I'm level N3 but I just started using this site. Do I really have to start from the beginning?

WaniKani
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Now that i think about it, if so many people ask about it, wouldn’t it be better to get rid of the wait times and then just make it like an “individual mode of study” thing, like duolingo is? Everyone learns at a different pace and if someone wants to speed through 4 levels in one day or do 1 level per 2 weeks it should kind of be their choice. All people are different after all. And they could review whenever they felt like it, too.

You’ve probably heard this a lot too, but you also probably understand why.

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People can go at any speed they want, as long as it’s not past the threshold of about one week per level (though it’s always at least slightly less than a week if you work hard, and about a quarter of the time is less than 4 days, because of things you probably don’t care about because you sound like you aren’t going to stay here).

Considering how many people get overwhelmed and quit without even hitting that speed limit, it’s not unreasonable. If it wasn’t there, very few people would go faster than it without burning out.

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My issue is more that I can’t commit because I get bored and forget lol. That’s why it’d be great if I could just catch up on the stuff I inevitably miss. Can’t do that if there’s a time limiter thing.

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I’m wondering why you’re looking for a new source to learn kanji from. Were you having problems with other tools? How many kanji do you know?

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Just use a regular flashcard app like Memrise or Anki if you just want to review stuff you know and then add things at your own pace. Here you are paying for the structure of the site, and that isn’t going to work if you just skip ahead, even if you are skipping stuff you know, because you don’t know the site’s radicals for the mnemonics.

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But that’s exactly why you want a system like this. How is being able to unlock anything whenever you want, and do reviews whenever you want, going to fix this?

The level system in WK acts to gamify the kanji-learning process. Trust me, nearly everybody here is addicted to WK and is not about to forget to do their reviews.

Just because people ask about it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. This is how WK works. It’s done a specific way, for specific reasons, and those reasons are why the current user base uses it. If it did things differently, it would be no different from Memrise, Anki, Duolingo… and then why would it exist? If you want the WK system, use WK. If you don’t, there are already resources out there for that!

And I believe that @hgbearawesome meant that that WK kanji are not linked to JLPT level or any textbook, so you couldn’t skip by selecting a JLPT level or textbook chapter. But I think many people have explained why skipping wouldn’t work anyway.

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That looks like a list of self-help and non-fiction bestsellers.

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I hope this guy doesn’t get scared with the replies and leaves the site.

Welcome, by the way.

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I took N3 this past December (failed it tho… again…) and I started WK in November. Even at level 13 I have learned SO much and am already SO much more confident in reading Japanese. The SRS is spaced on purpose, because if you just look at stuff once now and then don’t follow through and review later, you’re going to forget. WK may not be the tool for you, and if that’s true that’s okay! But it’s done wonders for me like nothing else ever has already and has been worth every gd penny.

Also, reviewing the basics is never a bad thing, and in the grand scheme of kanji learning, it probably won’t take you too terribly long to get to where you’re learning new things.

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Yeah, I’m sorry @BlueOla, we’re usually all very friendly.

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He doesn’t want to stay in the first place.

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Yeah, I’m sorry if I’m coming across short. It just sounds like gamification is exactly what the OP needs! And also… it would be sad if they were put off by the comments, sure, but they shouldn’t use WK if it’s not what they’re looking for.

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iago%20(1)

Been touched on before but if you know a lot of the lower level kanji then you should be able to fly through those levels. However, any mistakes you make will highlight weaknesses that you could possibly have from rushing (Let’s face it we’re all guilty of this… We want to know Japanese perfectly. NOW!!) through your learning material. There’s a very useful thoroughness about the wanikani set up.

Wanikani isn’t teaching us things we can’t learn on our own. I’ve learned kanji from flashcards and reading while using jisho that I haven’t come across yet or maybe won’t on wanikani.

The whole point in wanikani is the METHOD. You’re being drilled every day on meanings and readings. I suspect that like me, most of you find memorizing the meanings much easier than the readings. The constant repetition and use of mnemonics to remember readings has been so effective for me that often when I get a new sentence on my anki decks I read it out loud and it turns out that after checking the audio I had read it perfectly first time. I’ll never know for sure but I don’t think I would be able to do that if I’d been studying kanji on my own.

