I started wanikani at the end of last December, and I aim to finish level 30 before my first year here.
I had to stop wanikani for around one month this summer, but otherwise I have been really consistent with it. I would say that I spend around 1h30/2h a day on it. Since a few months, I reduced my number of lessons every day from 20/25 to 15, as it was a bit too much for me.
So I am pretty happy with my speed, and I would say that Wanikani is working for me.But recently I started to see that I tend to forget old voca and, even kanji (at least a bit more than usual). Obviously this is normal, and it is voca/kanji that I only used in one word and start to be old. (On my stats, I am around 95%, but on the review percentage from the Wanikani website, I would say I am around 85%; I guess they donât compute it the same way.).
So yes, it is working, and I am forgetting a few kanji, which is normal. My point is that outside of Wanikani I am not doing anything (maybe 10 pages of a manga per week and 3 bunpro lessons, but thatâs it).
My idea was to finish wanikani in 2 years (so one left now) and after to study grammar and other stuff. But now, I am scared to not use my knowledge enough and to forget it before finishing wanikani and that therefore all my effort would be useless.
I donât have more time to spend on Japanese every day, so I can only do that.
I would like to know what you think about that. Maybe It just an impression and I would be totaly fine but I wanted to ask you.
Iâd recommend putting more of your time into grammar and/or reading. Since you donât have more time to spend on Japanese, that would mean slowing down on wanikani to make time for it.
I would suggest spending 30 mins a day with Satori Reader. It helps immensely on getting started with reading, which is fundamental for vocab retention. And itâs also a ton of fun! Have a look at it
Iâm sorry if that sounds mean, but finishing WaniKani before starting on other stuff sounds a bit⊠arbitrary?
WaniKani used to have only 50 levels (IIRC). If that were still the case, would you do another 10 levels worth of kanji on your own before starting your grammar/vocab studies in earnest? What if they decided to add another 10 levels 6 months from now? Would you finish those before as well?
My point being: Donât structure your Japanese studies around the fact that some guy at Tofugu marketing thought â2,000 kanji. 6,000 vocabulary words. In just over a year.â makes for a nice sales pitch.
WaniKani gets a lot less useful the further you go. The last 20 levels arenât even close to as important as the first 20. With you almost being level 30, youâve already done the most important parts. If youâre going to try and use your Japanese whatâs going to hold you back isnât even more kanji. Itâll be grammar, core vocabulary and practice.
Long story short: +1 for slowing down WaniKani (by a lot) and spending it on everything else
I would say that I am a person who likes to do things one by one, and having several small things to do with no proper goal tends to stress me. Thatâs why wanikani is perfect for me, as it has this level system and an end. So yes, I would do another 10 levels. Because it is easy, I just need to do reviews every day and doesnât have to think much about what I should do.
However, since you all suggest that, i m thinking about slowing down at 5 lessons per day at some point (maybe level 30 and max level 40). For you this is better to do that and a bit of reading and grammar everyday ?
Satori will work well for you then if you like a solid routine. Start with 1 episode per day and you have a very easy structure to keep you focused. And if you have to reduce wk lessons to 5 per day I agree with the others itâs worth it.
On Satori, I never went beyond 2 episodes per day and I learned sooooo much from it that made the transition to reading books pretty smooth. It syncs with wanikani as well
If you havenât found the appreciation thread you might like to see that
It can be scary to give up the structure youâre used to, but the problem with completing wanikani and then starting other things is that âcompletingâ wanikani doesnât actually have that much meaning, in the sense that itâs not a guarantee that you actually know all of the things that are covered in wanikani. The tough truth about language is that you need lots of repetition over a very long time to retain what youâve learned, and things that you donât see âin the wildâ you will almost certainly forget. So in that sense starting some good habits involving consuming native content as early as possible will help you a lot. Ideally, you get good feedback loops between wanikani and the rest of the world, and encountering words and grammar in a variety of places makes your brain remember it all better.
Good luck, I hope you can find some awesome stuff to read/listen to!
In my experience, whatever vocab Iâve learned through flashcards and the like doesnât fully stick until I encounter it a couple times in context. Either Iâll forget it, or misunderstand it sometimes, or wonât fully know how to actually use it correctly in context.
So input is pretty much necessary for language learning, whatever ressources you choose for that. Itâs what will tie all the kanji, vocab and grammar youâre learning together, and make you progress a lot faster. For every language Iâve learned at least, the moment I start getting a lot of input (mostly through reading usually) is the moment I start improving beyond the basics, otherwise Iâm just stuck at a high beginner level.
As for grammar, again, seeing it in context helps a lot. Even just understanding sentence structure, that can be pretty hard if you arenât getting enough exposure to the language. Just because you know the vocab and grammar used in a sentence doesnât mean youâll actually be able to understand it, that takes practice in the form of reading and/or listening. So if your goal is to actually be able to use/understand Japanese, I would definitely advise you to slow down a bit and dedicate more time to reading.
