Haha! No, I signed up last year when I started learning Japanese, but I only started to use it properly since the start of this year.
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Do you think youâre learning too slow? Iâm asking this because even if you started in the end of February, you would be in a higher level than lvl 3 by now. Iâm in no ways trying to disrespect you. Iâm just trying to understand if the problem is that you think you canât go faster because it would be overwhelming for you.
Maybe read this and see if any part of my text answers any of your possible doubts:
Thereâs no need to wait until you get to a really high level before you start studying grammar. I recommend you start about 3-6 months before the date you wanna start reading by. Most people start with Genki and then go to Tae Kimâs grammar guide and finally Kanzen Master. Although there are other options as well.
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Do I think Iâm going too slow? Yes, but not in a âwhy isnât WK fasterâ way, more like a âI must be doing something wrong so I am making super slow progressâ kind of way.
I started in first or 2nd week of Jan this year (I forget) level1 took me a month, level2 same, level 3 I am only 30% through the kanji so far.
The thing is I am reluctant to do more lessons if I keep getting the kanji wrong.
I only took a brief look at these, but in one list I couldnât find æ·ăă, something I donât think is particularly that rare, and ć was listed as âRemaining Joyo Kanjiâ, which was removed from the list in 2010. Nothing huge on its own, but it definitely hints at âquality controlâ issues.
I think the best way to do this is to simply read and note the Kanji you read. I didnât study Kanji like ć«ćŠŹ and èă, I just learned them in the wild.
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Also, thanks for the thread, I had no idea about the timing - it seemed very arbitrary to me and based on whether I got something wrong or not.
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How many lessons do you do at a time?
I get the feeling that, for fear of not remembering the kanji, you restrict the number of lessons a lot. Typically itâs a good idea to control how many lessons one does at a time, but there is a point where itâs really too few.
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Most people are able to reach lvl 3 in around 10 days, maybe less. But donât feel bad! You can do better 
Iâd say to spend more time on the lessons and make sure to only proceed to the Lessonsâ Quiz after youâre able to recite the meaning(s) and reading(s). You can also change the number of items you see per session of lessons at once in your settings, if that helps. The standard is 5, but some people reduce it to feel less overwhelming.
How many new lessons/day are you doing?
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Common kanji donât just disappear after youâve completed them, even if theyâre burned. Theyâll keep coming back later in compound words, so thereâs some benefit to pushing through a bit faster than the point where you can achieve 100% immediate recognition, as long as your review accuracy doesnât start to drop significantly: youâll find your mind associates increasingly familiar shapes and sounds with more words, creating a feedback loop that helps to make future learning easier.
If you go too slowly or take long breaks, some of this benefit will be lost because the loopâs not tight enough. Youâll still learn, but absorbing new words might not feel as fluid and you might stumble more, though that itself is an important part of the learning process.
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It also really depends on what youâre reading. If you read more of the typical day-day stuff you wonât encounter as many new kanji as you would in fantasy material for example. Hereâs one I encountered in a manga recently, éé éé, according to jisho it means the evil spirits of rivers and mountainsâ. Only one of those kanji was actually taught by WaniKani.
@stevenhowe, youâre not studying Japanese at Soko Gakuen, are you?
I would answer that Wani Kani is enough to cover the kanji part of your study, but not enough to cover âwritten Japaneseâ since there is much more to written Japanese than just kanji, hiragana, and katakana. Specifically, there are a lot of grammar constructs andâŠvocabulary.
You see, just because you know three kanji, you wonât automatically know what a word built by stringing those kanji together means. In some cases you will be able to determine how to pronounce the word and what is means the first time you see it, just because youâve learned its constituent kanji. But in many, even most, cases you will not.
I would recommend learning to use Anki or another similar Wani Kani like flashcard system for vocabulary. Start slowly creating your own list, and add vocabulary you learn in your Japanese class for starters. Once you reach level 20 or so of Wani Kani, you can start trying to read native material, but it will be like deciphering hieroglyphics while intoxicated. Not a quick process. But if you are armed with a Japanese dictionary and add words to your vocabulary flashcards as you learn them, you will slowly improve.
Then there is grammar, but you are covering this with your class. I think the final components to focus on are speaking and listening, each according to your interest.
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Ah, I started with Tae Kimâs guide but I have Genki books on my desk which I could start doing instead. I started doing Tae Kimâs guide first because I didnât have a Genki book yet but now I do I should probably put Kim on hold and complete Genki I first.
It depends. If I do a review and feel confident (ie over 80% correct) then Iâll do a lesson.
Maybe Iâm going too slow? How many lessons should I be doing?
That actually sounds like a very 挫ç»ăŁăœă word, itâs something that is routinely on the list of âdifficult Kanji / wordsâ, and thus those kinda words are sometimes used in Manga as a cheap way of making things seem more fancy / smart / what-have-you, like an overwrought sentence in YA fiction.
é (AKA, the one character taught in WK), is the only character in that group used in any other words.
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It really depends on what youâre comfortable with. If the speed youâre going at now is the fastest you can deal with without being overwhelmed then keep going. I think typical users usually do something around 10-20 lessons per day at least. For me I make sure to always do at least 20 per day, sometimes more. Although with what Iâm doing I usually level up between around 7-9 days so you might want to make sure you could actually deal with that.
Yea Iâve been doing more so manga for my reading practice since itâs a bit easier to get an idea of whatâs going on through the pictures if I donât completely understand something when reading it. The manga that Iâve been reading has quite a lot of uncommon words/kanji which Iâm aware of, just figured Iâd also tell OP that the kanji theyâll be learning really depends on what theyâre reading.
Is that 10-20 items or 10-20 lessons x 5 items = 50-100 items??
Thatâs 10-20 items
WK is good for kanji, but it could be better.
tehehehe
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Ok, thatâs a relief! So, when I say I do 1 lesson a day I mean 1x5 items.
Make sure you are doing your reviews in time and do at least a set of 5 lessons every day (more when you feel the amount of reviews is too easy).
The reason to do your reviews on time:
When the progression is 4 hours, 8 hours, 24 hours and you do your reviews on time it takes you 4+8+24 = 34 hours to reach Guru.
When you only review once a day it takes you (at worst):
24+24+24 = 72 hours (3 days) to reach Guru (for one item)
If you feel like you want to learn the âmeaningâ of more Kanji faster you can try Heisigâs Remember the Kanji (RTK). That is what I am doing at the same time. You donât learn any readings or vocab, so the number of kanji you can learn per day is higher. You need to set up something like Anki for reviews though.
And in WaniKani the kanji you learn are usually somewhat frequently used Kanji. Heisig doesnât really care about how useful a kanji is, so you also learn kanjis that you might not need for a long time. As a graphical indication (green is Heisig, others WaniKani, ordering by JLPT level (ca.)):
Learning more kanji with Heisig only âhelpsâ in the short run, as you need to learn the readings later anyways.
EDIT: I am also lvl 3, but I started 20th of March (known Hiragan and Katakana before though)