I theorize about a new method?!?!

WaniKani Tips & Tricks
1

I really like WaniKani. It’s so effective! You learn a lot of things QUICKLY. However, I am a go-getter and fill my schedule with a lot of different stuff… so the one struggle with WaniKani is actually doing everything that asked me to do. I can fit the spaced review into my schedule (if I’m being consistent, I can finish a level in a week.) as long as I’m not doing crazy amounts of lessons lol. Meaning I don’t even do much beyond the kanji and a little bit of vocabulary here and there.

I’ve been thinking about how when there’s a lot of new stuff, you need more space to prove that you remember it…but sometimes while I’m doing vocabulary lessons, I run across a kanji where I only remember remembering it (because it’s been so many months and I’ve learned so many new kanji at this point). It’s a lovely opportunity for me to re-practice and re-remember outside of the kanji reviews. Even when it’s been a long time and I only remember remembering the Kanji, learning a new piece of vocabulary is not that difficult at all. The only difficult thing is the mass workload of vocabulary. There is a period of time where I started to take longer and longer in every single level before I decided that I wasn’t willing to wait that long and buckled down.

This combination of factors has made me wonder if there’s a better way to do WaniKani. I’m curious to hear your thoughts about it.

Basically, my new method has become:

  • level up quickly, and learn the kanji pretty darn well.

  • Then, do some vocabulary lessons every day, but not enough that I’m anywhere near being overwhelmed (or finishing everything in the level even).

  • Enjoy having the reminder of old kanji while still learning new ones.

  • Leave more time reading to expand my vocabulary; I feel this has allowed for a more dynamic and comfortable experience learning the language over learning vocabulary in a complete “translation-recall”, sort of way.

    I want your input: My question to experienced users would be if they see some sort of fatal flaw in my logic here… Will I be neglecting something important?

2

I think your logic makes complete sense, and in fact I pretty much did that. I didn’t really overthink it or go out of my way to build a buffer of vocab though, I just focused on vocab and kanji reviews (since that’s what unlocks new levels) and then I would go through the backlog of vocab lesson at a more leisurely pace.

And yeah, ramp up reading on the side as well is a great idea. It’s going to be very hard at first but it’ll pay off massively in the long term.

3

Haha, yeah I notice that I will sometimes feel guilty about doing things that are probably really just fine lol, so I have to construct an elaborate reason of why it’s okay. It’s good to see it’s not just a me problem.

4

Seems like you have a pretty good plan. I would recommend having a set number of lessons each day, such as 10, 15, or 20. I think this helps prevent being overwhelmed by spacing out reviews. If you do too many reviews in a day, the SRS clumps them all together and you end up having a lot of reviews at once. Having a set amount gives you a clear goal for the day as well. If the reviews ever do get too overwhelming, you can focus on just doing reviews until your apprentice items are below a certain amount, like under 100.

5

So the idea is that you will be moving through levels quickly, focused on learning kanji, and that the level your vocab is at will slowly lag more and more behind? Like you’ll be doing level 20 Kanji, but level 17 vocab? And then later you’re doing level 30 kanji and level 20 vocab? Something like that?

6

Yeah that sounds about accurate!

7

This is a good idea. I guess I hadn’t really thought about doing less more consistently… that way they don’t review all at the same time. I like it! Thank you!