My opinion is that WaniKani isnât so effective whether for Kanji nor for vocabularies after some point. Level 30 is probably about it. Supplement with vocabularies from other sources would be a good idea.
As for slowing down, WaniKani isnât ideal enough, so slow down, or drop it, and switch to another routine, be it a grammar book, or reading / listening to a completable series of articles. I think WaniKani isnât that bad for a crash course of Kanji.
Personally, if I had to choose a bare minimum, that would be listening with Japanese sub / or Japanese text with audio. And then, attempt to increase tolerable amount and difficulty.
Iâve been whittling my queue back down from 2,500 for various reasons (took a break to go through MNN book, vacations, work, etc.), and yes it does feel as if this time might better be spent trying to read/look things up as I go, learning more grammar, watching and listening to more native material, etc.
I also experience the same problem. Iâm not confident enough yet to do the things that would be really fun to do like reading visual novels or playing games in Japanese, so Iâd have to do simple stuff, and itâs hard to find motivation for it in addition to doing WK.
But honestly, Iâm just glad Iâm keeping up the WK routine to do something at least.
I feel like slowing down to 5 lessons per day will keep you on WK way longer than you should. 7-10 is a good sweet spot if you donât have much time outside of 2 hours a day to commit to Japanese. I personally do 15 WK lessons per day, Grammar daily on Maru Mori, and 7 vocab lessons per day on MaruMori. I also read 1 satori reader chapter a day and try to get in one article on Todaii Japanese to further cement reading. Outside of that I have a Japanese podcast in my ear all day passively listening. Right before bed, I put on a J drama or anime and just let it play as I fall asleep.
Like the others said here, you are mostly wasting your time if you are only doing Wanikani. I would not be doing 15 lessons a day if I wasnât making time for all of the other essential aspects of Japanese on top of that.
Also ask yourself if you truly donât have enough time to get other studies in. I personally have a demanding full time job, a social life, a girlfriend, go to the gym, and play violin. But through discipline and waking up early, I make time to do all of this Japanese every single day. Many small sessions of 5-10 minutes throughout the days work wonders if youâre dedicated enough to get there!
It has already been said, but at level 30 you will already know 81.20% of the 1000 most common words, 51.05% of the 2000 most common words, and 41.36% of the 2500. I think that knowing 80% of the 1000 most common words is already enough to start doing a lot of stuff.
My advice is to start enjoying it. Just start reading manga, playing videogames or whatever you want to do. Wanikani is great as the backbone of your Japanese studies, but you need to do stuff outside of it.
I think visual novels are pretty ideal for slow reading â no need to make too many choices (rarely make choices when reading slowly); mostly going in straight line, no need choose which direction to walk; no temptation to finish a chapter in x days as you donât know how long the chapter is left; text hooker / OCR may possibly be used; audio can help with understanding the tone and recognizing the words; no need to catch up with audioâs speed like in anime and drama.
Nonetheless, the problem might be limited choices of materials. Easy manga is easier to find than easy VN. Other choices may be graded readers and childrenâs books, but I donât know if people would find then interesting enough.
But I would stand strong that slow reading and taking time is an option. Rather than vocabularies, the importance of grammar would be keenly felt. But taking it realistically, there is no escape even you read any other materials.
The strength of WaniKaniâs approach is that it follows a pre-set formula. Itâs not going to bog you down beating you over the head with âleechesâ that youâre doing a bad job of maintaining - just get them right a few times again, and it will shoot them way out and free up some space for you to spend the time getting initial exposure to new words in. In the beginning, when you feel like you can barely retain anything at all, this is a huge plus.
But in the long run, I donât think anything can beat FSRS - an algorithm thatâs going to make sure you retain each word for life, and can calculate what retention you should aim for to spend the least time on flash cards over the next ten years of your life, personalizing its measurement of that directly to you.
The other weakness of WaniKani is that by level 30 or so, the review backlog of things you should be retaining very well is going to grow obscene. Suddenly the thing that gave WaniKani such an edge gradually transitions into being a weakness. To some degree thatâs normal: we all expect to outgrow this particular platform at some point anyway, as WK directly bills itself as such.
But I think a lot of people end up outgrowing it around halfway in, and stubbornly try to hold on to the end just to be completionists. Already at lvl 30 you are probably identifying words that are hopeless leeches for you that you may want to just give up on; other words that you donât retain despite getting them all the way to enlightened over and over again which just means you need an algorithm that isnât exponential, and the backlog doesnât just grow bigger, it grows bigger and sucks more time away as immersion in a wider and wider range of content becomes more and more feasible and valuable.
There are several things I could see improving WK here. An ability to follow the WK algorithm, but then shoot words into an FSRS type algorithm after a certain number of stages⊠an ability to only do a specified number of reviews per day while continuing through the levels at your normal pace once you get to later levels⊠or just reminding people that WKâs algorithm isnât some scientifically guaranteed ideal way of memorizing things, and its strengths are stronger when youâre a beginner with no clue how or where to start.
