I won't have a computer for a month, help!

This July I’ll be at a few different camps/missions trip were I won’t have access to a computer and/or internet access. I’ve been doing my lessons and reviews pretty steadily and this is going to be a big bump in the road for me. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can leave for a month and come back safely without forgetting everything?

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Tsurukame allows you to review offline. It will synch when you have an internet connection.

First of all, stop doing lessons. Try to get apprentice as close to zero as you can.

Other than that, you could make physical flashcards of your guru items and review those every couple days. Take out the ones you got right the first time, and add them back in a week later.

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I’m in exactly the same position as you! I’m also going to be totally off-line and busy for a month later this summer! Good idea to stop doing lessons now, and remember to put WK on holiday mode when you leave. Also, why not get a notebook and draw lines in it (you don’t need the printouts) and do the Iversen Method while you are away? Combine that with a bit of reading, and you’ll be good!

On the contrary, I would say make sure NOT to use holiday mode at all. It messes up with the SRS. Your brain does not stop forgetting things just because you press a button. If you end up with hundreds of reviews that’s how many you need to do. Holiday mode doesn’t make them magically disappear, they’ll just come back to you as a result of a lowered accuracy for lack of reviewing.

Vacation mode just means that when they do start coming back, you aren’t faced with a massive pile. They will come back in potentially more manageable amounts. Your correct answer percentage might not be any different, but how it feels might be.

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I suppose it’s down to attitude then. If I see a huge pile of reviews I’m encouraged to just do them. If I see 0/0 I relax and think it’s all good (even if it isn’t).

That can be a very frustrating experience however, the risk of never being able to climb a mountain of hundreds of reviews is high. I would always go for vacation mode.

About the actual question: one could also install Anki on a phone and use a WaniKani deck there to review the most recent levels and maybe preview the next one. Anki works fine offline.

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I wouldn’t underestimate the negative psychological effect of numerous reviews sessions in a row with very low accuracy (potentially less than 50%).

I would say the best thing to do to avoid the huge pile is to stop making new lessons at least one month before a one month break (I would say at least two, to avoid the one month reviews accumulating and showing up all at once after the break).

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You will have those without vacation mode too, just 800 at once. Might be less bad at level 9 since the kanji are easier in comparison to later levels and there is not so much material that can pile up. But I personally would just not do it. I‘ve been on plenty of vacations, with and without vacation mode and I think turning it on is better for being able to slowly ease back into things. If you forget an item then fine, you’ll fail it when the time comes and remember it again. But 1000 reviews staring at you: never fun.

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When you come back from a break and get items wrong, you don’t just need to do the reviews and let them come back again, you need to spend time redoing the lesson content. Being faced with hundreds of reviews AND hundreds of lessons needing to be checked is probably what knocks people out.

If you get 10 items in a review session, and you get 8 of them wrong, it’s not such a hardship to check those 8 lessons in the time before the next set of items comes back.

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Lol the fact I am now level 9 doesn’t mean I haven’t seen higher levels. I reset, and not because of too many reviews, but because of not enough reviews: I started burning a lot of items and started forgetting them because my level of Japanese wasn’t high enough to read material with the kanji’s I was burning… I made the big mistake of starting WaniKani when I had next to none grammar knowledge. I decided to stop it and start it all over again when I had N4 grammar knowledge, so I could actually use and retain what I learnt here, and by the time I get to higher levels I should improve my grammar too and have access to more complex texts.

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If you’re not going to be using WK for a month, then unless you’re using that kanji knowledge in other ways, I think it’s probably unavoidable that you’re going to forget at least some stuff. A lot of people find it discouraging to come back to a lot of reviews so you may want to turn on vacation mode like people have suggested. If that doesn’t phase you, like Walter-it, then you can leave it be and crunch through all of them when you get back. Either way, I’d expect to have some time of mentally catching up when you’re back.

Also, I’d like to add that if you’re ever going to be away from Wanikani for more than a month, be sure to also unsubscribe! You won’t lose any progress (you’ll get it back once you resubscribe) but there’s no reason to pay for time you aren’t going to be using. :slight_smile:

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*faze

:nerd_face:

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