Back after a year or so

WaniKani
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Hello everyone.
I definitely need some guidance here.

So, it was about a year or so when I completely abandoned WaniKani, out of stressful workload and extinguished motivation. But, miraculously enough, now it rekindles (not the workload, I mean). And here I am again, back to this familiar hall of 4-or-more-hrs-a-day torture and development, determined to face the music.

The thing is, I don’t know what to do at the moment. I don’t know where to start, or resume.
Like, not at all.

I considered restarting but, after a brief search for opinions, decided against it, since most people in numerous threads do recommend you power though the ever-piling piles of reviews. One problem is that I have forgotten most of rads, kanjis, and vocab in previous levels. I am now at level 52 with about 2,600 burns, 2,000 enlighteneds, 1,200 masters, almost 0 memory of what these things are, and a feeling like I need to cry and cry a lot.

My first plan is to resurrect every individual item which is deemed too unfamiliar to me (some, or even many, like 玉, of course, will be kept burnt.) The decision seems very suicidal; what awaits me–and how MANY of them–I dare not think of. But I guess that’s what you have to go through if you don’t what to reset.

Here’s where I need guidance. Is there any API or, well, anything, which may help to alleviate this soon-to-arrive pain? Or is my plan a really good idea? Any suggestion what I should actually do? I feel so lost; the plan seems overwhelming. Also, words of encouragement, words of comfort–anything, really–are more than welcome.

Thank you in advance.

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Welcome back!

Well done for returning, that’s always the first step. I haven’t any personal experience of this, however I can safely say that you will almost certainly be consumed by the workload you’d be undertaking by resurrecting those old items; this unbearable workload will almost certainly make you fizzle out and quit again. It is for that reason alone I recommend you reset.

I understand the worries you have that comes from resetting and how you may feel like you’re losing progress. Nevertheless, I believe the thing you need to realise is that WK levels alone are not progress. Progress comes from actual memorisation of kanji and vocabulary, if resetting helps you accomplish this, you will be making more progress by doing that then you ever will by struggling with an untameable work load.

That being said, it’s important that you reset don’t reset to a level that will be far too easy for you. The last thing you want to do is set back to level one and just get bored because you’re not learning anything new. So, what you need to do is go through all the levels you’ve already done, starting from your current level (52) and see what you remember. Once you find a level where you know about 2/3s of the content, I recommend resetting to that level and unburning any remaining items you don’t know. Hopefully, this will give you a much more manageable workload.

Don’t be too worried about any later kanji you already know, you’ll speed through these in no time, making your level progression likely much faster during your journey back to level 52.

This is the best method I could think of for returning after such a long time. Some words of reassurance: don’t worry if you feel as though you’ve forgotten a lot, and don’t be scared to reset as far back as you need to, you’ll likely be able to pick these kanji back up very quickly.

Good luck! I’m sure you can do it! :wink:
@IwaoiLaudo

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2E559B0F-382A-4F04-92AD-EBA546D8BD08

Welcome back!

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Hello,
I also came back after about a year of not wanting to face a huge pile of reviews and forgotten kanjis.
In the end, I decided that it was better for me to re-start from scratch now than not start at all.
Your level is pretty high, so probably restarting from level 1 would be too easy and boring for you. If I were you, I would look at the kanji of the previous levels and identify which is the lowest level that you are completely comfortable with, and start again from there.

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Welcome back :smiley:

I think the Item Inspector script might be your best bet to start sorting through things:

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Welcome back!

I didn’t come back after a year, but I did return from a 4-5 month break in which I only implemented vacation mode for one of those months. I came back to 1500 reviews and I couldn’t remember a lot. Though, I was also really surprised by what I was able to recall.

My recommendations are:

Seanblue’s Prioritize Overdue Reviews
rfindley’s Reorder Ultimate 2
rfindley’s Self-Study Quiz

You’ll want to be able to move through your reviews and adjust the order. It’s helpful to do enlightened → master → guru because you’ll reduce your initial review pile from increasing too rapidly. I recommend self-study because you should realistically assess what you retain from burned/enlightened/mastered items before you drop burned items back down to apprentice 1.

This way you can get clear on which ones to reset, though the Item Spector script also has self-study in it so that’s also a great option.

But otherwise, I recommend just going through your reviews and plowing through your inaccuracies. I had 23%, 17%, 47%, 34%, and so on accuracy ratings when I came back, but it’s ok. Take your time.

