I’m pretty sure I’ve been on level 10 to long but I also feel like I’m can do so many reviews in 1 day.
Currently I do about 110 to 130 reviews a day with about 91 items at apprentice and the rest spread out over the other levels with 146 lessons sitting in que.
Idk if I should just power through my lessons till at least the end of the current radicals or not because I feel like the large load of new materials for review might kill my over all motivation.
I usually due my reviews in 2 batches once in the morning when I get up and once when I got to be, there about 50 - 60 reviews each time and I get about 50% - 60% of them correct each time.
Don’t worry too much! You’re not the only one who has experienced this feeling of dread. Like many others, some chose to power through, some chose to slow down. For me, I’m definitely one of the people who decided to slow down.
Background
Just like you, I also power my way through from lv6 to lv13, levelling up about 7-9days on avg, doing almost or maybe more reviews than what you’re doing during that period. Then I realise that I am starting to forget my vocabs more often than not, especially on days when I have burn reviews coming up. So, I decided to slow down and do my lessons (~45/week instead) and it made things a lot easier and information retention is a lot better since I’m not just cramming and powering through.
Probably a good rule of thumb (take it with a pinch of salt & TRUST your judgement!), I would say know what your priorities are. Do you want to power through till your desired level or maybe, take it easy as you learn other things beside WaniKani (grammar, listening, speaking, reading portion). Also, do check with your own schedule to see if there might be other factors involved. (For me, it’s studying uni and overloading my acad semester which is dumb)
Another thing (more like a sidequest), check the forums when you have the time! There are many helpful post by various people, and post that are similar to yours. You might be able to relate to them and maybe, make new friends and help each other out!!!
Remember, learning a language is not about doing WaniKani till lv60 (and get the cake), its about your goals, the lessons (besides WaniKani) you learnt and the friends you make on this journey. Take a break if you need and come back stronger, smarter and wiser, we will always be here. Take care~
Thanks, I’ve been doing aniki for grammar and vocab as well as wankani but when I checked the android app is says I’ve been on level 10 for 2 months so It made me feel really bad like I’m just stalling out my lessons.
I would say 50-60% is fairly low. Any specific types of items (radicals, kanji, vocabulary) you’re struggling with the most? Or is it the mnemonic-heavy aspect of WaniKani that might require more time to get used to? Are you doing something else other than WaniKani which might also be impacting how many new items you learn daily?
I’m not very good at recognizing kanji and I think a lot of the vocab I’m getting wrong are jukugo as well as similarly sounding words.
I also often get U and O mixed up (ちょう and ちゅう) mixed up with spellings.
I am doing aniki as well now but I was having this issue well before that.
As for the mnemonics I found more often then not they don’t help me remember the word or make me remember the wrong word / part of the word so I don’t find them very helpful.
For recognizing kanji it might be a good idea to spend a little more time on the mnemonics provided by WaniKani or think whether there is a more personal system you can develop to make the meanings + pronunciation stick better. Anything based on sounds, pictures, cartoon characters, etc. If you have echoic memory I can suggest a thing or two, but as far as I know, there are more people with photographic memory around.
Regarding ちょう and ちゅう is it the characters or sounds that are troublesome? If it’s characters, writing kana in a notebook as you do your reviews might be a good idea. Especially pay attention to the stroke order and how you write the characters. That way you can trace them in the air later .
If it’s the sounds, that might be a little more tricky.
It’s definitely a sound issue, I feel like I have a bit of a split between echoic and photographic memory with echoic feeling like it was easier but then I stopped using the script that had the voice overs auto play after I spelled the word and I found my accuracy rate going up.
On a good day I get about 71% of them right without sound, but that’s only when I’m in a good place mentally and physically.
Pingu san has pretty much said what needs to be told.
You don’t have to be under the impression of “I have to complete this level in 10 days”. “Everyone is moving faster than me”
While you can’t completely eliminate that feeling, trust the SRS system and your body. If you feel overwhelmed, slow down. Your body and mind knows it better than anything else in the world.
One can enable the voice prompts in the options, I think. I have them on all the time and they do help me massively. Also, when reviewing items I pronounce the sounds for both kanji and vocab aloud several times, regardless whether the prompt is for meaning or reading. That also helped me quite a bit. Might be worth a try!
