Hi - I am a WaniKani newbie and am only at Level 5. While I’m enjoying the learning process, I don’t find the site itself very intuitive. Can someone please tell me:
where I can find a simple explanation of how one progresses through the memorising levels (i.e. Apprentice, Guru, Master, etc.)?
on the right hand side of the dashboard, what are the Review predictions about?
is it critical that you use the prescribed mnemonics? I only ask because many of the recommended mnemonics seem clunky to me and so I come up with my own instead.
I’m sorry if these questions seem a bit dopey. Thanks in advance. Cheers, Nezumi
See number 4 in the Ultimate Guide for questions about SRS and timing- I found that understanding the timing between SRS levels was key to figuring out a routine for WaniKani. (Long story short, it is more efficient to do reviews spaced 12 hours apart, so my routine is to do them at 9am and 9pm every day).
Also check out the userscripts when you have time- some of them are really handy.
Like tester123 said, using your own mnemonics is definitely better if you can come up with them! I add all of mine to the notes section. That being said, it is hard to come up with so many so the recommended ones are a nice back up.
My advice for #3 would be to stick with the default mnemonics for kanji if you can. A lot of future mnemonics will reference earlier mnemonics. If you ignore a lot of early mnemonics, you may end up breaking continuity with future mnemonics too. They also have recurring characters sometimes (Kouichi, Joe, Jo-anne, Satsuki, Tamara, etc). I would only deviate if you absolutely need to.
For vocab, feel free to go crazy with custom mnemonics. A lot of the default ones aren’t very good anyway.
Thank you for your advice - it is super helpful. I’m glad I’m not the only one a bit mystified by WaniKani! Your advice about spacing out the reviews systematically sounds sensible. I have been tending to just log on at random times during the day to see if their is anything to review at all. I quite like devising my own mnemonics but, that said, they don’t always work! Cheers, Nezumi
I was a bit worried that by bypassing the mnemonics provided, I might be disadvantaging myself in future when they are referred to again. I always read them to see if they point out that it should be remembered for future reference. I use some of them, but they can be a bit of a stretch!
Your own mnemonics will stick better but asap you should really use the radicals like a recipe.
I tend not to use the mnemonics now because it’s a lot more efficient to remember stuff like
一 (one) + 厶 (private) + 土 (earth) = 至 (attain, arrive, proceed)
至(attain, arrive, proceed) + 刂 (knife) = 到 (arrival, result in)
亻(leader) + 到(arrival, result in) = 倒 (collapse, overthrow)
For the radicals names and kanji concepts, i would recommend you to compare at least one other service like
Seconding this advice. I think you shouldn’t skip the mnemonics for kanji at the very least. They provide a bridge for your brain (alongside radicals) to link those random clusters of strokes into a concept you’re familiar with in English. Having recurring characters and items (saber, eagle, etc.) helps a ton once you get into the higher levels and things start to get overwhelming, because that’s just one less new thing you have to learn.
Everything else has been explained, so let me just give a bit of unsolicited advice, definitely try to keep your apprentice items under 100 so that your reviews are manageable daily. Once you start to creep close to 100 you generally also tend to have at least 120 ish review items for that day.