How to speed up pace

Hey I’m on level 1, and am being limited to like 1 review a day on the 25 radicals. I personally find this pace really slow since it’s stopping me from moving onto Kanji. 25 mnemonics is not that hard to remember, I doubt I need 4 days dedicated solely to them. I’m seeing posts saying you’re supposed to be able to do multiple reviews a day, how do I speed up?

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You wouldn’t spend 4 days with them though. The first 2 levels are accelerated by default, you only need like 2 days to pass the radicals enough that you can move onto the kanji.

Edit, slight explanation:
You cannot force out reviews. Whenever you review an item, wanikani checks how long the next stage should be and schedules a review that much time later. For levels one and two, these are the timings:


So your first review would come 2 hours after the lesson, then 4 hours between review 1 and 2, and so on. If you add these intervals together, that’s 1 day and 14 hours, so less than 2 days total to get to the kanji.

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Took me a minute to realize you mean one review session per day. I remember that the start felt like deliberate brake on learning, but don’t worry. It will pile up. Next day, you will have one session from day before, and one for today. Next day there will be more sessions, etc. In few weeks, you will have several sessions throughout the day. As time goes by, they will desynchronize and mix up, so you will actually have some review almost every hour of the day. Just pick when you can do them and you will always have some reviews ready.

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It feels sluggish when you’ve only got 25 items in the review queue, sure. When you’ve got 250 items, though, or 2500… that’s a different story. Enjoy the slow pace for now.

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Please look at your question in 2 weeks or a month >_<
You don’t see it by now but you will eventually reach a piont where you just did 200 reviews with a proud grin on your face. All to get struck by the fact that you have another 100 in one hour. Wanikani can soak up a good chunk of your daily life if you want it to. Like multiple hours a day.
Your question in a few weeks will be “How do I slow down effectively” :smiley:
You can learn some grammar in the meantime though :wink:

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What level can I look forward to having hundreds of reviews daily? Almost at level 4, ive started going into vocab and kanji links at the top of Wanikani to start learning new ones ahead of time since I always have nothing to do. I have to get to level 10 before I start grammar according to the Tofugu learn japanese guide and its going to take months at this rate.

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Just study grammar. This is what almost everyone says on this forum, and I agree. You don’t need any kanji knowledge to start gong through grammar resources. Waiting for level 10 is silly advice. Without grammar, how can WK’s context sentences be even useful at all?

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It starts to pick up around level 7-8. But I agree with the others who’ve suggested studying grammar. That’s going to help you a lot more than knowing a bunch of kanji.

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Not so. I was doing grammar before I found WK, and it made things easier. Go ahead and start some grammar if you want to. It certainly won’t hurt.

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As others already pointed out, you will feel more pressure around lv 8 - 10. WaniKani uses an SRS system, which means it builds up over time and you will be on max workload after around 6 months when your first items are getting ready to be burned. But I advice you to be careful when going on full speed. It will get very overwhelming and it highly depends on the time you want to invest daily only on WK. We are talking about around 500+ reviews a day at this point. This will take about 3-5 hours a day or more considering stll doing all lessons. Therefore, take it easy and relax in your first month here. Good way is keeping track of your apprentice items as these are our main workload. Everything above 100 is ok and more than 200 I consider busy (personal taste)
When I started WK, I was researching on how to study other parts of the language. What’s the best way to study grammar. How do I remember vocab I can actually use (WK will not help you short term for that). Where and how can I practice speaking?
You will have to study more than just Kanji and this will add to your workload as well. Means you mayby want to invest an hour or so daily for grammar, vocab and speaking. Additional to the 3-5 hours for WK.

Also, it might be hard to reduce your workload suddenly once its build up. Reviews will pile up the way you started it when doing lessons. So if you want to reduce later, it will also work gradually. 気をつけてね

So for now, I recommend engaging in ervything this community has to offer. There are book clubs here people enjoy or a game thread. I’m sure you will find something you are interested in. Studying japanese is not only about the Kanjis, its about immersion. Its not about the goal, its about the process and experience. よく楽しんでください!

Edit: After level 3-4, take a look on “wkstats.com
You have to create an API in your WK settings and insert it there. It shows you your overall and current progress, precision, and most importantly how many days you need for a level up based on your speed. Helps you calculating when you will reach certain levels.

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Having 100 apprentice items was okay for me back when I was studying Japanese almost full time, but now that I work, even 40 is too many.

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