Hey everyone! I’m looking for advice from people who may have been in a similar situation to myself. Here’s the deal:
I’m a level 60 user who got to level 60 over a year and a half ago, but a few months after doing that, I stopped doing reviews (I went on vacation, didn’t want to turn on vacation mode and push all my reviews back to the point of forgetting them, but then I didn’t keep up enough on vacation and got buried afterwards).
Right now, I’m using a script to do all the Enlightened reviews first, and seeing which terms I still remember and therefore can Burn. My current plan is to get through all those, and then reset everything left back to lessons (… is that even possible?). Afterwards, I plan on running through them a few every day, as if I was leveling back up. For context, right now, I have about 6700 terms burned and 2200 terms floating around.
But my question becomes this: should I just restart from the beginning? My biggest fear is that I’d have a LOT that is needless review, but on the other hand I feel like a lot of the kanji I generally recognize but have forgotten the actual radical makeup of them, and am therefore liable to confusing them with other similar kanji that I haven’t learned. I’ve got two years left on my contract here in Japan, and generally have a lot of time to actually do WK–I’ve attached my wkstats summary of my last one to show that I do have the capability free-time-wise to get it done within 16 months or so.
I’m trying to really knuckle down and get JLPT N1 (or at the very least N2), so I definitely am ok with being serious about it.
At the point you’re at, I would recommend calling Wanikani finished and just start doing what you want in Japanese, reading and listening then learning from that. You’ve forgotten some for sure, that’s inevitable, but you can refresh them while you actually use the language and you’ll get way more out of that. I’m assuming/hoping you’ve done at least your basic grammar studying to be at a point where you can, but if not that’s a serious priority to fix the unbalance anyway.
If you want to keep reviewing you can use flashcards in anki, which is quite helpful. Commonly people make decks to study the words they come across in reading, and you can automate the process of making those cards.
Reading and listening to real Japanese is the real path to serious improvement, and along with that passing N1. WK can be a good stepping stone but not “leaving the nest” can in itself become a problem.
Could be a problem if you want to do handwriting, but of course handwriting practice would be a pretty separate thing from WK. When you’re learning them as words in full units, which are also going to come in context to prompt what makes sense, imo this is rarely a serious concern and you just make individual note of the words where you find that it is.
Personally, I stopped doing reviews once I reached level 60.
In fact, even the level 60 congratulatory email from WK suggested that now might be a good time to move beyond WK.
Now, I’m not saying that’s what everyone should do, but for myself I decided to dedicate the time I previously used for WK to clicking POLLs in the POLLs thread
WK is a magnificent resource and I don’t think I’d be able to reach where I am at without it. But I think that for me – it has served its purpose, so now I chose to concentrate on other ways of studying Japanese
However, if you feel like you forgot everything – then reset is certainly worth it. Not necessarily to level 1, but to the level you feel comfortable with. The important thing is not to get stuck!
Anyway, whicever you choose – best of luck with your studies!
Thanks for the advice!
Yeah, part of me is kinda feeling a bit dejected by the amount of times I’ve seen a kanji and thought, “I definitely learned that one, but I don’t remember it at all,” but it’s often with more obscure ones.
Right now, I’m living in Japan with my Japanese girlfriend, and the bulk of our conversations are done in Japanese. I’m also streaming Ace Attorney in Japanese and live translating it once a week, and am very slowly making my way through reading a Fruits Basket in Japanese.
My big source of waffling is that I’m very much a 100% on or 100% off kind of person. I went ham on getting to 60, and then quickly dropped off.
Theoretically, it might be good to do WK again just as a consistent way to keep me in the learning mindset, but it also might just be a largely meaningless time sink. I honestly don’t know.
It might also be helpful to figure out some good tests to guage what exactly I need to work on the most.
Also, I need to figure out exactly how far I want to go with it–if I do indeed want to get deep in the weeds with knowing obscure kanji, then it could be helpful to go back over WK. But if not, maybe not.
If you are serious, then don’t reset to level 1. Move on from wanikani. Your anxiety about moving on is clouding your judgment. Anything of value to you that wanikani has to offer that you have forgotten will by definition present itself to you if you spend your time actually reading and trying to understand the language.
I think the biggest things I need to figure out at this point are what my actual goals are. Like if it’s just N1, then it might be to just do personally tailored studying to get there. But if I wanna become a kanji/vocab nut (which does appeal to me at a certain level), it might be worth it to reset.
Life decisions… Hmmph.
At least I have a decent amount of time!
This is a good point; I can re-study anything if I really need it. WK is/was a good base, but if I forgot something I burned here once already, then what’s stopping me from forgetting it again?
Glad to hear you’re making progress on language use! I promise you’re gonna see that pay off a lot.
I really think given what you’re saying, the best thing you could do is pick up anki and figure out how to painlessly make cards for it (grab yomitan for instant lookups in the browser, which is great to have already on its own if you don’t already, then you can sync that to make flashcards with one button click). Then you can use that anki deck as your daily habit, as a way to review anything you’re annoyed you didn’t remember, and to learn all the new things you want, without having to chain yourself to WK quizzing you chaotically on things you do and don’t need any review for.
Yes, you WILL forget stuff and that’s normal. Some vocab I have never seen and forgotten because they literally just never showed up. Some did and I just had to learn them again. That’s language study.
I would actually primarily associate resetting to level 1 with not becoming a vocab or Kanji nut. There is an exception or two of course, but in my experience the people who reset tend to not make it very far. Possibly because the type of person to need to reset has commitment issues. But I think it’s also because the population of resetters has a higher proportion of people with an unhealthy attachment to WKs structure and anxiety towards moving on in their journey into native content.
