*ekg's leech battle blog - a study log of sorts

Best of luck to you! :cat2:

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Time for another update! :high_touch:

I have finally gotten apprentice level items under control, meaning reviews are generally under 100/ day or around that. Comparatively, there was quite a jump in numbers at the start of my return to WK. I’m not doing as badly on them anymore, so I’m even burning some items. That being said, most items fall down to Guru or Apprentice.

Since I now feel like I have a good routine going reviewing the old stuff, and it’s not overwhelming in any way, I felt like adding a bit to the pile. :muscle:

I’m using @rfindley’s Burn Manager script to unburn kanji in bulk (you can find it here: [Userscript] Burn Manager (Review / Resurrect / Retire)).

I’m going through 1 level at the time, starting at the Hell levels sine I felt I they might need it most. So, far I’m done with lv 31-34. And by done, I mean, I unburn the level’s kanji, then keep reviewing them until I feel reasonably sure about them - also by using the Study Mode to go over “Recent Mistakes” - then, after a day of cramming the items I retire them back to burn. Next day, I unburn the next level kanji to go cram that day.

Lv 35 kanji coming up tonight
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It might seem like a lot to go through all kanji in a day, but not all items need revising (apparently my brain do sometimes remember stuff). And this is a great way of finding out which items I need to put some effort into studying again. ^>^

So, far I feel like this refresher is simple enough to do and helpful in reminding me of all I’ve learnt these past years doing WK. There are no demands on how much time to put on a level. Any kind of reviewing is fine. :slight_smile:

It’s kind of nice to also bring in “new” items, even if temporary, among the reviews I have right now, since they’re either leeches or recently failed burn-reviews. So, it’s a good reminder of the joys of learning, even if it’s a struggle at times. :sweat_smile:


Studying is great, just remember to nap! :cat2:

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So, since the last update, I’ve mostly been doing the FLESH & BLOOD, book club as my main study focus. But, I’m still keeping up with Hunter x Hunter and Space Dandy.

I think, it’s been a great ride so far and especially with F & B, it’s been as much of a history lesson about 16th Century Europe as a lesson in Japanese and learning new kanji! :joy:

Random thing, since I still have access to the Reality levels sub-forum, I got curious and revisited my own study-group thread for 2021 (if you can’t open this link, it means you’re not at WK level 50+). And I found my old poll from back then, but now with many more answers!

I think this might interest people who are nearing the fast-levels or are thinking about study pacing. :eyes:

Clearly, no one stayed at a fixed study pace during Paradise. Everyone sped up to some extent. In any case, that increased pace is then either kept up or being slowed down a bit to accommodate the increasing numbers of reviews you get from speed-running WK. :eyes:

Few people aim for the max speed approach, which I think is sensible. It’ll give you mountain of reviews to go through, and even going a pretty fast speed as I did, still landed me between 250-400 reviews at the peak of insanity.

Compare that to now, I just have between 4-40-ish reviews to deal with daily. it’s no biggies to miss a couple of days reviewing, but that’s defo hurting me getting over my leeches. I’m going to try to stay more focused moving forward, even if I just get 5 reviews in a day - I really need to get them done! :triumph:

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Time for an update on my leech situation.

For months since I restarted doing Wanikani, I have basically been swamped by leeches, but leeches of a different kind from before. Basically, I had simply forgotten a lot of Enlightened and Master items and so they failed to burn or move up the SRS as before my hiatus. Essentially, they weren’t real leeches, but still swamped my reviews and showed in my leech count. And there were so MANY of them! :dizzy_face:

I just couldn’t keep up with my leech battling routine in the face of it, also recognizing it might be futile. So, I just kept up with the SRS mostly, while doing “most recent mistakes” training from time to time, using either the Item Inspector or the native Extra study feature.

I sort of haven’t checked my actual leech number in a while, since I felt it was laughing me in the face. Only to do so today. I now suddenly have a tiny number of 92 leeches! O_O

I think it’s fair to say that the items here are all true leeches, that have plagued me greatly over the course of my WK journey, and somehow still do (I just failed a couple of reviews of items I’ve tried again and again to learn). I take time to do extra study and quiz myself, but many of them simply refuse to stick all the way to burn. :pensive:

But, the number is certainly manageable with how few items I have overall each day. :sweat_smile:

So, suspect that while it’s slow progress on these items, they are getting fewer and fewer and eventually, when they’re all that’s left, that’s when I’ll inevitably learn them - finally? Well, I can only hope so. :sweat:

I still have time on my yearly sub, so I’ll keep at it for that amount of time. If I still haven’t learnt some of these, I’ll just have to let it go and accept I’ll have to do so at a later time - probably from encountering them in the wild. Let’s not forget, that’s still the best way of retaining language skills! :lion:

So, I think my main focus on book clubs is a good way forward. :books: I’m enjoying the Flesh & Blood book club immensely and the Drama CD-club planned to start in January also seems like a great opportunity to work more focused on my listening comprehension. AND it’s great fun! ^>^ So, for now, that’s what I’ll do for Japanese studies.

