For a while when I started I felt I was relatively diligent with my reviews, but as time went on I got bogged down with school and personal issues and had to almost stop reviews entirely, only at level 10.
And I come back to this:
Over a 1000 reviews. A sight that makes me want to cry, and is a horror story told in one image. So my question is, for anyone that’s taken a rather extensive break like me, and has forgotten… what feels like basically everything, what’s the best course of action? Reset back a much much lower level, or just power through it and hope it starts coming back to me? Additionally, part of the reason I slacked was that reaching level 10 was daunting for me. It’s the level recommended to start grammar practice and the beginner stuff besides kanji and vocab, and I just had NO CLUE what to really do for that.
With school and work, I don’t have an extremely large amount of time to be doing textbook work, nor is it enough of a priority for me at the moment to be doing that, so are there any simple alternatives someone may recommend? I’m not looking for fast and rigorous, slow and thorough is fine.
I would recommend resetting back to where you are at least vaguely familiar with some of the kanji/vocab. I say this as someone who took a multi year break from WK however. I would think having some things you’re familiar with would help you get back in the swing of things.
For grammar I recommend Bunpro. It has SRS and links to websites and videos as well as textbook pages for the grammar concepts. Haven’t been using it long but I’ve liked it so far.
I took a year long break from WaniKani. A few months ago, I was in a similar position to you (albeit on a much lower level) so I reset back to level 1 and continued again from there.
From my experience resetting isn’t as bad as it sounds, as you power through the levels much quicker with relative ease. In your case, I guess it wouldn’t be wise to reset back to level 1, but maybe something like 5?
Check your Kanji and Vocab list (sort by level) to see what you’re most familiar with, and reset back to that level.
From there, just take it slow and steady. Don’t rush to do a bunch of lessons, just stay on top of your reviews until they’re coming in slow enough to add more lessons in.
There’s no reason to stress about grammar. If you just want to do WK for now, there’s nothing wrong with that. If you get to level 15, 20, or even 60 before deciding to start grammar, who cares? You’ll just be that much further ahead in vocab.
There’s no right or wrong here, it all comes down to what you feel like doing and managing your workload so you don’t get overwhelmed. Study just a little every day if you can and you’ll find one day that you’ve learned a ton.
