I seem to remember getting to level 60 in a little less than two years. Don’t know how many levels that is per month
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I usually level up in about 10 days. It takes longer at the end of my semesters since I put less time into Wanikani and more time into other studies.
Also, when I feel like I’m accumulating to much leaches, I take a break in levels and I try to clear them (I did it at lvl 30)
Here is my chart :
You should go to your own rhythm, there is no such thing as too fast or too slow. The important part is learning the stuff after all (and having fun doing it of course).
10 items a day, and I love it. Perfect pace for me, as it allows good retention, a consistent pace, and time for other types of study.
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Wow everyone seams to be able to do a level in less than 15 days and I stuck at level 7 after 290 days …
With average of 39 days, how many hours are you gays putting in a day ??
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personally im putting around 30 minutes in per day, though it sometimes creeps up to 45-60 if there are new lessons or theres alot of reviews (or if my brain just decided to not work that day)
I do around 40 min in day and on weekends 1 hour, but the people above are speedrunning levels …
Maybe I am just really slow to remember things
from what ive read i think 10 days a level is about the average, though i think you’re probably doing something wrong for 7 levels in 290 days because thats 40 days a level on average, maybe you’re not doing your daily reviews or you frequently get them wrong??
Four levels a month. Clear all lessons before each level and clear the reviews 5-6 times a day. Roughly an hour each day on WK, maybe a bit more when I get bigger batches.
Right now I finish a level every 20-30 days which is slower than I used to be. I use no web scripts, have a full time job, fiance, etc, and I also use Bunpro for grammar and engage with native content every day and take a class with a tutor once a week. Grammar/native content practice is far more tiring and difficult than Wanikani (in my opinion) which is why my leveling has slowed.
Don’t be discouraged by people on the forums who level up every seven days. People have all sorts of different circumstances. Some people have tons of free time, some people focus on Wanikani and nothing else, some may already have a foundation in kanji from college - there are a million different scenarios. As long as you’re plugging away each day and making progress that’s all that matters.
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1 Level / Year.
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i started at one week per level but struggled to maintain this and despite slowing down, resetting a bit around lvl 33 and ploughing on to lvl 41, i lost my motivation.
i reset to lvl 1 and i aim to do 10 - 15 lessons a day. i make sure to get to 0 reviews/ 0 lessons once per level at least and i pace my rad/kan lessons to 5 a day of each at most. this stops my vocab pile from growing and i level up every 12 - 15 days.
i think it’s a good speed. for me.
your good speed is the one speed you can sustain without accuracy taking a hit or reviews taking too much time. i used to get 3 reviews (mean + read) per minute, now i’m closer to 6 - 10.
you could try to find a good balance in lessons you can confidently do each day and/or the number of reviews you’re willing to finish every day.
also don’t forget your workload goes up when burns come in.
if we look at my daily reviews after the first fast levels:
i’m a bit under 100 reviews a day and the number is consistent because i do very similar amounts of lessons daily. those numbers work for me. i can manage that.
before, i was on 20-25 lessons a day. that gave me 150 reviews a day at least and it grew with burns and leeches. i got slower, less accurate and - quite frankly - disheartened. but it works for many people so it just depends on what you can manage happily.
good luck.
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I was coasting along at 7 days per level for awhile. I have a tendency to do all lessons as they come up and it looks like that’s going to cause me to now push a level every 3.5 days since things change a bit past level 42. Definitely going to be rough, have to adjust my sleep schedule a bit to account for this sudden increase in lessons per week (basically double). On the bright side, I only have to maintain that for about 2 months.
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honestly i respect it
I’m in a little slower pace, I was slower at the beginning, but now I’ve found a great pace for me which results in about 15 days per level, so 2 levels a month. I do 2-3 reviews batches morning-midday-night and lessons in the evening, as a whole maybe one hour a day?
first lvls 1-10 like 8-9 days on average. Now close to 14-15 days per lvl. Wanikani workload peak is around lvl 19-20 so most people usually gonna slow down a little near these levels.
Im moving slowly because I’m also using another srs vocabulary app to supplement wanikani- torii.srs, wanikani teaches you only 4300 most common vocab and I want to start immersion as soon as possible. With the current pace, il be able to start watching animes with Japanese subtitles and decent comprehension at around lvl 30-35.
a general rule of thumb- it is recommended to reach fast lvls 10-15 in order to cover all kanjis in beginner textbooks for grammar. Then push till lvl 40. After that wanikani starts to show diminishing returns- you already established a sufficient base for immersion and considering the fact that most kanjis past lvl 40 are becoming very nuanced its much better to start learning them through context than from srs programme.
don’t let anyone going fast get you down… It’s been 3 years and I’m just about to level 37…that means ALWAYS doing my reviews every day (not always doing lessons - but I have NEVER reset)…but that’s my reality. It’s going to take me 5-6 years to finish it all.