The same way you look at this ------> 4 and understand the concept and voice four, cuatro or whatever instantaneously in your mind, you’ll have the same ability with over 2000 kanji characters. The first few levels sucked even for someone like me who was at N5 at the beginning, they’re slow and you don’t feel like you’re getting many reviews. That will change fast. I sometimes have 200 reviews a day, maybe more.

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Let’s say there is an option to skip to level 10 or so. At that point, you will be presented kanji that you probably don’t know, but the mnemonics used there will certainly refer to something you (supposedly) previous learned. What will you do at that point? As you can see, the only way is to go through all the levels.

On the other hand, everything up to level 3 is something you already know (because N3), so what I can recommend you to do is look up for Anki and the Wanikani desk, which I think contains all of the kanji here (don’t know if it contains the mnemonics thou). Whether it has or not the mnemonics, you should look for high levels and create your own mnemonics and study that way. That’s the only way around I find possible.

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I just want to say that this ┬─┬ノ(ಠ_ಠノ) matched perfectly your answer and made me chuckle lol. I too thought he mean your answer with the links was useless and was kinda pissed

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Leebo kanji-ghost, confirmed

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Sorry, I wasn’t being clear. I meant that wanikani doesn’t follow a JLPT or textbook order, so skipping levels based on such doesn’t work. Which means, even if you do have some background in kanji leaning, you’ll probably pick up on a few extra characters (even if it’s not many).

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So, Wanikani has its own system. The reasons for that system have been covered above, but mainly you start at the start because everything about the system of learning kanji/vocab at Wanikani starts from there. In certain ways, Wanikani is teaching its own version of Japanese as a bridge to get you to learning real Japanese. For example, finding Charlie Sheen’s heart in a rice field and eating it, thus dumbing you down to pre-Einstein-heart levels of thought isn’t exactly standard Japanese. It may seem silly, but if you jumped into the middle of this craziness, it wouldn’t make any sense. If you start at the start, though, it almost does!

But anyway, what you need to ask yourself I think is whether the cost/benefits of the system would work for you. If you managed to get to N3 level of kanji/vocab knowledge within a year using some other method, then that sounds like a pretty good method, and maybe you should just stick with it and keep learning that way. But if it took a few years to get to N3 level, then Wanikani might be worthwhile as a way of building more kanji/vocab more quickly and efficiently.

I can’t speak for you, and I feel like N3 is quite a bit higher than N4, so take my experience with a grain of salt. But! I think (but haven’t proven) that I could pass N4 reasonably easily, and felt that way before starting Wanikani at the beginning of this year. In less than 1.5 months, I’ve made it to level 6. A lot of what’s been covered have been things I already knew, but I’ve also learned a whole lot of new things, and I haven’t been bored at all. Also, many things I sort-of knew have become solidified in my brain in a way they never were before.

You speak of going to Japan in September as though that’s some kind of cut-off time for learning Japanese, but of course it won’t be. You’ll learn a lot more once you’re there, and you could keep using Wanikani there, and it will prove even more useful there as you’ll encounter words you learn “in the wild” much more frequently there.

My guess is that even though a lot of the early levels are review, the system may well prove useful and maintain your interest. But the only way to find out is go through the first three free levels and see how you like it. I think at level one, it’s too early to tell, and it certainly does get more challenging as you proceed. Good luck.

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Well, to be completely honest with you my cut off date should be something more like June because that’s when my finals are. I’m a Japanese major. Was hoping to review some stuff but you know, more relevant stuff, the stuff I’ll be tested on. Guess I’ll have to do all my work one way or another lol.

Also Mr. Husky profile picture - just because you think i won’t stay doesn’t mean you can be mean to me. :stuck_out_tongue:

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He’s mean to everyone, no exceptions. You are not special in this regard.

As others have suggested, you’re probably best off sticking to the method you’ve used until now or spending a day getting familiar with Anki, finding kanji decks likely to contain stuff you already know (N5, N4, and N3 packs), and maybe a vocab/phrase/grammar deck, then grow from there after you feel comfortable.

Just be careful not to add more items than you can handle each day: with multiple SRS schedules, it can snowball really fast, the exact problem WK’s slow-start pacing is meant to avoid.

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