Hey there! I’m currently trying out WaniKani and I just reached level 2. Now before, I had like 15 lessons or something, but suddenly, I jump to 38 lessons, and now I have 72 lessons o.O
Am I supposed to do them all at once? There’s not really much help saying me how to deal with that. What should I do? How should I clear them? All at once? Batch of 15?
To be honest, I believe it depends on you. If you find that memorizing 5-10 kanji at a time or learning 5-10 new vocabulary words at a time (as in per day) is the right pace for you, then by all means continue at that pace. However, if you believe that you can learn 20 kanji per day and not struggle to remember/review them, then you can definitely go for that approach. I usually choose the former.
In my humble opinion, in the end, it’s all on you. Wanikani is made for self-paced independent/individual study, so you make that choice. Hope this helped.
There’s no need to force yourself to do more lessons at one time than you feel capable of remembering. I certainly don’t recommend doing all your lessons on one day, unless you particularly want to. There’s no benefit to doing this, really, unless you really want to. Even I f you’re trying to maintain a fast levelling speed, you still only need to do a maximum of around 20 lessons per day.
If you’re keen to keep levelling regularly, you can take the approach that many people do and use a script like [Userscript] WaniKani Lesson Filter which will allow you to filter your lessons so that you do your radical and kanji lessons upon levelling up and then spread the vocabulary lessons over the next three of four days, at which point you’ll hopefully guru your kanji and radicals and unlock new vocab and kanji, at which point you do the same thing again 
The key with that technique is never leaving your vocab lessons to rot. Doing the radicals and kanji first is perfectly fine, so long as you follow through with the vocab
Ultimately, the experience of wanikani is one of working out a routine for yourself and working out what works for you. Some people like doing levels in 7 days, some like doing them in 14, and some even like to go even slower, to make sure they always keep their Apprentice item count very low. You’ll work out what suits you in time ^^
Also, since this is your first post…
\textcolor{pink}{\huge \textsf{WELCOME! ^-^}}
Take the time to check out the FAQ and GUIDE if you haven’t already.
There’s also a lot of good stuff on the forum to help you, like:
The Ultimate Guide for WK
The Ultimate Additional Japanese Resources List!
The New And Improved List Of API and Third Party Apps
I hope your Japanese learning journey goes well and that you enjoy your time with us on the forums.
Hey, welcome aboard.
I encourage you to read that guide: My Journey of 368 days (+ The Ultimate Guide for WK 📖 )
In the 6 first level I did all lesson at once, it was overwhelming. Read that guide and try a schedule that you’re confortable with.
Keep it mind you will need a few days/week to feel the schedule and adjust.
Um… Hello!
I’ve also done a shorter guide that is more specifically to your question. The short answer is, no, you don’t have to do all you lessons at the same time. The medium answer is, no, you shouldn’t do all you lessons at the same time, at least, it isn’t helpful really.
Once you get to level 3 and up. You should be releasing kanji and radicals at regular intervals. I recommend you complete them asap, because kanji and radicals affect level up. (This means radicals the first day, kanji the second is fine.) Vocab can and should be split up over the days in between when kanji and radicals are released. If you do you reviews every day, you should release new kanji/radicals every 4 days or so.
I find 20-25 lessons a day is a nice, albeit fast, past. No shame is doing less lessons days, but not much to gain from doing to many more.
If you would like a longer answer than that I can provide one, but I hope that is a helpful start.
You said there, that I can use a script to do something, that I don’t quite understand.
Well, as far as I understand it, wanikani has a predetermined structure, and will give you stuff in exactly the order in which you should do things.
Why should I use an external ressource to mess with that structure and potentially mess up the lesson plan wanikani has for me?
Sorry, but I don’t understand most things in that text block.
I know, that WaniKani presents to me Kanji based on the radicals I completed, and Vocab based on the Kanji I completed. So far I understand you. But the rest just confuses me.
I don’t want to power level through everything as fast as possible. I want to actually remember stuff. Seeing a level number grow is not my main goal here.
