From Level 8 to Level 60

WaniKani Tips & Tricks
#1

I am about to start level 8 and I am just curious how much time it takes for me to reach level 60. I think it really depends on how much effort I put in. But generally, I am doing reviews and lessons as soon as they appertains on my screen.

I am looking forward to hearing your comments and your personal experiences.
Thanks in advance.

Sam

#2

It strongly depends on what pace works for you. The faster you go the higher the workload. There is no point going fast if you burn out because of high workload. Al level 7 the workload is still light. It raises progressively as the level increases. You will have to figure out what workload you can sustain and what pace generates this workload.

#3

Yeah, that’s not gonna last :wink: I think I did that until around level 20ish, at which point I already realized it was a massive pain trying to do like 90 lessons in one go once you level up. And also having them come back in giant waves of reviews afterwards.

I’m not saying stop doing it if you feel comfortable, I’m just saying be prepared to do the lessons more piecemeal over a few days as you progress.

Anyway, back to the main question,

Yeah, it really does depend on how fast you go. Minimum will be about a year (and that means high accuracy, probably with reordered lessons), a more average pace might be 1.5-2?

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#4

Yeah you might want to slow down the lessons and do a max of 20 a day because you’re gonna get inundated with burn reviews very soon. Sooner than you think.

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#5

I think understanding how Wanikani works might help you understand how fast you can go (based on your experience so far). I wrote a Guide for Wanikani that talks precisely about this.

I also agree with others. Level 8 is still a bit too soon to figure things out. Lots of people still give up after level 8, after all.

For now I’d recommend reading chapters 1-7 of the guide, with a bigger focus on chapters 4 to 7 :slight_smile:

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#6

Right now, I’m leveling up every 7 days. So I can take that and punch it into the progress tab on this site. WKStats has a place where you can adjust the progress to see how fast it takes to get to specific levels. I would highly recommend checking it out.

Although fair warning, they are sunsetting APIv1 keys soon, so I don’t know how long WKStats will be up. I think they’ve been working on a refresh to the website, and I’m assuming that would use the v2 api key. If this means nothing to you, then feel free to disregard it :smiley:

At the rate I’m leveling up right now, I’ve actually had zero issues with it and I don’t feel stressed about the amount of reviews I do. Here’s a breakdown of how that goes for me:

  • I level up every Sunday at 5pm. First thing I do is do the lessons for all the radicals using the reorder script.
  • After that, I do 10 kanji lessons per hour. Sometimes more, sometimes less. The first batch of kanji have a sort of grace period since you’re still waiting on the radicals to unlock your next kanji
  • At this pace, I’ve gotten all the radical and kanji lessons done within a few hours.
  • For the vocabulary, every hour, I do whatever reviews I have at the time, and then do 5 lessons. This makes it so that at any given time, I’ll only have 10-20 reviews due every hour. This makes it super manageable and I can leave it and let them pile up to be done later, or I can just do them on the hour.
  • After a few levels of doing this, things are paced out how I like them. The only thing is that in the morning, I’ll have to work through 60-70 reviews that may have become due over night. But nowadays, nothing comes due during the night because I don’t do lessons after a certain time (usually 9pm)

That’s been working for me, and it’s worked great so far. I’m not sure how I’ll be adjusting it for the fast levels, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Hope this was a little bit helpful!

p.s. definitely read @jprspereira’s guide. It helped me out immensely

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#7

A lot of time? Remember that Level 60 is not a goal, reading Japanese fluently is. Getting to Level 60 is relatively easy with repetitive daily effort. But you can get to 60 and never crack a book! Wanikani creates a very big workload due its design. If you try to go too fast you can choke out other opportunities for learning.

That said, your speed depends on your prior Japanese knowledge and your situation. I went very quickly because I have a lot of prior knowledge and I had a rare opening in my life where I could devote myself to the program. Without that, I think budgeting at least two years and more likely three would have been reasonable.

I see a lot of burnout on these boards, so I think making sure you have a diverse learning course rather than focusing on Wanikani is best.

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#8

There’s already a version of WKstats using the v2 API key:
https://www.wkstats.com/v2/progress/dashboard

As for pacing, keeping your apprentice stack at about 100 seems like a decent point to start. You can still up your speed if you feel you’re getting too comfortable afterwards.

#9

Yeah, I’ve been to the new site, but it doesn’t have the table where you can put in hypothetical speed and look at the fastest speed and all that good stuff. I’m hoping it’s added to the new site soon, though. Or maybe I’m missing something?

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#10

I used to do this then i almost burned out at level 9(my mistake) i recovered now i slowed down tremendously from 8 days level up to almost 14 days. Mostly because i started doing bunpro and kamesame along wanikani. And i loved it. Though i am wondering how long it going to take me to finish 10K vocabulary XD

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