would eventually even out the pile. Or at least option B to level X because srs doesn’t work without reivews.
Just take it easy from here on. Your large review pile is gonna be with you for a while so get used to it.

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Sorta devil’s advocate, but if you’re keen to keep going on the lessons so that you can get to lvl 60 b4 the summer and your membership expires, why not take it down to 2 new lessons a day? I’d have to do the math and know exactly when your membership expires to know if you’d get there or not though.

(However, I would normally also recommend stopping the new lessons)

Also want to throw it out there as an option, but if you don’t get to lvl 60 by the time you yearly membership expires, downgrade to a monthly one for 1-2 months so you can finish everything up.

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Thank you all for the help so far!:slightly_smiling_face:

I suppose it might’ve been better that I included the detail that, while I am receiving occasional lessons, I have little to no lessons to care for (due to the fact that I have ceased advancing in level progress). Still, I now intend to follow through with the given advice & decrease my lesson intake on days when I do have lessons. Upon that, I am receiving approximately 100+ review on a daily basis, so my efforts are being more or less nullified


I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to downgrade to a monthly subscription, though I don’t know how long it will be before I reach level 60.

Thank you for the encouragement to keep pushing onward, perhaps I will continue doing what I have been doing in that sense. On the bright side, I am indeed cementing (some) of the review items into my long-term memory, and I can do so while listening to audiobooks & podcasts.

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Looking at your numbers, almost all of your problems are coming from your apprentice count. The rest of them are pretty good. so there are a few things you should do to try and get that number lower.

Step 1
Use wkstats and check how much of your most recently completed levels are in apprentice (You can find an overview of levels under Items → Wanikani). Then reset back to the last level where this stops being the case. If instead all these apprentice items are spread throughout all the levels then you have a serious leech problem and resetting won’t help much.

Step 2
Get a script or two for focusing on leeches (Leech Trainer and Item Inspector are both good options) and use them. You should also go over the mnemonics for the items that are giving you the most trouble and either really visualize it or create your own.

Step 3
Use a re-order script for your reviews. Since you’re not getting through them all you should sort them so it’s not just pulling randomly. I think sorting oldest first would probably be the best way to go about it, that way you move along stuff to higher levels and remove them from the pile.

As others have already said, stop doing lessons. There’s not much point in doing them since you’re not able to review them regularly. It’s going to take some time to get through a pile like that, but you can do it. é ‘ćŒ”ăŁăŠïŒ

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Thank you very much for the tips, @Rihn! :slightly_smiling_face:

For the first time since my use of WK, I accessed WKStats, and found out that I have apprentice items in nearly every level (with only a few in the lowers levels, increasing to several dozen in the higher levels).

I find myself a bit hesitant to download the scripts, due to a mixture of unfamiliarity and paranoia revolving around them (I just learned that scripts exist). Simultaneously, I don’t know if they are downloadable on mobile devices or not, as some attempts have resulted in errors.

Perhaps it would be wise for me to reset to level 47 (where the apprentices first appear en masse), and retry things at a slower rate.

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I just worked through this myself, albeit it at level 10 with 900 reviews. I just started doing ~200 per day until the number got to a maintainable level then started doing 5-15 new reviews per day depending on how I was feeling. At first your accuracy will be low after coming back from a while gone and it will feel overwhelming, but with time you’ll get that 1500 down to a maintainable amount and burn some!

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For iOS at least, scripts won’t work because you need an extension, which isn’t possible on iOS. And on all honesty, not using scripts is like walking in the desert rather than having a full team of chefs and support to get you there. I’d be nothing without my own scripts but each to his own and if you can, please get a few of the essential ones (can’t link them at the moment but there’s a few threads on scripts and such).

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Scripts don’t work on mobile devices I believe. There’s a couple of unofficial mobile apps that include certain script like functions depending on your device. You can find them here.
The New And Improved List Of API and Third Party Apps
Take a look and see which one best suits you.
I think Tsurukame (IOS) and Flaming Durtles (Android) are the most commonly used ones.

If level 47 is the start of where most of the levels are in apprentice then you should probably reset to there. I’d say if 50% or higher of the level is at apprentice then that should be where you go back to.

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The hazard of doing ~200 per day all at once is that if those cards are at the same level, they’ll all come back at the exact same time. Doing 200 today means you’re likely doing 200 this time next week. I’m in a situation where I went on “vacation” 3 1/2 years ago at level 56, with a review count of 550, and because I barely remember a single one of those items, it’s ballooned to 650 over two days, and is on track to hit a thousand by the weekend.

