actually, i think i would enjoy a reset later, too
but it really depends on how long i can afford wanikani
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Iâm going on just over two years on WK now, and Iâve never reset, and havenât even unburned a single item!
My philosophy is that SRS is sort of just a memory placeholder anyway, so itâs mainly just tiding you over until youâve encountered the word/kanji enough in a natural context that you donât have trouble remembering it. I think there are some words that we will learn through SRS that we will just inevitably forget because they wonât show up enough in our immersion/daily life, and thatâs fine. If they do show up long after youâve forgotten them, you can look them up in a dictionary, which is essentially reviewing them again, and either theyâll stick better the next time or they wonât. If it doesnât stick, thatâs fine; itâs clearly not a word you need to know!
Iâve learned several tens of thousands of English (my native language) words in my life, and many of them Iâve forgotten at various points and had to look up in a dictionary to refresh my memory. I think forgetting some stuff is just a natural part of language use and acquisition, and you canât worry too much about it. As long as you are using it, you should retain what you are using, and if youâre not using it, then, well, maybe you donât need to worry about memorizing it, haha.
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Finally levelled up to 20 after 21 days and 6 hours on level 19.
Level 19 was pretty tough not because of WK content or work load itself but for other personal reasons. I lost both lesson and review streaks which were both close to 200 already. And I had the highest pile of reviews Iâd seen since I started which was 451 reviews. It took me a while to get that back to 0 and my apprentice items hiked up but i finally controlled the fire last night! Honestly thought iâd snowball and burnout.
I really hope I can get into the groove of things as I prepare for Death after Level 20!!!
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Hello, Iâm new here and I started my journey around a month ago. I try to review twice a day and I set myself the goal to reach level 15 before April, which is when some manga I bought is supposed to arriveâŚ
Today I realized that is never going to happen, and I decided that I much rather take it slow and have concrete gains than rush towards a silly goal I set myself without knowing what it would take to achieve it in the first place.
My brand new set of ăă¤ă°ă¨ďźwill still be there waiting for me whenever I reach level 15 or 18.
Slow and steady⌠
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You donât need lvl 15 to read Yotsuba IMHO. Youâd rather need some grammar, and a knowledgeable pal nearby to ask what all these slang and manga-specific contractions meanâŚ
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I guess joining a group could be fun. Iâm definitely more of a slow and steady guy.
My study strategy is pretty far from the average that I always see recommended around here!
I see people talking about doing lessons at 8-9:00 , then reviews at 13:00 and reviews again at 21:00 before bed.
My personal study method is to do all of my reviews as I wake up, while at work (Remote, and mornings are slow). So get up and do all my reviews at 8:00 or 9:00 , then do about 10 lessons every night before taking my shower, around 22:00.
It probably tanks my apprentice 1 accuracy, since I have a gap of 10-11 hours instead of 4 when I review them, but that is how I like to do it.
I used to do lessons in the morning back when I started, but I found that I retain information a lot better when learned late at night rather than early in the morning.
I average about 1 level every 20 days for now (Not counting the 3 and half years I spent on level 4 
) , and I hope to maintain it until Iâm 60.
No idea how to actually use this thread, but Iâll be lurking 
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Hello and welcome! Lurk away. No one way to use this thread. I like seeing everyoneâs progress, so I appreciate when folks share their level ups.
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I agree, thank you. I will probably lurk the Book Club when I begin reading.
Luckily Iâve had some formal Japanese classes back when I was in college so I think maybe I wonât be so riddled with it at the beginning, except for the slang of course⌠we will see!
I want to be able to get a few jokes or something even if takes time. I came up with that level 15 or 18 goal based on the Natively level they gave the manga 
but I wouldnât know if itâs accurate, although a lot of people recommend that site.
To answer to @Superdeva , Iâm also not sure how to use the thread but itâs interesting to share our routines. I have a similar routine to yours, I review during my lunch breaks at noon and then again around 8pm after I have dinner. I usually do new lessons at night and wait till noon next day to review them, I feel for our 
s
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The Natively levels donât correspond to WK levels. They have their own system there. Yotsuba at level 18 is I believe around N4 level, so roughly around where youâd be having completed beginner studies right before starting intermediate. Of course, you totally can read it earlier than that, but youâll need to rely more on the thread probably.
