Kind of getting stumped after level 20

Thanks for the reply!

My grammar comprehension is pretty decent(I’d say around N4), although it could be better; I am currently reading a book and most of my troubles are coming from missing kanji rather than grammar, so that should not be the problem.

I’ll keep the idea of resetting in mind, if I ever notice that I can’t keep up anymore!

Yeah, I seriously burned out in the 20’s, and eventually ended up with 2000 reviews piled up!
After getting back on track, I guess I learned that the key was consistency – even at a slow pace, as long as it’s consistent, you’ll hit 0/0 eventually

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Level 20-30 is almost universally the point where people start struggling when going full speed.

If you’re not already doing this, limit your lessons. A good rule of thumb is keeping the apprentice count at a fixed value, like 100.
If it’s lower than that, do lessons. If it’s higher, stop doing lessons.
From what I’ve heard, it only adds maybe 1 or 2 days per level, but makes it so that everything is spread out much more evenly

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Can confirm, really helped me keep a steady pace, and getting 0/0 consistently hasn’t been an issue either.

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Thanks for the reply!

First of all: I didn’t know you could reset to a specific level, I might actually consider doing that if I ever get completely stuck!

This is currently my situation: at lower levels having such a high apprentice items was fine, but at the current one it seems to be too much for me(keep in mind that most of these actually come from level 19-22 and were dragged on 'cause I end up forgetting them).

I’ll maybe try to study new words a bit less, but I’m not sure how much that would help, because even without new words I still end up getting lots of review, but hey, at least they are for words that I can remember better!

As far as grammar goes, I have taken a course on youtube and am pretty confident in it(at least up to N4), so I am taking a bit of a break and reading to consolidate what I’ve learnt.

Last thing: how do I check which levels the kanji and vocabs are from without opening every single item one by one? I’d like to check which are the ones I have the most trouble with.

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I think I was around lv 20ish when there were a bunch of kanji that started getting mixed up in my head. One of my greatest tools to help me was a plugin for visually similar kanji. There were a lot of times I mixed up kanji like 湯、場、and 揚 for example. Having all the similar kanji lined up to compare helped me differentiate, and if I was mixing it up with a kanji that wasn’t showing up then I could add it myself! There’s also a plugin called confusionguesser that guesses what you might have been thinking of when you get a problem wrong, and I found that really useful for helping me tell apart similar vocabulary (I’m not sure if you’ve gotten to it yet, but 栄光 and 光栄 constantly find their way back into my leech pile)

Hope those help!

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Hey, thanks for the reply!

Unfortunately I mostly study/review on my phone so I don’t really have access to plugins… I’ll still keep them in mind if I ever decide to switch over to pc, though :smiley:

(and yeah, there are a few vocabs that get stuck in my pile for a while, but I can eventually find a way to differentiate them: being bilingual helps me come up with some crazier mnemonics sometimes)

If you download fennec droid as a browser on your phone, you can install scripts using violentmonkey! Youu used too be able to use them on firefox, but a recent update killed that :c

I just exclusively use this browser for WK and forget about it by making a shortcut on my homepage to WK. It makes using wk on my phone so much more bearable!

Another tip I use is to use lesson re-order. When I do lessons, I break them down to a more manageable ratio, so I do maybe 10-15 vocab lessons and 3-5 kanji lessons ^^ I find vocab lessons easier to retain than Kanji, so breaking them up this way keeps things manageable, and I can slowly whittle away at the vocab backlog when they start to build up!

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Thanks for the tip, I didn’t know you could do that! I’ll try looking into Fennec browser and see how it goes compared to what I’m currently using(Flaming Durtles).

I also agree that Vocab(and radicals, to an extent) are way easier to retain, so I’ll try to rearrange the lessons that way instead of doing all the kanji and then all the vocab.

I have my own vague mnemonic for 栄光 and 光栄. Eikou sounds a bit like “ego” so I associate that with glory, not honour.

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Level 21 here.

It’s absolutely the burn reviews, they add to the pile and they drag the accuracy down. I’m fighting an uphill battle against the reviews. If I miss one of two huge sessions of the day, the next day is absolutely awful. Today I did already over 200 reviews and will still do another 150. Either I get myself together or I will need to slow it down for real.

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I think “Light of Honor”, so 光栄 is honor, that leaves 栄光 to be glory. If it’s the wrong way around now you can laugh at me.

Btw if anybody is having problem with 論理 and 理論… Often the last Kanji is the more important one. 論 means theory, so 理論 is theory too.

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don’t despair @Anghi22 because although it’s getting harder to deal with the sheer amount, your brain will start making more and more connections that will save you from having to remember because you’ll start guessing instead.

total newbie to japanese here with no immersion and with only european languages knowledge.

i suffered badly in the first 20s but it’s levelling now that i’ve accepted burns hurt and add work! I’ m enjoying the increase in correct guesses. it’s far more satisfying than memorising.

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Haha, I have a phonetic mnemonic for logic 論理 and reason 理論 too: ronri has (basically) the same first vowel sound as “logic”, and riron has the same first vowel sound as “reason”. In fact, riron and reason sound a bit similar.

The last-kanji-is-more-important thing might be more generally helpful, I admit.

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It really sounds like you’re on the right track, then, and that this pain is… good pain? Like how your muscles have to ache after a really intense workout, and it won’t be an intense workout unless you keep forcing your body to lift heavier and heavier stuff. I usually tell my students that if they’re finding language easy, they aren’t learning much, and need to suffer a little more. I think I’m starting to see myself in the crabigator…

As for finding the stuff in each level, on the dashboard at the top right, click on “vocab” or “kanji” and then choose a level range. Then you can scroll through and see all the items by level! I just now realized I have a bit of an advantage here because my account is so ancient, so I have a ton of burns (2411… and only 118 enlightened…) and can see at a glance what’s burned and what’s active from these levels… but it will probably still give you an idea, like you can look through the list and see what’s immediately familiar and what isn’t.

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It would be interesting to see data around the amount of people that get burned out at around 20-30.

I really didn’t crash and burn until 30. I sustained my reviews and didn’t progress for about 2 months. Then stopped completely for a month or two. Finally knocked out all my reviews and cumulatively have around 400 leeches in apprentice/guru/master.

I really regret going as fast as I did. WaniKani started to drain a ton of my brain power and I’d have to use my first morning coffee to power through reviews and new lessons everyday for about 1-2hrs.

My advice is just to really focus on the mnemonics for the items you have trouble with, slow down, start reading some native material (join a book club), and learn more vocab in the context of your grammar studies.

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This is actually tremendously helpful! Thakyou XD

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YES.

My twenties here on Wanikani were the worst part.

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I don’t remember how funky your total kanji are 23 exactly, but one thing I would recommend is setting up the Visually Similar Kanji plugin which allows you instantly see and compare kanji with similar radicals. I find those are the ones I have the most trouble with.

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Here’s my convoluted difference:

光栄 begins with 光 which has the kun’yomi ひかる so it must be honour.