Is my progress atypically slow?

May I ask how did you generate that chart? Is it a WaniKani function or you are recording it on your own?

For what it’s worth, I’ve done WK reviews once a day for three years. Extra-study (well self-study) fairly often has been a great help.

The problem with once a day is you don’t get frequent enough iterations with items you find difficult. Blitz sessions with extra study fix that.

OP still has to do their real reviews, but this isn’t theoretical advice.

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It’s the WaniKani Heatmap.

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Thank you all for the advice and encouragement. I have started using Anki Mode on Flaming Durtles and it is really a game-changer. I have been able to keep up with the reviews as they come up, since it’s so much quicker and less annoying. As a result my accuracy is improving.

I had just lost track of the big picture of how SRS is supposed to work. My schedule got much busier this past fall, and I was just kind of treading water, just trying to do more than nothing. I don’t care about getting to level 60 quickly, but it was discouraging to do 20 levels in nine months and then only two more in the subsequent three.

I think I’m back on track. Thanks again!

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I went way too hard on my lessons for a long while, then had a bunch of life stuff come up

I haven’t done a new lesson in 65 days now - so don’t worry, you’re not alone.

As others say, don’t do more lessons until you’re caught up or the problem will just get worse

I just keep grinding away at it daily, I mean worst case scenario, everything will just get burned

Just for perspective, I joined around the same time as you, and I don’t feel like I’m going too slow. My numbers are probably similar to yours, except fewer items on Enlightened and Burned, and I stopped doing lessons for a bit to let my Apprentice items fall below 50 again and lower the number of daily reviews, since reviews come first - remember that the goal isn’t to level up as fast as you can/as everyone else, we’re here to learn the kanji.

I don’t think you’re slow at all but doing lessons when a lot of review material isn’t sticking will just pile on more work.

Stuff that helped me and my lazy brain:

When something from a lesson gets added to the review queue you HAVE to hit it the first two times it comes up for it to stick. Don’t do a lesson and then leave it until the next day for reviews. You’re just not going to remember it.

If your review queue is always huge and rocketing fast then that’s a sign you currently have too much material to work with and are making too many mistakes. Stop doing lessons and keep your reviews to 100-150 reviews per session (how many sessions you wanna do in a day is up to you).

I am JEALOUS of your burns. I wish I had that much burned already by now but hey give it another year.

The only time I have 94 apprentice items or more is when I’m studying vocabulary. I try to pass a full level of Kanji before studying vocabulary. Passing the Kanji and unlocking the next level has always been my priority. So if I forget vocabulary or Kanji but it’s not part of my current level, I never worry. I eventually remember these Kanji as I continue to expose myself to it and I just had a few burns doing this method a second ago.

My secret to remembering the readings of Kanji and Vocabulary isn’t in using mnemonics.

What I like to do is recall Vocabulary which has a reading/meaning that I can more likely associate with the Kanji. It doesn’t work 100% of the time and can create confusion in your head though, but when it does, it truly does count. For instance, I just burned 南, which I tend to remember the vocabulary reading みなみ out of habit (for me it’s useful, and みなみ is also a name I’m quite familiar with, there’s a few people, real, anime or other fictional characters, particularly a child of the sun with that name). I had a mental block with this for awhile, until I ask myself what Vocabulary I know that contains this Kanji, and that’s when I remember なんべい or “South America”.

Memory is funny like that, it was like trying to find the right key on a keychain with lots of keys. What I love about this method is that it’s a meaningful way for me to remember a meaning/reading from a previous application of a Vocabulary; did I read the Vocabulary in a book? Is it part of a title, someone or some place’s name? Regardless, it felt more natural to me to remember something this way, because I didn’t have to try, way better than remembering through constant studying and not using the word outside studying at all.

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I probably get a lot of the easy/common kanji and vocab for free, since I learned Japanese as a child. That was a long time ago, though, and I never was very good at kanji.

I have the most trouble with homophones like 関心 and 感心, and also when we get a whole pile of vocab with similar meanings, like “territory”, “region” “zone”, etc. Sometimes I think I’ll get through by just calling them all “zone”, for instance, until all that’s left unburned is items that don’t accept that meaning, haha. Or I’ll just say it’s close enough and cheat.

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Thanks for sharing. I am on my third WaniKani attempt; in the first two it took me about a year to get to the low/mid 10s, and this one is the same; with typical six-week lesson time (so my speed seems to be comparable to yours).

Biggest change now is that I reordered lessons to vocab-radical-kanji (so I get the vocabulary for guru-ed kanji earlier; helps tremendously with memorization and improves early-stage review success without impacting the long-run) and trying to refrain from too many lessons a time (except for already known words, or words that have reading and meaning identical to the kanji, I stop lessons once I get too many Apprentice or too many completely new items).

がんばって!

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I am new to WaniKani, so I am not able to give you any advice on if that is atypically slow or not.

However, if typing on mobile is your only problem to put in more time, I would suggest you buy a portal keyboard that support bluetooth connection for mobile device. (e.g. this one) Even if you only have 30mins, seperate them into 3 10mins sections in the morning, afternoon and night would definitely help. (I believe that is why the first level of SRS is designed to be just a few hours apart?)

