Level 60 celebration! やった！

veroiuexl · January 1, 2024, 2:53pm

I’ve finally made it to level 60 after a little more than two years!
Technically I still have to do the Level 60 Lessons

I started around summer in 2021 and just thought I’ll try it because I really wanted to understand and sing along with Japanese songs, and after incorporating WK into my schedule I guess it just stuck with me until level 60.

WK Schedule that worked for me

Going through my reviews in the morning and evening (and doing 10 lessons a day) was normally perfect for me because I only had to do 200 reviews most of the time, but there were some days where I had to do 300 or more, which was kind of overwhelming (my kanji reading accuracy wasn’t great sometimes).

Advice for avoiding the flood of reviews

What I would recommend to people that just started with WK is, that brute forcing yourself through all reviews for the day just for the sake of it, while the accuracy suffers, is and will not be beneficial in the long run. The SRS doesn’t forget, but you will!
The reviews scale up quickly and you can end up with having to do 400 reviews or more like that

General WK advice

If you find yourself buried under the amount of reviews, just slow down a little and don’t take it to seriously, after all it’s suppose to be fun and not make you hate kanjis!

Another really important advice when it comes to making the best out of WK:
PLEASE also study grammar and immerse yourself in media!

I know this is a really standard advice, but I honestly wish I would’ve started doing actual grammar points earlier in the WK levels, and I can’t stress enough how much that can improve your experience with the language overall

Also this post has a ton of useful information as well and is definitely worth a read [Level 60 Post]: WK was totally worth it! Semi speed-ran it and not mentally broken (I think? :D) Some advice/tips:

Here are some stats:

Review count doesn’t match 100% because I was also doing some reviews on other devices

Useful Userscripts

My brain really likes streaks so if you’re also like that or just like a nice overview be sure to download the Heatmap

[Userscript] Wanikani Heatmap

I haven’t used the reorder script myself, but I’ve heard it’s super good and can accelerate your kanji learning even more
[Userscript] Reorder Omega

This is also extremely useful and can help you with recognizing frequently appearing radicals in kanjis that have the same reading
[Userscript] Keisei 形声 Semantic-Phonetic Composition

I really liked my time with WK, sure there were some kanjis or vocab that I felt like were really rare and specific, but honestly, with the use of userscripts this is probably one of the best ways to learn Kanjis!

Also あけましておめでとうございます

semaphore · January 2, 2024, 7:30am

Congratulations and Happy New Year! I started about three months before you, and I just Guru’d all the level 60 kanji today!

I think a couple of levels around level 25 took the longest for me, probably because there was a mountain of reviews. But, it seems that we have similar accuracy levels and time to complete.

veroiuexl · January 2, 2024, 9:57am

Congrats on hitting level 60 as well!

For me it was pretty similar at around level 19 to 23, which took me the longest.

How did you space your lessons and reviews? Did you do them all in one day when you level up or did you also do it day by day?

semaphore · January 2, 2024, 10:24am

I think when I started, I wanted to level up so fast, so I might have finished the early lessons in one day.

But, when I got to the levels where there were a ton of reviews for lessons from several levels back, it was like I hit a wall. A lot of items would fall back into Guru or Apprentice and back onto my review pile, and it was a little bit discouraging. I actually was scared of doing lessons, because it would have added to the review pile.

I think I was able to continue leveling up by just promising myself to do five items per day or two until the review pile was more manageable. I aimed to maintain 100 Apprentice items during these times around level 20-26.

After I was able to pass level 26 in 9 days, I aimed for 200 Apprentice items and just continued doing that to the end. In particular, I would do ten lesson items and review them up to Apprentice 3 before continuing with another ten lesson items, but not exceeding 200 Apprentice items. (I would not be able to start on a level’s radicals or kanji lessons for at least four days; I did not use third-party tools except wkstats.com)

veroiuexl · January 2, 2024, 11:47am

I see, that’s an interesting way of balancing the amount of reviews! I should’ve done it like that as well, because I feel like I already forgot soo much, especially the vocabs, but I suppose that’s only natural and now it’s time to just study grammar or read a lot to actually get real use of the kanjis.

That is pretty similar to what I did as well, I guess consistency is just really important with the WK System
Here are my level up stats

It’s very interesting that, despite our different approaches of tackling the reviews, we still got there in a reasonable amount of time!

Now I really just got to find a good way to study grammar (I’ve looked at Bunpro, but also found really great free alternatives like Tae Kim Japanese Grammar Guide or imabi)

What did you use for learning grammar?

semaphore · January 2, 2024, 11:57am

I have bunpro, but I am going to try working through Tobira (Intro to Advanced) first. One of the things that kept me from going through Tobira and actually getting WK was lack of furigana.

WaniConti · January 3, 2024, 5:56pm

Still counts! Congratulations on reaching level 60! Here is some cake from the 1960’s for your troubles, and a ton of kanji and vocabulary knowledge from 2024!

60scake

-Nick at WK