has anyone dropped by at level 6? for some reason the number of reviews keeps on increasing. i’m not sure why. for example, i finished all of the reviews last night on level 5, did all 129 lessons for level 6 which i clearly dont understand why there was so many, and when i woke up at 9am, i had 119 reviews. my next estimated time of review is at 1pm but for some reason its hitting at 149 reviews. like what the heck is that?
if that’s the case for 1pm to review, then either there better be like 30 new lessons which i can handle. cause doing 129 new lessons in one day is what the heck
You’ll want to start spreading out your lessons a bit. Due to how the SRS works, if you take 129 lessons, then 4 hours later you will get 129 reviews for those items, then 8 hours after that you will get them back again (assuming you did all of them right, otherwise they’ll come back even sooner).
If you spread your levels out over multiple days, you won’t get massive spikes like this, the reviews will also spread out. You don’t have to do all lessons as they become available, for most people that becomes hard to manage.
A lot of people on these forums (myself included) spread out their lessons a bit. You can for example set yourself a limit like “I will do at most 20 lessons per day”. You might also want to set a limit on the number of items you have in the Apprentice stage, as these items come back most often and thus will make up most of your reviews on any given day. You’ll often hear a limit of 100 as a good benchmark, but it depends on the person how much you’re actually comfortable with.
So in short: there’s no need to do all the lessons as they appear. Spread them out a bit and you won’t get massive spikes like this as much.
like what i dont get is that why there are so many. i got 129 lessons. i feel like if i do half of it, then when i finish a certain amount of reviews, the reviews will increase regardless. but level 6 in 3 weeks not that bad
The number of lessons you get as once is indirectly related to this as well. Say you do all your kanji lessons in one go, and get all of them (or at least enough of them to level up) right all the time. In that case, they will all hit Guru at the same time.
The moment this happens, first the remaining level 5 vocab for these kanji will unlock. You’ll also have cleared the condition for going to level 6, so all level 6 radicals will unlock, furthermore, any level 6 kanji or vocab you already learned the radicals/kanji for will also immediately unlock, adding all of those up, you get a large spike.
It’s best to just focus on doing lessons a bit at a time, instead of all at once. It’s a lot more manageable, especially later on when older items come back for later SRS reviews.
well it’s 1pm now. i have 185 reviews. i seriously hope i wont get like 30+ lessons. regardless, the reviews only stack up though, which is pretty bad in my opinion. i feel like if i dont do lessons all in one day, i’ll get like more. when i complete the reviews. so its vice versa
If you don’t do lessons, your lesson pile will eventually just hit a limit (you can’t unlock new lessons if you haven’t completed the materials to unlock them), so there’s nothing to worry about there, your daily reviews should also go down over time (if nothing new gets added to the pile, nothing can come back for review).
For lessons, it depends on how many you already did and what level you’re at. New lessons only unlock when you get all their prerequisites to Guru. In the very worst case you can basically get all the previous level vocab items and the current level radicals, kanji and and part of the current level vocab in your lesson pile. I would estimate that that’s not really much more than 150 items even in the worst case. There are ways to get even further (most notably changing lesson order, in which case you can do next level radicals and kanji before finishing any vocab, allowing you to skip all vocab entirely, but skipping vocab is usually not a good idea anyway).
Reviews can pile up if you don’t do them. The maximum number of reviews you can get is just the sum total of all non-burned items you did lessons for, although it takes a long time for all of those to come back. Doing reviews every day is recommended, otherwise they just pile up.
There are multiple strategies to dealing with WaniKani journey long term, based on person’s goals. Forums have bunch of topics on the matter.
Unless you plan to spend huge amount of time on WK, two simple rules are:
Finish pending reviews each night (bring reviews to zero)
Do not take more than 10-15-“your-own-number-here” of lessons per day, i.e. spread out available lessons, and not try to go at maximum speed which is 6 days 20 hours per normal level.
IIRC level 6 was when I realized I cannot handle the time commitment of full speed WK run without quiting my job and family and slowed down to two weeks per level which is approx 12-15 lessons per day.
The reviews you do at any given time
are going to be based on:
the lessons you did 4 hours ago
the apprentice 2 items from 8 hours ago
the apprentice 3 items from a day ago
the apprentice 4 items from 2 days ago
the guru 1 items from a week ago
the guru 2 items from 2 weeks ago
Once you’ve been on WK longer, you’ll start seeing Enlightened/Burn items.
