You’re just lumping everyone who goes slow into a single category (including people who are using Duolingo which has nothing to do with this?) and then you say that you
Yeah, big surprise: People who don’t have the will power to see their goals through won’t probably achieve them. That’s completely unrelated to speed.
Figuring out your goals and how you can reach them is a big part of growing up. Maybe some of those people complaining about not progressing on Duolingo will some day recognise that it doesn’t work for them and either quit their goal or switch to a better approach.
Some of the ones who would be doing only or mostly Duolingo, won’t, because the app markets itself as the in and out of language learning, while being severely lacking, especially for a language such as Japanese.
The way I understand @x90PT is that people want to learn a language, but don’t know how to or can’t realistically anticipate the effort necessary to complete the course in the app (a full language tree in Duolingo, level 60 in WaniKani, etc.). They realize the journey is actually challenging and need to season their anticipation by setting more realistic schedules. But in a grander scheme of things, how likely is one to keep doing WaniKani for multiple years and is it actually worth it? Especially if one’s goal is to learn Japanese and not just kanji?
And the app doesn’t help in setting realistic goals, because it just shows the tip of the iceberg - you can learn ~2k kanji and ~Xk vocab in a little over a year. There is no disclaimer about hours spent daily, pacing, etc.
The correct speed to go is the speed I’m going. People going faster than me are going too fast and will never remember anything. People who are going slower than me are going too slow and will never learn Japanese.
Stoooooopuuuu! The last time I saw an age poll on wk I think half the respondents were old enough to feel pain from reading that. I’m not old enough to be having a midlife crisis, but you’re making me feel dangerously close to it
I think you and @x90PT just make a lot of assumptions and generalisations about Japanese learners’ motivations, personal situations, preferred methods of study, discipline, etc., none of which I find warranted.
We clearly have enough people on this forum demonstrating that it’s possible to successfully complete WK after several years. Some of them have used the time to study other aspects of Japanese in the meantime.
For me, Japanese is a fun hobby. If I progress enough to read real adult novels and understand movies someday, I’ll be thrilled, but either way I’m enjoying myself and exercising my brain along the way. I don’t feel like I need a more concrete goal than that, personally.
I think this is helpful. I’m in the “super tourist” category, and I know my goal is for approximately 3 years out from now. WK is the easiest study for me to stick with at this point, but I know that I need to work on listening/speaking/grammar as well, so I definitely want to make sure I use my limited time as effectively as possible.
