I wish we had to do vocab lessons before leveling up

Well, the philosophy behind sentence cards is this: What does immersion provide you? In most cases, it provides you lots of sentences. What is communication built upon? Sentences (structured thoughts). Why does engaging/compelling comprehensible input usually work better as a language acquisition tool? Because it encourages you to be exposed to more sentences. So, skip the middle man and expose yourself to a cubic **** ton of sentences rapidly with SRS. Sentence cards with audio improve reading, listening, kanji recognition and recall, build vocabulary and grammar, and hone the ability to acquire kanji through contextual clues.

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For instance, yes, I am spending significantly more time doing SRS with sentence cards. With my vocab and kanji decks combined I am spending 90-100 minutes per day doing Anki, but I am doing about 55 vocab/sentence cards and 15 kanji cards per day. This equates to going through N5 vocab in less than 3 weeks. And I am only taking that long per day because I just sucked at SRS, but that is also a skill, which is also improving. I can probably cut that time in half for the same work with enough practice.

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Yeah, they definitely have their merits. I think it probably makes more sense in the beginning of the language learning journey. I want to actually read books instead of sentences, so I just do that instead :sweat_smile:. Anki is just there to kickstart my acquisition of new words; and is just a small supplement.

You could say I kind of did sentence cards back when I did Bunpro, but that got bothersome after a while.

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To be honest I like it. When I was doing all kanji and vocab before moving on to try to power through levels I found I was getting things confused because I’d be learning them at the same time. What I do instead now is still try to get through the kanji quickly, I only do vocab at a rate of 10 cards a day, because the kanji and vocab are separated out I find I can learn them better and stop getting the readings wrong every time. But if I had to do this before leveling it would just be far too slow. In a way I’m satisfying both my winning fast brain, but also taking my time to do things slower so they stick.

yes, same here, three days at 30/31 to lvl up to 43.

That’s never happened to me, but I can see how that would help with getting through the vocab!

Unfortunately, the way I tend to respond to a pile of 100 lessons between me and the lessons for the new level is to feel overwhelmed and avoid doing lessons for a while. And hey, if that approach sounds counterproductive for getting through wanikani, just imagine how well it serves me in the rest of my life! :tired_face:

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What helped for me is take more time with kanji, then getting through vocab is a lot faster.

Well, sure, my rational side that wants to learn Japanese recognizes that, but my lizard brain that controls most of my behavior just wants the cookie of leveling up.

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Good analogy, but I think it highlights my problem. I’m not a gamer, but my husband is. It drives me crazy when he’s off doing side quests and not advancing the game. If I were in control I wouldn’t want to spend much time on the side quests. And since wanikani effectively makes vocab into side quests, I’m not as interested in them, even though I know they have much more real world usefulness.

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We’ve all been there.

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Hehe, I like this analogy. Here’s my experience as a former “speed demon”, so take this with a grain of salt. I used the reorder script to make this possible.

During a normal level (not a fast level), there’s two batches of main quests. First batch is the radicals and initial kanji. The second batch is kanji that gets unlocked upon guruing the radicals. I always tried to do main quests as soon as they became available. In the down time while waiting for batches to reach guru, the next few days were for doing side quests (vocab). I’m sure all of this is written in Jeeper’s ultimate guide as well and in more detail.

Just in case, this heatmap might illustrate better what I mean with the concept of batches. Purple days were more intense since that was when the main quests unlocked.

Wanting to post in the 0/0 streak challenge thread definitely helped with motivation for completing side quests. Our methods of “clearing the game” might be different, so really, take this with a grain of salt. As a former student who studied Japanese full time, I had the time available to go the speed demon route. I wanted to get to as many kanji as possible so I could pass my kanji tests. Vocab was a great bonus - thought me readings we didn’t go through during class.

But yeah, like others have said, vocab don’t have to be pointless obstacles. There’s EXP to be gained from those too :slight_smile:

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As many others here, ive found the best strategy to be doing set number of kanji and vocab every day with reorder and not really looking at how many lessons there actually is (obviously chosing daily vocab size so it doesnt grow overtime).

Exact numbers depends on the overall speed, but something like 5 kanji and 10 vocab every day is very smooth (15vocab if no kanji is available, more relaxed day if less than 10 vocab is available), something like 7 kanji 15 vocab is i feel like as close to max speed as possible without causing much of downtime or cramming too much in one day.

I know lot of people like to see 0/0, but im not the biggest fan of it, i would rather have the ride be as smooth as possible and have every day at least some lessons to do. If i see theres possibility of having very few lessons next day, i do less the previous day to average them out.

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I think that’s a really good approach! I started doing something siimilar, though using native Japanese definitions for new words instead of English translations. It did show me how inaccurate some translations were and helped me to leverage Japanese to learn more Japanese.

But sadly, this and other more tailored approaches point to using Anki instead of WaniKani altogether, because it provides the flexibility WK doesn’t offer. Also, Anki is unlikely to overwhelm the user with review piles if one decides to keep things simple :slight_smile:

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Well I’m using several other SRS in tandem. BunPro + iKnowJP + KameSama + Clozemaster, and a couple vocab apps on Android. Been doing that for a week now. My brain feels like it’s on fire, but I’m clawing my way out of that novice hole. Recently discovered Katsu: practise Japanese conjugation - 活用 (arthurhoek.nl) which is helping me improve my BunPro review accuracy.

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I agree. Although I am still currently in level 6, I used to study grammar before joining Wanikani. So, I enjoy the vocabulay lessons because those are words that I can actually use in a conversation or read in a manga or something… And yes, I sometimes bump into vocab that I already kow.
And plus, as I’m seeing the vocabulary in context, this helps me remember it’s meaning AND the kanji way more easily.
In fact, a reward sistem would be nice, but if that makes leveling up take longer, then it would be a problem.
Changing your mindset might be the best way to endure the long vocabulary pile…

Hey, that’s pretty nice. Thanks for the link.

Personally, I tend to agree with not leveling up until you’ve also demonstrated proficiency with the vocabulary on a level. But I’m also familiar enough with the law of unintended consequences to be suspicious of wholesale changes. Small, incremental changes, introduced slowly, are usually wiser once you have something that demonstrably “works”.

I like the idea of in-context sentence based training to study vocabulary, but that feels beyond the scope of WK to me. WK does teach almost all of the most common vocabulary, but many of the items were selected to reinforce a particular reading, not for its frequency or utility.

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That is true, but perhaps that’s because the scope of WK is just too small to begin with, making it less practical than it should be?

Doesn’t feel that way at all to me. Learning kanji is an incredibly helpful early step to learning the language.

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