How I feel about studying Japanese and using WaniKani after 8 months

what do you mean by properly understanding? With 2200 kanji and 10k words you won’t really have trouble with diving deep into native content and receiving constant input.

By ‘plenty of people’ do you mean those four friends of yours? I googled the number of users for WaniKani and got 28000. Statistically those 4 represent 0.001% of users. There are more of course, I’m just wondering where you got ‘plenty of people’ from. Can you provide your source (stat)? I’m wondering myself. I’ve set 9 days for each level (which is I think is close to how fast you can go) and that’s 540 days. That’s about a year and a half.

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“just reading” you say… :sweat_smile: Don’t forget that there’s a listening section too.

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Iv encountered 4 threads like this in learning Japanese r/ by browsing it for 2 months.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/l51r3d/my_500_day_journey_to_a_160180_n1_score_w_tips/.
Friends experience and ext. Obviously, it’s maybe not a lot- but definitely not that rare as some people make it out. - you need to study Japanese for 10+ years to reach fluency!- unironically by fluency they usually mean n1 certificate.

Some quotes from “Matt vs Japan” (from a video Q&A) that pretty much sum up what I meant:

If all you want to do is pass the JLPT N1, then your best bet is just buying JLPT prep books and just Anki-ing the entire thing from start to finish, and then taking a bunch of practice tests

There’s really no point in doing immersion - I mean, you could do some immersion on the side, but if you just do lots of practice tests you can get good at just reading the multiple choice questions and skimming the paragraph to find the right information. In the listening tests, they speak super slowly and unnaturally, and you can get good at just listening for the key word

You probably wanna make use of just doing everything bilingually 'cause that’s just gonna make it quicker to get to the point where you can pass that test, which is all that matters, right - can you get a high enough score on this “game”, that ultimately is pretty much completely detached from actual Japanese ability

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You need 0 Kanji to reach a conversational level.

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Correct points but I don’t genuinely believe there are people who just study Japanese to pass n1. The end goal is being able to consume native content. n1 is a good metric showing your literacy level. With that level, you won’t have trouble going through native content- after all- kanji and hanzi characters are the main obstacle for Japanese/Chinese learners. You already know them+ grammar, it won’t take that much time acquiring true language ability afterwards.

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Agreed! There’s definitely many people who put a lot of time into studying JLPT prep books and such specifically to get better at taking the JLPT though, although that’s obviously far from being as extreme.

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yeah, I agree. JLPT is only useful as a literacy metric. Which is why I said it’s possible to pass n1 in 1.5-2 years without actually selling your whole soul to ajalt 24/7. you won’t be fluent but you will finally become * literate* which will massively ease the consumption of native content. At that point, language acquisition will no longer be a big deal because of comprehensible input.

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I might’ve misunderstood reading your comment again. I don’t think you’re talking about WK. I think you’re saying plenty of people pass N1 or reach N1 level (incl. reading and listening).

Speaking of which, is there a way to access average data? Since everything is compiled I’d imagine there’s an average day per level variable stored somewhere? I’ve googled this but I’m getting threads of people sharing their own average which is not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for the average for reaching level 60 in particular. I’d also like to investigate what % of people reach lvl 60

I’ve never heard that before, please develop. What do you include as Asian languages? Do you include dialects spoken in India? Because India is technically part of Asia.

Where do you draw the line? Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Burmese?

As for European languages, do you merge Germanic and Roman together? Because some languages are a lot easier to learn when they’re part of the same family (French and Italian comes to mind).

Where’s the 4x coming from? Does it take into consideration the learner’s background? Where’s the research?

wanikani can be completed in a year with maximum speed- 7 days per level. 3-4 per fast level- its pretty hardcore though. you gonna need an alarm clock)
But yh I’m not talking about Wani Kani because for n1 you actually need to know 2200 kanji, while Wani Kani teaches you 2060+. Still its quite easy to find some Anki deck for the rest needed kanji.

When people mention hours for language acquisition they usually refer to American foreign service institute study numbers- where they prepare future diplomats. On average people from the anglosphere need around 600 hours to reach the b2+ level in European languages and around 2200+ in eastern asian languages( kor/chin/jap). Although it’s hard to gauge how they evaluate numbers- is it just class numbers? or self-study also included?.

anyway, these are just average numbers.+ for eastern languages they also practice handwriting proficiency which can literally take 2x of your study time. If you just study by yourself and not trying to learn to handwrite I’m sure you will achieve a solid level faster.

I’m really enjoying this thread and this statement specifically has been a little revelation for me. I moved to Japan 6 months ago (to follow my partner) and started studying Japanese around the same time. Wanikani was the first thing I started with – actually 8 months ago – but it has since become just one small part of my toolkit.

I very recently took the N5 and think I nailed it (though I found the listening section a little tough). I love studying Japanese BUT… every once in a while I get down on myself because despite spending an average of 3-4 hours per day studying, and living in Japan, I still feel pretty useless when faced with interacting in Japanese in the real world. It’s a long road to fluency!

