Level 10 in a nutshell

109/175 Vocabulary, oof. feels even worse when I probably mistyped a solid 15 of those.

I’m part of the Olympians group who are trying to reach level 60 by the beginning (or end) of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, so I’m trying to level up on average every 8 days. Although I’m able to get the kanji and radicals down in that amount of time, the 100+ new vocab every week is overwhelming.

What are all of your experiences with this? Do you do worse on the vocabulary?

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I actually do better on vocab!

But I had to slow down. I wasn’t learning effectively. Oh well.

Good luck!

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I’m in the Olympians group too, and at level 13 am not too far ahead of you. Completely empathise on the copious reviews actually attempting to kill me! Lol.

I find it’s the opposite, I’m not great on the kanji until the vocab reinforces them, and apart from the odd “exception” readings, dare I say, I enjoy the vocab because I feel like I’m learning something useful.

That said, I’ve slowed my pace somewhat - I was doing 7 or 8 day levels, I’m now doing 10-ish day levels. I’ve found this has taken away some of the pressure and allowed me to pace my reviews and lessons a bit better. I think that once you reach the “painfuls” the game changes. In the “pleasants” I used to be able to complete all my lessons in one hit and have a great recall rate. Now, I have not only my lessons but the other items in the SRS system coming back for review, meaning LOTS more reviews than ever before. I’ve found that from level 10 to level 13 I’ve had to tweak the way I tackle WK in order to keep a reasonable pace and not burn out.

Perhaps it may be worth reviewing your own pace and if you are finding it to be too fast for you and/or your retention? Just an idea.

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Oh, and take your time… It’s a race to the cake, but typing things slower won’t stop you getting there but may take away some unnecessary pressure you are putting on yourself to “go fast”. When I’m in those kinds of moods, I usually go away and try later. My recall seems better when I’m not trying to speed through or pressure myself.

I’d recommend you explore userscripts like [OBSOLETE] Wanikani Override ("ignore answer button") that let’s you re-input your answers. It’s super useful for typos when you start to get tired from going through so many reviews.

The caveat is you need to self discipline to only use it for typos though.

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I used to use Wanikani Override but I am now a convert to Double Check.

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Double Check is much more superior to the Override script, agreed. :+1:t2:

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As a professional Override Script Expert (Abuser) I would like you to retract your statement

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I totally feel this pain as well. A colleague of mine got me into learning from a more disciplined approach, which is how I even found WK in the first place!

When I unlock new words, I try to spend a good 5-10 mins with each of them, going through its kun and on readings, and then grabbing a word from the vocabulary that has the kanji reading that I’ll need to input for the review. It adds more knowledge and kick starts the vocab process. Maybe try giving that a go?

Also, don’t be afraid to fail. Forgetting is part of learning. As someone who stopped learning Japanese for 15 years, it’s actually stored there in chunks, and interestingly, I’ve remembered the readings for kanji I haven’t seen in the 15 years. It takes time to compact this amount of information into your brain.

So TL;DR be patient, forgive yourself, and don’t be scared to fail! Not starting lessons for fear of getting the kanji wrong hurts more than failing the reading the first couple of times

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Thanks to @quollism and @lertad for showing me the double check scripts, that should help a lot. I definitely should go slower during my reviews, but it can be hard when there are 200+ reviews. I just need to make sure I don’t abuse the scripts, lol.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone! :grinning::ok_hand:

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