Knowing how Wanikani works is making everything way more stressful now

It will take some time to do this for previous items, but what if you added synonyms in Hungarian to the hard words? I would recommend doing some research to make sure you are translating the more abstract words correctly, though.

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You could connect on Discord, or another platform that allows DMs first, and exchange information there.

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Hi !

Sorry I didn’t take the time to read all the replies so I might repeat something already said here.
I had the same reaction as you: having fun doing things my way, and then reading the forums about maximum speed / efficiency, and instantly feeling bad about myself.

In the end I decided of my own rhythm, using what I learnt about the system to be a bit more efficient when I can / want to, and chosing to ignore it when it doesn’t work for me.
I don’t usually review three times a day… I usually do 2 times when I can, which is not optimal, but it’s still good progress, since it’s almost every day. I found some regularity in my own way, and I make slow, but steady progress. And I’m having fun ^^
Whenever I get frustrated, I look back at all the progress I’ve made… And I try to not look at the forums too much when there are posts about people going fast ^^;

Hope you find the right rhythm for you, and that you get your fun back !

Welcome to Wanikani ^^

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Something that may not be so obvious when starting out here, is that some of the people racing, are learners that already have studied kanji in other ways and are transitioning to Wanikani. I am one of them, and I’m using some of these techniques to catch up with my actual level a bit faster.

As a beginner failures should be embraced and you actually do not want to go fast, as this is more likely to overwhelm you… Like really overwhelm you. Failing cards is preventing you from going faster than your mind is able to keep up. When you fail a card, it doesn’t mean that you are doing something wrong. It just means that you need more time with that card.

The beauty of SRS systems like Wanikani is that it will automatically focus your study time where it is needed, on the cards that you don’t remember well, so you spend your time efficiently. The brutal part about SRS systems is that they will focus on the cards you don’t remember well, which basically means that most learners feel they are doing terrible, because the cards you see tomorrow, will be the cards you failed today. Again you are likely to have trouble remembering them, because they are still the cards you have not internalized, yet. Think about the 50% cards you just remembered. They are quickly heading for Guru status and you are only seeing them occasionally. This is stuff you have already learned! That is awesome! Think about the 50% you learned, not the 50% you haven’t, yet. You knew none of those when you started.

Tl:dr; You are doing great, just keep going and let Wanikani do it’s awesome magic. If you keep at it long enough, you will get to level 60, but more importantly, you will be learning real Japanese every step of the way!

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it’s a tangerine

Posting this one again. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I dunno, that’s what we teach kids here, tangerine = みかん
Never encountered ポンカン here yet though, maybe I’m just ignorant :wink:

It’s only the fifth-most widely grown citrus fruit in Japan, so I guess that’s not terribly surprising. Especially since mikan, in first place, has a total cultivation area which exceeds second through fifth added together by a factor of three.

Still, it’s not a direct correlation - tangerines are anything that’s a hybrid of a mandarin with something else, while a ponkan is specifically a mandarin-pomelo hybrid. Also, mikan aren’t stritctly mandarins either - the mikan is Citrus unshiu, while the mandarin is Citrus reticulata, but hey, they’re similar enough.

Bottom line, though, is that tangerines and mandarins are different.

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TIL the correct english for みかん would be mandarin :slight_smile:

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Your goal is to become a fluent reader of kanji, not to beat Wanikani.

There are a few niche scenarios where a mistake could hold you back on the cusp of a level-up and lose you time when you’re genuinely ready for new content, but in practice that rarely happens. (Especially since level-ups don’t require all items at each level to be guru’d. Just most.)

Ninety percent of the time, a wrong answer is just letting the system do its job of putting kanji you really don’t know well enough yet into more frequent rotation, so that you can practice them until you do.

Especially those initial post-lesson reviews? Unless you’re trying to speedrun the site, which is completely pointless, they don’t matter. The whole goal there is to flag what stuck immediately from lessons, and what didn’t. If you do big batches of lessons, there’ll probably be ones that didn’t.

There used to be, then someone went and spoiled it for everyone…

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`)
thats really sad

Dm would have been such a useful option here ;-;

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You’ve already gotten a ton of advice here but I would say the main thing you should do is do whatever fits into your schedule. So what if you can’t do it every hour on the hour? You mught end up less efficient than the people who blast through and get to level 60 in less than a year, but learning Japanese isn’t about others. If you can persist, then keep on going! Progress is progress.

Failures are frustrating and especially if you read this forum where some people have averages significant above 95pct throughout their entire wk life, but there is no need to care about what they get.

Good luck!

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At some point I also started to worry too much about my accuracy and if I made mistakes early in the review session, it would just get worse and worse. So here are my suggestions to try to relief that stress:

  • Hide review accuracy: until I tried this script, I didn’t realise how much the accuracy percentage during reviews was bothering me, distracting me, and influencing my review session according to how well/bad I was doing in the beginning. You will still see the percentage at the end of the session, but it’s something less to think about during the actual reviews.
  • Disable the SRS update indicator during reviews in the App settings. That way you won’t see a red arrow when you get something wrong. Instead, I use WK Review SRS to know at which stage the item I’m reviewing is at.
  • I have also hidden the progress bar during reviews because it moved very slowly when I have more than 300 items in my review pile, but this may not be a problem for you now.

Hopefully this tips will help you focus more on your answers and Japanese learning!

As long as you don’t fail the radicals and the second set of kanjis you should be able to go at the same speed as if you didn’t fail anything.
I study those way more than the vocabulary and the first set of kanjis, the later normally stuck with me after a couple of times of geting them wrong… most of the time.

I’ve been doing Wanikani for about 2 years and I’m on level 22. I don’t use any scripts, or have a routine, and I work on the levels very very slowly! I’ve burned a lot of items. I love this pace! Some days I do no reviews at all, but I never let more than 200 pile up. At the same time as doing Wanikani I’ve completed the 2 GENKI textbooks, moved to Japan, and speak Japanese everyday. My advice is go slow and enjoy it. Try to find some perspective - this is an app, it’s not life.

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Yeah, failing radicals is why I’m still on level 3 after 10 stinking days. I kept on failing the life radical (it looks just like cow and noon to me) I finally guru’d it like two days ago so I just need to pass ONE MORE KANJI and I can finally escape this Level 3 hell hole.

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Some cards no matter how much I try to memorize them won’t stick to my mind when I was starting, I know the feels. Sometimes I make it wrong on purpose so it could stick to my mind once more. I don’t know what happened but good thing I didn’t gave up half way and endured the struggles.
Right now, I am just thankful that I persevered when I felt like giving up, I know everyone can do it too. It’s the journey of learning Kanji that makes it hard yet wonderful. Just a little change of perspective makes things awesome, isn’t it? You can do it! :confetti_ball:

I know Mandarin so differentiating characters is not very hard for me. You should make your own notes to try and remember.

Mhmm, 生 doesn’t have a “tail” at the end and is more down to earth. 牛 > cow has a horn? 午 > noon doesn’t have a horn

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