I’m not talking about those of you who are all “I’M GOING TO DO WK IN YEAR!” I mean the people who feel like they’re going at a good pace.
I saw a bunch of people in a comment section saying that learning 20 Japanese words a day is a lot. With WK, if I’m not learning any new kanji, I usually do 15 words (if I’m learning kanji, I’ll do 3 kanji and 6 words), so I’m not sure how difficult doing 20 per day is. It was a post aimed at beginners, so maybe it’s just because it’s harder to learn new words in the beginning? Knowing kanji certainly helps with picking up on vocabulary, after all
Best practice is to be flexible. Too many reviews? Do less lessons. Too many items in apprentice level? Do less reviews. Review accuracy in 95+ percents? Do more lessons. Too much free time? Do more lessons.
I went from 15 to 30 to 5 to 20 to 1 and still don’t know what is best for me, because the situation is always different.
one my first attempt i was doing i think up to 30 lessons a day??
i don’t really remember exactly, but it was too much for me to handle and eventually it got to the point where it felt like with each new item i tried shoving into my brain, at least ten old ones came tumbling out
this time i generally do ten per day, but as i get to the end of a level when i only have some vocab left i’ll reduce to as low as five
i feel like this is a much better pace for my brain, and i’m almost at the point where i reset but with no sign of burnout yet
also i’m increasing the number of days a level takes by one every five levels
Currently my daily lesson goal is set at 20- though it is more of a reminder to work than it is an obligation to reach. I approach my daily lessons with a lot of malleability- most average days I hover around 12-15, days I am feeling up to the task I have gone upwards of 25-30, and there are plenty of days where I feel overwhelmed and just skip entirely to focus only on reviews.
Generally speaking, though, my approach is kind of like this;
This stage of WK only has around ~5 radicals per level- so I just knock them out immediately upon level-up every time
If I have Kanji to do, I add in no more than 5 a day- and I try to only add them in the early morning so I can poke in later through the day to get some fairly immediate practice in
All vocab is preemptively scanned and I build my days around confidence level above all else. If I unlock 40 words and 22 of them seem quite easy (for example) I might just add them all in at once knowing it won’t really impact my review flow or add frustration. If the remaining 18 seem notably difficult, I might only elect to add in ~5 a day from that point on and chip through the rest
Many people check what their apprentice level count is hovering at and use it as a sign to put their foot on the gas or slow down some. From my experience having 150-160ish items in apprentice usually means ~200 reviews on any given day- and that is where I generally find reviews go from engaging to annoying
I think the larger thing to be mindful of is your own needs and ability- since doing lessons ultimately means a lot more review content. Do you have the time/energy/patience to sustain 20 items a day? If not, then it won’t be productive to do so, so it’s best to just work at the pace you find comfortable. If your current workflow is working well, I say no need to change it to try and speed up the process beyond your ability
I also was doing 30 a day (when I reset my level from 14 to 7 last March), but found that it was nowhere near sustainable.
I opened this thread not to look for advice, but just out of curiosity to know how other WK users are doing. You’re all right about being flexible though. When I went to Japan, I was doing like 2 kanji and 4 vocab per day, and I plan to cut it down to 1 kanji and 2 vocab per day this coming January when I get busy with work.
I’m currently going through levels at one per two weeks, but I’m leaving a decent amount of vocabulary behind. I generally try to finish all the vocab from two levels prior before I start the new level’s kanji (so like, when I got to lv19, I finished lv17 before doing anything, and so on)
My default is 15 lessons per day. But there have been days where I only took 3 lessons, some days 20. Even straight up skipped a few days when I was sick or on vacation.
I believe that because life is full of ups and downs we should all strive to be flexible. Learning this language is a long term commitment, so I do not think anyone should push aside life.
Sometimes, when I am especially free, i might use the advanced feature and speed run the kanji lessons to unlock a lesson faster. While at other times I might do the same but only do vocabulary to catch up. Most of the time I just let the WK algorithm do its thing. I do 15 lessons a day and never above. Not because I cant but because i know how it can cause reviews to pile up to a degree that can easily cause burnout. So it is not worth it. Keep in mind this platform is about getting new items into you head so you can recognize it when you immerse in Japanese content. If you immerse enough and see the items you will remember them much better, more easily.
There are times when I cannot remember certain WK items, and I accept that. I don’t beat myself up over it. It just means it isn’t that important to me right now. Maybe it never will? or maybe my next immersion content will show it to me a bunch of times at which point I will remember it.
So, I do 15 a day normally. I’m willing to go lower. Never higher, it really ramps up the number of reviews per day later and is never worth it, to me.
I do 15 a day on average but will stop doing new ones if the number of apprentice items exceeds 100. If the number of apprentice items is low I do a few more lessons as long as the reviews are not to high. I find this makes it doable, not easy but doable. I work and have young kids. I’m probably going to hit 60 around the two year mark.
I am doing 12 each days (unless on level up days then i add all the radicals also). I do 3 kanji and 9 vocab. This makes the level up in about 15? days. I have no need to go faster, I want to spend the majority of my time reading instead of doing srs
I try to do 10 lessons per day, as long as life allows it and my Apprentice counts dont move towards 100. This is not really fast, but it’s a pace, where I won’t get burned out again. Particularily since WK is not my only study resource, it don’t want it to take a majority of my time, since I think actually engaging with native content is much more relevant once you have a foundation.
Whatever speed you choose to go at, I think it is important to consider that adding lessons does not only increase your immediate review count, but will also start to kick in with Master and Enlightened later on.
Depends. I had to reset from lvl 25 to lvl 10, and part of the reason why I was struggling at lvl 25 was that I used to do 15 lessons a day, whatever. Now I try to keep my apprentice items at 50 or below constantly. So some days I will do the 15 lessons, but other days don’t do any. This way has been way more managable and my accuracy rate remains pretty decent as well. Though, I am now on lvl 15, so let’s see what happens when I get back to 25.
Yeah I think for most s , best to keep apprentice items at a max of 100, especially when you get past the first 10 levels. For awhile I had it capped at 50.
Recently that is the maximum: I do all my reviews daily but if apprentice items go above 100 or daily accuracy slips below 85%, I cut back, usually to 2 or 3.
At the beginning of WaniKani I did around 30 lessons a day. That was mostly due to knowing a lot of the lower level kanji and words, as well as the usual beginner enthusiasm streak. I’ve found that pace unsustainable the further I progressed. So now I’m averaging 5 lessons a day. Some days though I push for more (like 10+) when I have more free time or mental bandwidth. When it’s a bad day, I just aim for 1 lesson as the bare minimum.
I do five a day. I’ve been using SRS systems for other languages for a couple years and from experience, I know that more than that will give me more reviews than I can face in a couple of months’ time, even though the current volume is manageable.
I also know that more reviews means either rushing to get through reviews or finishing at the end of the day when I’m tired, tired and rushing means more mistakes, more mistakes means more reviews, and all of the above means a grumpy, frustrated me who doesn’t enjoy it.
That said, my life is pretty busy, WK isn’t my only Japanese study and it’s not my only language. If were doing this this in different circumstances (including being younger!) then I would do more.
s , best to keep apprentice items at a max of 100, especially when you get past the first 10 levels. For awhile I had it capped at 50.