You don’t hear from many of us that have to go slow for what it’s worth try to ignore the “I did it in a year” …those are the superstars that can retain stuff and actually get through…most people if they try to go that fast end up burning out and quit or go through many reset cycles and quit… (at least that’s my impression)
IMO…either dedicate all your jp learning for the next year to WK and go FAST if you can or … take it slow and steady… honestly though it took me a long time to find the current pacing looking at my stats and how much I can do with all the other studying I’m doing. I was in the 20s before I was getting death by leeches (IF WK would finally build a BUILT IN leech manager for the love of…)
tried keeping the apprentice items under control but in my case it wasn’t enough… looked at my overall stats and averaged all things together and found that my average level over the course of all the time is really going to be 40-45 days… so went with that and keep my NEXT days reviews about 100 based on my failure rate of about 30% (the WK intervals are horrible for me)
as an example i typically get about 40 reviews in the morning and based on how many reviews are the next day with the remaining after the 40 done… I see if the total goes above 100 and then don’t add any new lessons past that … it’s much slower this way but it’s manageable for me
Example
Say Today it’s 6 am and I have 97 reviews pending.
I do my reviews on a break at work and do about 45 of them … leaving 52 left to do for the rest of the day
I look at the next day review numbers after my review lesson is complete … if the numbers of the next day review say 62 for example then I take the remaining 52*0.3 (failure rate) + next day 62 = 77.6 about 78 reviews the next day…ok great I can do lessons… I rarely do more than 10… usually 6-8.
Now say the next day same thing… I have for some reason 103 reviews pending at 6am and it’s morning break and I do 48 leaving 55 for the day.
taking the same math 55*.3 = 16.5
tomorrows review count is say 85… add that and it’s > 100…so no new lessons that day…
kind of round about way to do it…but for me it’s been working ok (prior to this I was doing 2-2.5 week level ups and hitting a leech wall from hell where I was being forced to spend 3 months or so just working on leeches w/o new lessons just to try to get them under some sort of control again
(WHEN WILL WK CREATE A BUILT IN LEECH MANAGER …with BUILT IN being the important part…yes there are scripts … don’t care BUILT IN!!! ) this is by far the main reason I don’t recommend wk to anyone anymore… SRS w/o some sort of built in leech manager is awful! the amount of time learning things wrong and wasting time on cards that you can’t suspend or do anything with… just makes you wanna quit.
You can see where I had to stop and just grind on leeches w/o doing lessons…was super demotivating!
and my current accuracy numbers are not great…they have been slowing working down over the past year but it is what it is…just maddening to see how times I’ve entered the incorrect answer (almost 40k shees)…makes me feel dumb…
but the thing to do is do your best to ignore the people that are always omg I did horrible and only got 90%…shees I’m happy when I break 75%…my average over the course of a day is about 72-74%…been consistently that way for the last 2 years…
focus on what you can do and try to find the speed at which you can progress w/o burnout and being overwhelmed. If you are intent on learning kanji quickly then get the reorder script, skip the vocab, and if that’s not fast enough then consider another resource…the first 3 levels being free really doesn’t tell you anything about how things will be when you climb to higher levels.
Best of luck!!!
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Speed doesn’t matter. 1 level every 20 days is plenty.
A lot of the Wanikani speedrunners just do Wanikani for a year straight. I don’t
think that’s a very good idea.
While doing Wani, you should try and do some other Japanese studies imo.
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just over 7 days is my average at around 93-95% vocab and kanji accuracy. But, i have a lot of free time though being homebound. i do reviews between working on artwork during my day or between bits while gaming.
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18 days on average right now. But I’m slowing it down for a bit. Thats mostly because im using 3 different srs systems at once (wanikani for kanji, kitsun for the genki vocab and bunpro for grammar srs) and wanikani is no longer my main priority since im level 10 (which means most of the n5 kanji is added) and ive got all the genki 1 vocab srs’ed so im focusing on the grammar right now.
Don’t worry about going fast, as long as you keep bashing your head against the brick wall of kanji you will break it down. Eventually.
I used to leveling up around 8-9 days/ level. However, I hit the wall at level 40. I could go at the same speed but I feel like my problem is not the kanji anymore so I invest my time on something else. Like grammar, vocabs, and immersion.
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