I mean, I know that WaniKani has a predetermined structure and plan. I was just wondering wether when WaniKani makes 72 lessons available to me, if I am supposed to complete them at once, or if WaniKani just says: “here’s what you should learn, proceed at your own pace”
And as far as I understood from the responses so far, I should just go at my own pace, right?
The reordering is just for the lessons that you have unlocked. It’s not reordering the entire system. Most people use quality of life scripts, but you do you.
The only order you should be concerned about, strictly speaking, is that the lessons from one level be done before you do lessons for the next. The order that wanikani has developed things is to allow the mnemonics taught from the radicals to be applied to the kanji, so that there is a constant building of little stories that help cement the knowledge in your head.
Nope, you’re free to go at whatever speed you want, the main thing about the system is doing your reviews on time, not whether you do all your lessons at once
Isn’t that the whole point of the leveling system? I mean, I’m currently only level 2, so I don’t know much, but I didn’t see any level 2 stuff until I reached level 2. And I didn’t reach level 2 until I finished all level 1 radicals and kanji.
Do you mean, that WaniKani will somehow give me level 3 kanji before I actually am finished with all level 2 stuff? That seems somewhat confusing.
Not by default, no.
Things are unlocked like this:
You get Radicals to Guru and you unlock Kanji lessons.
You get Kanji to Guru and you unlock Vocab lessons.
So when you hit a new level, the following things are unlocked:
The new radical and kanji for that level.
The vocabulary lesson for the kanji you got to guru and caused you to level up.
Because only the radical and kanji are required to Guru level before you level up, it’s entirely possible (if you change your settings) to level up without doing vocabulary lessons at all. Though this is a Bad IdeaTM of course, since the vocabulary lessons exist to reinforce the kanji you’ve learned. So the point I was making about lesson order is this; if a person wants to level up at the maximum speed (6d 20hr) then doing the radical lessons first makes the most sense, because they control the unlock of the rest of the kanji for a level.
I’m not in any way saying that a person SHOULD do that, because it’s entirely down to personally preference and goals. The biggest truth of success on wanikani is doing stuff at a pace that suits you and if that means doing 10 lessons a day, that’s fine.
By default though, and as things currently stand if you’ve never touched any settings, things are kept on the default lesson ordering settings (By Level, then By Subject) and you’ll never see stuff from a new level before you’ve finished the stuff from the current level. If things were set to Shuffled, for example, and you were doing 10 lessons a day, you’d theoretically start getting stuff from the new level before you finished items from the previous.
Ah, yes. That’s my experience as well. WaniKani currently only gives me lvl 1 Vocab. I was assuming, that after I got through that vocab, it will start to give me lvl 2 radicals, then lvl 2 kanji. That’s why I’m confused as to why I would need a script to limit that.
When I do lessons, I see what type of lessons they are going to be. As long as I see purple vocab lessons, I know that I won’t see any new radicals, and can limit my progress by just not advancing more than I can handle.
But, thank you! You have answered my question. And gave me a better understanding in the process of WaniKani lesson ordering! I can now calmly progress through my lessons without wondering if I’m doing something wrong xD
Yes, that’s quite right
It’s entirely down to preference and some of us like to try and keep a fairly fast pace, for various reasons whether they be goal setting or preparing for trips (not so much at the moment) or exams.
From my perspective, if I’m aiming to level up every 7 days, this happens:
I level up and, because of how the system works, the first lessons I get are the vocabulary lessons for the kanji I just got to Guru in order to level up. I know that I do 20 lessons a day, so I have time to do those vocabulary lessons, but I want to get the clock on the new level started straight away.
So I use a lesson re-ordering script to do the radical lessons first. I then divide the number of remaining lessons up and do them over the next three days. When those radicals get to Guru and I unlock the remaining kanji for that level, all my vocabulary lessons are done.
That’s not a way that suits everyone, but I thought it might give you an insight into the reason why scripts like that exist
The text box is a link to the full guide… I don’t pick what piece of the guide it chose for the “preview”