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Congratulations for your progress. It is a pleasant feeling to see how few items are left to be learned.

I ran into a situation recently and I wonder if you run into the same thing. During a vocab review I try to recognize the constituent kanji and fail. I go check the kanji on its item page and to my astonishment it is burned but I may as well have never seen it before. So I go resurrect it to learn it again. Do you run into these situations or are all your burned items engraved into your memory?

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No, not at all. they’re clearly not I think. I’m not all too surprised, tbh. The items that are truly engraved in my memory, I’ve encountered in the wild on top of the WK learning. The others are shaky at best. It’s like, on a good day, I’ll recognize a word and or I can guess a word from the kanji. A different day, I can’t do either for the same items. They’re clearly learnt in some way, but not as easily accessible as the deeper connected items.

I think it’s best to accept that’s the way of language learning. You have to make words “your own” to truly use and express them. And that takes more than some meaning and reading tests. It takes language use and recognition in the wild. Something a bit more complex.

It doesn’t really take away for how much I’ve learnt from WK, but it’s a reminder that it works best in conjunction with reading, listening and other Japanese language activities. :eyes:

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I’ve finally gotten to a new milestone on my WK journey. Today I finally managed to get that elusive 0 apprentice achievement! :sob: I thought I’d never manage it, as I kept getting items to fall down the SRS just as I was getting remotely close to it. ^^; But there it is! (for now! :sweat_smile: )

But, more than that, I’ve managed to get 8000 burns! :astonished:

giphy

I’m happy to say, I’m at least burning some lv 60 items now, though I’ve failed several already. Who said it was ever going to be easy! ^^’ But, I’ll keep on chipping away at my reviews and hopefully I might reach even higher levels of burn! :fire:

index

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Since getting lifetime, I’ve been considering how to make the most of it. And I’ve decided to do a bit of resetting to allow me to better master the items on WK. I have all the time I want to complete WK a second time and I’m going to make full use of it - no rushing, just enjoying the process. :slight_smile:

So, time for some recording of my current stats as they will get deleted after I hit that reset button…

WK stats

Burnt items

Items lv 1-5

Items lv 6-10

Items lv 11-15

Items lv 16-20

Items lv 21-25

Items lv 26-30

Items lv 31-35

Items lv 36-40

Items lv 41-45

Items lv 46-50

Items lv 51-55

Items lv 56-60

JLPT items burnt

Leech count 71 items

Never burnt items 1-30

Never burnt items 31-50

Never burnt items 51-60

The deed is done! ^^; I’m officially lv 6 again!

While not posted, I also did 3 different csv-item extractions using the Item Inspector-script by @prouleau <3 That way I have full access to the old me and my old struggles, if I wanna take them on. XD

Also @anon3564849 as I’ve done a @Matskye! XD Which level are you on anyway at this point? :thinking:

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Plesant to not be alone. I should have done the same safe keeping as yours though.

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Since I’ve already finished with the initial batch of lessons for lv 6, I felt like doing some more reviewing.

I’ve decided to use the Extra study Burnt Items-feature. Which I never really tried much of before resetting. It was just a tad too overwhelming. :sweat_smile:

But having just 700-ish items in there, is much easier to handle. :slight_smile: So, I’m doing some cramming of these items from lv 1-5, which feels very doable and helpful as well. Let’s face it: there are always cases of rendaku I’ve forgotten about, or the meaning of items are starting to become vague and not as precise anymore. Also, the whole transitive/intransitive thing could really do with some more cramming. :thinking:

I’ve already done nearly 200 items and will defo have done that at the end of today. Then it’s time to take a break. :slight_smile:

cat-asleep

Edit: forgot to mention it, but going back in levels has finally killed my final leeches! :joy: Cheat mode on! :rofl:

@prouleau <3

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At the end of the day, the stats doesn’t mean much. If it helps you feel motivated, check them out from time to time. If the opposite, ignore them. :wink: I’ll be keeping an eye on my old leeches and see how they fare this time round though. As well as the items I never burnt. :slight_smile: Curious cat is curious! :cat2:

Learning is about repetition and so, hopefully, things will set a bit better in my memory this time. ^>^

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I love stats, they kept me going last time. I’ve decided to keep it as a leisure stroll this time and only being complemental of my others studies, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to refrain myself ha ha.

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I kept myself busy redoing level 1-5 in the past 2 days (besides reading several chapters of Flesh and Blood, vol 8). And so, I finished the items and am now doing them one more time actually. This time, I’m also resurrecting some items that I feel I need to work a bit on, and which seem useful. :slight_smile:

So, now I’m up to 100+ reviews /day from the previous slow trickle. ^^;

Since, I’m moving a bit fast with all of this, I’m taking a forced pause on resurrecting more items.

