I know a lot of people around here talk about only doing a certain amount of lessons per day to prevent the review pile from getting too big, but I’m curious as to when this is for different people. I typically do all lessons as soon as they are available unless there are more than 50 of them. Then I’ll do several sessions but easily all within the same day. I’m Level 9 as of writing and my apprentice pile has never been above 150 items, typically hovers around 80-110. Also curious to know when I should brace myself for a sudden jump in these numbers and interested to see others’ experiences.
I don’t remember the exact level, but I first stopped doing them immediately when I could not keep my accuracy up to a level was comfortable with. I also got days with 300-500 reviews as a result of my accuracy, and that was frankly not fun.
I started with the max 100 apprentice items as a way to keep me going and not burn out, but I will do everything that is available if I have a vacation or a longer period with more spare time.
Sounds a like a good strategy. What accuracy was it you aimed for?
Mine tends to sit at around 85% on newer items (70% if it’s a really bad review), but gets to 95% within a few reviews of the newer stuff, and I’m completely happy with that for the most part and don’t wory to much about review accuracy as long as it’s improving and I’m levelling up.
I average at about 75%, but I have an horrible accuracy on burn items (around 55%). It is usually when the burns come in that people get a sudden increasement in their workload.
I am improving, but if I have periods where I am in the 60% ratio I will not add any new items, since my daily workload may increase because of the low accuracy.
So I don’t aim at a certain accuracy, but I want it to be at a level where I get less reviews, not more
At first I would do all of them in one sitting, but when that became unviable (don’t remember exactly when that was, sorry), I would do the radical and kanji lessons as soon as they were available (with reorder, of course) and then spread the vocab across the week, which usually meant doing 20~25 lessons a day, I think. I did 7~8 day levels.
I think I stopped doing it once I reached level 5. I remember leveling up and unlocking a massive number of items, doing 50 lessons in one go, and realizing that my accuracy was going down.
A few months ago I got lazy and started doing them only once daily, which personally does not work well for me and tends to keep my retention very low
Around level 10 for me at one point i had almost 200 in apprentice which severely slowed me down and tanked my accuracy. Just hit level 18 with 97 apprentice items but still have over 100 lessons lined up…
Never. Slowing down is for the weak
No. Slow is for the parents, working people, people who got other hobbies, in general, people who got a life.
There is zero issue with being slow and despite I think you might have made a joke, I dislike how these kind of jokes or comments give the impression that “slow is wrong” or “slow is for the weak”.
Congratulations that you made it quickly so far, but this is not the only way. WK is not the only solution to learn japanese.
To respond to these questions, I was quick to do the lessons in my first run up to level 15 or so and restarted when I realized I still cannot talk in japanese. Now I am doing slow and got myself a conversation partner and progress much quicker with japanese than ever before.
Yeah I’ve done this when lots of unlocks come at once.
I wouldn’t worry about the comment too much. To my knowledge MegaZeroX has a reputation for “gotta go fast” within the WaniKani community.
Sorry, I wasn’t intending it as serious advice. It was meant to be facetious.
I stopped around level 11-12 after picking up grammar / Genki. There will be days I’d be too tired after work to absorb WK effectively so I just do reviews or do something else (like listening or reading).
Sorry as well, maybe I took this too serious. Your comment made me feel uncomfortable though. Thanks for clarifying.
Going fast was not the issue here. Perfectly fine with people going super fast and impressed by that kind of hard work.
Ditto. I never did either!
I still do all available lessons within the day. Unless I level up very late in the evening (like around 23.00). Then I do the last level vocab, radicals and some of the kanji before sleep) then call it a day and do the rest the next day. But, I try to time my level ups for the morning so that I can do them all within the day. ^^
Do I recommend it?
Dunno? Let’s just say that there’s pretty much consensus among users that doing a set number of lessons is a great way to use WK. So, that’s what I recommend doing.
I think, if you’re to speed up lessons, you probably need to have more vocab internalized already, which is the case for me. So, obviously, I can breeze through lessons for that reason.
It’s up to you to decide what pace to got at. Nothing is wrong. It’s all good as long as you take care of yourself along the way.
I haven’t stopped.
I enjoy sitting down for an hour or so and working through a large pile of lessons. Thence on, if I forget one, I simply reread the mnemonic.
I think the most important thing is to get them into your head first; if they fall out, just look at the mnemonic and remind yourself.
So far, this has worked fairly well. It’s not uncommon that I forget a quarter of them or so on my first few reviews, however this doesn’t bother me and afterwards I have a near 95% retention rate.
This may change as I get into the higher levels though. Only time will tell.
Probably at level 2, I enjoy taking it slowly, plus, I have university to worry about so sometimes I just don’t have the patience to do lessons or my brain is just not present enough to do them.