The “1000 reviews” problem can be solved with vacation mode… but realistically that one week is:
The issue i have with down time is that this is a subscription service, and an expensive one at that (too expensive imo). So any dead time is money just going down the drain. Obviously i understand the theory behind the system but it feels especially bad when this cost what it does.
O, can you elaborate more on this? I’ve been generally limiting my pace to 15 lessons on weekdays, because I’m otherwise super busy with work + other ares of study. I’m wondering if there’s any benefit to trusting my brain with more. I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
Essentially the method I follow involves doing all lessons at the start of a level. For example if I level up to level 10 then I will do all lessons by using the advanced tab under current lessons. I do every single one of them in one go. They come back as reviews in 3 hours and I do them again. They come back in 8 hours after that but instead of doing them at that time I wait for the next morning cause that works best for my scheduling since the next lesson will come 24 hours after and 48 hours after and I prefer to do my reviews in the morning time. So I will be doing 80 plus lessons all at once (130 plus during fast levels), but this is far more effective for me because I am getting so much content revolving around that level all at once. Usually I do to reviews within 30 mins. Sometimes it takes an hour. Some levels just did not stick as well and it took longer. Your brain wants to die during these sessions but you get used to it. It’s like going to the gym for the first time. Sucks bad at first, body is in pain, but you get used to it and start to crave it.
Also side note, I only do reviews on the Tsurukame app for iPhone because I never mark things wrong until after they have reached Guru. After that it is 100% fair game even if it falls back down to apprentice 1. So when I do my reviews if I get it wrong I hit ‘ask again later’ if I get it wrong again ‘ask again later’ wrong again ‘ask again later’ until I get it right. Like I said I do this for the entire batch until they are Guru. By then I know them better than I do if I do it other ways and my burn rate is pretty solid. I will be level 60 (hopefully) tomorrow and I have been able to burn around 4.5K stuff. Also note that I am insanely strict with burning as I only burn if I get it immediately and know it almost perfectly. If I sit there for more than 5 seconds not able to immediately say the reading and definition its out and goes back down to Guru no hesitation.
So, instead of doing 10 kanji this week, then 10 the next, then MAYBE the next week I get to the vocab that corresponds with the Kanji I had learned 2 weeks ago I just do it all at once and get blasted from every direction with it. What this means is levels are done in 8ish days (minus fast levels being done in 4). This for me, as I supplement it with books, manga, news, etc (plus living in Japan), has done wonders this past year and a half but results may vary. Also moving faster means later in levels Kanji that you learned before will be mixed with a new Kanji forcing you to have to re-remember it outside of that original lesson, but since you are going at a faster pace you will see it sooner and just kind of be hit from every direction with constant Kanji and Vocab. Downside is reviews will skyrocket in general and you will always be busy. My life has revolved around WaniKani and my other Japanese studies this past year and a half.
Anyway I don’t recommend this for everyone but if you think it will work for you I would say try it. If it doesn’t work you can always tone it down. It is grueling work though and it feels like banging my head against a wall most of the time, but it has been paying off and I am determined to reach my goals with Japanese.
Sorry for the wall of text! I like to be detailed but that generally means overly detailed, but I hope there is some helpful information you can get from it. Also any questions let me know!
Thank you for the detailed reply, and
Congratulations on level 60!!
This is interesting info, I haven’t thought about attempting it this way before. So do you do all of the lessons, and then review with no new lessons until you level up again (after like 8 days)? I think with my current schedule, that review pace sounds intimidating to me, and I worry about getting burnt out, especially as there are other things I am juggling. However, this reminds me that my brain can handle more than I expect. I’m going to give throwing in extra lessons a shot–probably not all at once, but more than I usually do–and see what happens.
I would like to make serious progress with my reading this year. My current Japanese exposure is 90% speaking/listening, so it’s easy to neglect reading practice in favor of audible media. I wonder if I should give it a shot to see what I can handle? Mostly I don’t want to burn out or tank my accuracy.
That’s right! So I max out doing the most possible lessons it will allow me to do. The normal levels are done in 2 phases though. It’s 4 days per phase. So for example level 10 phase 1 will be all the radicals, most of he Kanji, a good bit of vocab. After 4 days phase 2 will be the rest of the Kanji and vocab then after 4 days (total of like 8 days) level up. Repeat the process until you reach 60.