Didn’t know that voice prompt was built into wankani, been using a custom script.
It is nice to know that I may just need to take little more time and a little more work on those kanji that are giving me a hard time…
I’ll try pronouncing them out loud for my next lesson and see if that helps.
There is no “too long”. There is only quitting, which is forever.
91 items in apprentice will translate to pretty much exactly the number of reviews you quote. However a 50 to 60% correct rate will result in lots of churn and a much slower rate of apprentice → guru → master progression. Which can make one seem as though they aren’t making progress. That said, don’t compare yourself to people who post their crazy high percentages. Most of us aren’t like that. I just look at churn as more opportunity to see that character.
Thanks, this is the exact reason why I stopped visiting r/LearnJapanese since more often then not I felt like I was an idiot compared to others one it >.>
Sometimes it’s clear from one of the radicals which on’yomi reading a kanji will have, for instance kanji with the 青 “radical” (well, more of a kanji, but…) will mostly be pronounced せい, kanji with the “top hat” radical, like 粗 will mostly be pronounced そ or そう, etc. This helps a lot, because it takes you <1 sec to read it without thinking.
When reading words aloud, try to create a setting in your mind which fits the meaning and pronounce that word with slightly different intonations a couple of times. That way you will be able to create an emotional association with the vocal aspect of the word. The setting doesn’t have to be overly complex. It can be a short clip or snapshot of a scene. For instance, you petting a swan, you returning from work in a crowded train car, etc. Anything that would be both personal and evocative enough to make the meaning stick.
Regarding the percentage correct each time thing. You’ll notice that your performance is a lot better when you aren’t stressed out and are relaxed. But because you think your performance is low, its stressing you out.
Also, the reason that its giving you a older item to review when it does is because its timed in such a way that it thinks there’s a good chance you’ve forgotten it, so if you have forgotten, it just means the system is working. It wouldn’t be good if it didn’t bring up the ones you forgot just so you can get 90% or so.
It sounds to me like you’re getting stressed out over it and are beating yourself up. It’s a lot easier said than done, but you need to go easy on yourself and try to relax.
I’ve been on level 16 for a few years now. Just got through a backlog of pretty much every non-burned item and it was quite a slog. Ended up using the reorder ultimate 2 script so I could do them by level. It took me a few weeks, but now I am back on track to level up eventually. The thing that has gotten me through this is just remembering that WK isn’t a race. There are people go very fast, and others at a slower pace. Just go at the pace you can, because life won’t slow down around you. If it takes you a bit longer to finish the journey, know that nobody is looking down on you.
Oh man, I definitely know that feeling. “I learned 6,000 vocab words and internalized the entirety of the grammatical structure of the language in just 6 months! And all it took was having nothing else to do, so I could devote all of my free time to it!” That sub can be a great resource for asking questions (although even that can be sort of shaky sometimes) but man it can be rough when you’re surrounded by people going wild on how great they’ve been doing.
Everyone else has already given you great advice, but FWIW, there really is no “too slow” to learning stuff. I def take longer than average (WKStats says that since lvl 10, I’ve been taking like 13-15 days/level), which can be sort of discouraging sometimes but at the end of the day it’s not really a race. I’m just doing it because I want to learn it, and I assume you are too (and most people, tbh), so sometimes you’ve just got to let it take as long as it takes. When you look on a long enough time scale, these small differences don’t seem to matter much.
5 years from now, we’ll both be at level 60 (because we’ll both definitely stick with this!) and having a great time feeling like we’ve learned a functional amount of Japanese, and you won’t remember at all whether it took you 9 or 12 or 15 or 20 days to finish level 9.
Yeah, don’t listen to people on “/learnjapanese”. I’m probably the only one with balls to say it, but most of them are idiots. Wouldn’t be surprised if many of them were trolling. Many are of the opinion that immersion isn’t the way to go. I mean… what do I even respond to that? No, don’t listen to them. Do your own thing, they aren’t the geniuses that will make you learn or make you pass wanikani.
(kidding - I know you meant Anki)