How do I get my motivation to continue back?

So I have been doing this for two years this December I believe and I am currently on Level 42. I’m not rushing the process or anything like that but I am finding WaniKani to be a chore. I hate waking up and having to do X amount of reviews especially when I have over 100+ to do.

I’ve wanted to change to another method of learning Kanji and am tempted to go do KLC book for Kanji as a change of pace and to help distinguish between different kanji better. I guess I continue because I have gone so far and I am getting closer to the end but I don’t know if I will be able to reach there.

It’s not that I don’t want to learn Kanji, I love doing it just not sure if WanKani is the best for me anymore. But I will say that without it I would not be able to read so many things so far.

What would you guys recommend I do? Continue along this way or continue with another method somehow?

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Hello @Gorganite, thanks for reaching out. I guess the first question I’d ask is “why are you learning Japanese?” What made you start this journey? What do you hope to get out of it? :slight_smile:

If kanji is the strongest part of your Japanese abilities, I’d say maybe this is a time to use vacation mode indefinitely and revisit WK when you’re feeling like it’s a bit more necessary to your learning journey. If kanji is holding you back from other areas of Japanese, try slowing down your pace and doing x amount consistently each day, even if it means your dashboard isn’t at 0/0

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Well I’m living in Japan so hoping to be able to communicate and read in Japanese. Also I would like to have conversations and text messages with my partner so this is all important to me to do :smiley:

(Well more than I already do)

Kanji isn’t holding me back I would say, I still focus on reading, listening etc and enjoy all of that. It’s just WaniKani and the SRS reviews that I have to do I guess.

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As far as I remember by lvl 42 you should know enough kanji to read a lot of sources without needing to lookup too many new ones.

There’s nothing wrong in taking a break and simply using Japanese. Since you’re in Japan you should have plenty of opportunities.

Btw, consider putting WK on vacation mode, otherwise when you decide to come back a pile of potentially thousands of reviews may discourage you.

Sounds like a workload problem if youre a the point it feels like a chore. Unless you just genuinely do not get any value from doing WK anymore.
Consider first if the knowledge in the last levels is even relevant to you.

If yes, reduce apprentice pile (do fewer lessons to hit some selfimposed number say 100 or 80) and give it a week or 2 for it to settle in to the new workload. You should see a lower reviewcount when waking up that doesnt immediately turn you off.

If the knowledge doesnt feel relevant, toggle vacation mode and quit.

Maybe just RTK or 千字文 is enough by now. Don’t focus too much on vocabularies.

I mean sometimes its fine and its manageable and I don’t have much to do per hour or day (under an hour). I think its also the vocabulary words I’m learning for a lot of the levels now compared to earlier on seem really irrelevant to me

What do you think about KLC compared to RTK?

I might just try to focus on reading more things and looking up unknown kanji like I do for listening instead of learning maybe.

I was in a similar situation during the start of the summer. I was level 34ish, sick to death of reviews every single day. I haven’t missed a day of reviews since i started in 2017. What inspired me to keep going was, I realised I if I did 20 lessons every day, I would be able to reach level 60 before the end of the year. At that point I would essentially be “done”. As it stands, I hope to be there by October. My intention once hitting 60 is to continue wanikani for a further 6 months to solidify the knowledge I have for the latter content.

Realistically, you’re at a level where you don’t need to continue wanikani to be proficient in Japanese. You are probably equipped with all the kanji you need for day to day life in Japan, so stopping now isn’t the worst thing in the world. That being said, you’re very close to the “fast levels”, so your journey to 60 might not take as long as you think.

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Yeah I think I will just push through it. I have learnt so much and am grateful for that and the ease it is to have everything organised for me.

When you say fast levels are they fast because there are less to learn in each of those levels?

There are less radicals. All of the kanji you need to level up is already unlocked for you from the beginning. It means that you can do the level in 3days 8 hours or something crazy if you go full speed. I’m averaging around 5-6 days a level at the moment. I’m going to do one level max speed and then a regular paced one to make sure I don’t get overwhelmed with lessons and reviews.

Reading and how much better it gets with more vocab and the proper kanji knowledge was my fuel to keep going. I think progressively receiving enough immersion and turning down the SRS quota helped a lot to keep the spirits high while reaching the last levels … Then again I don’t think it matters much to actually reach level 60 after a point … Vocab is what really matters … :wink:

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