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If you’re learning Japanese because you enjoy it and aren’t too fussed about being productive with the language anytime soon, then sure, take as many years as you want to finish WaniKani. It’s your time, money, and enjoyment.

If you want to do something with the language, then yes, your progress is slow. I think there is, unfortunately, a culture here of people accepting that it’s normal to be on this platform for years. From a language-learning and efficiency perspective, especially if you compare it to the typical speed you might see from an Anki user, you really should reach level 60 within 12-18 months. We shouldn’t kid ourselves that such slow progress is okay if the goal is to actually use the language productively.

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It is actually perfectly normal to be on this platform for years. Many people here have jobs and families and other commitments that make it impossible for them to put hours into studying Japanese every single day. Only a small minority of WK users successfully complete WK in under a year, and many of the people who do go that fast end up regretting it because unless you have quite a bit of free time, it’s hard to fit in other Japanese study around WK if you’re going maximum speed.

Just because you can go faster does not mean that most people will be able to do so successfully. That kind of schedule is very demanding and takes quite a bit of drive. Full power to the folks who can keep that up, but I think those people are in the minority of language learners. I have a few friends who are fluent or near-fluent, and all of them took several years to get there. Going faster than that is possible, yes, but very, very hard.

Well, I’m on track to complete WK in just over two years, and I’m using Japanese productively every single day, and have been doing so for over a year now :person_shrugging:. You don’t have to be perfectly efficient with your studies to reach a point where you can use the language effectively in a relatively short period of time. Plus, after all, slow progress is much better than no progress.

But it’s pretty clear from the original post that speed isn’t actually the issue here. What’s really needed is a new approach that’ll help the OP improve their accuracy. They’re currently having to spend a lot of extra time redoing work because their accuracy is too low. If their accuracy improves, their pace will probably improve, too. The solution isn’t “go faster,” but “find a better workflow that will help you make the best use of the time that you do have.” I think your post here is just unnecessarily discouraging, and doesn’t offer any real solutions or actionable advice.

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I think what megamind is saying is that anki’s review schedule for new items is less intense(stock anki is 3 days for the first interval I believe) so a person might keep the same pace just with less effort.

I know my anki reviews per day is about 10x new cards, whereas my wanikani reviews is around 20x.

If you don’t quit your job and ignore your family, then, you’re not a real language learner smh…
jk but there’s a guy in this thread who said he takes months to do each level.

This guy is just doing wanikani wrong and is just wasting time.
Wanikani without the lesson reorder plugins promotes this pace though imo

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I feel like you really honed in on my second paragraph as if I didn’t write the first …

There’s 31 comments of helpful advice above mine regarding OP’s accuracy and more. I just wanted to answer that there is such a thing as too slow, and that depends on your goals. My intent wasn’t to be discouraging, it was to make OP think about what they wanted.

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It’s possible to improve memory, and I have been trying to find a way for that from the start. I could say that I don’t rely much on SRS for initial memory.

Immersion or production aren’t the only way to improve, although they are places to go in the end.

Some if the ways are mental imagery, researching, taking notes, and slower vocabulary (with Kanji) writing with better handwriting.

Of course, a part of the answers is, focusing better on each item. Wanikani isn’t the end. You can search outside.

There is a point where you will just be stagnant, or just simply lose progress because you don’t put in enough time. So I totally agree. Don’t really know where this limit is though, probably higher than most people are comfortable with.

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When you say “this guy”, do you mean me?! If so, I would love to hear how I’m doing it wrong!

I use WK, Kitsun (N5 and 10K), and Bunpro (N5) and I watch anime everyday (with Jp subs and with English subs) and I read a little when I can (Yotsuba). I am sure you are right and I am wasting time, so any advice you could give would be very useful!

My slowest level on wk was 43 days(level 18), I’m not sure how this compares to your pace but when I was at that level I felt like I was wasting time. I wasn’t trying to be rude and of course, any progress is better than none. Even compared to a University language course pace, doing wk slowly is still more efficient.

To do wk faster the lesson reorder script is essential. IMO it should be a built in feature of wk.

I used bunpro to study like n5, n4 and most of n3 level stuff but I don’t recommend it, I don’t think it’s a good way to study grammar. I say this because the main particles and conjugations are for sure the hardest part of grammar. Maybe it’s better for the n2/n1 stuff which is just sentence patterns, but you can just mine them to anki you would any other word. Grammar dictionaries, I use the 絵でわかる one.

I wouldn’t recommend kitsun either, just sentence mining(sentence or vocab, whatever) with anki is probably better

edit:
yotsuba is boring, I’m not much of a reader and have a hard time enjoying reading, I know some people like the sol moe stuff but it’s not for me.

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This was the issue I’d been having, I was bored when doing lessons and not imagining memorable mnemonics. Also I’d forgotten how the radicals fit together to form the Kanji.

My strategy has been to reset (only from level 12) and do little mnemonic doodles for everything. It seems to be really helping.

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