Also, WK levels donât really have much of a bearing at all with regards to Yotsuba because it has full furigana, so you could read it without being able to read a single kanji. Grammar is far more important for your comprehension there.
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I see, when I last had class I was preparing for N3, but it was years ago and I was using a different book from all I read in here. The book we used was called Situational Functional Japanese (sfj) so the order in which I learned grammar points was a little different from Minna or Genki.
I went through Genki I last month, just reviewing all and reading, and right now Iâm on Genki II, some lessons I would just read because I kind of remember, others I stay longer and actually study a bit and do some exercises.
Though I must admit Iâve fallen asleep quite a few times while watching toki ni Andy, usually I read the lesson and watch the video for that lesson for around one week or so, just a few minutes at a time each day or else Iâll fall asleep.
Personally, I think I still have the âfeelâ to know if the sentence makes sense or not when practicing, at least while I was reading the contents of Genki I and some of II I would get that âyeah, that sounds rightâ feel or âI remember this!â moment.
Iâm doing my best with Wanikani right now because I think my vocabulary has faded tremendously and it makes me a bit sad that Iâve forgotten so much. 
(sorry for the long post!)
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Iâm here finally, everyone clap. Gosh this level was a beast. Not because of the difficulty, but because I was very demotivated in the beginning and mid-way, but Iâm finally through.
Levelling up is always so sweet. But the numbers in this level are so ugly lol.
Anyways, now we onto tackle the 8th level 
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Yay! I made it to level 29 finally! 
(Took me 39 days, due to an influx of old Enlighteneds. My median/typical level-up time is 22 days.)
This is officially the highest level Iâve ever reached yet on WaniKani, since I had previously reset from level 28 down to level 7 some time ago.
Last time, at level 28, I had been trying to âgo fastâ, but as usual life 'n things got in the way of maintaining such a rapid pace for so long, and it didnât take long for my review stack to pile up to over 9000! 2000. Not to mention, constantly trying to keep up with reviews was causing me stress and anxiety.
After coming back from that hiatus, thatâs when I decided I needed to slow myself right down. And soon after that, I found this thread and saw that it was a great match for me.
Even with the extra Enlighteneds knocking on my door, I just took them on bit by bit, day by day. The great thing is, no anxiety or stress anymore. Doing reviews is still/again fun like it used to be!
Hooray for Durtling the Scenic Route! 
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Hooray! Congrats on achieving a new milestone and even more for finding the fun again
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Big congratulations! 
Iâm a little bit scared of letting a few days go by after seeing a few memes of those insane review piles.
The trick is to find that sweet spot that is completely personal in terms of the quantity we can handle. Iâm still trying to figure that out.
I leveled up on Sunday night and I had around 120 new lessons and had a mini adrenaline spike 
so I took it slow and separated the new lessons into 3 blocks that I finished learning today. Felt much better like that, but now I have 129 items on Apprentice, first time going over a hundred here, wish me luck for the rest of the week.
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Youâre still in the very early levels, so you should be fine for now, but just consider: Thereâs nothing that says you have to finish all of your Lesson pile right away.
In fact, while some/many people choose to follow a âcertain # of lessons per day/weekâ routine (and this definitely can be good, especially for setting up a very regular/predictable progression), I personally focus almost entirely on how many reviews I have in my Review pile and also to how many reviews I have coming up in my Review Forecast for the week.
I (usually) only add new lessons when Iâm starting to run low on upcoming reviews, adding new Lessons in batches of 5, and usually only adding a maximum of one batch per day. Often, though, I will not add any new lessons during a day. Sometimes several days in a row.
This is less regular/predictable than âcertain # of lessons every single dayâ, but itâs also more flexible/adaptable. And, in that way itâs more âdynamically predictableâ in a sense: I know for sure that I will be able to adapt my # of incoming reviews either down to a less-stressful level, or up to a more-active level, depending on how I feel about my workload at any given time.
