Hi Wanakani community, I felt like I have been getting new lessons way too slow even though I did my lessons and review almost immediately (or within few hours) after it unlock.
For example, I just unlocked my level 4 on 14 Feb 2024. I’ve been doing new lesson and review whenever its avaliable. But the thing is I only get new lessons (20-30 lessons, i dont remember the number exactly) every two to three days. So as of today 20 Feb 2024, I’ve unlocked all 33 radical, 38 kanji, and only 53 out of 112 vocab.
Im stuck in 1 level for 7 days!! And Im not even close to finish!! (I remember for level 2 or level 3, i was doing reviews for two whole days and no new lessons)
I read a lot of post where people get to complete 1 level 3.5 days, or average 7 days. How do they manage to finish that fast? How do I get more new lesson a day? Please advice
Tldr: I do my lesson and review everyday every few hours but new lesson coming in too slow so im stuck at the same level for more than a week
As MQM said, doing your reviews frequently and getting them correct is how you go faster.
New lessons are based on what you’ve learned previously, so to unlock new lessons you need to “prove” to the system that you have actually learned the previous lessons (by answering correctly several times in a row, with a few days between each attempt).
If you’re doing all your reviews and lessons as they come then the only way to go faster is to make fewer mistakes:) Maybe focus more on the mnemonics, or make your own mnemonics if Wanikani’s ones aren’t working for you. Good luck
I tried to have perfect score in level 2 or 3 when doing my reviews, and end up getting very few reviews for the next two days and 0 new lesson. I wonder if im the only one facing this issue?
Is it anything to do with the setting? I set it to 10 batch size previously.
Radical and Kanji reviews are the only ones that unlock new lessons, it takes about 3 days to get them to the stage where they unlock new lessons, so if you do all your available kanji and radical reviews on the same day then you won’t unlock any new lessons until three days later.
Is it theoretically possible to for example do the work of 2 or 3 days in one day? I’m a very quick learner (7 languages at fluent levels in) and I’ve got lots of time for small units during the day as I always have 2-3 min timespans which I am completely unoccupied in due to my job. So I’d rather study than play mindless games on my phone.
Ultimately, the answer to your question depends upon if you plan to do reviews every day or not. If you do not plan to do reviews every day, note that there is no way to adjust WaniKani’s SRS stage timings to fall on the occasional/sporadic days that you plan to do reviews. The SRS stage timings are only dependent upon previous review accuracy, the previous SRS stage, and whether or not you pass or fail a review. Also, the SRS is meant to remind you about an item (radical, kanji, vocabulary) just before you forget it, so lengthening the review time can decrease review accuracy (depending upon the person). For example, if you learn a new item on Day 1 and don’t do reviews on Days 2-4, then you’ll probably forget it by Day 5. You have a much better chance of remembering it 4 hours later on Day 1 (Apprentice 1 → 4 hours → Apprentice 2), 5+ hours later on Day 1, or on Day 2. Therefore, reviewing every day is advantageous.
If you do all reviews every day (keeping up with previously learned items), then you may be able to do 2-3 days worth of new lessons at once. I think that the default number of lessons per day is 15, so you could do 30-45 lessons in one day depending upon the number of available lessons (see WaniKani Lesson Settings dropdown below). However, keep in mind that adding new lessons increases your daily review count which can easily become unmanageable and cause burnout. To keep reviews manageable, I’ve seen many in the WaniKani community use an Apprentice count cutoff below a certain number, with the upper limit/cutoff ranging between 50 and 150. For example, when the Apprentice count is below 100, it is okay to add new lessons, but when the Apprentice account rises above 100, no new lessons are added to prevent burnout.
WaniKani Lesson Settings
You can use the lesson settings to increase the number of lessons per day (without using the advanced button): https://www.wanikani.com/settings/app
Yes, these small pockets of time can be used for WaniKani. There are multiple ways to take on small review batches:
Wrap Up Button (Vanilla WaniKani)
In vanilla WaniKani (no scripts), hit the wrap up button when you start to take on only 10 reviews. Or, hit the wrap up button anytime during the review session to take on a maximum of 10 additional reviews.
Before hovering over the wrap up button, it looks like:
While hovering over the wrap up button, it looks like:
Batch Size (3rd Party Apps)
Some of the WaniKani apps (3rd party) give you more review flexibility. For example, in the Hakubun beta (iOS and Andriod) you can change the batch size to less than 10:
Reorder Omega: I think you can use reorder omega to do a batch size cutoff for reviews: [Userscript] Reorder Omega
Try something like this (creating a new preset for each review batch size you want):
Perfect answer, thanks a lot! I’m not too concerned about burnout due to experience with written Chinese and thus probably some transferable skill and as mentioned, lots of small timeslots to use!
Also thank you for your time to formulate such an extensive answer. I’m always so impatient and didn’t get how the full system works yet as I was focused on studying.
Your previous written Chinese experience will definitely allow you to take on more new lessons and go faster, but I would still recommend implementing at least 1 strategy to prevent burnout (such as a high Apprentice Limit).
I’ve read that going at maximum speed with good accuracy may eventually cause more than 400 reviews per day. If you choose to do this, please read some of the “Level 60 in around 360 days or 1 year” posts for tips and more information about the time commitment: Level 60 Celebration - WaniKani Community
