Huh, that’s true.
I didn’t think you didn’t have to do the kanji either until you unlocked all the second round kanji.
Still will, tho. (And think people should.)
1 Like
Well, my point was that you didn’t have to rush them, but do them regularly.
For instance, I just checked level 20 and there are 6 radicals, 33 kanji and 114 vocabs (let’s assume that there are as many lessons coming from the previous level than there are lessons that will be unlocked after level up).
Day 1: 6 radicals and 14 kanji
Day 2: 13 kanji (done first wave) + 7 vocab
Day 3: 20 vocab
Day 4: second wave: 6 kanji + 14 vocab
Day 5: 20 vocab
Day 6: 20 vocab
Day 7: 20 vocab
That leaves 13 vocab unaccounted for. In my case, I did a couple of days at 30 (usually day 1 and day 4) to catch up.
It’s really nice to have a steady flux of reviews too. Up to level 15 or so, I was doing all lessons at once, which gave me alternatively days with huge review spikes or basically nothing.
5 Likes
I was thinking about that, but I guess my conclusion is that leaving things for later on purpose instead of doing them now feels like the wrong solution. Just to have something to do everyday.
(Again, as long as you can do them all at the same time. If you need to space them out because of time constraints, then sure.)
Hm, I’m on the other side of the spectrum. Having nothing to do on a given day feels wrong instead.
Plus, doing lessons on WK was a nice warmup to get me to do other things (mostly lessons/reviews on floflo and kitsun or practicing kanji writing). Kitsun wasn’t around when I was doing all lessons at once, so it might be an unfair comparison, but if I had only reviews on a given day, I would do them and that’s it.
But again, that’s purely a matter of personal choice. Obviously, doing all available lessons in one go works for max speed.
3 Likes
Where did you find that gif I cant stop staring at it
Another factor to consider is that it’s harder to learn 80 kanji/vocab in one sitting than it is to spread them out over multiple days. The first few reviews are pretty critical for retention, and if you are trying to retain 80 new things at once things are bound to slip through the cracks (unless you have crazy awesome memory).
I do it the way Naphthalene described because I find it helps with my retention. It feels much better to me to pick up 20-30 things commit them to memory for a day, and then pick up the next 20-30.
3 Likes
I don’t use scripts or anything, but used to just do everything as soon as it came up. Now I don’t worry about it so much and probably do a level on average every 9-10 days. I do all my radicals and vocab before even touching kanji. Level 20 just dumped so much vocab at once. I don’t like doing kanji before vocab… the vocab helps cement existing, and also new, readings. Playing video games also solidifies my reading comprehension from the vocab.
2 Likes
Parroting most everyone else here. I level up in 8-9 days, although I recently started using the reorder script to do vocab lessons rather than skip them. My general routine is to do 20 lessons a day, and do reviews throughout the day as they trickle in.
My daily WK breakdown:
- 10 lessons in the morning, finish all reviews
- Reviews for said lessons 4h later, then 8h later (these are the first couple WK intervals)
- 10 more lessons around 4-6h before bedtime
- If you already did 10 kanji lessons in the morning and any of these 10 lessons are kanji, use re-order script to do vocab instead. If there are no vocab, you’re done with lessons for the day
- Reviews for said lessons 4h later
- Do reviews throughout the day as they trickle in
With this routine, here’s my rough timeline for each level:
- Day 1: 20 vocab lessons from previous level
- Day 2: Some vocab lessons from previous level, do all radicals lessons, maybe get a kanji or two
- Day 3: 10 kanji lessons, 10 vocab or so
- Day 4: 10 kanji lessons, 10 vocab or so. Radicals guru’d
- Day 5: 10 kanji lessons. Reach 0 lessons, 0 reviews. Yay!
- Day 6 ~ 8 or 9: Kanjis guru’d each day. ~20 vocab lessons each day.
- Day 8 or 9: Kanjis guru’d. Level up! Rinse and repeat from day 1
1 Like
I googled “よろしく gif”
I think it’s a character from Doreamon
1 Like
I have been completing all of my levels in 7.0 days and this is the exact schedule I follow.
- Day 1 (Sunday 7:30 am): Guru all of prior level’s kanji to unlock the next level’s kanji
- Day 1 (Sunday 8:00 am): Learn all of the new Kanji (apprentice 1 all kanji-batch_1)
- Day 1 (Sunday 12:00 pm): Apprentice 2 all Kanji-batch_1
- Day 1 (Sunday 8:00 pm): Apprentice 3 all Kanji-batch_1
- Day 2 (Monday 7:00 pm): Apprentice 4 all Kanji-batch_1
- Day 3 (Tuesday): Nothing! Break day!
