:durtle_hello: Let's Durtle the Scenic Route šŸ¢

I think I figured something outā€“if I do 5 lessons before starting reviews, I chip away at a level much more quickly than if I try to do all the reviews before doing any lessons. I suppose that was obvious, but yā€™knowā€¦

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Congrats! :tada:

Welcome new friends! Enjoy the views :sparkles: :sunrise_over_mountains:

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got to level 23 this morning ! lately, iā€™ve been seeing a huge amount of enlightened items in my reviews and so many of them iā€™ve got wrong. when they go back down to guru, at first, it feels a bit tragic haha but then i remind myself the goal is to genuinely know the words not just to pass WK as quickly as possible

so hereā€™s to the other side of scenic-route-durtling: acceptance of retaking the route over and over again until you really know it

disney-winnie-the-pooh

for the record, this is also something i only realized today :see_no_evil: :see_no_evil: but hey better late than never!

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Made it to level 32! Took a little over 14 days. Itā€™s been a busy level for me, so I didnā€™t get as much reading and textbook study done as I would have liked (and my main study log post will be a bit late :sweat_smile:), but I did get through lesson 27 of Minna no Nihongo and finished another translation.

The spring read every day challenge just started, so I signed up for that and inadvertently started a bit of a trend haha where a bunch of us are trying to read something in another language in addition to Japan every day. So Iā€™m going to be spending a little more time reading in Spanish as well, hopefully!

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Congrats on your level up, and yay reading challenge! Thisā€™ll be my first time joining. Iā€™ll keep in eye out for you in-thread!

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Itā€™ll be fun to have you! The thread is a nice little community of people. Itā€™s a blast to follow along with it :blush:. Unfortunately I donā€™t really post much about my reading in there haha because I post my updates in the pro wrestling thread instead :sweat_smile:. But I do read everyone elseā€™s posts, and occasionally chime in with updates and comments.

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@fallynleaf @potatonaught oooo good luck in your reading every day challenge!! :books: I would love to join one of these soon but i know the next month is gonna be super busy for me so maybe iā€™ll join if they do a summer reading challenge when this one finishes (apparently on May 31!)

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Did all my level 10 vocab lessons, so next lesson time Iā€™ll start the Hell levels in earnest! :fire: So long for real Pleasant levels :wave:

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For a second I read that as, ā€œSo long for real, peasants!ā€ and was prepared to feign offense.

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It gets me too, every time :laughing:

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I tried that for a week but it didnā€™t do any miracle for me lol I guess itā€™s up to everyone to figure out the rythm that works with their brain :sweat_smile:
I found that what works best with with me at the moment is to do a set of 5 lessons in the evening, ~1h before going to bed, then in the morning I do my reviews that include the 5 new items, then later in the morning i do a new set of 5 lessons.
10 lessons per day is the max my brain can take, unless thereā€™s lots of easy vocab that I already knew :smiley:

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Hi friends! Joined yesterday but durtled my introduction because durtles gonna durt.
This is my second time trying to get through wanikani, and so far the scenic route has treated me much better than the study-as-fast-as-possible route. My next level up will surpass my first WK attempt!

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Welcome welcome! Enjoy the journey :durtle_hello:

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Made it to level 33!

Took a little over 13 days this time, which is about standard. Iā€™m now on lesson 29 of MNN, so almost four chapters into the second book, which is cool!

Iā€™ve been managing to keep up with reading every day, too (in both Spanish and Japanese), though Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling has been doing so many shows lately, I havenā€™t had the time to read any manga between my wrestling translations haha :sweat_smile:. Iā€™ve reached the point where Iā€™ve SRSā€™d enough wrestling vocab that I can actually read a fair amount of sentences in these show recaps without having to use Yomichan or another tool. Still adding dozens of new words from each show recap, though, so I still have a long way to go!

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ę„ćŸļ¼ę„恟悓恠恞ļ¼ć‚„恰恄恧恙恭ļ¼
obraz

Sorry, I couldnā€™t resist :smiley:
I feel like because of all the memeing around this vocab I already know it, and river+pork ateji composition is not a problem. So, thanks to all those who shared their fugu battle stories before!

In other news I leveled to 27, and today marks the day 10ā·ā· since Iā€™ve last done some grammar.
My day job is eating a lot of time, so I normally just manage my normal schedule of 9 lessons and then zeroing reviews. I do hope I can get myself to do some other JP-related work on weekends though!

Last, hereā€™s another photo from the scenic route:


:durtle_stabby:

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oh boy, oh geez, this is exactly why I have the double-check script lol. so i can add things like this as a synonym and not lose overall progress

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Dinged to level 12!

