How am I doing?

WaniKani
#20

How long does it take you to review one item usually? Your post indicates that it its 1+ minute per item, right? The goal is really to have it down in like a couple seconds for a lot of these. After all, we don’t want a 10 word sentence to take 10+ minutes to read.

Yeah, your initial learning of the material is pretty important. Early on, its not a bad idea to make sure that you can remember all of the mnemonics for your apprentice items. The mnemonics will fade from your memory with time.

Unfortunately a lot of stuff at early levels doesn’t really have a logical explanation. There’s some vocab that does for sure, but kanji and readings really don’t. Logic only comes in when you have vocab words whos meaning makes sense from their kanji’s meaning like 四捨五入 or 戦車. Theres plenty of words like that, but I personally don’t know of any logical explanation as to why 入 is read as にゅう, yknow. If there is one it probably requires some background knowledge in chinese.

2 Likes
#21

That’s ok. Guru is where you want to take your time and learn them properly so taking a bit of extra time due to failed apprentice reviews is fine.

Losing a few days is way better than having them drop down 2 levels from Enlightened and Master and losing weeks and months. :wink:

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#22

How is your study environment? Is the TV on? Kids/spouse vying for your attention? While on a train or bus? It might be you a distracted. I have ADD and if I am not studying in a relatively quiet calm area accuracy and time just go out the window. I will drag out a 50 item review to 20 minutes because I’m looking at the TV or yelling at the kids.

If you aren’t already try going to a quiet calm area to do your reviews. Take a moment to clear your head and start. I often end up doing the reviews on the toilet (!!) just for the privacy and peace and quiet lol.

The other’s advice is solid too. This isn’t your Japanese final. Think of it as a really long extended pre-test. It’s just checking to see if you know the answer. Failing an item isn’t a big deal. In fact most SRS expect you to fail between 10-20% of items. That’s kind of the point of the entire system. To find what sticks and does not need further review and what needs strengthening.

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#23

Yeah, same. I’ve never really been able to relate to people who could concentrate on something with music on in the background. I need quiet.

Haha, aye. No one’s going jump out and bop you on the head if you forget a reading/meaning while reading. :laughing:

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#24

Might be good motivation if they did…

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#25

I’m assuming you’re coming in to Japanese fresh? In that case, be patient! In the beginning everything looks weird and all words sound like a random combination of syllables. But you get used to it. After about 5 levels you will start to recognize some patterns and it won’t feel as overwhelming. That’s usually the point rendaku starts to really bite though - but that too shall pass.

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#26

@KyoTokyOsaka Hi! I think it’s important to learn some tips as a beginner of Wanikani to understand how it works and how you can make it work for you.

I wrote a guide full of solid advice to help you build a maintainable routine around Wanikani and to avoid doing some beginner mistakes (everyone does them, so you’re good!). I’d recommend focusing on reading chapters 4 to 7, but from chapter 1 to 8 is all very good advice for a beginner :slight_smile:

Hope it helps.

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#27
  1. Take longer doing lessons. Take the time to internalize as much as you can.
  2. Do lessons sparingly. keep your Apprentice items count below 100, and only do lessons when your queue isn’t going to be overwhelming in 4 and 12 hours.
  3. Do reviews faster and don’t worry about failing them. It’s ok to fail in SRS, just let the system do it’s thing. All you have to do is show up and gradually watch your accuracy climb.

Frankly, that should get you most of the way there.

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#28

same boat here, although i restarted to level one due to a long absence. just go at a pace you can manage. i usually do all reviews in the morning, ten lessons, and repeat in the evening

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#29

This. Spending time on lessons and trying to internalize the memories as good as possible is much better spent time than on very long reviews per item. What helped me too is to recapitulate the learned items of the day once or twice again later on that day. Just klick back on lessons (where you can see the learned items) and go through them once again. If a memoric did not stick, open the item and learn the memoric again. Spending this extra time in the learning phase helped me so much to make the words stick and reviews after were much easier.
When I started with wanikani I also tried to do reviews as correct as possible but I think it is much better to just “fail” items you do not recognize directly (within 5 seconds). That way you see them more often which is obviously needed because else you would have directly recognized them.

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#30

I’m very happy to hear the workload adjusts!

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#31

It’s not 1 per minute, because if I get it wrong in the review, it’ll show again during the same review. So if I keep getting one wrong, 2 or 3 times before I get it right, it’ll take longer.

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#32

After I get something wrong, I look at the information in the drop down box.

So if I get ビー玉 (marble) wrong, I’ll take a look at what it was, then when it comes up again I can just get it right and move on (since it won’t affect the SRS, once you’ve got it wrong it goes down in SRS level even if you get it right later in the same review).

I have had it happen whe I’ve got it wrong 2 or 3 times in the same review even after looking at what the correct answer was, but in all honesty that’s my fault, I was either two tired or doing too many review items in one go and my brain turned to jelly!

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#33

Don’t give up! It’s hard at first, but it’ll get easier over time. And if you need help visualizing the mnemonics, I made MS Paint doodles for Levels 1-4 (so far) that might help. :slight_smile:

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#34

if it is your first time studying/reading japanese then it is perfectly fine to be slow like this in the beginning.

I see myself in you 16 years ago trying to read texts in english (not my native language), I was really slow, 40min to 1h to read small texts.

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#35

Ahhh ok that makes sense. Then yeah I mean spending more time in the lessons would definitely decrease the number of incorrect answers which would speed things up. Best of luck to you my friend!

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#36

Thanks to EVERONE for your posts and help! :heart::jp::japan::tokyo_tower::bento::shinto_shrine::ramen:

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#37

Keep us updated on how it goes :slight_smile: ?

Even if you’re struggling we can always offer you as much support as you want / need!

Keep in mind learning Japanese is not a race, we aren’t competing against each other in anyway, so even if it took you a month per level, that would still be awesome.

All that matters is that you move forward.

#38

By 100 reviews, do you mean 100 pairs (100 meaning + 100 reading) or 100 individual questions (e.g., 50 meaning + 50 reading)?

1 Like
#39

Reviews by the WK implicit definition. Reading and meaning count as one review for kanji and vocab

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