But I think at the moment I need to worry less about output and just keep jamming it all in! Vocab, kanji, more vocab, grammar, vocab vocab vocab, listening practice, vocab… At some point it will all come together right? Right…?

With respect to the OP, I’m at Level 10 wanikani and I find it useful for learning kanji, but that’s pretty much it. It does help to reinforce vocabulary I’ve already learned elsewhere, and makes it easier to learn new vocab (obviously knowing kanji makes it easier to learn new vocab that uses that kanji).

But I spend much more time on other resources:

  1. I spend A LOT of time every day on Kitsun (SRS platform) learning vocabulary :joy:
  2. I use Genki (currently halfway through Genki II) to learn grammar, supplemented with some Tae Kim and other N4 and N5 textbooks
  3. I was taking three lessons per week but have recently paused my lessons
  4. I listen to pod101 podcasts and use duolingo nearly every day
  5. I watch Japanese TV series (with english subs) almost daily (e.g. Terrace House, Midnight Diner)
  6. And read very basic Japanese children’s books to my 2 year old son. Today I learned the words for poop うんち and diaper おむつ :joy:

After making that list I feel like I should be farther along than I am :weary: but to be honest I think my kanji and grammar are nearly at N4 level, I just need to focus now on cramming more vocab in. Lately, I feel like it’s all about increasing my vocab level.

And I should ad a caveat that while I live in Japan, I’m not working at the moment and my husband speaks no Japanese and works in an english-speaking environment. I also have a 2-year old son so don’t get out much, and have been living under various shifting states of emergency. All that to say that my daily interactions with Japanese speakers is limited to the grocery store, pharmacy, nursery and playground.

My goal atm is to pass the N4 in Dec… I think I’ll be ready for N4 sooner than that but don’t think N3 is achievable by then.

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頑張って!
絶対にできますよ

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https://community.wanikani.com/t/its-a-stat-22-people-make-it-to-level-60-every-month/30156

I wonder how much this stat has changed since 2018

This is a bit old, but relevant

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There’s this from 9 months ago.

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I knew I had seen a more recent one, but I couldn’t find it - thank you! :raised_hands:

Edit: Also, @Zizka - I think levels 4-60 are really the relevant ones when calculating % of people who have made it to X level, since the first 3 levels are free and don’t require a subscription/commitment, although the google doc above separates who was free/paid/lifetime at the time the list was made

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Yeah, and WK gave me the nudge I needed to start looking at stuff with JP subtitles, which means I’m running into all sorts of vocab not covered here in a very natural way

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yes! it will eventually click. I dont like to use reference on other people, but there are just so many successful examples- like polyglots steve kaufman, steven krashen, people whome they interview, matt/britt vs japan, my experience with learning french and english and ext.

They just focused on reading/listening comprehension. But what was the most interesting is the fact that people who never practiced speaking their target language- year later after receiving tons of input suddenly realize they are quite fluent in speaking( strong foundation in input led to pretty quick acquisition in speaking ability. When you see patterns all the time it takes a very low amount of efforts to activate your passive knowledge)- this process is called unconscious acquisition of language which happens automatically when you consume native media. Its still has to be comprehensible input so ideally you should use japanese subs for movies/shows and animes. Eventually you will reach a point where you no longer gonna need them.
Also the funny thing about output- when you practice speaking, you are actually benefiting more from input- hearing target language from another person.

I would just add 1 thing- in my opinion with that many resources( especially when they often overlap between each other) you gonna get burned out fast. I remember my experience with dabbling japanese 2 years ago. I decided to reach fluency faster than my friends. Wanikani/anki/4 books on grammar/ listening pods- great results in 4 months but massive burn out rate where i just started to hate this language ).

i think its just better to stick to 1 specialized rescourse-
wanikani- kanji
kitsun- comon vocabualry ( i use torii.srs)
and just use 1 book- tae kim or genki for grammar.

and then slowly you can start transitioning to your favourite recreational media with subs. Most native speakers in anime and movies dont really use sophisticated grammar constructions and n4+ is more than nuff to start acquiring grammar in context. ( you can finally get rid of boring grammar books- hurray)

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That’s definitely not true, if you put 0% effort on output you’ll get an appropriate outcome. You have to “activate” your passive knowledge to be able to use it. There are plenty of immigrants in countries that have high level of understanding of the local language but can’t really speak it beyond survival basics. This is also from my own experience of living in an occupied country getting tons of input at a young age, I can still understand the occupier’s language at a high level but can’t really speak it.

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well, this is why I said I don’t like to reference others people. Everybody can be different/unique. It definitely worked that way for me and many others but in the end, it’s only through exposure smb can understand if it works for him or not. Especially if it’s not your first language learning experience.

Although if I’m not mistaken Krashen was mentioning input in the form of text+sound.
If you just have a massive vocabulary and can read books freely but you rarely hear sounds of these words you won’t be able to unconsciously acquire them thus won’t be able to output them.

p.s i struggle to believe that someone who can clearly understand daily speech, medias- cant talk beyond survival needs. It just goes against all the evidence for 2d language acquisition studies.