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Welcome back @IwaoiLaudo

Take it slow :slight_smile:

Good luck :four_leaf_clover:

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welcome back ^^

i’m still new, so can’t speak from experience, but a suggestion i’ve seen quite a lot is to reset back a number of levels (like, 5 or 10 or something) to wherever you still remember most of the kanji and vocabs. that would also get rid of a lot of the review pile

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I second the above ^. I came back from a long break, reset and started at level 1, but that’s because there was stuff from level 1 I actually did not remember. At a higher level, you probably want to skip the early stuff. If there’s like 1 thing from a level you don’t remember, I wouldn’t sweat that either though, assuming you’ll be engaging with japanese content by reading/listening/studying elsewhere, it’ll likely come up again.

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Thank you for advice and words of assurance.

I must admit part of me doesn’t want to reset because, well, I don’t want to lose any “progress”: I had worked so insanely hard to get there. But, as you mentioned it, progress isn’t about WaniKani level, right? Perhaps I need to let it–or some, or many–go. Poor me.

But, first thing first, I need to sort out how much exactly I still retain in my memory.

Thank you again!

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Gosh is that gif Jon Snow. I mean, not in his usual outfit, or self, actually. I took me a few seconds to register it’s not from Rupaul. Hilarious.

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Thank you for your kind word.

I second your idea to look into everything again and see how much I can remember. We are both semi-beginners here, I guess. Let’s make it to level 60 together (or well, whatever level you’re aiming at)!

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Wow, this thing seems promising. Need to give a thorough look into it. Thank you so much!

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Thank you for your suggestions and advice.
It will take some time looking into those API and how they work. Much less time than doing reviews, that’s sure. I must admit I don’t even remember how to make these API work. Good thing the instruction is provided there. Oh but I do remember TamperMonkey though, which I always mistook as TamponMonkey because I don’t know the word ‘tamper’ and ‘tampon’ seems close enough.

P.S. 17% accuracy seems great in my situation; I cannot afford to hope for more haha.

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Well, yes, I need to calm myself down a bit. I know there’s no need to rush things but still.

And good luck to you, too!

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Thank you for your warm welcome back.

And belated welcome you to WaniKani, too!
This is the best place for studying Kanji and lots of vocab, I can assure you.
I mean, well, it works for me. And I kinda believe it works for anyone.

Let’s hope we can survive this together.

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Yes, I engage with Japanese content somewhere else. It’s not much but I watch some anime, and that gave me a deep prickly reminder of WaniKani. Every single time. It feels like you left something unfinished. Perhaps that’s another reason I’m back here.

And I hope that last part of yours is true: I hope they would all come up again.

Thank you for your reply!

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Haha, same here… Was at Level 6 or something and thought it was better to reset…

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I don’t think I’m the best to advice you, considering I’ve never reset or revived any burned items. There is however a script that could help you with that last bit if you’re set on going through with it, the Burn Manager.

Regardless of what you decide to do in the end, good luck with your studies! ^>^

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Unpopular opinion here: get rid of WK. Not because is bad in any way, damn I’m lovig it so far, but because I think it has no porpuse in your condition.
I’ll explain myself, what is your objective? As for me, is primarly to understand japanise (be it spoken or written) and then speak it, and I think at your stage WK isn’t going to do you any good.

As you can see from my level I’m not an expert in japanise, but mind you, english is not my first langauage, so i know a thing or two about learnig languages. All right, I licked my own ass enoght, if you want it, those are my advices.

First, as I said leave WK, then buy and study thoroughly a japanise grammar book.
My advice would be to choose something relatively easy and short. My go to is Basic Japanise Grammar, is short and not at all compreensive, but is enought to get you started.

Second in my opinion, and I could very well be wrog, the most important first step in learning a language is to understand when is spoken.
For this porpouse I raccomand you a really easy to understand (and enjoyable) anime: takagi san. On netflix they have the second season in the original language and also subbed in english and japanise.
So what you should do is to try to understand word for word and then phrase for phase what they are saying, and then use english as a back up when you really can’t undestand the meanig of it at all.

Obviously you can’t drop kanji all together so my advice here is to use anki. You have to set it up all by yourself and you can use it for all the kanji you encounter whatching the series.

Those would be my advices to start to really use and aunderstand the language, ultimatelly WK is not progress for the understanding of the language. Is just a mean to make your own method of kanji studing, which is a relativelly small chunk of learnig japanise.

That said, god luck. I hope you find my rumblings useful in some way.

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