I sometimes think of Lessons as like the accelerator pedal of a car (or perhaps like adding logs to a bonfire, or adding coal to an old steam train). Yes, if you hold the accelerator down to a very steady point, the car will end up at a very steady speed. But, if you want the car to be able to slow down, or speed up, at any point, then youâll at some point need to be able to lift up, or press down, on the accelerator. (Of course, the full effect of adjusting the âacceleratorâ is not felt right away â thereâs a delayed effect â which is why the adding-logs-on-a-bonfire or adding-coal-to-a-steam-train metaphors are perhaps somewhat more accurate.)
So, think of it this way: Your bonfire is currently just starting out. Itâs burning nicely, but itâs not very big yet. On Sunday night, when you leveled up, you got a delivery of 120 new logs to your woodpile. Already, by Tuesday, youâve added all 120 logs to your bonfire. Itâs grown by +120 logs from whatever size it previously was (letâs say roughly 500 logs worth). Thatâs a pretty significant size growth. But since itâs still pretty small, youâre still going to be pretty okay in the near term.
But if you were to keep adding all of your new lessons immediately at the beginning of each new level, you will end up with big surges in your reviews periodically â like those fresh logs all starting to catch fire and flare up all at once.
Or, for a more visceral car-based metaphor, by adding 120 lessons in a short period of time, itâs like youâve suddenly pressed the accelerator down hard â not quite to the bottom, because as you said, you did spread them out into 3 batches, but still quire hard â and thatâs going to make the car surge forward in speed. That is probably okay, because your car currently isnât going very fast (it only started from 0 a little while ago, in the metaphor). But later on, if every time you have the opportunity you press hard on the accelerator, your car is going to end up lurching fast-and-then-slow, fast-and-then-slow, over and over. Needless to say, it may become quite a âcrazyâ ride! At the very least, it wonât be a âcomfyâ ride. And all that focus on how fast-and-slow the car is going will distract your from the lovely view of the Scenic Route (of the fun/joy of learning Japanese in general)!
Anyway, I hope those analogies/metaphors are helpful for getting a feel of what adding Lessons is like. They are like fuel, so you need them, but you donât need to add them all-at-once, or even particularly quickly, once you get new ones. Indeed, it can be more pleasant just to add them very slowly-but-steadily (like a certain # per day/week) or only when-and-as-needed (like when your Review stack and Review Forecast are starting to âthin outâ).
Again, itâs not so crucial right now at level 5, but it will become more important as you level up and have more âlogs on the fireâ, so to speak.
[Once again, a comment I intended to be short-and-sweet ended up being novella-length. 
]
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Now Iâm terrified. 
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Itâs only a huge issue if youâre like me and try and keep your reviews at 0 at all times of the day. (I often wake up on a weekend to 110 reviews and do them all in one go!)
Youâll find your reviews come in lumps for the next few days/weeks, but if you donât do all the reviews in one go, theyâll start to space out.
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@wct all these analogies were great! I also base how many lessons I do on how many reviews I have coming up and I totally agree with your reasoning for why this is a good method!
oh no ahahah ! It will be okay!
Another thing to remember is that having lots of reviews is okay. Of course it can feel stressful and overwhelming (partially because of those cute but v scary illustrations WK use depending on how many reviews you have haha), but I think thereâs a tendancy for us to believe that if we have 120 reviews come in all at once then we have to finish them in one sitting immediately. Of course that thought would make most of us feel stressed! During my 100+ day levels, there were many times when I had 600+ reviews (I think my peak was over 1000 reviews or something crazy). I knew I couldnât do it in one sitting so the only alternative was just slowly chipping away at them. I had to get used to seeing a huge number of reviews. But through that, I learned to accept them. So now, theyâre way less scary and Iâm way less intimidated by the thought of review batches coming in the hundreds. Iâll get to them whenever I get to them. Itâs no biggie at all!
Essentially: I agree with what @pembo wrote concisely hahah I opted for the novella-length comment like @wct haha
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Ah, that reminds me of one of WKâs little features that is not very obvious, and Iâm pretty sure some people (especially if relatively new to WK) arenât yet aware of, or â even if they are aware of it â may not realize how often it can be useful. Which is:
The Wrap Up Button
What WK is ârememberingâ while youâre doing a review session
Imagine WaniKani (WK) is a person, and youâre playing a kind of âcard gameâ with WK. Youâre playing the part of the quiz-taker, and WK is playing the part of the quiz-master. Your stack of review items is the âdeck of cardsâ.
