So I’ve been doing WaniKani 3 times a day religiously (8 a.m., 12 p.m., 8 p.m.) every day for the past few months (with vacation mode on Friday to Saturday to take a day off and for other vacations in between), and I’ve been doing KaniWani as well.
However, doing both is extremely time consuming and draining, and I was wondering if it’s just as effective to only to Kaniwani once per day and stick to my WaniKani schedule. I don’t want reviews to pile up on KaniWani, but man, it’s stressful sometimes.
Any advice for KaniWani in general (synonym failures, etc.) would be appreciated. Thanks!
Personally, I would only use wanikani, and use any more free time in reading/listening to more japanese. I used Kaniwani before, but the time commitment was not worth it imo.
You can set your KaniWani settings to only have you doing burned items from WK. That makes the workload far more manageable and gives you a good way to retain WK vocab.
I have a hard time keeping up with KaniWani too, so maybe take anything I say with a grain of salt…
One thing I’ve done is limit the items that show up on KW to only those that are enlightened or above on WK. Its mostly a strategy to reduce the number of items I have to learn and review right now, but I guess I also feel like those items I have a strong enough grasp on here (on WK) that I get less frustrated by them on KW.
To deal with the multitude of synonyms and similar-but-not-exactly-the-same meanings I’ve added some additional user synonyms on WK (that will get picked up by KW the next time it syncs), based on other threads I’ve read about those issues. For 林 and 森, for example, I’ve added “two trees” and “three trees” as hints specifically for KW. I also have some words where I’ve added a synonym like “not XX”, where XX is the other synonym. It might be cheating a bit, but I expect that those will sort themselves out better as I read more, and the reduced frustration means I actually might continue using KW.
If you’re having issues with synonyms on Kaniwani, I recommend KameSame instead. You don’t get synonyms wrong, it just tells you it’s looking for a different word and let’s you try again. It also requires you to type in the answer in kanji (with an IME) instead of just the reading in hiragana. As for frequency, I use it 1-2 times a day. Reviews do pile up a bit, but for me they’re faster than WK reviews since you don’t need to enter a meaning and a reading, so it’s not as much of an issue. Honestly, if KW or KS is stressing you out, it’s okay to stop doing new lessons and just work through the reviews. Yeah lessons will pile up, but you are in no rush to get through them since they don’t affect unlocking new stuff, so it’s not much of an issue.
I do WaniKani on computer and KaniWani (well, actually KameSame) on mobile. So when I want to do reviews but don’t have a computer in front of me, it’s KS. Otherwise it’s WK.
I just think it’s a very easy way to fall into a mindset of thinking in english to produce japanese, instead of just staying in japanese when required.
I definitely also get the problem of having trouble remembering what something in english was in japanese, but having no problem recalling the japanese into english, so I get why it exists and why people use it, but perhaps users should be mindful that relying on “translating” might not be what they want.
Then again, that might be ok for lots fo people or not even a thing people think about, but english isn’t my first language, and somehow (Cause I did when pretty young, without even going to english classes, I legit don’t know how I learnt lol) I managed to learn it so well that when I read or listen english, I understand it as is without any “translating” to produce or understand it, I just think in english just as much as I do my native language, so to me it’s kinda hard not to aspire to that same level
I started Kaniwani a while back, but got totally overwhelmed.
Recently, I went back to it and locked everything but the first level. I will add levels as I pop through them. It’s much easier now, as I’m reading more and have started burning on Wanikani. It’s less stress as there is less learning and more reinforcing now.
I have 486 vocabulary items in enlightened though haha
Thanks!!!