I've reached level 60, but I feel the need to restart

Ok, I think I’m ready for a proper post. Let me tell you my story. I’ve been doing wk since a long time ago. I have reset two times, first one I was overwhelmed with a wall of reviews and can’t remember most of my burned kanji. The last time was two years ago, more or less, and I decided on stick with the app consistently, and so I did. At some point after I started to use wk I entered the official school of languages of my city, and thanks to Textfugu I could skip the first course of japanese and start right from the second grade, it was a bit odd at first, because thanks to wk I could read kanji my classmates couldn’t but they were able to write them and I wasn’t. But with time and effort, now I can read a lot, and write too. This year I’ve finished 6th grade, and got 2 years to finish all I can study in this school. At the end it would be like a N2 level of the JLPT. In the european system I think it would be a B2.2. I’ve always been a self-taught person, but I really noticed the difference when I got a teacher, and she wasn’t a native either. It would have been great if she could have been my teacher through all the years, but it couldn’t be, and I got some natives as teachers, and funny enough, that’s when I realize that to be native don’t make you a good teacher just by itself.
Thinking of all the skills we need to learn in class, I struggle the most with writting and speaking, reading ang hearing piece of cake, but when I need to write something I feel like I need all the hours of the day just to write a couple of sentences.
Anyways, now that I’ve reached this point, I feel like a need to reset again and start all over again. Does it have any sense? anyone else has the same feeling? I was thinking of reseting and at the same time start using kaniwani in order to be able to recall the words in the inverse order. What do you think?

22 Likes

Congratulations! :crabigator: :cake:

There are a few people here who made it to 60 and started over. Some more than once. I can’t really say what their reasons are/were. If you think you will gain something from starting over, why not do it? Though, have you thought about putting all of the time that would take into consuming native content instead?

6 Likes

Sounds like your problem is recall, not recognition. WK teaches recognition, so it doesn’t feel that useful to me to restart WK?

Why not start Kaniwani for working on recall (and leave WK alone)? If you want specifically writing practice or something, there are apps and games that can help with that (sorry, I don’t know them but I’ve seen them talked about here on the forums).

Is WK gonna be the best vehicle for practicing what you hope to practice by starting over? I like WK, don’t get me wrong, I think it is great for what it does. But it sounds like recognition isn’t your problem, and then I’m pretty sure there are better options out there. Finishing WK means you’ve unlocked a lot of time from learning kanji that you could focus on the Japanese skills you need to work on next.

Also, congratulations! Well done :exclamation:

14 Likes

I use kamesame on burned items. It has been a good refresher and some practice on recall. There are definitely some items I can recall better than others.

Anyway grats on this milestone. It never feels like you’re finished when you reach a new one, so all I can say is keep it up.

1 Like

Personally I think all the time you put in a second WK run would be better spent just reading or enjoying native content (and maybe some light Anki if it suits you). If you want to get better at speaking and writing, then especially WK is not the tool for that.

13 Likes

But you mentioned you can read a lot, right? So it seems like kanji recognition is not your biggest issue.

I think what might be worth investing in is either more exposure to the language or an Anki deck so you keep repping more vocab which you can then use in conversation practice (via HelloTalk, for instance?).

Are you expected to write by hand on paper or on PC? If the latter, hop onto the Japanese Sentence a Day and have a go at it :wink: . If it’s the former than I’m sorry to hear that and I would honestly do the bare minimum of writing practice, because long-term that’s not terribly useful.

5 Likes

Level 59 now and can confidently tell you I’ve forgotten so much in my many years here. I don’t plan to reset (need to keep that golden pin), but do plan to resurrect a ton of stuff. Probably resurrect everything from level 1, when review pile gets low resurrect level 2, and so on.

2 Likes

firstly, congratulations on reaching level 60! i hope you have some cake!

then, secondly, no. you might get some marginal improvements in recognition from resetting WK, but it’d be a lot of work for limited benefit.

at the very least you should be putting the time saved by not resetting WK into reading. but as you are already good at reading, you should probably be going for some form of production. something like kaniwani or kamesame if you want to stick to an srs.

but personally i think that by the time we reach level 60, if we’ve not been neglecting grammar etc., we should be trying to write and/or talk with native speakers (if we don’t just want to consume media). we will of course continue learning new kanji and vocab for as long as we continue using the language, but apps like WK will only ever be stepping stones to get us to where we can start using the language.

1 Like

Thank you all for your responses, it make more sense leave wk alone, and spend the time using and doing other things.
I know I won’t use handwriting outside the school and all, but since there is a writting part in the exams I need to take to promote to the next level, it is something I can’t avoid for now xD

4 Likes

did you start grammar as well?

I was doing only WK until lvl 33 then I realized it was time for grammar.

I realized that if I continue at the pace I was at doing only WK, I could get to 60 and feel a lot of gaps that should have been done earlier like grammar and then immersion, like watching anime.

So far I am happy with my change, almost 1 year into it, I only wish I had more free time after a long work day so I could practice more.

1 Like

yes, as I said, I entered the official school of languages 6 years ago, and I been studying grammar along with all the rest of skills.

2 Likes

I understand the struggle :see_no_evil: I made it to 60, too, but then stuff happened and I forgot many kanji so resetting it was for me.

But if you want to become more proficient in writing and speaking, then that is what you need to practice. I once read that the active usage of a language (which is speaking and writing) is processed in a different part of the brain than the passive parts like reading and understanding. Therefore you must practice writing and speaking separately to train the other half of the brain.

It was definitely like that for me. I was really good at reading and understanding English because I’ve been doing nothing else for a looong time but the first time I was forced to speak English with someone was nerve wracking haha but after being forced to speak for a few times, it got really easy.

So my advice is to actually work on those parts you struggle with.

2 Likes

Since you mentioned that writing is one of your weak points, I would recommend practicing that. A good app for that is Ringotan, it’s for andriod and recently became available for iOS too. It’s an SRS system for writing and you can set it to follow WK order. The advantage to that is while practicing writing, if you come across any kanji you don’t recognize, you’ll know it’s something you learned in WK and can resurrect it to refresh your memory.

3 Likes

Eww if I ever make it to level 60 you would need to point a gun to my head to make me restart Lol

That would be the end of wk for me. I actually may never finish all levels. I might stop doing wk when I feel like I can read most basic stuff— people say usually it’s around level 40 but at the rate I’m going I’ll probably ever only reach level 30 and call it a day…

We’ll see what the future holds :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I would even say stop doing and start living. It’s AJATT time for you. Just do everything in Japanese and make it a blast! It’s like studying how to play the piano vs playing it. Go play the language!

3 Likes

I’ve thought about it but in the end thought it best to take Koichi’s advice of moving on to other things. Now I just review the kanji of a level per day…so every two months or so i’m making a full review of the kanji…using the rest of the time on improving grammar and trying to get in as much reading and listening practice as I can.

5 Likes

That makes great sense to me. Getting a review of something every two months is more often than the burn time!

2 Likes