I always want to know who’s doing the housework, who’s doing the shopping, who’s keeping up the household’s social commitments, who’s basically making it possible for daily life to run smoothly.
When people boast about the long hours they’re devoting to something, I want to know who’s taking care of the essentials because when you factor in sleeping, showering & eating there isn’t much left of a day spent 12 hours working and 2 hours studying minimum.
I worked 11 hour shifts with a 1 hour commute and was 6 days a week doing manual labor in a factory for part of my journey. During all my breaks, including all of lunch I was doing reviews or reading. I would also do reviews during down time and thanks to good relationships with higher ups and the general respectability of learning another language, they were cool with it because they knew I would work hard and never get behind. I would also listen to Japanese audio while I worked. I coulda done stuff in the car too actually but just preferred to jam out. So even excluding my 1 hour commute, I was able to usually get in 1.5 hours or so of studying just at work alone and I made sure it didn’t get in the way of my actual job. So maybe that’s something to consider as well. At my level now, I could honestly listen to 雑談 or audio books for like 11 hours straight. So yeah, there can always be overlap of work and studying depending on your job and how good you are at maneuvering that.
What kind of a manga do you read that it takes an hour to read a single page? Kanji lookup on phone is quick…
12 hours? I work 8 so that is 4 extra for studying I guess.
reading through the thread, just wanna say that I really, REALLY disagree with this.
I think what makes people interested in something like WaniKani is the ability to learn at one’s pace. For some, that means 50-60% accuracy, for others it means 80%+ accuracy. To say “oh sorry you’re struggling, but we got nothing for you, give up,” to those with 50-60% accuracy is only dejecting and does nothing to help them. And it makes people like the OP leave the site.
How does that help anyone?
now that I read through this thread, dang, I can totally understand why the OP quit. So many hostile replies to them and for what? Just so people who are level 60 can boast? Very rude stuff, I don’t get it.
I’ve been using WK for about three and a half years now. About two years back I also started using BunPro. At first, I much preferred WK. The ghosts on BP were overwhelming and like the OP with WK, I was very discouraged. But I pressed on. Last year, I went on vacation, didn’t put on vacation mode on either site, and fell behind hard on both, and fell behind further, and further, and further. Nine months later, I’m caught up on BunPro, but have something like 2700 reviews on WaniKani.
BP just felt so much better to catch up on. When I had issues, I went to the forums and people would help me out, showing me how to change up my reviews to better suit the learning experience I needed. And if I still had an issue, I’d post about it and a dev would respond either with suggestions or talking about changes on the way that would help.
It doesn’t feel the same way here at all. I can totally understand the OP’s feeling of being pushed away 'cause that’s what I got out of this thread and again, I just do not get it. As someone else mentioned in this thread, WaniKani is not school. This is a learning application and it can and should be malleable enough to fit many people’s needs, OP included. To say something like “you’re the problem, not WaniKani” is only going to push people like the OP away.
You’re conflating pace and accuracy. 50% accuracy is not a “pace”, its a retention rate of information you have learned.
People can go at any pace that they want. Very low accuracy simply suggests that they are not effectively learning at that pace.
okay, but that doesn’t matter to you. what matters is putting options in place on this site so that those who are at that rate can go above 50% – if they want to, of course. As I’m catching up on my reviews, I’m getting way lower than 50% most of the time, and that’s fine right now; I’m just playing catch up. But it really depends.
I explicitly mentioned being behind in reviews after a break as a legitimate reason for low accuracy. And, still, that’s on the learner.
You’re making a mistake in assuming people who are at 50% retention rate are missing 50% of their reviews because they lack options. The power to not forget 50% of the content is within the individual. No amount of options is going to make that drastic of a difference. The longer you, or anyone else remains in denial of that simple fact, the longer their studies will suffer for it. It probably feels a lot more comfortable to be able to blame your poor performance on lack of accommodation, but such low self accountability will get you nowhere.
