If I understand the implications of your opening post correctly … have you not studied grammar at all?
If so, yes, you’ll face an immense hurdle with verb memorization. Wanikani’s mnemonics for verbs are still useful, but much more so if you also understand the role they might play in a sentence. It’s also going to help to just start seeing some of these words outside of the site.
At this point I’d say it isn’t about how you’re using Wanikani at all–it’s about your overall Japanese learning, and this might be the signal that it’s time to dive into grammar too. (Which I’d personally recommend before even starting Wanikani, though I know others differ.)
I kinda had the same problem as you. It was just too much information. I get the rules but found it was much better to just see it in action. So I started adding the basic conjugations of verbs to my anki flashcards.
It was more comfortable for me to process info this way without multiple paragraphs explaining to me why something changed a certain way + all the exceptions and blah blah blah. Screenshot (don’t mind my stupid mnemonic)
The low vocabulary progression and high apprentice items means that you’ve been abusing the reorder script(s) to prioritise radicals and kanji over vocabulary for quick levelling up.
The only way to learn the vocab that you’re complaining about (whether by rote memorisation or via mnemonics) is to review it again and again and again until it sticks in your memory. There isn’t a trick to learning any language other than repeat exposure and production, and the only person you’re harming with your approach is yourself.
For comparison, this is what mine looks like at level 7 (after resetting):
yup that’s it, I busy for few days and don’t touch review vocabs, so this consequence happens, I’m using all my time in day to review and review, I’m having near 1000 review ! ( after sum lesson and review !)
Thanks for pointing that to me !
edit: I will begin genki for grammar after I solve this mess, at level 11 !
Sorry but I don’t get the problem here,
Is it different readings?
You will be alone in the wild so lots and lots of experience is required to differentiate those.
I’d recommend not doing any new lessons until you manage to keep your review queue at 0 for a couple of days. Reviews are much much more important than lessons in the WK scheme of things.
(You can sort reviews to go from lowest levels to highest, but I really really recommend uninstalling it after you catch up with your reviews)
Not to be rude, but that sounds like a really poor way of learning. Of course you’re going to have problems with remembering vocab readings if you never actually review your vocabulary words. Did you just expect you would learn and remember them through osmosis?
An SRS doesn’t really work when you leave out the repetition part.
I think you’re looking for a pattern to verbs so that you can “cheat,” thinking that if you know the base meaning of the kanji and a simple pattern you can just create whatever verbs you need. Not only is that not going to be the case with Japanese, it wouldn’t work for actually using the language anyway. You need words to become automatic in your brain, tied directly to the concept, in order to be able to use them in speaking. If you have to process the kanji through a pattern to come up with the verb form every time, you’d be far to slow to use it in any meaningful way.
Honestly, this applies to any language. Spanish, for example, is very consistent with a base word that can then be conjugated in many different forms. However, even for Spanish, becoming a master at conjugation simply won’t make you fluent. Yes, it can help you figure out a word you don’t know off the top of your head, but, ultimately, you must learn the word in every conjugation such that it flows the moment you need it.
Others have already pointed this out, and I think @konekush was very astute in diagnosing your problem, but I want to reiterate the point because it is truly so vital. At the heart of WK is the SRS system. I can’t stress enough how important using the SRS properly is. Forget leveling up. Level-ups are utterly meaningless. They are just there to make this system fun and motivating. Learning is the point here and to make you learn the information, WK uses SRS. If you don’t use the SRS, you won’t stop struggling. SRS is really a miracle in learning technology and I’m confident that if you use it as it was designed to work, your problems will go away. (Not to knock the reorder scripts - I know they have their place and people like them - but there’s a reason WK isn’t programmed with reorder scripts built in.)
Especially make sure to get those early reviews done on time. Those first few reviews are critical for your success. Good luck.
I absolutely agree with what others have said about keeping up with reviews. The SRS really works if you use it the way it’s intended. Another way you can help with learning the readings is to listen to the audio that is available for vocabulary. Any time you can engage multiple senses in the learning process, it will help reinforce what you are learning. Then, once you have learned a little bit of grammar, you can start practicing using the vocab you are learning in sentences, and that will reinforce it as well. Until then, yes, you will have to learn each reading. The forms in WaniKani are strictly dictionary forms, not conjugations. You will need to learn these forms in order to understand how to use them later. Take your time, don’t expect to just flip a switch and know them all immediately. It’s better to go slow and really learn than to try to speed through and get overwhelmed without really learning things well.
I cant even imagine 450 apprentice items what the hell… Ofcourse he doesnt remember anything if he has so many in his que lmao. That must be so stressful and time consuming aswell o.o
Oof, well just remember them, I see your top leeches are level 3 stuff, I know a day ago I couldn’t remember any of the outside and part vocab, (how do you write kanji on here ?) that you are having trouble on, I’d fail everytime, on both meaning and reading.
I just couldn’t remember the mnemonic, so I just set out to read the pages of all of them again, 30 minutes later try to recall them while hiding the answer, then still fail on a lot of them, repeat until you can get all of them right, when you do, set the interval to one hour, then again, and then it’s probably review time.
Now I remember the 9 vocabs that were giving me trouble, they don’t come without thinking about it like let say otona, but I can get them right, and they surely will come after a while, and now I have nothing else to do here since I need to wait a full day to review the rest of my lv3 kanjis to guru, heh.
But seeing the amount of apprentice stuff you have, and the vocab progress, I’d say reset, you’re off to a bad start, I can’t imagine how it must be to have that many reviews.
And don’t do lessons if you can’t remember almost all the stuff you’re reviewing.
Also, some mnemonics just don’t cut it and that’s fine, the kun’yomi for inside, uchi, absolutly didn’t want to stay in my brain, so I modified it to the person inside my head that chases me with a nai fe (so the on’yomi) and then he stabs me, uchi ! it just works better for me.
Honestly that seems like a good reason to just restart from like level 2. Being at level 10 but yet hardly being able to recall most vocabulary readings seems like someone is prioritizing a useless number instead of actual knowledge.
No one in the real world is gonna be impressed by telling them you’re level 60 on WK, but yet you can’t remember how to read even the most basic verbs.
I had a similar problem when I was at your level.
生まれる、生きる、生む、Etc were, for some reason, really hard to remember, but when I started reading Japanese books, something finally clicked when it came to actually reading the vocab when it was being used.
Also, if it helps, make up your OWN mnemonics, you can add notes in WK (at least on the mobile app) so you might find it easier if you come up with your own ways to remember using things that resonate with you.
In addition, failure will also help you, having to see it come up time after time again will eventually force you to use it. 受付 was SO hard for me to remember for the longest time and I have no idea why, and then, after failing again and again, it finally magically clicked. I didn’t realise I remembered until I was in Japan and somebody told me (in Japanese) to go to the receptionist and I understood. It was a magical moment.
The mnemonics for the kun’yomi reading of “inside” (“uchi”) didn’t work for me either! I managed to recall it only after I started associating it with another “uchi” I knew (meaning “house”) and just imagined “inside of a house”.
This means that you’re not doing your vocab reviews at all. You’re only doing the radicals and kanji alone. I’m not really sure why I’m bothering to tell you this again, but this is only hurting you. At this rate you will never know Japanese well enough to be able to work in a Japanese environment like you want; hell, at this rate you will never be able to remember even the radicals and kanji that you are reviewing, because once you’ve burnt them you’ll never encounter them again.
If you want to get back on track and actually learn kanji (which you aren’t at the moment, trust me), do the following:
