I can easily remember the meanings, but the readings are killers for me sometimes.
Right now Iām doing 12 lessons per day. Between very roughly levels 10 and 40 I did about 24 per day.
And no, vocab are way easier for me to remember I think once you get used to how vocabulary works, the vast majority are self-explanatory because youāve already learnt the kanji, by definition. The kanji, on the other hand, are more likely to be totally unfamiliar. Plus the kanji get more obscure as you progress through the levels.
It makes kind of sense, doesnāt it? I mean with radicals you only have to memorize one meaning, with kanji you only need to memorize one meaning (most of the time) and one reading (most of the time). However, with vocab either the kun- or onyomi reading is needed, meanings are more complex than one-word fragments a lot of the time. You have compound words where you need to know multiple readings of multiple kanji.
In my opinion itās easy to see why vocab is harder, so donāt worry about it.
(Funnily enough, wkstats.com says that I am better at retaining vocab readings than I am at kanji readings though.)
I usually do 5 new lessons a day unless I move to the next level and have a ton of vocabulary left from the last level. Iām in the boat now so Iām trying to do vocab lessons every hour until I catch up to my new radicals.
In the past I would do every lesson available and found it much harder to remember anything so slowing it down to 5 a day or keeping under 120 Apprentice items has worked well for me now.
The number of lessons I do depends on the type of lesson.
Radicals: All of them in one go. They only have one answer, and plus, sometimes theyāre just kanji Iāve already learned being used as radicals.
Kanji: 10 a day. I donāt like to go too fast with kanji, because the shape is usually completely new to me and thereās the addition of a reading. I also like writing them out in a notebook a few times, which makes going through them take a bit longer.
Vocabulary: 20 a day. I personally find vocab to be initially less difficult to remember than kanji, since the readings are often straightforward after being drilled the kanji for some time. If I encounter words I already learned outside WaniKani, I sometimes will even do 25. Vocab is also often paired into helpful sets, like ęé” (monthly amount), å¹“é” (yearly amount), å¤é” (large amount), å
Øé” (total) etc. which I find to be not that difficult to figure out looking at the components.
I am doing roughly 20-25 lessons on good days I have been following this guide for a while, and it works for me: My Journey of 368 days (+ The Ultimate Guide for WK open_book )
I wish there was a division between easy vocab and hard vocab, where easy is just on-yomi readings, and hard is all the new kun-yomi readings and rendaku, etc. On bad days, I could just go through all the easy words, and tackle the hard ones when i have more energy !
There is a 20 lessons limit for me.
I hope that point where it becomes easier is soon then
Yeah itās like I instantly know what it is or I have no clue, Iāll start making a note of the ones I donāt get immediately going forward
Yeah thatās what Iām getting wrong most of the time too!
Yeah that makes sense. I hadnāt thought of it like that.
Also does anyone know if there is a way to do the lessons out of order? I have about 10 more vocab lessons to do before I can do the lessons on the level 5 radicals but Iād rather do the lessons on the radicals because I have already done 15 vocab lessons today.
Dunno why still says level 4 on here but I got to level 5 this morning with a whole 68 new lessons
There are reorder scripts, but people often get in trouble when using them. In particular, skipping vocabulary often comes back to bite people.
Oof, 60 lessons sounds harsh!
Usually the number of lessons I do depend on how many items are still left in my apprentice queue. I try to never have more than 50 items in the apprentice queue at a time. In my experience the number of reviews start getting unmanagable for me if I just power through the lessons, which im turn means I forget stuff I already knew because I canāt review it on time, which means my review queue is just getting more unmanagable.
All things considered I usually do Radicals in one go. There arenāt many and I only need to remember the meaning. With Kanji I do around 10-15 a day and then see if I can still recall them all consistently for 3 consecutive review sessions. If I only get half or less of them right, I wonāt do new lessons until I feel confident with them. When it comes to vocab I try to do bigger batches of 20-30 in one go. I feel like, if I know the Kanji well, vocab is quite easy most of the time. Apart from some exceptions the meaning is mostly straight forward and the reading also tends to stick with me quickly (except for verbs which I always have to spend extra time on remembering the reading correctly).
Iāve tried both approaches: 20 per day and clearing out the queue. Iāve found that 20 lessons per day helps with remembering vocab since, by the time theyāre unlocked, youāve already seen that kanji several times. The problem with the queue clearing is youāre hitting vocab for Kanji that youāre still in the process of memorizing.
My current method is to do 20 items per day on Mon/Wed/Fri. That spreads out the times that they come back around again for Guru and Enlightened and gives me off days to ensure that my reviews donāt pile up too much.
Hmm, interestingā¦ I mostly find the opposite. I spend a lot of time with the Kanji and only do 5 lessons a day, occasionally 10 is I missed a day. I take time to write my own mnemonics for each kanji and burn them into my memory as much as I can. Possibly because I spend so much time with the Kanji, I find vocabulary pretty easy and can do 20 or more lessons per day. Then again, I also donāt care as much if I get vocab wrong. I figure if Iām really solid on the Kanji, the rest will come with enough time and practice.
Definitely donāt feel pressured to do more than you can chew. I usually do all radicals in 1 day but limit myself to 10 kanji and vocab. Itās not a competition so thereās no reason to rush, it just makes things more difficult imo
I used to do all lessons at once in my earlier levels (at levels below 20) since I know most of them already, but recently, I only do 20 lessons a day as long as my apprentice count donāt exceed 100
I did 90 lessons (or something like that) on the turn from level 10 to 11 all at once, and letās just say that was a steep learning curve lol.
Same here. I think itās because a) I fail so hard at the kanji in the first few days, and b) sometimes the onāyomi readings donāt really pop up again as often, and the vocab have other reference points