Sometimes people seem to expect just “showing up” to be good enough for wk or other resources. And when it’s not, it’s always “it doesn’t work for me”. Well I say how about you work for it first and then make your conclusions about the effectiveness of the tool. WK is more than just clearing review and lesson piles. It’s about taking times to go through mnemonics and lessons, really trying to visualize shit, getting your srs timings down so you’re seeing things when the system wants you to, etc.
I was going to respond to vanilla, but I couldn’t say anything nice. I will say to you that sometimes things get really judgy in forums about Japanese on the internet. I don’t know why, but Japanese seems to be much worse than other languages I’ve studied in that regard. For that reason I think it’s a good idea to block people on the forum that you don’t like. It makes it a much better experience, and you are almost certainly not going to be able to argue someone into being a more compassionate person.
Props to you for that.
+1 for blocking. Past a certain point, if you know you’re not going to be able to have a conversation with someone, it’s best not to engage in the first place. I’ve got people I don’t engage with anymore (at least learning stuff related) and I can’t say id feel offended if anyone felt the same towards me. No hard feelings. Best not to have unproductive arguing where we know it can be avoided.
It is good enough, because as I said: This isn’t school. This isn’t work. This is people studying at their own pace, doing their own thing.
Again, continuing to talk this way only turns people away from the site, people like OP.
So I can agree with that and ALSO say that retaining 50% is retaining more than zero. And that it’s a rolling 50%, by which I mean each item, the person might fail it a bunch of times before learning it, but that they DO learn it. So I think that’s worthwhile even if 100% would be better. I don’t think it’s a choice between “get better, slacker” and quitting. It will take a lot longer at 50% and with a higher review work load, but so what?
I forgot what we were arguing about.
It may help to think that opinion on WaniKani app is mixed, while on BunPro is generally positive. OP already commented a lot on the former.
I think everyone has a point, but maybe something needs to be done about message delivery and tone.
Given that Wk drops an item 2 levels for getting wrong you need an average above 66%
to make any progress at all.
A crowd with 50% average simply cannot exist,
those people would be making negative progress.
And even if they did why should they be accomodated?
No sane person is going to do anything for an extended period while failing half of the task
without getting the idea that something is not right.
Especially in your free time.
There are a ton of options that WK could and should implement.
Artificial inflation of % correct Kanji review is not one of them.
Has anyone here advocated for that?
It seems to me like this is a fight between people who want to prevent people from learning Japanese by shaming people who struggle, and people who want to be inclusive by encouraging people who are struggling. Is that not the case?
Edited to add: there’s a big difference between saying “something is wrong with you and/or your learning” and saying " learning Japanese is hard but have you tried…"
I would like to encourage people to say less of the first one and more of the second one.
I… don’t think that’s true. 50% of the items would drop back 2 levels, and the other 50% would advance? I’d have to play with an actual model to check that out. It could certainly be 50% or below for streaks of time.
Anyway:
What accomodations are we asking for here that would hurt anyone else any? (Or any at all for that matter, I literally did forget what we were arguing about.)
Edit:
Yeah, what?
Hypothetical: I have 300 items in apprentice 1. I’ve repeated 100 of those so often I know them now. I don’t miss them ever again until they’re burned. Meanwhile I keep failing the other 200. What’s my failure rate? Is that “progress” if I learn and burn 100 kanji?
This thread is pretty wild. It keeps sucking me back in because some of the conversation up thread was really interesting, I thought. If I recall (I can’t be bothered to check, pure laziness) the OP said they were quitting because the wanikani format didn’t work for them, but imo it was a pretty even tempered laying out of the facts, at least it didn’t strike me as some of the super angry ones that have been posted in the past. And then it diverged.
Tbh, I find loyalty to vs anger at the wanikani platform to be sort of intellectually interesting. I discovered over the course of doing wanikani that I absolutely despise timed reviews. Can’t stand them, never want to see another one. So, I guess wanikani doesn’t work for me either, although it was really useful for the first levels. But I feel doing wanikani or not doing wanikani is a decision that shouldn’t carry this sort of moral weight that people ascribe to it. Anyway, some non-emotional thoughts to add to this, I guess.
Same, same. I watch, and every once in a while can’t help myself. 
Timed reviews though, is that a thing? If I’m being timed I don’t know it. Is it a setting?