Since a single review season is composed of previous items over time, you can see why it’s recommended to limit yourself to 15-20 lessons per day. That’s to keep the daily review count manageable.
At 15-20 lessons, you should average about 150-200 reviews daily and level up every 11-13 days. That’s a decent pace.
I think “lessons will pile up” is the wrong way to look at it.
There is a set number of lessons you have to go through until you’re done with WaniKani. Every one you do makes the pile a bit smaller.
When you unlock new lessons, the pile of things you have to go through doesn’t actually get any bigger. WaniKani just allows you to take some more items off that pile and put them into the pile of things you are currently learning.
It is entirely possible to get overwhelmed by having too many reviews and those absolutely can reach the point where you can no longer efficiently learn (especially if you take a few days off for whatever reason). You can’t get overwhelmed by having too many lessons, because like I said there’s a fixed number of those and they also won’t magically triple if you take a couple of days off.
So you absolutely should prioritize keeping your reviews per day at a manageable number over keeping your lesson inbox at zero.
(Also, a strategy I’m using is, when I’m reaching a new level, I do the lessons for radicals first, then the kanji, then the vocab - because I need the radicals to unlock all the kanji, i need all the kanji to level up, and I can add the vocabulary during the inevitable lull when all my radicals are in the 2-day gap because Apprentice 4 and Apprentice 5. I’m not 100% sure how effective that strategy is but I feel like it’s a good compromise between a) leveling up as fast as possible and b) not doing everything at once. Of course you shouldn’t start the new level’s lessons before you’ve done everything for the old one.)
100ish items per day are perfectly normal and doable. Also, no, you won’t be at over 100 until Thursday so unless you sleep for 24+ hours straight from the time of the screenshot you’ll wake up with 80ish items at most. The righthand column is cumulative.
idk man. i cant even do the 12am. thats late. so thats 73+3am which is 74. who does wanikani like super early morning. so blehhhhhhhhh. level 6 in like one month not that bad. but its whatever.
Even if you sleep in until noon, you’ll have 81 items to deal with. You should be able to go through them in 15 to 30 minutes at most.
Items appear in the queue when their timer has run out, regardless of your personal sleep cycle, because WK has a global audience in different time zones, and some people sleep at weird times. That does not mean you have to do every item as soon as it is ready. In fact, choosing one or two points in time per day and doing your reviews at that time is perfectly acceptable.
So I really fail to see what your problem is. You can’t possibly expect to learn a language without putting in at least a bit of time every day.
lol. one time i had 190. for no apparent reason. i woke up with that number. took me an hour… i feel like they should reduce the amount of reviews. because like say level 1 you get like 30 reviews. and i feel like when u go higher, u get more reviews like 190+ or something. i try to knock them out based on the time that is estimated that they give me
Yes, you can get high numbers of reviews at once, especially if you have done a lot of lessons in the evening.
If those are too many for you to get through in one sitting, there are two strategies:
a) only do new lessons after checking the review forecast and being confident that you have the capacity to take them on right now
b) only go through 100 items in the morning and then through the rest after lunch
There are people - myself included - who are confident in doing 150+ items a day and whose learning speed would be artificially limited if WK didn’t let them do that. If you want to stick to less than 100 items a day, you do have control over the speed yourself.
Not sure if it’s more efficient, but I always try to do my reviews 2 - 3 times per day. Like one time in the morning, one time before sleep and one time in between.
Not sure if you know, but there are also apps for WK which you can use to do your review on your phone. (I use Flaming Durtles but there are more, mine is for Android but there is also one for iOS)
At least for me the app is a life saver when I’m not at home or might just feel to lazy to start my pc!
Doing your reviews at set times per day is not the most efficient, since you’re compromising on when things become available, but it is often a better learning strategy for some/most if the routine of when you check your reviews makes you less likely to burn out and more attentive during your review process.
The most level efficient path is to login every hour that reviews are available and to do all lessons as soon as they unlock, but that breakneck speed isn’t feasible for most folks - even those who have a lot of free time/are in front of the computer all the time.
The WK intervals line up nicely with a 3x per day schedule, e.g. 9am, 1pm, 9pm.
If you do your reviews at the same time every day then the times will eventually line up.
I do three sessions a day and I’m not super strict about the exact times and my reviews never come through in the early morning unless I do a lesson late in the day.