WK, the quiz-master, is going to show you the front-face of your review-cards, and you have to guess the answer on the back-face of the card. Just like when doing flash-cards, if youâve ever done that as a kid.
But WK doesnât hold the entire deck of review-cards at once. Instead, WK draws 10 cards from the review deck, and holds them in its âhandâ. Letâs call this list of cards the CurrentHand, just to give it a name. It usually consists of 10 cards, with some exceptions, such as if the initial deck of reviews consisted of less than 10 cards to begin with, or if WK starts running out of cards as the quiz goes on.
Starting with the initial 10 cards, we have to realize that actually most of these cards are actually made up of 2 question/answer pairs. One is the Meaning pair, and the other is the Reading pair. (Radical cards only have a Meaning pair.)
This means that even after WK shows you the first card (for the first time), it has only shown you half of this card, and even if you answer it correctly, WK will not discard this card from its CurrentHand list, until it later shows you the second half of the card, and you also answer that one correctly.
So, every time you get both parts of a card right, WK discards that card (for this review session anyway), and then immediately draws another card from the review stack, if it can. So, most of the time, WK will have exactly 10 cards in its CurrentHand. But if it canât draw a new card, e.g. if the review stack is empty, then it will discard down to 9 cards, then 8 cards, etc., until it runs out of cards, and thatâs the end of the review session.
However, suppose you were to get up in the middle of one of these card games, and go out to go grocery shopping, or to a movie or whatever. Well, WK will eventually think, âHuh, I guess thatâs the end of this game,â
WK will then place any of the cards remaining in its CurrentHand back into your Review deck â even if youâve already half-answered some of those cards in its CurrentHand. This is where the Wrap Up feature comes into play.
What is the Wrap Up feature?
Instead of just abandoning your review session (e.g. by closing the browser tab or navigating to a different page, such as by clicking the âHomeâ icon in the upper left), you can tell WK, âOkay, letâs just finish the remaining cards in your CurrentHand, but donât draw anymore cards from my Review deck. I want to end this game/session, but I donât want to âloseâ any correct answers Iâve already made that are still only half-answered cards.â
Thatâs exactly what the Wrap Up feature is intended for. And thatâs what it does. You finish off the remaining CurrentHand list, which is why the counter almost always starts at 10 and counts down. When you reaches 1 and you get that card right, it discards that card (for this review session), sees it has an empty âhandâ, and ends the game gracefully. No progress gets âlostâ.
But the Wrap Up feature can be used for (psychologically) different reasons, too!
How Wrap Up can be used with Durtling the Scenic Route
(Note: this is not exclusive to the Scenic Route, nor is this an exhaustive description of how the Wrap Up feature can be used. Itâs just some ways Iâve used it myself. Would be glad to hear if others have other ideas about it, too!)
-
Probably the first way I used it was in a circumstance like @raindrops was describing:
âI knew I couldnât do it in one sitting so the only alternative was just slowly chipping away at them.â
When your review stack is just so big that you have no hope of finishing it in one session. At some point, you just have to stop. And you might as well use the Wrap Up button, so you donât lose any of your progress.
This seems to me the closest to the original intent of the Wrap Up feature. But! -
If your review stack is so so big that you canât even hope to finish it over several days, then you start to realize that: Though you may not be able to finish it in one or a few sessions, as long as you make some progress on a regular basis, you will be able to tackle that giant mountain, at least eventually! So, whatâs most important is not so much doing âas many reviews as possible per sessionâ as it is âdoing at least some reviews on a regular basisâ, and putting that another way, you could rephrase it as âdoing at least one review session every [day/week/whatever]â.
And so, as long as youâre doing at least one review session per day, you can pretty much choose how many of how few reviews you want to do during any particular session. You donât have to go all out until you reach your limit every session. After all, that can be very stressful and draining.
Maybe yesterday you did 300 (going all out), but maybe today you only do 100 (still a sizeable chunk). At least youâre doing some every day.
So, you pick a number of reviews to do today, and when you get to about 10 away from that number of reviews, you click the Wrap Up button to finish off the session.
