I just reached level 3 because I completed level 2 kanji but I haven’t finished level 2 vocabulary yet and I’m only about halfway through.
Ideally I’d like to finish ALL the vocabulary from level 2 before really starting level 3. I feel like it might be better for retention and understanding to complete the whole level to 100%.
So I’m a bit confused about what to do now:
How can I keep studying the remaining level 2 vocabulary without getting too many new level 3 items?
Is it even recommended to finish all vocab before moving on, or is it fine to continue normally?
How do you usually handle this? Any advice would be appreciated!
The Advanced button allows you to create a custom lesson batch. You can then choose which items you want to have lessons on.
As to is it recommended or not to finish all the vocab before going to next level – well, I’d say it depends on the person.
It would certainly slow down your leveling speed, but there is nothing wrong with that.
Finding out your pace and moving with it – is the key to avoiding burnouts.
I think it’s probably better to start the next level before clearing out all of the vocabulary. Why? The vocabulary (also) serves to reinforce the kanji you only recently guru’ed. Be aware that as you go on, you’ll be asked to remember things you already guru’d. You will get some of those wrong and those items will get demoted. It’s really this function that will (eventually) set things in memory.
Anyway, the way to clear out the vocab would just be as trunklayer says, use the advanced function for your lessons, choosing only vocabulary. It would work, but I don’t recommend it. (Read Koichi’s piece on interleaving at Tofugu: "Interleaving" To Memorize More Japanese)
Just for reference, I use ‘Advanced’ to select lessons and I usually start a new level when I still have a lot of Vocabulary to do from the last level. However, I choose lessons so that I finish all N-1 level vocabulary before finishing all N Kanji.
In addition to the great advice already about the advanced lesson picker, also you may want to keep in mind that the way vocabulary is unlocked (guruing the component kanji) and the way that leveling is gated (guring a percentage of the level’s kanji) means that whatever kanji you guru to put you over that level marker probably unlocked a few vocabulary items, so there will always be some vocabulary in your backlog when you level. And if it helps, consider that without the construct of levels, you’d still unlock vocab pretty much with every kanji, so completely clearing out the vocab after each level is an artificial delay that may or may not be worthwhile.
With that said, whatever works best for you is going to be right for you. The advanced lesson selector is a great tool to configure what you do - for some people, they’re speedrunning kanji and take all of the radicals and kanji early, for others it’s clearing vocab and then going into kanji, yet others try to do a mix. The only right method is the one that helps you accomplish your goals!
