HELP! I’m so lazy at the moment and I don’t want to do my reviews or lessons because I know if I do I’ll get all of them wrong! Even when I do lessons it feels like a chore and I’m only on level 7 ! I haven’t done anything since the start of level 7 and now I’m wracking up the reviews please help meeeeeeee! : (
As long as you are learning you are making progress. Failing is part of the process
Similar situation with me. Logged in today after taking a year off from studying and am trying to decide how to best proceed. I almost finished level 6, but at this point I think I’m going to just reset and start from the beginning. Flying through the first levels again shouldn’t take long and will maybe give a confidence boost.
Good Luck!
Please don’t be afraid to make mistakes ! It’s part of the learning process If you feel overwhelmed, just go through your reviews in small batches of 10 throughout your day. Even if you get them wrong at first, in a few days you’ll start to see improvements. And don’t try to learn new lessons until you’re comfortable again with your review stack. It’s not a race, it’s a marathon, you’re entitled to some low speed times ! Stay strong
It’s impossible to learn kanji without getting a bunch wrong in reviews, just do them, you’ll remember more each time you do so.
I have a couple of thoughts for you.
My first thought is, if you are just barely coming back from some kind of break, I would avoid the temptation to do lessons. I don’t know how many reviews you have, but doing more lessons directly leads to more reviews, and you’ll start digging yourself into a hole that will be even more frustrating to dig your way out of. Not an impossible one, mind you, there are many threads about people being hundreds or even thousands of reviews into the hole and successfully coming back from that.
My second thought is to echo what @Kumirei says above: Don’t be afraid of failure, since it’s a part of the learning process. Just the other day, I had my absolute worst session of WaniKani I’ve ever had after I had taken some time off from doing lessons while my SO was visiting. The first session back into lessons, I did 20 at a time (something I have done numerous times before). The resulting review session, 4 hours after that, was a very rude slap in the face and a wake-up call for what happens when you let yourself get lulled out of a schedule. I failed miserably, to the tune of like 35% accuracy. Even on my worst days prior, I at least managed a 60%, so that felt pretty harsh!
But I bounced back quickly, and the next session, all the ones that I had failed, I passed perfectly, and continued to do so until they were guru’d (and now sitting somewhere in the master pile, I believe).
This is because anytime I fail a kanji/word/radical/whatever, I take a few extra seconds to re-read the word’s meaning and reading explanations and repeat out-loud the reading and meaning as I look at the item to better cement it in my memory. Doing something similar may help you out as well.
I’m starting to go on a bit, so I’ll cut to the chase: my main recommendation would be to just dive into your reviews. If it’s too large of a pile to do all at once, segment it out throughout the day. Don’t worry about the failures. I know they can be demoralizing, but just take that and use it as a fuel for the fire of wanting to get better. Use some method that works for you (steal mine if you wish!) to make sure that you better remember the items you failed when they next come up for reviews. After you have your reviews down to a manageable level (over the next couple of days or so), and you feel like your accuracy is where you want it to be, start up lessons again, and continue down the path! がんばって!
One of my tips is to do flash cards, I can then practise before doing my reviews.
It doesn’t work for everyone, it is a little repetitive but I feel it works for me.
I probably won’t do this as my level increases but at a lower level I feel it helps me be able to pick and choose what to study.
I have different packs for radicals, kanji and vocabulary.
I sometimes struggle with the difference between kanji and vocabulary when the image is the same but they are using either on’yomi or kun’yomi.
Being able to do a bit of practise when I have a spare minute really helps me be prepared for my reviews and feel confident enough to pick up additional lessons.
Good luck with getting back on track, I’m sure you’ll do great x
I reset from level 9 back in early December for similar reasons (I took ~4 months off and came back to 1000+ reviews, and got most of them wrong). I got back to where I was earlier this week… Not saying that your progress would be the exact same as mine, but if you were to reset to level 1, and followed about a similar level-up average (about 7.5 days per level), you’d be back to level 6 in about 45 days, and I think you’d find that things would come back to you surprisingly quickly.
And that’s the nuclear option. You don’t necessarily need to reset entirely back to 0, you could just reset to your preference, and manually review the earlier content. I would recommend trying this first, seeing as you cannot undo resets.
TO CUT TO THE CHASE:
I guess my advice to you would be to hit a few of the reviews (maybe ~50-100 of them, and I would use the finish-up button stopwatch- so you don’t end up answering one half of a Kanji and having the other half locked out with so many reviews on deck). See where those fall in terms of level, and if you did get reviews from earlier levels wrong, maybe it would be a good idea to reset down entirely.
Any way you slice it, it isn’t going to be insanely easy coming back - you’ve been gone long enough to Burn an Enlightened item… If you’re willing to bite the bullet and commit to that month and a half fullstop, I’d say go for that.
You got this!
Everyone else is right that you really can’t be afraid of failure; you can only really learn a language by failing so much on the way. That said, that sort of mindset shift might take a while so… while you work on that, the flipside is, the SRS intervals exist for a reason, targeting what the WK team believes to be about when they expect you to have almost forgotten an item. Lessons can and probably should be paused if your accuracy is struggling… but the longer you wait to do your reviews, the worse you are going to do when you do them. Don’t let that discourage you out of tackling them at all, but, the sooner the better!
What time are you doing your reviews each day? If it’s “whenever you have time and feel like it”, you will very easily get overwhelmed like you are. I say that because that’s how I got overwhelmed with WaniKani at level 5 years ago.
When I restarted last month, I set 2 mandatory times 12 hours apart - 4:30 am and 4:30 pm. When I wake up and get back from work, 6/7 days a week it just feels like the time of day to slap myself in the face with some kanji reviews. Like a physical work out. At least Once a week I still don’t want to do it, but I grit it out because I know if I skip a day (or even a session), the next day will be twice as hard and I will resent it even more.
Do it regularly and do it today for yourself tomorrow!
It looks like you have plenty of good advice already. I’d just remind you that you don’t have to do everything all at once. Knock out your reviews over the course of an entire day, then only do reviews for a day or two without adding any new lessons. I’m only level 3, and I let like 30 lessons stack up because I wanted to focus on reviews for a while. It’s not a race, and you’re not going to learn fast by trying to power through everything as quickly as possible. You’ll learn fast when you go at a manageable pace that you can maintain. Cramming will NOT help you learn. Consistency will.
No growth without struggle. Stop doing lessons, only do reviews until you’re feeling more comfortable then slowly reintroduce lessons. Important thing is continuous forward motion. Relentlessly. Try to find a way to make this a daily habit. It’s much easier to do a bit everyday.
Don’t do new cards.
Only do reviews.
When you do reviews, you have to pretend you are doing “new” cards, and relearn them. Spend time with them, don’t rush. Relearn them.
Every day, knock the total reviews down by 25 maybe? That’s how I do it.
I did it stayed in bed for 2 hours until 12 am !
I personally don’t have a lot of experience (yet!) in learning languages or especially in Japanese
BUT I had a similar situation where I hit a certain rating and I was afraid of keep playing because I was sure I would fail or lose miserably - and that resulted that I dropped my favourite game for over half a year.
Learn from others (or your own mistakes) and don’t let the fear of failing or getting a lot wrong scare you away from doing something that is supposed to be fun and most importantly a journey to learning a language you very much enjoy and have interest in.
As Shia Labeouf once said: just. DO IT.
Just do it. Failing will happen. You will get a lot wrong. But there is nothing wrong with that.
Do what you love and KEEP LEARNING!
行ってらっしゃい!
.3.
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