But, it feels like it has already been pretty useful so far to do a bit of rehashing of old knowledge and I’m defo feeling better off having looked at these highly common items, reminding me on their on’yomi or exact meanings. It’s nice to know that I actually know the vast majority of these items (not just hoping I do). It was pretty fun to plow through 700+ items with little effort, even as I made mistakes as well. ^^;

In any case, I feel ready to guru my lv 6 items tomorrow. :cat2: (and unlock some more vocab and kanji lessons! ^>^ )

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Seems like I’ve unlocked the ultimate cheat code for how to game my own stats! XD

Redoing previous levels has already pushed up my accuracy. And I suspect it will rise further still. :sweat_smile:

in any case, tomorrow is level up day! :partying_face: I look forward to getting new lessons! ^>^

images

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This has indeed proven true. lol. I can’t even believe these numbers. ^^;

I used to put in system the failing of kanji during the first batch, just to spread out the review times for the items, so it all didn’t end up being one huge chunk of items.

Not so anymore. I’m basically not failing anything unless it’s a typo. I’m sure this won’t keep up forever, but for now, it’s makes for a great “learning” experience. :sweat_smile: Clearly, I’m just brushing up on already learnt stuff, but I have defo taken pause at some lessons to really let them sink in this time.

There’s also always the issue of similar looking items and there’s no two-ways around that but more focused study to make sure you don’t confuse those items. :eyes:

Still, I’m clearly not taking more time than necessary on each level.

I thought I’d go slower this time, but frankly, I would just be uncessessarily holding myself back using 10 days for each level by the looks of it. It IS a bit slower right now, just not much. ^^;

I’m also keeping apprentice item numbers a bit lower this time. We’ll see how I keep to that plan moving forward. ^^;

In any case, I feel like all this extra kanji training is helpful, as I feel like I can more freely access my Japanese language knowledge now. :slight_smile:

I’m gonna keep studying and leveling! :triumph:

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I’meowt of likes right meow, but, as always, I’m rooting for you! :cat2:

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Thank you @trunklayer! I’m rooting for you too! :orange_heart: :cat2:

2631611d79def1b3911931b3eda8e316

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Time for an update!

Today is lessons day, the best sort of day! ^>^ Ngl, I enjoy the vocab lessons the most!

Some stats:

I still have an artificially high accuracy, which I guess, is just me having done the hard lifting before and working hard still. ^^’

I’m also going pretty fast, all things considered. I’ve been a bit concerned by getting 200 incoming reviews on a single day and i should think about the pacing a bit more. :sweat_smile:

Then again, as I get the vocab lessons, I can’t help but breeze through them. ^^

We’ll see. I don’t wanna end up with the 250-350 reviews a day scenario again, so I defo have to think of strategies to force myself to drag my feet a bit more.

But, overall, I feel like I’m steadily just improving bits here and there as usual. Most of my time is still spent on Flesh & Blood, mostly the book club but also the Drama CD listening club that will start in on CD 2 tomorrow! I’m really looking forward to that one. Audio media is just something I deeply love. :slight_smile:

So, leeches? What’s the situation there?

Tbh, my high accuracy doesn’t create many of those. At the moment I only have 1 real leach, which I’m not sure why I struggle with (duh, the very definition of a leech :sweat: ), but yeah, it’s “for some years” 年来. I guess, all those year-time definitions blur a bit in my mind and for this one particularly.

私はこの言葉は二年来で知ってるはずなのに!>_>‘’

Well, regardless, I’ll try to work on that one! :cat2:

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reposting, hoping to get some tips perhaps. Not sure how to cap myself from just doing more, as at this stage I do find it easy (mostly! :eyes: some leeches are soon arriving).

And just I have other stuff I wanna do as well. I know 100 reviews is not much if you can speed through it, but it still feels more like a commitment than 50 reviews at a single time.

Again, habits. I used to do 20-30 review sessions and then just stop.

Now I feel like I allow them to pile up more and then immediately get rid of them all, creating new big piles. :frowning_face: Not sure I like it much, as it’s inflexible. It’s easy to start feeling like you have to do this next batch of reviews just because they’re 70 of them. Not so if they’re 20. Then you can just wait some more hours.

I’ll need to think of a strategy here to trick myself into not doing all lessons available, even though I can handle it. :thinking: I just want this run to lv 60 to be different. taking time to see the sights really. ^^; Getting to bond better with each kanji in a way and see if I can just create a more nuanced way of memorizing each item? Something to deal with lingering leeches and just cementing what I know in a more definite way. ^^

Gm5ZmDs

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Time for an update. :durtle_hello:

I’m keeping up a good pace here. Feels like I’ve found a sweet spot of when and how to level up, not slow, but also not max speed. :slight_smile: I basically mixing 7- and 8-day level-ups to keep apprentice numbers from snowballing.

More stats:

Pretty good numbers. Way better than my first run-through. And it also shows in how few leeches I have so far. Still, for old time’s sake, I’ve made myself a kanji-cloud! XD

I’ve been neglecting a bit to do extra study for items I fail. And so far, actual leech training has been put off since it’s just not that many items. Still, I’m gonna do some extra training on these ones to not let anything fester. ^^’

tenor

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