Level 10-11 hit different

I’m not sure if anyone else has this same issue but my progress stagnated at level 10-11. Maybe it was the fact it hit during Christmas time but my accuracy dropped from like 90% to 60-77% and my reviews kept coming back around. I think I’m though the slump now but dang that was not fun. It was like a vicious cycle, I kept getting reviews wrong, which made me do them less often, slowed down my progress, which demoralized me. Just seeing if anyone else had this issue around this time. I feel like I’m getting back in a rhythm but idk… Just rambling about a funk I’m in.

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I had some sort of similar issue when Level 16 came. I don’t really remember my impressions from L10-11 but I can bet it is normal to hit these roadblocks every now and then.
If you find out that there are leeches lurking their way in, once you spot them, maybe try to understand why they’re a problem. I believe L10-ish is when we start seeing how confusing some kanji can be, although eventually you’ll get them under control :pray:

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I’m having this issue now at level 7 so I took a week off of new lessons and just focused on lowering my apprentice and guru queues. I’m assuming it’s less about the level and more about how long it’s been since you started… For me anyway, since those enlightened reviews started, old and new kanji are now mixing together more and more which is making my accuracy a lot worse. Also a lot of my leeches are coming back to haunt me now. Oh well! :woman_shrugging:t2:

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So good to know I am not the only one. Definitely hit bit of a brick wall. Kanji getting more complex and less regular. But I think my problem is that my knowledge base is different for different aspects of the language. My reading is rubbish as I have a grasp of grammar but I get lost without the kanji. My listening is awful because of the speed.
The only thing to do is carry on as I know it will get better.
Well everybody here says it will!!!

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Level 11 kanji was much harder to memorize for me. Getting through the vocab right now has been a breeze but those kanji…

Well, since nobody has mentioned it, you might want to back off on lessons for a while if you haven’t already. It’s common for people to get in the habit of doing all their lessons as soon as they’re available in the earlier levels, then pay for it when they get a few more months under their belt.

Since you’re about two months in, you’re likely seeing a fair number of Master-stage reviews that you haven’t reviewed for a full month. This adds to your load even though you’ve demonstrated that you already “learned” those items. There’s a huge difference between reviewing something you just saw a week or two ago and something you’ve not seen in a month. Just wait until “enlightened” items start appearing in your review queue.

Trust me you’ll likely see many of those “mastered” items again numerous times over the coming months (I’ve some items I’ve reviewed nearly a hundred times).

What does the SRS stage breakdown of your assignment queue look like?

At the risk of self-promotion, I wrote a script called the GanbarOmeter that attempts to make managing your lesson speed more straightforward.

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I feel I am ok with my workload as I stop doing lessons if the reviews get too much. I think it is holding onto things you have not seen for a while. Now the items in play are quite numerous it is so easy to get muddled with new and old as some are very similar.

I’ve been in level 14 for a long time Lol. Got overwhelmed with leeches as well but I’m back taking lessons again!

It’s normal to get things wrong over and over from time to time.

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Im having this exact issue at level 9 right now. So far everything was pretty smooth sailing, finishing every level in 8-10 days, but after 7 days on level 9 i got 2 kanji at guru. No idea why, but this batch just isnt sticking.

Good to know level 10 and 11 might end up the same lmao.

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Even the “slipperiest” items eventually fall to sheer repetition. I’ve got one item I’ve reviewed 118 times without burning, but I think I’ve got it licked now. :slight_smile:

Seriously: more reviews are the ticket, especially if you’re not always able to do multiple review sessions per day to catch the 4-hour and 8-hour schedules.

I’ve started using the self-study quiz for items in stages 1-2 every day, repeating the “out-of-band” quiz multiple times until I can score 100%. Those extra repetitions have really aided my retention (they rarely fall back to apprentice levels once they’ve progressed).

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Wow, this is really helpful advice. I’ve been nervous about messing with scripts but this pretty straightforward.

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Thanks. It’s kind of a virtuous circle, too:

More repetitions of stuff in stages 1-2 means they will progress faster. Faster doesn’t necessarily mean you should progress levels faster by doing more lessons (though you can if you want), faster means your real reviews (items in ALL stages) will be less stressful (because a higher percentage of items are familiar).

You’ll still miss items occasionally, but that has the effect of randomly spreading out your future reviews (because some items come back sooner and some are pushed out later and we sometimes do our reviews at different times of day). Which means our daily review load tends to become more balanced.

I just hit level 11 a few days ago and I also slowed down, but for me it was on purpose. I found the number of things at Apprentice level was becoming overwhelming, so I deliberately slowed until I can get that number under around 80 or so.

It might be a me thing (I’m notoriously nerdy–I spent an hour this week tracing the etymology of “thesaurus” so I could tell a coworker what to say when you have more than one), but what I’ve found to be helpful at this stage is figuring out the rules that WK doesn’t really teach–like how to spot transitive and intransitive pairs or the difference between getsu and gatsu when 月 shows up. That’s helped me get a lot of words that were kind of teetering for me to be more consistently correct.

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You’re right, of course, that WK doesn’t teach how to spot transitivity pairs or really any rules at all.

But from firsthand experience, I can state definitively that it absolutely does teach one the “rules” indirectly for things like transitivity, readings, broad-vowel vs. short vowel pronunciation (しょう vs. しょ), 促音(そくおん) (きて vs. きって), 熟語(じゅくご) exceptions that use 訓読み (足跡(あしあと) etc.) and the like.

I’ve been saying this on a lot of different threads recently, but the human brain has an INCREDIBLE ability to discern patterns (“rules”) and exceptions to those rules. Never underestimate the power of sheer repetition!

It’s incredibly satisfying when you start to just know how things are probably pronounced or which form of a verb to use in conversation without trying to consciously apply any rules whatsoever. With enough repetition, your brain figures out the rules on its own.

In particular, while not perfect, WK has taken pains to teach transitivity (they won’t accept “to raise” for 上がる, for example, and witness all the “to be ◯” and “to ◯ something” meanings). They’ve also recently spaced out the transitivity pairs, intentionally not having your memorize them at the same time because research has clearly demonstrated people learn them more easily by spacing them out.

It’s well worth reading about the rules and understanding how they work, but I sincerely recommend relying on sheer repetition and memorization to actually learn them. There are exceptions to every rule (including this one! :slight_smile: ) and there simply isn’t enough time to apply rules in a conversation or when trying to read something in a reasonable amount of time. Direct recall is a powerful thing.

Just do your reviews. (And be careful with user synonyms.)

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