I hope this isn’t redundant. I searched the forum to see if someone already brought this up but I couldn’t find anything, which is why I’m doubting myself in this.
Basically I’ve seen most users advise to start lessons by radicals, then kanji, then vocab. It made perfect sense to me at first, but now I’m wondering why no one is suggesting doing it the opposite order (and if it’s because it’s a terrible idea?).
Hear me out. I recently levelled up to level 11. Finished level 10 vocab before moving on to the new level. I noticed two things :
the lesson unlocking system “protects” you from trying to learn stuff too early (you won’t unlock a vocab before having guru’d the pertinent kanji, same with kanji and radicals)
at the beginning of this level, there are already some vocab words that are unlocked, which means these ones don’t use level 11 kanji or radicals (I’m not talking about the leftover vocab from the previous level)
This made me wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with the level 11 vocab that’s unlocked at the start, then move on to the kanji (which will unlock related vocab), and then do the radicals? My thinking is that this way, after learning new kanji, you only have to do related vocab to reinforce them, without being overwhelmed by too much vocab. (I try to do as much vocab as possible before levelling up, and I’m going at my own pace, I’m not looking to be especially fast).
As I haven’t seen people talk about this way of doing lessons, I’m thinking either it has been talked about and I suck at going through the forum, or this is a TERRIBLE idea for reasons I haven’t thought about yet and I’m unknowingly digging my own grave.
Fellow wanikani users, who certainly know way more about this than me, can you tell me if I would be making a mistake by doing it this way? Sorry for being dramatic, I know that not thinking things through in wanikani can sometimes come back to bite you, especially in higher levels, that’s why I’m trying to be cautious.
Thanks!
I don’t remember seeing any posts about this before but I feel like you might end up delaying your level ups significantly by doing it this way, this doing radicals last will mean that you will have to wait until they are at guru, so you get the kanji, and them guru those. Worst case this might end up extending your levels by a lot. For about the first half of my WK journey I’ve been doing the quick radicals, kanji, vocab way, which is certainly fast but can get tedious. Nowadays I just let WK auto-select my lessons and that’s been going just fine, but I’m also not rushing at all anymore.
I think the main reason people propose the order is for going fast. You have to get the radicals to guru before you can get the Kanji. So if you do the radicals last, your kanji unlocks for the level take longer → the kanji take longer → the level takes longer.
If you are not in a hurry, and you like your order better, I don’t see any reason against it. Just know that leveling up will be slower if you move the radicals to last learned items.
I think this would definitely delay leveling up quite dramatically and you would run out of lessons to do. Leveling up is based on guruing 90% of the kanji for that level. When you level up, you unlock the radicals for that level, some of the kanji, and vocab that uses kanji you’ve gurued so far. You don’t unlock all of the kanji for the level until you first guru all of the radicals. Therefore, your hard limit to leveling up is guruing all radicals, then guruing 90% of the kanji.
There are some users who speedrun through the levels by timing their lessons and review sessions strictly around the SRS for the radicals and kanji to optimize leveling up in the fastest time possible. But even if you aren’t trying to achieve maximum speed or even trying to go particularly fast, the barrier to level up is still guruing 90% of the kanji. If the very last thing you’re doing is the radicals, then you would have 0 lessons after that. And then once you’ve gurued the radicals, you’d unlock the rest of the kanji for the level, and after learning them, you’d be back at 0 lessons again. You would have multiple days every single level without any lessons to do, but you could’ve been learning vocabulary during that time. But there’s more. If you make a mistake at any point when learning the radicals or kanji, you would have to wait for the SRS to feed you the item again, which creates an even longer period of time without any lessons.
I like to think of the vocabulary as something to do while you’re waiting for the kanji for the level to finishing guruing. I don’t even do the vocabulary for the PREVIOUS level until I’ve done all radical and kanji lessons for the new level, because if I did, I would still end up waiting for the kanji to finish guruing with no lessons to do. At least in my opinion, you never want to be at 0 lessons because then you’re not able to learn anything new that day (despite the feeling of nirvana of having 0 lessons 0 reviews).
TLDR: you would delaying leveling up quite substantially and have frequently have no lessons to do.
As others have said, the strategy is not terrible if you want your own pace to be moderate not necessarily slow. I use the new level’s unlocked vocab as filler on the days when I don’t have the mental bandwidth to take in new stuff. Some of that vocab uses kanji from several levels behind.
Also, since my strat involves not starting a new level until all prior level vocab is done, I am in no rush to do all the new level kanji immediately. I do two batches with the first one being less than the amount needed to level up. In between, I do the unlocked vocab as filler before the first batch of kanji reach guru.
I always get the radicals done before starting any new kanji though..so as not to get soft locked from getting the rest of the new kanji.
The ultimate goal is to be able to read words. Wanikani does this by breaking the words up into smaller, simpler chunks. So learning radicals makes it easier to learn kanji, which makes it easier to learn the words. Doing it in reverse doesn’t make much sense. If you already know the words then there is not much point studying the kanji or the radicals.
I might have explained wrong. I’m not talking about learning a kanji and then the radical that composes it, as I think it isn’t possible (the kanji wouldn’t be unlocked if I hadn’t already learnt the radical), I’m talking about the kanji for which I’ve already learnt radicals in previous levels. Sorry if I’m making this even more confusing, I’m bad at explaining haha
Thank you all for the replies, I see that it’s a timing issue ! I might have been looking at this all wrong because in my mind, having no lessons left and only reviews seemed like a good thing, but it’s true that I would be losing time that I could have been using with vocabulary. I don’t know why I was so set on doing things strictly one after the other instead of just making sure I’m making the most of my time. Thanks everyone
I think it’s cool your not rushing your wanikani progression Neither am I and it gives me time to focus on other aspects of learning Japanese without getting burnt out. I’ve been using wanikani for a bit more than 2 and a half years haha, I used to try and go faster to get it all over with. But now I feel like it makes sense that becoming really fluent in Japanese will take a long time, and I feel peace about it. In my opinion, whatever is fun/motivating/sustainable for you is what you should do!
Neither am I and it gives me time to focus on other aspects of learning Japanese without getting burnt out. I’ve been using wanikani for a bit more than 2 and a half years haha, I used to try and go faster to get it all over with. But now I feel like it makes sense that becoming really fluent in Japanese will take a long time, and I feel peace about it. In my opinion, whatever is fun/motivating/sustainable for you is what you should do!