Great Filters: Is it worth asking the question of Wani Kani dropouts?

I’m curious if any of the staff would be willing to release some stats on this, I would love to see it if they have those numbers somewhere :thinking: too afraid to tag any staff

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@Mods

My first time :eyes:

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Just think of it as the stone being at the very top to do the most damage when dropped down. 石 You can picture the stone 口 starting out attached to the ceiling whereas in 右 the “ceiling” is lower. Lol hope that helps!

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We don’t disclose the data or the exact number of users we’ve got on WaniKani, sadly! Though morteASD is correct about the graphs and the data there:

The forum is opt-in, so there’s a good number of WK users that have never logged in here.

Quite a bit I’d say! The graphs can give you an idea about the answer to the thread question, but there’s a significant number of users that aren’t tracked.

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I think it’s also likely that at least some people give up on WK before level 60 just because it no longer makes the most sense to them as a method for learning kanji, but are still motivated and learning japanese. ie - if you’re able to get to the point where you’re doing a lot of immersion then you might find that you want more flexibility in the ordering of what you learn so that you are kanji based on what you’re coming across ‘in the wild’, or maybe you want to move over to primarily using a mono-lingual (J-J) dictionary and so learning a lot of vocab E-J might be counterproductive.

I’m back from two weeks vacation mode because I was feeling like WK was becoming a chore and getting in the way of things like reading and learning grammar which I felt were more fun, productive and motivating for me. I decided to come back and at least progress a little bit further (though not trying to go fast) as I think I just needed an SRS breather and I do think WK is really effective for learning kanji but I’m not certain at all that I will continue to level 60. I think all of this stuff is really personal and it’s a good thing for each person to evaluate whether a certain learning approach works (or still works for them).

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I don’t have any goals, and I don’t find them important. I have no target to keep me on track, but I don’t really feel like comparing learning a language to a track. I don’t see the process as going through certain elements in a certain order. I think of it more like a field of… I don’t know. Berries?

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I think we can say with a rather high degree of confidence that the drop off at the start is far more dramatic when all users are considered. The more time goes by the more likely you are to get on the forums and the earlier you are in your journey (especially before you pay), the more likely you are to just get annoyed at how “slow” it is and leave or realize it’s just not for you.

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What probably helps is slowing down the pace or taking a break. Not of wanikani per se - thats bad, since it will get you a huge pile, but just taking a break from doing any new lessons for a few week. Essentially you will move a lot of your kanji workload towards burned and have an easier time with new pick ups.

It also helps to really nail in those few that you miss often, since there will be less and less in the guru pool.

Honestly I think the biggest dropoff is from users who join up for fun and realize that, while it is gamified, it’s also a legit learning app that requires more effort than anticipated and just silently leave.

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I dont know if you have experience teaching a language, but for me I was an English teacher at a language school and the quantity of dropouts is always big after the first 2 levels (1 year).

The fun in the beginning is always replaced with more homework and people get fed up with doing them and realize they only need to rely on themselves to learn, many students complain they are not learning. But then you investigate a little bit and see they stop doing the homework, watching movies and tv shows dubbed (not in english) so…yeah it becomes an easy way to become a dropout.

Here on WK I am a student and I try to not do anything I have seen years before with all those students were doing.

what I need to do more is attach to grammar lessons somehow.

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Hmm, I would consider myself a dropout. I stopped at level 28 back in 2017(?). While I ultimately left for personal reasons and doing other things with my life, I actually stalled around level 20 or so because that’s where I really noticed that putting effort in WK was seriously paying off. At that point I was very diligent about keeping up with WK and not so much grammar/vocab, so I kind of had to switch my focus around. Going through the reviews was super painful, but looking back at it I could totally see why level 50 was the “end”. By the late 20’s I was confident enough with learning new kanji that I felt like WK was more of a convenience than a necessity.

The crabigator is not some sort of violent opponent, but a lovely and benevolent being that knows when to support and praise, or when it needs to give a firm push. So even after being gone for a few years it was patiently waiting for me on the dashboard with an automated notice asking why I had cancelled my subscription a sad look on its face.

Now that I’ve reset my level, I suspect the crabigator is secretly whispering “you should have bought a lifetime membership…


As a side note, it’s pretty wild coming back after that long and recalling random WK tidbits.

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Holy sh*t. Didn’t think you’d be back :scream:. Good to hear from you again :+1:. Planning to stick around?

With a cattle prod. Into a pit of fire. And despair.

This. It’s one of the first things I tell anyone who is ready to sign up because, unless you’re an ass a diligent student like @jprspereira, it’ll probably be worth it.

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“Because learning Japanese without Kanji is not learning Japanese”

After thinking about it, I have to disagree. One of the things I find about learning Japanese is that unlike most languages, you learn reading, writing and speaking as almost completely separate entities. If I want to learn Greek or Russian, for example, I’ll start learning the alphabet from the word go, and a lot of study texts and conversations, if not all, will be written in the script. You learn the alphabet by writing, and build vocabulary and grammar by reading, which you then use in conversation. Once you have the basic characters, you can read pretty much anything.

Japanese doesn’t work like that. It’s possible, indeed usual, to learn each part separately. Wanikani, for example, teaches kanji readings, but not how to write. That’s a separate skill.

With writing you mean “writing by hand” because I can of course type Japanese on my phone and judge if the correct Kanji are chosen, but I can’t produce them from memory :grinning:

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Ah, but then you run into the Japanese way of thinking; if you’re not learning how to write, you’re not really studying kanji. :wink:

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By that definition I’m not studying Kanji and totally fine with it.

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Yeah, in a pinch, if I had to write things down I’d just type it on my phone and copy it. Once you’ve learned to write a few you get a knack for the stroke order. Plus, it’s not like the handwriting is going to look that far off if you swap a stroke or two.

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I’m with you! :joy::joy::joy::joy::+1:

Writing from memory is just sooo hard, but I guess IF you can write something from memory you know that one exceptionally well.

This was what I expected. Sorry I was busy all weekend with dumb stuff and forgot I dropped this here as an errant thought I had.

I didn’t get the impression OP was giving up; just curious about, is all.@morteASD

This sums it up. Specifically, I was curious about any correlations between level and drop-out, and if so, what factors of the median level is the cause be it the content of the level itself or the timeframe. Each learner is different, but it was mostly curiosity if there is a “Great Filter” within Wani Kani that was THE killer level. Admittedly, it’s a borrowed concept I discovered from Kurzgesagt a while back.
From there, the question spiraled into if that information is worth knowing or not as a user. Ultimately, It’s probably better to keep that information secret and work on it on the backend of things quietly.

From the opt-in data, it’s not the best since the question is seeking a level so difficult it wipes out the other users. The outliers would be levels 1-3 being the free levels and the level 60s for completing the program and leaving. I’d be tempted to add up to level 5, but that’s personal learning bias.

If I did read anything into this graph, it looks like maybe 31 and 51 since they have a noticable bump with the levels surrounding them. Either way, I still have a crabigator to spar with. Even if he is a more friendly crab sending turtles for me to burn on my path of learning Japanese, I still wouldn’t be surprised if he accidentally slays his followers in their path to enlightement with a set of particularly nasty turtles.

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