- Day 4 (Wednesday 6:00 pm): Guru 1 all Kanji-batch_1 + Apprentice 1 Kanji-batch_2
- Day 4 (Wednesday 10:00 pm): Apprentice 2 all Kanji-batch_2
- Day 5 (Thursday 7:30 am): Apprentice 3 all Kanji-batch_2
- Day 6 (Friday 7:30 am): Apprentice 4 all Kanji-batch_2
- Day 7 (Saturday): Break Day!
- Day 1 (Sunday 7:30 am): Guru 1 all Kanji-batch_2 - Level up!
-Repeat
Notes:
- I do use the re-order script so I can finish my Kanji Reviews and Kanji Lessons first because everything is time sensitive.
- After all of the kanji is out of the way, I finish all other reviews and do all of the vocab lessons in one go.
- I also make flashcards of everything (kanji and vocab) and constantly review between Apprentice 1 and Apprentice 3 to minimize mistakes.
- After I Apprentice 3 reviews, the lessons will appear in Kamesame where I will normally get 90%+ on Lessons. This will help with retention.
- The time i spend on Wanikani-KameSame-Bunpro per week averages around 20-25 hours
This method has worked for the past 3 months and I hope to continue it for a while. I do work a full time job and this schedule is structured to work around it. If you’re motivated hopefully it will work for you as well!
4 Likes
The SRS is designed so things that slip through the cracks come back regularly, while things that don’t, don’t.
If I learn 50 of the 80 new things the first time, then the next 30 things will come back in an hour, then the next 15 things will come back in an hour, and so on. Until you learn them all.
Even if there’s something I have no idea what it was once it comes to the first review, I’m like, “Well, that sucks. Let’s see what it is.” and then rarely get it wrong the second time it comes up because it’s usually by itself (or only joined by the other things I got wrong).
My point being, it may feel harder, but in the end it’s the same, so it’s better to start as soon as possible.
Of course, I’m speaking from my experience here, can’t really speak for other people.
When I said people should, I mostly meant “try the system how it’s meant to be and see if it works for you, instead of immediately doing things differently”. (Or something like that.)
3 Likes
I totally agree with you. But then again, I spread out the vocab of a level over 7 days equally to have an even workload. Just so I dont have 400 reviews one day and 15 the coming.
4 Likes
It does suck.
2 Likes
I think it’s important to ask yourself why you would want to level up every eight days. Sure, you’ll be done faster, but taking the larger perspective of learning Japanese as a whole, the difference between one year or three years (or whatever your specific case may be) is pretty insignificant if you intend to keep it up for a lifetime.
Find your own speed and love it. If it’s right for you, then it’s the right speed.
6 Likes
because they just ignore vocabulary. I think it’s not a very smart way to level up, learning a language takes time and you need to go in depth, not just race towards LVL60 in an app.
1 Like
demonstrably based on 1 anecdote? okay, strong statistics
1 Like
Better than your 0 anecdotes.
Either way, I didn’t say it was common, just that it’s false, and I proved it.
You can level up in 8 days while studying vocab.
8 Likes
I agree with @Kazzeon. I don’t see how you could get data on people going at 7~8 days per level.
I’ve seen both scenarios. I didn’t skip any vocab along the way for instance (that’s well documented in the 0/0 challenge thread) so that’s 2 points of data for you. I know of more level 60 who went all the way at full speed (e.g. @jprspereira) without ignoring vocab.
That being said, I also know of people who did ignore vocab, either going full speed or not.
Conclusion, though, is that I don’t think your statement really applies here.
7 Likes
I second this, I also level up in 8 days studying vocab, it is very much possible.
While this is certainly true, this would also require you to be able to come back and check every hour wouldn’t it? If someone works a full-time job, it might be difficult for them to do it that way. Spreading out lessons the way that I do allows me to do two review sessions a day and one set of lessons a day, so even if the time I spend is actually roughly the same, it’s more focused? (not sure if I’m describing that correctly). This is also assuming people want to level at a 7-8 day pace.
But I want to be clear, I don’t think doing all of your lessons as soon as they come up is wrong. If your schedule can accommodate doing that and it feels better than it’s fine to do it that way. Your statistics are quite impressive so ignore the haters and keep doing what you’re doing cause it clearly works.
1 Like