I’ve been using WaniKani for 10 months now and I am only level 11. I’ve literally been doing it twice a day clearing all reviews and new lessons, with around 85% accuracy every time. My average level up rate is about 28 days and I was wondering how people can level up so fast and go through a level in around a little more than a week?
You can level up quickly (typically 7-9 days) by taking your radicals as soon as they are unlocked. While at it, take your kanji since they determine when a new level is unlocked.
By getting the radicals for a level to Guru, locked kanji become unlocked.
To level up, you’ll need a 90% passing rate for your kanji. Passing rate means you have your kanji at Guru.
Keep in mind that failing a review could take you back a day or more depending on the SRS of the subject. So, to ensure you can keep it between 7-9 days you would want to improve your accuracy to about 95+%.
Additionally, use the lesson picker to select the subjects you want to take. With the lesson picker, you have two options:
- Select the subjects you want to take lessons for then click the big button that says “Start Lessons [count]”
- Uncheck “Interleave lessons”, then click the big button that says “Batch, please”. With this option it will sort the lessons by level then by subject type - radicals, kanji, vocabulary. So, if you have old levels yet unfinished this option is not suitable.
Having said that, I want to stress that speeding things up can lead to burnout and if your drive isn’t firm might lead to you eventually slowing down drastically and could consequently halt your learning. While it is seemingly cool to speed things up, you want to do it at your own pace and capacity.
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I am properly remembering everything so far, and I want to speed up to at least level up twice per month. Since I’ve hit level 11, I’ve been doing everything as soon as it unlocks at a pretty high accuracy and have been on this level for around 12 days, but I’m only around halfway done
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I don’t know what strategy you employ but your goal is achievable speaking from experience. For over 200 days I stayed on a particular level just because I had other priorities. When I returned to taking my lessons and reviews consistently, I levelled up thrice in a month simply by keeping my accuracy high and clearing out my kanji. The least number of days it took me to level up was 8 days 21 hours and takes into account some days in which I didn’t take my daily lessons.
For context:
Level 12: 8 days, 21 hours
Level 13: 9 days, 2 hours
Level 14: 9 days, 11 hours
All those times, I still skipped some days of lessons and just did my reviews.
Over speeding things can burn you out.
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Are you using the Lesson picker?
To level up fast you need to get the radicals to guru because there are almost never enough initial kanji to level up without first doing radicals.
For example level 12 has:
12 radicals
33 kanji (but not all of them unlock right away.)
140 vocab (vocab are not necessary to level up but will help with your retention)
So using the lesson picker you could do:
Day 1: 6 radicals 4 kanji 10 vocab
Day 2: 6 radicals 4 kanji (all radicals started) 10 vocab
Day 3: 6 kanji 14 vocab
Day 4: 6 kanji 14 vocab
Day 5: Radicals Guru, some more kanji unlock. 6 kanji 14 vocab
Day 6: More radicals Guru, all remaining kanji, and some vocab.
Day 7: 20 vocab
Day 8: 20 vocab
Day 9: 20 vocab
Day 10: All remaining vocab.
Day 11: Level up.
And this isn’t even the fastest, but it’s a balanced that assumes 20 new cards a day, and could still do 2 level ups a month and allow for some extra days in case your retention or study habits cause it to lag behind.
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Doing your radicals and kanjis when they unlock is only part of the formula. Another is keeping your radical/kanji percentage accuracy high until you get to guru. The final thing is optimising your lessons per day to match your speed or you could be left with a load of undone vocabulary from previous levels. Keeping lessons even helps avoid peak review sizes.
I reckon something like 13 or 14 lessons every day will be right for about two levels a month, doubling your current speed. [I’ve been doing 15 lessons a day averaging about a level every 13 days after the first two.] You could take it up to 24 or 25 lessons a day for the absolute highest speed, but expect huge reviews all the time. It’s easy enough to figure your required lesson rate. Just add all the objects in a level (say 200) and divide by required days per level (say 15 days for two levels a month) = 13.33 lessons a day.
This has got to be the problem. I’m imagining you have 4 or 5 kanji you just can’t get to guru because you keep failing them right at the point you would level up.
Just to make sure we’re talking about the same thing… every day you do “today’s lessons”. Is it 15 lessons every day? There are only about 150 items in a level, so that would be about 10 days per level. Do you do the ones it chooses for you automatically, or are you picking which lessons you want to do yourself?
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If you find you have a little extra time at your hands, I feel like it’s worth it to do some extra review with your recently missed items. I feel like some items just take a little longer to stick, but giving them the extra time does help.
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When I went from 30 to 60,I averaged about 10-12 days per level so about 2-3 levels a month. I didn’t do any radical or kanji prioritization in the scheduler, I just did 15 new items a day.
As mentioned in the other comments, I think accuracy is an important factor in leveling up quickly as one or two missed kanji will set you back 1-2 days. I try to aim for 90% for the accuracy number in the upper right of the review screen and that got me a consistent enough average.
I do the ones it chooses for me
Then you should be visiting WK more times than twice a day. I’ll be on level 9 tonight and I started two months ago.