until about level 11-12, my accuracy rate on first review was in the low seventies.
i have since upped my game. i spend much more time on lessons (2-3 minutes per kanji); i really figure out the mnemonic, with adaptations as necessary so that it sticks and covers all the radicals in the kanji. and about half an hour after lessons, i have a quick review (just visually look at the kanji, and recite mnemonics and readings to myself).
my accuracy on first review is now in the high nineties, and remains high as the level progresses.
I do few lessons (10-15) and I usually remember them in the next reviews, in apprentice I do few mistakes, I have some, of course. I also try to always hit the 4 hour review and be close on the 8 hours too. I usually have more trouble with the long term memory and I make more mistakes going from guru to master and master to enlightened.
My overall accuracy (wkstats one) is pretty good at around 97%.
Honestly, I know a little Chinese so that helps with the meanings and rarely, the readings. With others, I usually remember it after two tries, others, I can really struggle with.
Nice to see all your replies! I’m just gonna reply to some of the main points people bring up here instead of individually replying.
As for time: I too have times when I seem to be more of a sponge, but whatever. I also do lessons while under the influence of painkillers which is a terrible idea haha but I do get them eventually so, meh.
As for the amount of lessons: I’m online all day, so it’s usually faster for me to do ALL my lessons as quickly as possible, and then maybe fail a few of the early apprentice reviews than to space out the lessons. Sometimes though, when I’ve got a lot of lessons from a level up I might get tired or bored and do them in batches of 30 or so.
Lessons themselves: For radicals, I read the meaning, move on. For Kanji, I look at the meaning and the reading (if I need to. I have been dancing around Japanese for almost 20 years, so my kanji and vocab are all over the place just from being exposed through other sources so I know some level 2 kanji/vocab and some level 20 kanji/vocab) and move on. For vocab, I look at the meaning and reading if I need to and then read the example sentences, and move on. I’m a firm believer in you either know it or you don’t. I like to get through them as quick as possible to start practicing.
As for mnemonics, I ignore them. Mnemonics are BS in my opinion (although I don’t judge if they work for you), and I find it takes more time, effort and memory space to remember a silly story than to just recognise it on sight. Also, I personally detest the WK mnemonics in particular, because they rarely teach the correct pronunciation of the word.
I find that early mistakes really help it stick. I have some leeches (particularly body/rest) that I will occasionally get wrong, but typically I don’t get many wrong once they pass from Apprentice to Guru. That said, I have absolutely no problems with making mistakes, I just don’t like it when dumb typos hinder progression XD
Right now I have 40 lessons left and at level up I had like 100, I’m pretty sure I’ll forget many more of them for the first reviews if I did all of them at once rather than my usual 15.That’s why you can’t really compare.
Somewhere between 1 to 4 times. Mostly depend if i know it before or not(and if mnemonic make sense)
On the other hand i still got friends from level 1