So a warning to you turtles out there. WaniKani users have a really high failure rate. It’s hard to commit to something like this for 2-3 years. But I’m here to warn you. I joined WK in 2014. If I stuck with it every day I’d be done by now.
I came back after a 2 year break, and found my reviews were in the thousands and I didnt remember anything. The spaced repetition requires that you actually keep doing reviews as the pop up.
I had Koichi reset my progress about a year ago. I’m back to level 5 now (I was at lvl 10) and going back through, I’m feeling pretty bad that I dont remember most of the words, though I’d say I do remember about half of them.
Trust me… do all your reviews every day and avoid regrets… also if it pops up get a lifetime membership.
(Edit: 11/17 Well I’ve stuck with this grind method for 11 days now and I’m up two levels already! Gotta practice what I preach. At this rate I’ll be done with Wanikani in about a year and a half!)
It feels like that is certainly the case, slow and steady wins the race…
I am suggesting a lifetime subscription but the price is very steep, it’s hard to justify. I figured that unless there’s a sale or event or something that makes it more affordable I may just stay subscribed for about a year and then look for a different service/tool once I’m more advanced and know how to direct myself better.
Good job coming back! just keep at it, all it takes is to do reviews/lessons twice a day (morning and evening) it’s not like you have to be on top of it all the time!
To be clear, stopping lessons is not as bad as stopping reviews. If you don’t do your reviews, they will pile up (new ones coming in every day). If you don’t do your lessons, the number will stay the same.
I half disagree. I agree about not stop doing reviews, but you can totally do a break with the lessons, I myself am doing a ~1 week break of doing new lessons, but of course I’m doing the reviews, because it would be madness if I didn’t them. Not doing new lessons do no harm.
I was getting really overwhelmed by WK because I was doing 20 new itens a day, pushing all the new kanji to the front. I was doing 1 level per 8~9 days. So came this week, I have a really hard test tomorrow (quantum mechanics) and I decided that I needed WK to have less reviews, so it’s been I think 6 or 7 days since I took my last new lesson and the reviews dropped considerably. I’ll probably return doing lessos friday or I’ll wait for monday.
And I’m reall considering going for 10 new itens a day! Hell, maybe even less. Is fun going fast, but is overwhelming AF and, if you do a ton of other things in your life, it can begin to make you go bad in your other projects.
I joined in 2014. The first time I made it to level 16. Then I think I reset and didn’t come back for a while. This level (34) is the highest I’ve ever gotten to. And even just now I spent two months on a level because I moved and started a new job and life was just so hectic. Still, this year I’ve been more motivated that ever but it’s not like I wasn’t studying and Japanese at all when I was away.
I think it’s ok to go at your own pace. I got the lifetime so I that I wouldn’t feel like I was wasting money or anything. I study when I actually feel like studying.
well so, last summer during exam time i stopped doing my reviews properly but i still had the will to learn the kanji and radicals to continue leveling up. and then after exams i went to japan where i also didnt had time really. (i still did about 150 reviews a day and lessons every now and them) but i always had between 600 and 3000 reviews (yes 3000 is my record) and about 400 lessons.
since then i have gone down to 0/0 three times, last time yesterday, but even though its no month after my dilerium i still get about 300 to 400 new reviews a day. (not really a problem to be honest, can do those is just under an hour), but let me tell you always to your reviews. most people wont have the iron will i have to power though all that
Was gone for 3 years and decided to only reset 4 levels. Powered through 1800 reviews, burnt 1300, failed 500. Had these 500 return once and pushed them higher up the ladder, but they will return… in 2 or 3 weeks from now. I’ll push them up again, they’re my reminder to not slack, and I’ll be redeemed when they’re burned.
I believe that older problem items become easier the more you know. There’s no science backing this claim, it’s my empirical data - stuff I had trouble with half last time around is trivial now. My wall of shame still contains that one thing I got wrong all the time 3 years ago. With how the brain grows connections, I might have cornered it from another angle - saw it and registered it unconsciously or so.
I’d not rush, but continuing is important in my opinion. With zero progress over a long time, I believe the construct will slowly rot.
There’s actually a lot more to learning kanji and words than just doing the spaced repetitions. Truth is, even if you flawlessly complete a word or kanji until you burn it, you’ll still forget it if you don’t use it.
Spaced repetition is a tool for learning, but it assumes that you’re in regular contact with the language and finding the words or kanji it’s teaching you in the wild, so to speak. Your brain is wired to forget that which it does not use, and spaced repetition is only meant to keep it from forgetting too quickly so you get enough time to see said words or kanji used naturally in texts.
So it’s not just about not stopping doing reviews. You also have to read outside of WK if you want for anything to stick.
I agree, since I’m level 59, I have a lot of reviews every day. More than two hundred, even when it’s same in lower levels, the words get pretty hard… Sometimes I lose my motivation, but then I say “Just few more levels, and you’re done, after 2 years…”
But yeah, it happened mayme twice, that I didn’t do my reviews for a month, and when I came back, IT WAS HORRIBLE! I couldn’t remember lot of things and I felt really down, kinda hated myself for not remembering.
But yes, I must say WaniKani is an amazing experience, it taught me so much, I can read any text and get the gist of it, I’m really thankful I started those 2 years ago and kept doing it (almost) everyday and now I must say, CONTINUE, IT’S WORTH IT. DO YOUR REVIEWS & LESSONS.
If you don’t stay on top of lessons as well as reviews you won’t ever finish WaniKani. Every day that you put off a lesson pushes the burning of that item back by a day. And that can add up to a huge delay if you compound that from all 60 levels.
Also I know WaniKani isn’t a panacea, but when you finish it you’ll be at a pretty good starting point. Something I do every so often is go back over my burned stuff to see if I remember them all. So far so good, though that may change as I start racking up the burned items. The mnemonics only get you to the point where you can read, only through practice can you turn it into intuition.
But even Japanese people I’ve talked to say they start forgetting Kanji when they move to the US. I think if you can manage the free time to do all of your lessons and reviews as they pop up, you can level up every week and be done with Wanikani in less than 2 years if you have 100% on the reviews. Super rigorous, but most college programs that I know of don’t even make you learn 2000 kanji. The genki books only have about 600 I believe. So getting started on 2000 kanji in less than two years is pretty good.
I think it’s important to be realistic about language goals and try to adjust how you do lessons and reveiws accordingly. I need to do both as soon as possible every single day because of my goals, but for people who have different goals, don’t feel like you need to be going super fast!
Overload is a real thing, and it’s true that review can feel not as fun because it’s stuff you’ve already learned, but boy can I tell you it is so helpful to have it because I forget stuff all the time. I recently moved to Japan on the JET program and honestly all the studying I did in college for my Japanese degree felt like it went out the window since I hadn’t been practicing it regularly. Reviews are your bread and butter, keep up on them!
I messaged tech support last night because some audios were failing on my end. In the conversation, they mentioned that there would be a Winter special including a reduced cost for the lifetime membership.
