What is the rate that you get items wrong though? I just don’t see how its possible to retain all the vocabulary at all unless you already knew a large portion of the words. Or you are just skipping vocab all together.
I’m already seeing a 50% failure rate of older items because I went as fast as possible and I retained it just long enough to pass the next few levels…
Especially on this level, (Level 12) its taken me two weeks just to finish, and I have several hours a day to study…
EDIT: I’m going back to using KameSame because there is no other way I can see to retain vocab without its help. Eats up a lot more time, but I dont want to be like a lot of people here who have to restart because they simply dont retain a lot of what they’re learning. I have a feeling a lot of people totally brain dump like we do to pass an exam each level…
Edit 2: I remain convinced that the SRS timing is messed up with Wanikani. There is too big of a gap with words when they enter mastered.
I wonder what the rate is of level 60 in a year if you only came to WK knowing kana and little to no other Japanese knowledge? I’m a bit too focused on other things to check all the posts though.
I speed ran and maintained about 95% accuracy iirc. Didn’t know a vast majority of the items at the time of learning.
I took my time doing lessons, really making the mnemonic stick, and reviewed all my mistakes carefully in the summary page after each review session (rip), and always doing my apprentice reviews ASAP.
Some people seem to have a approach of “let the srs make it stick eventually”, but I personally am highly opposed to this approach (though it will work). SRS is meant to show you the item right before you forget it, meaning that you should remember it when it pops up in reviews. If I didn’t, I would take that as failure on my part to remember the item to the next interval take time to prevent it from happening again. Sometimes revisiting the mnemonic, checking the kanji/word I got the item mixed up with and noticing differences, etc.
tbh, at some point, I did EN => JP before level up in WaniKani (using Anki, Level n+1), taking like 15 vocabularies per day; or multiple session of 15, if I want to hurry. I don’t continue that after Level Up. Kanji reading / meaning is implied. I don’t exactly care about Radicals.
Still then, seeing / hearing vocabularies in context is more powerful, where I already have supply for that around first 20-30 levels. (But of course, missing some vocabularies, here and there.)
Honestly, mentioning the review page, I really have had a dramatic drop in accuracy with its loss…
However either you are on the top end of human intelligence or I’m just not as smart as I think because there’s just no way to remember this level of vocab items and Kanji. So many sound so similar I get them mixed up all the time. Chou, Shou, Choku, Shoku. And especially Jyo, Jyou, jyuu, jyuu. Its absolutely crazy. I still don’t have the "replacement,/substitute series remembered at all from several levels back.
I mean, I’m on the upper half of the bell curve along with 50% of the population, but my talents actually are actually more in the math area! My personal assessment is that I’m actually meh at languages. A lot of my ability to remember words I feels like just coming up with stupid tricks that stick rather than any intelligence I may have or thinking through anything.
Are you using mnemonics? What stands out to me is that you say you get Chou, Choku, and Shoku mixed up because they “sound similar”. But, when I was learning, their sounds weren’t what I was remembering, so that didn’t matter. It was Mrs. Chou, the infamous woman of wanikani, Choking something, and a Shock. A famous fictional woman, choking something, and an electrical shock are basically impossible to get mixed up. So then all I was remembering was that Chou → ちょう, Choke → ちょく, and Shock → しょく and the little mnemonic story to go along with them that would include one of the three. After learning 10000 or so words I stopped using mnemonics for anything and would just kinda remember it because for that point I had a feel for learning new words, but when I was your level in WK I would usually be going through the mnemonics.
TLDR: It sounds like your issue isn’t getting the readings mixed up, its not having the mnemonics down perhaps.
I think it’s a skill that you have to practice, like everything else.
One thing that helps for me (and that WaniKani’s provided mnemonics don’t use enough IMO) is simply to remember the reading of kanjis/words based on the readings of other kanji/words.
So you have one ちょう early on with 丁 (street). Just make an effort to remember this one, then use it to remember every other ちょう. This is especially helpful in this case because you can literally find it as phonetic component in other kanji: 町 or 庁 for instance. But even for kanji that are unrelated but happen to have the same pronunciation, just tie it to “street” somehow. 長? Think about a long street. 調? You investigate something that happened in a street. 徴? You’re lost and you’re looking for indications leading you to the right street etc…
For しゅう I use 集: 州 (state) is a gathering of people. 習 (learn): in order to learn you must gather knowledge. 秀 (excel) this one I actually remember thanks to learn: in order to excel at anything you need to learn many things about it.
For しゅ I use 主, for じょう I use 上, for じょ I use 女. Of course that’s my set, use whatever you’re most familiar with and can work into mnemonics most easily.
Eventually you don’t even need these menmonics, the reading becomes bound to the kanji. I also think that it’s superior to the English-based mnemonics WK uses because it effectively reinforces the reading of several kanji at once.
Well, ok they don’t know if you know kana beforehand, but that’s kind of irrelevant because kana can be picked up in a matter of days.
They do know when you started, and they do know what level you are at. It’s easy enough to structure a query that will give you all users that obtained level 60 in less than year.
I think we’re thinking of different things. I’m wondering what the portion of users who did level 60 in less than a year were complete/near complete beginners. A lot of people say in their celebration posts, but I’m not spending my time reading through that.
I don’t know if that’s particularly relevant, I started only knowing kana and I think that I could do it (although I won’t because I intend to slow down at level 40).
I think the most relevant metrics for pulling it off is how much time you have to dedicate to WK daily and whether you’re familiar with SRS already. Personally I did use SRS to study other languages, so while Japanese was new, the daily review/lesson routine wasn’t and I think that’s a very serious advantage if you’re trying to go fast.
In the end even if you’re already fluent in Japanese you still have to go through at least ~72,000 reviews before you can reach level 60. It’s not about being good, it’s about being consistent and disciplined.
I agree with you here, but other than the timing/scheduling, surely people who already know Japanese (but just not all the kanji in WK yet), would need to spend less time outside of and during reviews and probably be a bit less prone to burnout since the mental load is lighter with matching kanji to readings than matching both kanji to readings and meaning to readings.
My first time doing WK I started as a complete beginner, by the end of it I even passed (with a very low score, but passed) the N3, then I tried to move to Japan but covid said “Hello, it’s me!” and I lost inertia and pretty much these last 4 years I never studied. Personally, I’m trying to mend that mistake
I do recognize that I could’ve spent a bit more time on grammar or reading instead of WK that time. But I do not think that my idea of studying like crazy for a year and then going to Japan with an N3 and then by immersion filling the gaps in my knowledge in Japan was wrong. I do not regret going fast but I understand why it’s so badly perceived by many these days.
I think that after all, one is responsible for its own decisions. This time I think I can go fast because even after forgetting a vast amount of knowledge in these last years my studies so far in N5 and N4 levels have been a nice refresher, as motivating as going back to the gym after years and noticing that, after all, you still can get the hang of it.
