I’m at level 9 and so far I’ve been keeping around 100 items in my apprentice pile and it’s been working very well for me. A few leeches here and there, but I usually don’t get too bent out of shape about it because it’s usually vocab words and it’s not slowing my progress at all. Recently (last week or two) I’ve started logging on to 140-150 reviews some mornings. I think it’s just a product of my schedule. I tend to do reviews at a few set times during the day: 0700, 1100, 1500, 1900. But sometimes I forget the evening one and just do those in the morning and I think that’s causing a lot of master/enlighten reviews to fall all in the morning so I suddenly have a ton of reviews at one time instead of just 30-50. So I think I started rushing my morning sessions because I wanted to be done with my 150+ piles. Which in turn made me not focus as hard. Then yesterday I did a lesson with my first set of new kanji for level 9 after having just done a big review set. Then my 1100 review time rolls around and I got, I think ~30% right and I normally don’t have much trouble with new kanji. It was very frustrating and I’m still having trouble with a few of those kanji with today’s morning review.
This turned into a lot more explanation than I intended, so sorry haha, but thanks for reading. Anybody else experience anything like this and have any tips on how to get back on track with some higher confidence?
I think, everyone here has had bad sessions…
What I’d recommend is to take notes on items that you have problems with.
Anyway, I hope this won’t discourage you from continuing your studies.
I’ve definitely had similar feelings, and they probably started at a similar level to you as well. One thing I do now is I use the wrap up button and do all my big sessions in 10’s, so if things start going badly I can take a quick mental reset before I do the next 10. It’s helped me get a lot better at being comfortable getting things wrong (and I get the dumbest things wrong).
Plenty of challenging review sessions. Important to just accept that some levels or kanji or vocab will be easier or harder than others. You’ll have ups and downs, and that’s fine.
As others have alluded to I’ve had success breaking review sessions down into chunks. Sometimes if I have 100 reviews in front of me I’ll just rip through all of them. Other times I’ll do 30, close it and take a break. Even if it’s for literally just a minute, a mental breather. Then another 30, repeat, repeat.
my accuracy took a steep dive around level 9-10. but i added some leechsquashing to my routine, and started separating 100+ review sessions into two sessions. and with that accuracy has gone up again ^^
i’ve also added a 0-th review about 1 hour after i do lessons, where i just have a quick look at those items.
i think it’s normal to have times where WK goes better, and times when it’s more of a struggle. this is a long-term project after all. so when it’s not going so well, it’s best to figure out what’s causing the problem, and then keep on keeping on ^^
My accuracy right now is almost non existent… Level 21 is kicking my behind. I can not get the kanji straight some i have reviewed straight every four hours for the last three days and they still do not stick. Was down with my apprentice to fifty because i wanted to take it slow till i cracked those kanji but now i failed some kanji and vocab down from guru so my apprentice turn from 50 to 75. And i still have 40 new lessons from the level vocab and the vocab i unlocked with the few level 21 kanji that stuck
Happens to the best of us. There are some days when you can do 20+ lessons and they all go in instantly and others where an entire level takes you three months (level 21 I’m looking at you!)
Anybody else experience anything like this and have any tips on how to get back on track with some higher confidence?
Literally hundreds of times over the course of years. It means nothing; none of our worth is predicated on how well we memorize kanji. You get back on track by getting back on track. If you want to, you will. How do you build confidence? By doing it, which simultaneously involves lots of failure. When you run from failure you run from success.
I’ve definitely had this happen, several times. Try not to stress about it too much. It’s the SRS doing it’s job.
I also know that I have certain times of day that I’m better for doing reviews. Mornings are good, evenings are good, but if I try to do more than a few in the afternoon, I get lazy about reading stuff and start to miss more. Maybe give yourself a break, then come back at a time that usually works well?
To be honest, when I have one of those sessions where I get every second item (or more) wrong, I just abandon the session and try again an hour or two later. Because if that happens, it usually means I’m just not in the right headspace for doing reviews, and usually it does work a lot better when I try again after a while.
Also, for me personally, review sessions of more than 40 items in one sitting don’t work well and less than 20 annoy me. So I usually do up to 30 reviews whenever I have time and more than 20 reviews waiting. But I realize that this won’t work for everyone. Regardless, maybe spreading those 100+ reviews out over your other review sessions as well might help you. And after a while of doing that they actually stop coming in such big chunks.
But the most important thing is definitely to keep going It’s completely normal when learning anything for there to be some slumps, but as long as you don’t give up it’ll start working better again eventually.
Well, everyone is different and what works well for one doesn’t necessarily work so well for another.
In my case, putting review session for later would only make the accuracy worse
People have given good advice above but another thing I would suggest is that if an apprentice count of 100 is leading you to have more reviews each day than you feel you can manage then it might be an idea to reduce that number for a bit or even take a break from lessons for a while.
You can always go back up to 100 apprentice in the future but having big stacks of reviews that you are finding demotivating is probably a good sign to slow down at least just now (unless there’s some real reason you need to go at a certain pace). The 100 apprentice is kind of a general guideline but it’s really a personal thing how many reviews a day is too many for you.
Just started level 17, did the first radicals and then kanji/vocab
abysmal!
The worst mnemonics I have seen so far! Noothing good to remember them. I spent 40min last night on 20 lessons, then this morning I got 56% accuray on review. I could remember only words in the little stories that had nothing to do with the meaning, lol!
I will have to stick to self study quiz to memorize them for this level I realize.
It’s completely normal when learning anything for there to be some slumps, but as long as you don’t give up it’ll start working better again eventually.