My long-term strategy I think is to do maybe 60 a day, and possibly use a reorder script so that I actually get a chance to remember them – SRS doesn’t work if the R gets delayed a week or a month.

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I’ve come back from ~3000 reviews twice now, and feel like I have an approach that works.

For one I would say to not reset if at all possible. It will just throw away months of progress on items that you do know.

Other than that, for sure take no more new lessons until you get your Apprentice count down to under 100.

Then pick a date you want your review count to be down to 0. Let’s arbitrarily say July 1, 36 days from now. And just aim to chip away at the review pile incrementally every day. 1500 items / 36 days = 42 per day. Just aim to have that number down at least 42 every day. Of course that will involve more than precisely 42 reviews and more things come up, but it’s a sustainable pace and you will whittle it down in small chunks. It’s far more manageable than trying to do all 1500 at once.

This stands out to me - that’s a long time. 100 cards, two “sides” per card, 3600 seconds in an hour
 that’s 18 seconds per answer. Can you try to get that down? Push yourself a little faster. If you don’t know something you don’t know it - perfectly fine to just get it wrong and move on.

The more you push yourself like that, IMO the better it will be in command of the language; the goal is to have instant recall. I started pushing my pace a little more every day and now ~100 cards takes me ~15 minutes.

In doing so that makes all of this less daunting as well, increasing your throughput and not taking up as much of the day.

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I think the most important thing to do right now is to stop doing new lessons until you are back in control. 5 might not sound like much, but in your situation you are just making things worse.

As you are probably realizing now, a card is not learned when you add it as a lesson. It will continue to come back for months. Some are easily learned and reach burn in about 6 months. Others will haunt you and continue to appear for much longer while your brain tries to learn them.

My point is: Reaching level 60 is not the end, so stop trying to rush there. Just do your reviews at whatever pace you are comfortable with. If run out of reviews and have more time to dedicate, do a few lessons, but don’t over do it. The number of out standing daily reviews don’t really matter. In the end, it’s the time you put in that will teach you Japanese, so just keep doing them and you will attain your goals.

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Level 47 isn’t too far off from where you are now, and it will solve a big part of the problem. Ultimately the decision is yours though.
As for scripts, I don’t use any, but the people in the script threads can walk you through installing them if you want.

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I am now using WK Stats & Jakeipuu, as some of you recommended.

However, I am a bit conflicted on whether to reset a few levels, or just stay where I am & keep trying. Both paths have their pros & cons, naturally. :thinking: Perhaps I’ll stay where I’m at for a bit of time, then see if conditions have improved.

I seem to be receiving 75-100 review items daily, so I would likely need to be doing at least that to make any progress at chipping away at my review stack.

As many of you advised, I shall indeed refrain from taking on more lessons until I am in a better position.

Perhaps the key reason why I have been taking so long at sifting through my review is because I listen to podcasts or audiobooks at the same time. I think this is having a negative effect on my speed, trying to multitask. So, I will also abstain from doing such while I chip away at my review stack.

I’ll try to, as many of you recommended, take things a bit steadier from now on, less “full-speed ahead”.

Again, thank you for the advice & encouragement thus far, I think it’s all going to help me in the long run. :slightly_smiling_face:

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ahh, that would certainly make things much more difficult! i often listen to audiobooks while doing other things, like cleaning or crafts. but as soon as the other thing involves language (reading, talking) the audiobook becomes a major interference. if i have music while doing reviews it’s stuff which isn’t focused on text.

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Scripts work perfectly on mobile, too. I refuse to do this on my pc haha but since the latest firefox update (unless it’s working again) it only works on Kiwi browser (at least on Android). You can install the scripts the same way you’d do it on pc, too. The guide is quite good here.

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I had no idea it got that bad, wow. I always thought the stories of people saying it went up to 500 reviews were rarities, not the inevitable.

edit: I see a lot of advice here advising how to pull yourself out of this rut, but how do you stop from getting this many reviews in the first place?

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It seems that I am receiving mixed signals about whether or not scripts work on mobile. I am using an IOS, which @wanumu claims doesn’t allow scripts. :thinking:

As for not falling into this rut, @Yryrdz, a possible tip is keeping you amount of apprentice items under 100 (something I only learned of recently). Otherwise, you may end up like me: swamped with sifting through hundreds of apprentice items daily, upon with everything else. Hopefully that helps. :slightly_smiling_face::+1:

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