Maybe you think to yourself, âI could do even more, maybe,â but for whatever reason youâve decided, âBut this is enough for today.â
⌠But, then, ⌠there are those âŚotherkinds of days. When you canât handle doing 100. Or maybe even 50. In fact, yYouâre not sure how many youâll be able to handle. So⌠-
When you want to at least do as long a review session as you can handle, even if you donât know how much that is at the start. The main thing here is to keep doing at least one session per day. And youâve realized that today it is only going to be one single session. Thatâs okay. But how many items? Not sure. At least youâre going to get started and go as far as you can.
Once you get to the point you start to feel overwhelmed â or, actually, before you feel overwhelmed, since you donât want to be feeling overwhelmed every single day! â you press Wrap Up and you only have 10 more to go.
Ugh. 10 more to go? âCan I really do these 10 more? Iâm already starting to feel overwhelmedâŚâ Yes! Actually, you will see it if you try it. You will be able to finish that last 10. Youâve done thousands and thousands of reviews by now, and even if youâre questioning your ability to do just 10 reviews, your well-practiced mind and body will just get through them. After all, these 10 are the last ones, and there are no more after that. The overwhelm is coming to an end, it is not going to continue. That is the key.
Which leads to the âworst possible caseâ scenario: -
If youâre not sure you can even do any reviews today, but you realize from before that the key to tackling that mountain is to do at least some reviews every [day/week/whatever]. After having used the Wrap Up feature many times by this point, even if youâre having doubts about doing one of those #3 âWell, at least as much as I canâ sessions, you can rest assured that no matter how many items you do in a session, at least youâll be able to use that trusty Wrap Up button at the end, to finish up the remaining 10 items.
âBut what if I start a session and then I canât even do any items? Could I still make it through the Wrap Up phase?â Yes! Actually, you can! Because youâre not going to be starting some big daunting task! Youâre actually just going to be âwrapping upâ your 0-item review session ⌠which is technically already DONE! You did âas many as you couldâ, which happened to be 0 items. But now youâre done that, and youâre just going to âwrap upâ your âprogressâ by doing the âfinal 10â items that are in WKâs CurrentHand.
And youâve done this so many times before, and youâve always succeeded in wrapping up the final 10, that strangely, you have no doubts that you can actually do them.
So, you simply start a review session as normal, and immediately press Wrap Up!
Youâre essentially doing a âzero-itemâ review, but because WK always draws 10 review cards initially, and Wrap Up always finishes off WKâs CurrentHand to empty, you âautomaticallyâ get a bonus +10 items completed even on your 0-item review sessions.
So, no matter what, you can always make some progress on even the worst mountain of reviews, every single [day/week/whatever]. -
Youâve become so skilled at using Wrap Up that youâre able to flexibly end review sessions whenever you need to, and indeed whenever you feel like it.
- Feeling a bit anxious about continuing this review session (not yet overwhelm, just anxious)? Just Wrap it Up for now. You can always do another session later.
- Just Wrapped Up that last session, but you now realize that the anxiety you were feeling has faded, and you wouldnât mind doing a bit more? Just start up another session right now (why not?). You can always just Wrap it Up, too, whenever you feel the need.
- Just started this new session, but now suddenly starting to feel dread again? Not even sure it was a good idea to start this new session after all? Already feeling regret? No problem!!! Just click Wrap Up right away. Youâre already DONE, now! No pressure anymore. Just finish off these last 10 like you always can do, and thatâs the end of it. Doesnât even take more than a minute or two!
After using Wrap Up in this way for I think probably over a year now, it has really helped me be able to face my anxieties over doing reviews, and take them on, challenge them (âHey, maybe I can do another round, letâs find out!â), and overcome them (âCool! I actually was able to.â). Because of this, the anxieties have faded a lot. I may still have twinges of anxiety here or there, but because Wrap Up allows me to always succeed in my review sessions, those past experiences of success soon balance out my anxious brain and allow me to just âlet goâ of those anxious feelings.
[Yet again, a massive post. Apologies. Iâm not even going to go back over it to try to make it shorter, as Iâve already spent too long on it. But I hope it is nevertheless useful or interesting to some others, so I think itâs worth posting anyway. ]
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yeees I do number 4 (the 0 item review session) all the time hehe itâs awesome
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