How to balance work load?

Even if you’re studying full time at max speed WK shouldn’t take that long. My first guess would be that you’re spending too much time on reviews and it’s a somewhat commonly discussed strategy to just mark something wrong after too much time has passed.

If you’re using Bunpro I would recommend looking at basic vocab from an N5/N4 wordlist or mining straight out of their site since they try to stick vocab at the appropriate N level for each grammar point.

I definitely think going pure WK at the expense of everything else is bad. In particular I think it’s important to have at least some familiarity with N4 level grammar (roughly Genki II, or the end of most beginner textbooks) by around the time you hit burn reviews or WK 20-30 so you can reinforce whatever you learn here with reading native material. From there it’s really easy to adapt your studies however you want and reading will help cover the slack if you choose to go a little hard on WK over other things.

I’m going to say this just in case because I’ve seen a few people miss it, but for any given point on Bunpro the resources tab will usually have a link to a combination of free online resources (eg. Tae Kim, Maggie, Japanese Ammo with Misa) or books (Genki, MNN, A dictionary of Japanese Grammar, ect.). Some of the discussion threads for each point get really detailed as well, so check out those for more complex points.

Also I’d have to say I appreciate the existence of 80/20 Japanese (expensive) and Japanese the Manga Way as supplements. Human Japanese was OK to me, but I preferred it as a way to pass the time on the subway. I like Imabi, but I don’t think it’s beginner friendly at all.

I haven’t tried them, but I’ve seen a lot of praise for Jalup and LingoDeer as well.

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