Hello. Long time reviewer, few times poster. A few weeks ago I reached level 60, after four years of doing reviews every day. I wanted to finish all my lessons too, but now I have, so here I am making this post. (I will probably never burn everything, I’m sorry)
I’ve been doing this both as a full time student in an unrelated field and then a full time employee, so the time devoted to Japanese have mostly been devoted to Wanikani. Now it is time to learn Japanese in some other ways and see if I can reach a level I am satisfied with. (I’m gonna try and play a game in Japanese)
I love Wanikani, it’s a great and wonderful site. Great balance between gamification and pedagogical value. At the same time I am looking forward to letting the reviewing go. While a nice, educational, meditative activity, it is also a chore that I sometimes stressed about having to do. Like I said, looking forward to using that time on other learning.
(I wish the update that changed how lessons are mixed between kanji and vocabulary was around the entire time, that was a great update to enjoy right at the end.)
Congratulations on reaching Level 60! And the consistency is commendable. You should thank yourself for all of the hard work you put in. You decided that your future self was going to be in a great place in their Japanese study!!
Personally, I think not being able to read is the biggest stumbling block to becoming truly fluent in Japanese - wanikani is great for having created a systematic method that can help get you there.
Congratulations! Hoping to be where you are in a couple of years.
The truth is: Be really proud because Lvl60 is no easy feat. All that knowledge will surely give you a great advantage BUT your new objective should be to engage in some kind of formal course or start reading like crazy to avoid forgetting all those kanji (therefore losing your great effort).
Congrats on reaching Lvl60 and happy learning… Your Japanese adventure continues
Now that you have reached level 60, how do you feel related to your japanese skills? can you listen or read to native content? what type of studying have you also done besides wanikani? Have you taken or plan to take the JLPT?
Thank you! I can of course read quite a bit now, but the grammar is still something that needs more work. I have a textbook called みんなの日本語 that I got most of the way through but stopped because I guess I didn’t have the energy to do both, but I will go back to it now. I’ve also been enjoying reading NHK’s NEWS WEB EASY. Extremely satisfying when you suddenly realise that you can read and understand that. But more advanced reading is tricky, so getting to the point where I can enjoy a simple novel is the goal now I think.
Listening also not great but some simple phrases and exclamations I will understand. I have a Japanese co-worker and she said I can talk to her but I’m always chickening out. I won’t be taking any tests I don’t think, I’m just learning for my own enjoyment.
Gosh - the japanese co-worker is such a golden opportunity. Please, by all means, get over the chickening part - I am sure you will find it most rewarding!
One hundred percent agree. It’s uncommon to find people who will generously let you stumble through their native language with them - when you get such an opportunity, you shouldn’t let it pass!
To give another perspective as someone who has done a lot of language exchange. It can be good if you like doing that but if you don’t you can have the target of just trying to spend time on listening activities to improve your listening rather than feeling guilty that you aren’t talking to your colleague in Japanese.
As was said already… not even close . In wanikani, well, you’re not really done until you burn every single item. I reached 60 in early April and I don’t even know if I’ll ever get there. There are leeches that refuse to stick, updates on content, etc… so I have “only” burnt about 7200 items and I have about 2000 to go.
More importantly, kanji is obviously only one part of Japanese language learning and I made the mistake of prioritizing WK over everything else. So I may be a kanji whiz, but there’s a ton of vocabulary in the wild that I don’t know, my grammar is somewhere around N3-N2 (thanks to Bunpro which I’ve been doing in parallel), but my listening ability is barely N3 and my speaking ability might be N4 at best.
The more alarming thing is that if you don’t use your fancy new kanji knowledge- it will go away fast.
So - it’s not the end, not the beginning of the end but maybe the end of the beginning!
頑張って！
I noticed that when an item comes up for burning, even when I get it, sometimes I feel a bit unsure about it. I think it’s not good to burn an item without 100% confidence. I suspect WaniKani could be improved if cards were not burned so soon. I’m sure that some of my burned cards are already forgotten. With Anki that problem is solved by giving the card a long review time such as 1 year rather than burning it completely.
. In wanikani, well, you’re not really done until you burn every single item. I reached 60 in early April and I don’t even know if I’ll ever get there. There are leeches that refuse to stick, updates on content, etc… so I have “only” burnt about 7200 items and I have about 2000 to go.