Just some speculation from a rando on the internet though
Sounds good!
I’ve messed around with Anki before for school, but my biggest issue (idk if I had the right version/was using it to its fullest tho lol) was that I would get too impatient and just say “oh yeah, I knew that one” and give myself a pass. WK was good bc it would force me to type something in, or else I couldn’t progress. I’ll look into yomitan; it’s the first I’ve heard of it.
This is certainly a valid perspective. I’m definitely afraid of trying to review the basics too much to the point of not ever getting past them. The idea behind making this post was to both figure out what I wanted to do, and to steel myself into absolutely, positively, not giving up until I actually burned through everything, should I choose to do so. After all, I know I’m good enough to get through it once, so I would hope I could do it again but better. Who knows, though lol
you can create items where you have to type in the answer in anki too right? but i don’t know if it would really work as well as wk has with what scripts you might have had
Given your stated goals, do you really think that repeating WK (a beginner tool) is the best way to get there? Especially if you’re actually in Japan for a limited window? I have to imagine there are a wealth of learning opportunities there.
While WK is indeed a beginner tool, it also builds its way up into an intermediate and advanced tool, so I don’t think it’d be a complete waste. It might make more sense to reset to level 40 or something and redo the stuff I never really got into. I’ll most likely still be living here after my two years via some other form of situation, which is why I was wondering if it might be fine to restart.
Though these comments have definitely dissuaded me from that lol
I think that you’ve done an awesome job getting this far and you have built a great foundation to build on!
Don’t get discouraged by forgetting things! It is completely natural and will happen all the time. But, as you said earlier, when you see certain words, you think “I remember learning this but I just can’t recall it”, that is already a huge step up from “what the hell is this?” . Just a simple lookup of that word will immediately remind you of what you learned before and you will move on, instead of having to spend extra time learning it from scratch.
Considering that you’ve already discovered that working on WaniKani doesn’t permanently lock things into your brain, and that even burned items fade away from memory, resetting and doing the same process again will probably just repeat the same result when you take another break from it. Not to mention the things you are forgetting might also never even be used day to day and won’t make a difference in your overall fluency or JLPT goals.
I think you might just have a bit of anxiety of leaving the nest so to speak and trusting yourself with continuing your development on your own terms instead of simply following a limited structured program. You mentioned doing some reading and playing/translating a game once a week. Try spending your previous WaniKani time on doing those things instead. If you’re worried about the JLPT specifically, there are lots of textbooks that have many sample questions and mock tests that you can practice and read, which will probably get you comfortable with common kanji and grammar used on the exams.
In my opinion, immersion and native materials are king. That is where you will take off and potentially improve at a blistering pace. I believe you are in a situation where you are more than ready to tackle this. There’s nothing wrong with doing some extra SRS on the side or maybe resuming your current Wanikani reviews, but there comes a point where you just have to slowly let it go. Believe in yourself and stay positive! I know you can do it. Take the plunge and move on to bigger and greater things😁
Hey, thanks! Your reply did a pretty good job nailing the new opinions I’ve been forming reading all the replies to my original post. At this point I’ve more or less made up my mind to put WaniKani to rest–if not completely abandoning it, then doing it for kicks in my free time way down the line to freshen my memory. I’ve just cleared the last of my enlightened items, so I’m pretty confident that I’ve reached a good ending point.
As big of a pain as it is to go gather my custom study materials, that’ll be the next step. More books for me, I think!
I’ve got a couple years to hit my goal, so hopefully I can keep my nose to the grindstone and even overshoot it if at all possible.
I think I might finally do my “level 60” post just to tie everything up into a neat little bow and give myself some closure lol
edit: I already did one. Completely forgot. Maybe I’ll just spend time figuring out how to study instead of writing a fancy post lol
Nice, that sounds great! For what it’s worth I can kind of relate to you. I just recently hit 60 after grinding wanikani extremely hard and I’m steadily just knocking items into the enlightened and burned category mainly just for completionist sake. I too live in Japan on a contract/visa and have a Japanese girlfriend here that we’re trying to build a future together with. I don’t play Ace Attorney but Persona 5 Royal instead😂. I’m also keen on getting that N2/1 certificate so I’m preparing to challenge them this December. Ever since I’ve stepped a bit off the gas on SRS and just grinded heavily into immersion, the results have really skyrocketed and my confidence and quality of life here in Tokyo have increased substantially. I feel like we are both somewhat around the same level or at least circumstance so I just wanted to say that you’ve got this. I can probably imagine some of your anxieties because I’ve probably had the same ones here too. So yeah, trust in yourself, stay positive, and see what kind of progress you can make from trying other things than Wanikani😁
Oh, cool! I picked up Persona 5 (not sure which version, Royal or whatever) a while back, but just haven’t had the time to crack into it. I know it’s super long, so we’ll see when I have time.
I feel super confident in my day-to-day, but I find that reading can get me to grind to a halt sometimes–I feel the classic “I understand every part of this sentence except for the actual meaning” wayyy more often than I’d like lol.
But, I’m hacking away at it, and I should probably figure out exactly when I want to take the exam and therefore exactly how I want to go about studying for it.
Being on Tanegashima, getting off the island to take the test is a bit more of a hassle, but it’s definitely something I should do.
Taking the little practice tests on their site has told me that N2 is probably doable if I took it right now, but N1 needs a bit more work.
We shall see!
. Just a simple lookup of that word will immediately remind you of what you learned before and you will move on, instead of having to spend extra time learning it from scratch.