Hi. I made it to level 49 after lots of up and down moments. As am a procrastinator and very lazy so recently I got so hooked up into games and such, making the reviews pile up to 333 items and about 100 lessons to handle.
Normally I would just slowly tackle with these items but work and such tedious review task just bore me to nothing, plus I dont have an actual goal to keep study (well I dont study anything relate to japanese besides wanikani at the mean time) I dont know what to do, I’m exhausted with work, mundane things and I feel like to quit. I’ve tried to slowly recovered but all those measures just bring no result.
Sorry to share such disappointing story but yeah it’s feel a bit better to just throw it out of my head. I wanted to make this topic for a couple of days but was hesitate that it may make me look like a whiner or smth.
Thanks for your reading. i hope i dont bother you.
If all you’ve done in Japanese is WaniKani, you need to do other things. The best way to keep things interesting and fun is to do a variety of things at once. For example, if you study grammar, it will open up opportunities to read or play games in Japanese.
Just 11 more levels you can do it. But if you don’t have time or doing reviews is too bothersome right now then maybe turning on vacation mode and taking a one week break would help.
I’m doing early 50+ levels now and I think they are much more difficult compared to the earlier ones.
Quite often I see kanji that mean something totally weird that I’ve never heard of before (e.g. eddy) or it’s a very niche word (e.g. hollyhock, I know nothing about flowers and it’s been fine for me), or in most cases the kanji looks very similar to the ones I learned earlier.
And to make matters worse, some kanj have no associated vocab! How am I to remember a kanji without any of how it’s used?
Doing WK feels like a chore now. My accuracy is going down because of the numerous similar kanji and a ton of synomous meanings.
It feels like WK team didn’t spend much time on polishing the later levels. I understand, most users never get to this point, so it’s lower priority but it’s a shame for dedicated users…
I was reading about some people who take pretty big breaks from learning new lessons every so often. I can imagine that the reviews will still be pretty intense right now but if you just quit new lessons for a month or slowly get to level 50 and then drop all new lessons maybe you will be able to work through the workload and just chill out for a little bit. If your studying more than once a day the maybe drop down to 2 as it’s no longer as important to push through apprentice level items as quickly.
If you do get a bit of motivation then you could use some of the extra time to study some grammar as suggested above or just chill out for a bit. You’ve gotten so far you certainly deserve a break.
Echoing what @seanblue said. You need to start doing other things, too. I can also imagine how hard it is to keep all the readings and meanings in your head without additional connections from listening, reading, speaking etc. Do you have anything you look forward to doing in Japanese? I would imagine, since you’ve had the motivation and will to come this far!
It is a bit harsh, but you won’t get much practical use out of Japanese studies if the only thing you do is WK. It does give a great steppping stone, though.
This is interesting. It almost feels that a pause at ~level 51 would be more fruitful to grind more outside extra vocab rather than progressing forward…this is tempting, especially to solidify some of the N2 kanji. I never really understood the 3 day level blasts in the 50s, the guru aftermath I imagine is ugly.
To the OP, all I can say is that over 300 reviews sounds hellish and probably why you are not having any fun studying. I used to have a 150 apprentice limit but now I keep it strictly below 100 …this generally keeps me ~150 reviews daily and I can either work on other things or have breather if work get busy. And I’m fine failing higher tier’d SRS items if it’s necessary, which seems to be happening more…I’d rather repeat these kanji when necessary than progress forward, but I have to make room for these potential failings. I’m still able to move forward at my own pace (so far) but everyone is different of course.
Yeah, I’m just taking as much time as necessary. Actually, I wish it was possible to disable certain items, because they feel useless for me at this point in time.
But I want to finish WK soon. So, I’m spending a bit more time on kanji. Started handwriting practice too, since it really helps with similar kanji.
As for workload, I took a 3 months break from lessons at lvl 30, so I burned quite a bit of earlier items. Now my average daily review count is around 150.
I think it’s easy: feeling burnt out - take break, do reviews once a day, maybe skip a day. Maybe use a vacation mode for a week.
You’ve made it this far, so there’s kind of two ways to look at it:
You’ve learned a lot! Almost everything after this point is N1 material, and you won’t see it too often even in “the wild”. And when you do, you might be able to figure it out from context. So you can stop or pause now if you don’t have any active learning goals that are pushing you further;
You’ve come so far, you’ve got a lifetime subscription, why not take your time and finish?
This is what I’m doing right now. I finished the last vocab of Level 30 last week, and am now taking a 2 week break from lessons. It’s been good for my mind. Still doing reviews.
I’ve been 60 almost a year and still getting lots of 50-60 items wrong because I pushed hard to finish. It’s not worth it. Being 60 doesn’t change anything. Takes a long break from lessons and get your reviews/day down to a sustainable level.
Just stop. You sound totally burnt out and that’s the way to fall off the wagon completely. I found that my motivation naturally came back once I actually stopped and gave myself a long break.
If you can maintain the motivation to keep reviewing only, why not try that? It takes a long time but it’s kind of satisfying seeing your reviews go riiiiiight down after a few months of this. I had about three months where I also completely stopped doing reviews, which I think was necessary for me because I was so sick of doing WaniKani, but if you can keep up the reviewing it’s a lot easier to start back up again.
It’s easy to trick yourself into thinking “I’m so close to the end!” But unless you’re doing the last levels fast, 11 levels is still going to take at least two to three months. That’s a long time to push through burnout. I know it can feel depressing to think about how far back you’re pushing your “finish date”, but in the grand scheme of things it really doesn’t matter, especially if (like me) you don’t have any particular need to learn Japanese. It’s much more important that you get to the end, preferably without coming out the end a burnt out misery-fest who sort of hates learning Japanese now!
Maybe pause your WK study, put it on vacation mode, and use the massive amount of kanji and vocab you’ve learned to practice reading books or manga in Japanese to reinforce what you have learned and perhaps spark an interest in learning more to make the reading easier.
I’d be against vacation mode, because I suspect a lot of people don’t come back from it (or come back much later than they wished for). I’d immediately stop with lessons though, keep up with reviews until they get more manageable, and follow seanblue’s suggestion.
Exactly what I feel right now! Even an associated famous name or place or anything would be helpful but yeah from that point its a matter of brute force memory. Just today I took lessons on 乃 which means “from” (very abstract…) and with nanori reading “ない” then no vocab associated. As far as my poor memory serves, I haven’t read any vocab with this kanji.
At this point, I recall more vocabs and new kanji from what I read than what I do in WK, so to OP, just parroting what others have said – it’s better to have other Japanese immersion than just WK
I’m no where near where you are but when I’ve been getting frustrated with how badly some of my reviews have gone recently, I’ve taken a deep breath… and let out a barrage of curses.
Once I’m over my initial tantrum I go through my leeches and handwrite them with their meaning/reading. Then I go do something enjoyable and put it out of my mind.
I agree with these:
Also, I have no idea, but is it possible to turn on vacation mode to clear a backlog of reviews so that you can work through them without additional reviews piling up?
thank you guys for your helpful advice.
I’m really sorry for replying late.
currently I’m trying to mainly focus on reviews.
well I really don’t know what I would really do with all these kanjis though.
once again thank you all for your time.
