last year i bought a year membership and stopped wanikani right after it… for several months. so stupid haha i was too overwhelmed by the sudden new possibilities and made myself feel uncomfortable with all these new kanji to learn. have now a big list to finish (sth around 400 reviews) and slowly getting back to it.
i believe what absolutely killed my motivation was losing my big strike on duolingo. Again haha. i felt frustrated after that and left the app untouched for awhile.
guys, lemme tell ya: it‘s hard to learn while you‘re frustrated. so i think my long break was maybe not the worst to feel energetic enough to get back to it naturally. atm i‘m making lotta mistakes and need my time to learn the old material i already forgot :‘D
but it‘s also a good feeling when i remember some kanji and vocabulary even after 3–4 months doing nothing. even if it‘s really just a few. starting slowly and hopefully will be back on track soon.
Did some of you made similar experienes in the past? :X
Yeah, sometimes studying just goes wrong. You keep forgetting a leech, shapes of kanji are unrelatable to their meanings, you mistake しょう for ちょう or just don’t understand a grammar concept.
When I reach such a point, I always go back to the native content I used to watch, just to get the fun back. Dependent on what your taste is, that might be some easy book, some subbed anime or a variety show. In my experience, you will remember why you started the language to begin with and regain motivation and confidence.
I’ve had a break in the past. I was just too tired at some moments to do reviews, and the stuff just kept piling up. It was both the amount of reviews and my accuracy that made me eventually reset to lvl 1. I don’t really want to advice that as you might regret it a bit, you’d have to figure your optimal path for yourself.
That streak feature on Duolingo is indeed a double-edged sword. It motivates you to keep practicing every day, but when you lose your streak it can be demotivating as well.
Oh I bought a year membership when I just started, got to level 20 as fast as I could and stopped /o/ Came back only after one and a half year and reset to level 4 \o\ I think a lot of people had similar experience, so don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that you’re bad at studying or something:D We all need breaks.
I had a 3-4 month long break after the three free levels. When I decided to come back I tried doing the pile of reviews but I wasn’t confident in them. So, since it was only three levels, I just reset back to level one.
I’m glad I relearned some foundation items (counters not included) and I was able to grasp a few more concepts this go around. I did have to brush up on my hirigana (just now relearning my katakana ) but this time it didn’t seem so foreign. Already understanding how the SRS system works and how WK is laid out definitely helped me feel less like a fish out of water.
I think taking a break in the beginning can be very helpful in gradually becoming used to Japanese. Good luck with that review pile! Glad it’s you not me
I think it helps to remember that you don’t need to rush this. Learning a language, especially Japanese, takes a long time. So what’s a few months interruption? In the future, maybe you could try going into “emergency mode” where you do very little, but you still do at least something just about every day. When I got to busy with work over the summer as I was studying TextFugu, I just stopped doing new lessons, but just did reviews only for a few months. Eventually, circumstances changed and I was able to go full swing again. My busy season is coming again in about a month and I will have less time and also be very tired. It’s ok, though. I’ll just go into “hybernation” again and “feed” off of reviews.
Make learning Japanese the thing you love, not the idea of knowing Japanese. Love the process, not the goal. When you sucked at drawing, you probably just kept drawing because you loved doing it. And now look at how great you are at it. Maybe you even had ups and downs with it. But you continued. Japanese will be the same way.
I haven’t used Duolingo in years, but as I remember it, you earn “lingots” with your streak, and these lingots can buy you items. One item you can buy with lingots is a “streak freeze” that will protect you if you miss a day. This streak freeze is only valid for one day and you cannot buy more than one.
While the concept of “doing a little bit every day” is commendable, we all need a break some time. People who have a family, whose jobs require them to travel a lot, who sometimes have to study intensely for an exam, etc., they can lose their streak very easily. Rewarding streaks (and, by extension, punishing streak breaking) is not very optimal.
I think the better approach is the “gentle streak” like e.g. @Kumirei’s heat map script. It shows you how long your review/lesson streaks are, and if you have a long streak, it doesn’t reward you (other than that satisfied feeling in your 心). But neither does it punish you when you just don’t feel doing WK for a day.
Way back when Wanikani was still in beta, I purchased a year long subscription, got to level 8, and then stopped… for 4 years.
Then I came back buckled down. And got to level 60. I found it helpful to use the month to month payment plan because that charge keeps popping up every month, and because I didn’t want to waste that money, I got my work done.
Last year at the exact same period I started this year, I did the first 10 lessons, and never came back lol.
I even forgot I made an account here so I created another one, ahhh, alll that time wasted that I could be in my level 40’s at least if I kept at it lol.
another bunch of months went by where i just got back to feeling overwhelmed. i already wasted all that money and needed a fresh new start, so i got back to level 1 and try to give myself more air to learn. every day a little, not too much pressure. i think, like you mentioned before, i gonna try to get a monthly membership purchase. need to be flexible to decide when i can learn and when not. i am sorry i cant answer all of you, but reading all these comments after such a long time really motivates me to keep it up and dont give up. nonetheless the hard times T__T
That wouldn’t be a nyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaice thing to do!
Plenty! As you can see, I’ve joined at March 2016 and could have long since achieved level 60 by now, but I got to level 37 then found myself overwhelmed and let my reviews pile up. I’ve spent most of 2017 sitting near that pile, contemplating it and trying to find the strength to tackle it. Then I realized that I might spend the rest of my life this way with the same result, so I did a reset to level 1 and started moving agin.
However, when I’ve reached level 20 it happened again - I found myself standing before a large pile of reviews that I couldn’t force myself to get rid of, so I did a reset a second time…
As you can see, I’m quite a pathetic cat
However, I really hope I would be able to avoid this happening for the third time - I keep doing my reviews every day, no matter what, and I also back my WK studies by doing reading and writing practice…
Anyway, the point is - stumbling and falling is, though unplesant, an essential part of learning. As long as you keep standing up and resuming, sooner or later you would reach your goals.
And you are most certainly not a waste, you are a nyaaaaaaice purrson with a nyaaaaaaaice avatar and a nyaaaaaaaice nickname!
Let’s do our best and reach level 60!
I have reset my account 3 times in 3 years. This time is going to be the one where I get all the way to 60. You have to tell yourself that you’re committed and believe it. Then all you need is to just do it.
Backing all the stuff that’s been said.
Don’t give up, and if you fall, you fall.
The journey isn’t always as smooth as one would like to but you gotta keep moving.
) but this time it didn’t seem so foreign. Already understanding how the SRS system works and how WK is laid out definitely helped me feel less like a fish out of water.
Maybe you even had ups and downs with it. But you continued. Japanese will be the same way.
…