Learning kanji that Iā€™m seeing a lot in native materials, but never got as far to learn while still in school. An exciting place to be!

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Hey folks! Hereā€™s another idea Iā€™ve been trying out recently, which helps balance my review schedule to fill in gaps of upcoming reviews but without overloading myself with too many new lessons too quickly:

You might think of it in a ā€˜scenic routeā€™ kind of way as, revisiting old friends. :sweat_smile: Basically, it amounts to ā€˜resurrectingā€™ previously-burned items that ā€“ despite being ā€˜burnedā€™ ā€“ I came across later on in my ā€˜journeyā€™ and just couldnā€™t remember. For example, I recently came across the word 音 during a grammar review on BunPro.jp, and I just couldnā€™t remember how to pronounce it as a vocabulary word (恊ćØ).

So I searched it up on WaniKani and found the pronunciation, which I had previously burned long ago. At the same time, I noticed that I had a day or two coming up in my WaniKani Review Forecast which only had a few reviews scheduled (for me, less then 15 or 20 makes for a ā€˜slow dayā€™; I prefer around 30-ish per day).

So, seeing as 音 is a pretty common word, and seeing as I had a spot of ā€˜free timeā€™ in my upcoming schedule, I decided to use the Resurrect button on the bottom of the itemā€™s page to reset it back to Apprentice from Burned. And just for good measure, I also resurrected the related 音 kanji item, and a couple of related vocabulary items.

This has some nice advantages!

  1. Normally, if I spot a slow day coming up in my review schedule, Iā€™ll do a batch of new lessons, since that usually indicates that Iā€™m running low on Apprentice and Guru items. But what if Iā€™m already going a little too fast and want to slow things down a bit? Well, instead of filling in the schedule gap with something new to learn, why donā€™t I fill it in with something old that Iā€™ve unfortunately forgotten? Reviewing resurrected items (revisiting old friends!) is much much less stressful, has a nice ā€˜familiarā€™ feeling, and eliminates any feeling of disappointment at having forgotten a so-called ā€˜burnedā€™ item.

  2. At the same time, it balances out my review schedule with some low-difficulty, low stress items, so that I always have at least a handful of items I can review each day, which helps me keep up the daily habit of doing WK reviews, but doesnā€™t overload me with too many new items at once.

  3. It helps prevent me from ā€˜powering throughā€™ levels too quickly, which would deny me the enjoyment of Durtling the Scenic Route! Of course I could power through, but I donā€™t need to, nor do I actually want to. So, taking the time to ā€˜revisit old friendsā€™ Iā€™ve forgotten seems like just as legitimate a way to spend my time learning Japanese as constantly always learning only new items!

  4. Probably other advantages I canā€™t think of right now, but thatā€™s plenty enough for this post! :sweat_smile:

So, Iā€™ve recently been doing this for a few other words/kanji here and there that Iā€™ve burned but now forgotten. For me, itā€™s a great alternative to only having the option to fill in gaps in my schedule with new lessons.

Hopefully this is a helpful idea for anyone else looking to fill in those gaps in your schedule to ā€˜smooth it outā€™ so you have roughly the same number of reviews per day. If you donā€™t yet feel ready to take on more new lessons, and youā€™ve recently discovered some ā€˜burnedā€™ items (especially if they are common words!) that you just canā€™t remember, feel free to resurrect them and even resurrect their related vocabs, kanji, or even radicals. Theyā€™ll refresh your memory and on ā€˜the second burningā€™, Iā€™m sure they will stick with you much longer, yet they wonā€™t require much stress or effort to ā€˜get to knowā€™, since you basically already know them! Theyā€™re just like old friends! :sweat_smile:

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This is a great name for it! Iā€™ve done that a couple of times with recently burned items as well. I would run into it in the wild some where, know that Iā€™ve learned it in WK but wasnā€™t confident, and want to know if I have any upcoming reviews for it. If it was in fact a burned it, it goes right back into Apprentice mode.

Reframing it as an old friend will help give myself some compassion, and not beat myself up for ā€œforgettingā€

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Iā€™m sure I have some of these, haha, but personally Iā€™ve chosen to just let them go. I actually have an extension installed on Anki that imitates WKā€™s system of burning items (it automatically suspends a card once the next review interval reaches a year or more) to force me to eventually move on from my flash cards. Ideally, Iā€™ll eventually reach a point where my vocab is good enough, I donā€™t have many cards left on any platform.

My logic is that once a flash card reaches that point, itā€™s best to let things get taken care of by the natural SRS that is reading. Itā€™s not the end of the world if I forget a word and have to look it up again. That happens even in English, my native language :blush:

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