Burnout is very real. I had a rough patch in the 40’s where I remember struggling to keep going. It was brutal, but after 2 levels which was about 2 weeks I was able to re-motivate myself. I have another friend who is doing the same thing and he is level 30. He has recently has some troubles too (the new Monster Hunter is a very fun game it seems), but I think he has refocused. Essentially it is going to depend on you but maybe you could try to do a bit more and see how it goes. Your brain 10000% can handle it, but it comes down to if you can stay motivated to keep up the intensity. In my case that has been the case at least haha
Good luck though. I am sure you will figure it all out. Setting goals and understanding the risks involved in certain study habits I think will go a long way in you figuring out what will get you to that finish line!
Ok cool I see! Very interesting approach. I’m honestly tempted to give it a shot, because leveling up once a week sounds great and it seems like loading all the vocab and kanji at once, while high volume, might help drill in the readings/meanings as they’re all related. I’ll weigh the risks and maybe try it out in the next week or so! I could probably handle that many lessons on a weekend (the weekday reviews could be a very different story). Thanks for the advice~
Oh one other question actually–using this method, around how many reviews do you have to handle at a time? For example, how many apprentice-level items was normal for you on a daily basis, and if you do ~3 review sessions a day, around how many reviews were you typically seeing for those?
Well so the thing is this method requires you to do the reviews all at once too when they come in. Those took be 30 mins sometimes up to an hour for some sessions. So a lesson has maybe around 80 lessons, you do them all in one go. Then they come back 3 hours later, you do them all in one go again. Then the come back in 8 hours (I wait for the next morning to do them, but you do them all in one go. 24 hours they come back, do them all in one go. 48 hours later they come back do them all in one go and immediately do the next 80 lessons for phase 2. repeat. It is very very rigorous. So if you were to do them split up I’m not sure how exactly that would work. It would confuse my brain in terms of scheduling. So I am not sure, but if you sit down and do the math you could maybe figure something out. I just always do my reviews on a schedule and I do them all at once. Now in regards to other reviews not relating to the current level I try to do those all in one go, but if I can’t no big deal because they don’t affect my current level. My goal is to constantly keep my review pile at 0.
Overall I am personally doing 1K plus reviews a week at very very minimum. Usually much more. Just the current level reviews alone will rack up 700 reviews in a week for me at my current level on WaniKani. Reviews exponentially goes up but it will also exponentially fall down to 0 once I near the end of burning them all.
As for my overall apprentice items I always tried to keep it below 120 (Now days I keep it below 180 because my overall lessons increased since reaching the fast levels). So maybe when I was level 30 for example, I had 80ish apprentice items from my current level/phase but obviously I have leeches and stuff from a recent level that did not stick. So I would figure out what those are and try to make them stick. As long as I was keeping my apprentice numbers below 120 I knew I was not going to be overwhelmed. I had some times it went up to 150 and had to bring it down but I always told myself if I hit 180 I would immediately stop leveling up and work on getting them down first. Luckily I never got to that, but there was a couple of times it came a little close and I had to really get serious, do extra study, and hit my reviews hard.
Hopefully that all makes sense. The min/maxing of WaniKani has become an insane game to be honest and there is so much involved in it.
Okay cool! Yeah, with my current 15 lesson/day method, I keep my apprentices at around 100 and review 3x a day (all reviews to 0 each time), which is typically 100+ reviews in the morning, 50 or so in the afternoon, and anywhere from 50-80 in the evening. Thanks, this helps me factor in the workload.
It’s probably worth pointing out, that this is the best case scenario, i.e. you make no mistakes? If you do make mistakes, they will come up quicker than that. And if you like to keep up the pace, you have to do these as well, as soon as they come up.
So with my method I always will get them right because I don’t mark them wrong. For example, instead of making it wrong I use the ‘ask again later’ feature if I get it wrong until I get it right. Even if it takes 5 or 6 times. Once it is Guru then I will always mark it wrong if I get it wrong. So this provides you with quick leveling up at a fast pace, and also really helps drive in the reviews. Then for the few you don’t know well they will eventually find their way back down to Guru or even apprentice on some rare ones. I posted about it above but with this method I have seen great burn rates meaning they are sticking well, and for me they stick better this way than the intended method from WaniKani.
How do you do this? It’ll only give me 15 per day.
On the area where you see your 15 lessons, click the “Advanced” button on the lower part of this area. This will take to the “Advanced lesson picker” screen. You will see all of the unlocked and ready to learn items in your queue. Select as many as you like (up to all of them if you like) and then click the button at the bottom of the page to start the lessons.
If you would like to see the total amount of available lessons in addition to the daily limit (15 in your case) then check out the “Show Total Lesson Count” user script.