Any advice for us beginners? How do you level up so fast? I average around 17 days per level. My accuracy is usually around 80. I feel like it could be way better, but I just don’t know what else to do.
At least, I shall advice something…
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Do EN->JP. I use Anki with some special settings, but the easier way is to use Kaniwani.
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Find/use real-life examples
The other thing I also do, but don’t really advise, is to drill Kanji one level before in advance…
There must be more advice, but take time to find it in WaniKani Community.
This is unrelated to your accuracy rate, but beginners usually are not aware of the mechanics of leveling up. So they spread out lessons over a long time (which is fine) but don’t understand how that impacts leveling up. Pushing radicals and kanji to the front of the lesson queue with a reorder script (while doing all lessons overall in the same total time) will result in a faster level up speed.
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The earliest you can level up is in 7 days, and half of that when you get to levels 46-60. If you want to level up fast, you will need to know your current level’s kanji/radicals well in order progress them to Guru faster. As polv said though, it’s not really advised to drill them beforehand, since it could interfere with the SRS system. Also, doing reviews as soon as you get them helps too. Like Leebo said too, the reorder script can help you prioritse your current level’s radicals and kanji in your reviews.
80% is a decent accuracy percentage imho. I usually get about that or higher, and sometimes less if I’m learning new lessons.
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おめでとうございます！
Actually, I recommend you get into above 90% accuracy rate, by immersion, using it, grammar, or some other different dimensions of recall (like Kaniwani, dictionary, thesaurus, or example sentences).
That’s my goal. When you first do the lessons, do you do anything in particular so they’ll stick? Maybe I just need to take my time on those instead of rushing through them and forgetting it all.
I took a long break of few months due to real life, but hopefully I will be able to get to 60 before november as well. Congrats!
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Only works for lower levels (I am a failure at higher levels).
I pre-study…
EN->JP is the trick. (That’s why I mention Kaniwani.) Plus looking up the word enough in the dictionary, even thesaurus or monolingual, if need be.
Also, I almost never pre-study Kanji vocab->Kana, to save time. I believe it might help prevent subvocalization in reading.
Further tricks, especially for higher levels, I suspected, is example sentences; both via reading and listening. This will need grammar. But I don’t live in Japan or have Japanese conversation, so…
Of course, immersion is another trick, and I do (but not difficult enough?). I suspect N2 or N1 material is needed.
Moreover, that many people do, is try using it in a conversation.
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I personally use this.
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Unfortunately, for most WK vocab (I’d guess for me 50%-75% after level 20 or so), I needed to reinforce it outside Wanikani in order to “recall” (i.e. go from English to Japanese), even for many items I’ve burned here.
But that’s totally ok – WK does such a fantastic job with the comprehension side that it’s still incredibly worth the effort (imo). But if you want to speak you’ll still need another source anyway (Anki, Houhou, or even just picking up from actual native material) to learn kana words and a lot of common vocab not taught here. That tool can also reinforce the WK vocab.
If you really want to go back and relearn all the WK vocab from the “recall” side, there is also www.kaniwani.com – I have it set to reinforce only words I’ve burned here, and it definitely does the job.
I also learn vocab from the recall side with Skritter and Anki.
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congrats, I hope i can achieve level 60 someday
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Do you have a strategy for kaniwani so that it doesn’t become overwhelming? I’m already doing wanikani and iknow, which doesn’t leave me much time for any other Japanese. I’d like to use kaniwani for EN → JP reinforcement, I just don’t know that I have the time, even for burned only…
Yes try setting kaniwani to burned only and just unlocking one level and see how it goes.
The thing about kaniwani is that its really not that big of a time commitment, since you are only doing one review per item (vs. two on WK… meaning and reading). I’ve always felt that kaniwani review sessions go really really fast. Like 100 reviews probably takes 10-15 minutes tops.
You can then set your own pace by choosing when to unlock new levels. And if you can “catch up” to where you are on WK, then you’ll have only as many new items in kaniwani as you can burn in WK.
But honestly if you don’t have time, I wouldn’t sweat it!! More important than anything else is that you have time to study grammar so that you can get to reading and listening to lots of native material as soon as possible and actually enjoy it. All these SRS tools are great, but for real retention nothing beats seeing the words in context in the real world!
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Thank you everyone for your replies! I will definitely try out the suggestions posted here.
@Illuminari, I feel confident that I can recall most of the words I learned. The bigger issue for me lies in recalling words quickly and in succession, for example when someone is speaking to you in Japanese at native speed. I may know 90% of the words they say, but often I find that I cannot recall all the words fast enough. I usually understand the main idea of what they are saying, but often miss nuances or certain points (such as adjectives). What makes it even more complicated is that from my experience spoken Japanese has a lot of colloquialism. Native Japanese speakers often omit particles, use slang, and shorten or combine words together when speaking, which is something you won’t find in written text (the exception being manga).
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おめでとうございます！Congrats on a major accomplishment!
Did you learn with anything besides genki and wanikani? (I wanna know for myself) 
Are you sure you can reset to a specific level?
おめでとう！次はiTalkiをしたらどうですか？？？
ありがとう！それをするつもりです。自信がないけど
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