Level 7 Absolutely Annihalated Me. Tips for Pacing?

Bruh that’s kind of the point of WaniKani lol. When I’m learning new kanji it’s not at all uncommon for me to spend a few minutes per kanji creating a mnemonic that is memorable and unique. Honestly more often than not I either modify the provided mnemonic or toss it out completely and create my own based on the radicals I’ve learned. I’d much rather spend a little time making a mnemonic and cementing the kanji in my brain than drilling it over and over again through rote memorization. That’s exactly what WaniKani was created to avoid having to do. Shock your brain with your stories. Make yourself cry or laugh. Use creative language. Whatever works to burn the kanji into your brain.

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i do all radicals on day 1, then a bunch of kanji, some vocab to make me happy.
lvl 7 might still have lots of radicals, lvl 28 only has 5, so i did those plus 5 kanji, 10 items.
woke up, did my first review, went to work.
lunch break. no reviews ready yet, but kanji during the day are a bad idea, so i learned 20 vocab.
reviews will come up at 5pm (it’s 2pm now), i’ll do those 5 rads/kanji on the toilet. ninja review.
6pm is when the vocab is ready, but i work till 7 - it’s fine, can do those 18 words (i learned 20 tho, 2 went MIA) an hour late, that’s fine (that’s never fine for kanji!).
gonna do 10 more kanji in the train home, then that review before bed, thee again when i get up.

that’s what a day looks like for me.

when the radicals are done, i hope to have all first-wave kanji done, because i’ll then do all remaining kanji in one go and finish whatever vocab might come up a day later.

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Keep going and get used to the pain. You will have better levels. You will also have worse ones. Don’t mind the mistakes and take them as learning opportunities. Pace you lessons if your reviews get out of control. I was busy over the weekend so I didn’t do any WK and came back to 450 reviews. Oops.

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I don’t allow myself to do new lessons unless I get 90% or above on my review.

Then on top of that I aim for 100-150 items a day.
There are userscripts that will give you an estimate.

I also create visualizations: Here

And I do take requests.
I usually do them for items that hit my critical list.

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Doesn’t WK just do this automatically? Why would you need a userscript :thinking:

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There are several things that help me always.

  1. Always do your reviews first. If you feel then that was enough take a break before doing any lessons
  2. Have a look at your “Expected Daily Reviews” to get a feeling how many you can handle and what is to much.
  3. If you feel it’s to much, do a couple days just reviews to get your Items to a higher level and as such less per day.
  4. I also learn only around 10-15 new Items a day, so that my reviews don’t just up to quickly. Don’t worry about not getting all lessons to zero in one day, especially when just jumping up a level or you just Guru’d a bunch of Radicals.
  5. Lastly, learning Japanese and especially Kanji is not about who can do it the fastest, but finding your own pace. If you rush to much but it doesn’t stick, you get frustrated to fast and just feel like quitting. So take it slow at the pace that you still feel challenged but not to fast just to be fast :wink:
  6. Just have fun and learning will be easier :slight_smile:
    giphy%5B1%5D
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I prioritise reviews and do them asap every day (usually works out about three times a day).

There’s no way I would be able to do all of the lessons at level up, I simply wouldn’t be able to retain that amount of information at once. I just chip away at them each day, maybe doing between 10 - 20 lessons if I can. It will depend on how my reviews are going and how easy the lessons are (i.e. if I am learning any items that I am already familiar with that I’ve learned elsewhere).

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You have to turn on the setting, but yeah, it is native WK stuff.

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Shameless plug: [Web app] Wanikani accuracy and review pacing

This might help you get an idea of how many lessons per day will result in “too many” reviews per day.

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The learning how to handle lots of new lessons on level up is something I have been trying to work out the last few level ups. Recently I’ve been trying to stagger the previous levels vocab learning throughout the level so I’m not hit with a massive amount to learn before I can learn the radicals of the new level. However, I still try to blast through those, and blast through the radicals, and then take the kanji slowly. I try to just learn things when I feel like it but also try to keep my apprentice count around 100. If it’s above that I stop lessons for a bit, and if it’s below, it’s a sign that I should get a move on and stop being lazy and do some of the lessons.

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Memory is a skill that you practice. The more you practice it, the more attention your brain will pay to it. The more you learn, the easier learning becomes. Even though, neurologically speaking, the brain isn’t as fluid for us adults as it is for toddlers/young children, adult brains still have a remarkable capacity for learning and skill acquisition.

There’s been days when I’ve gotten 50% on reviews I only did four hours before, and boy did that make me feel stupid. In the end, WK isn’t a game of memory, but as @jprspereira says again and again (broken record by this point eh bud? XD), it’s a game of routine, pacing, and consistency. Most of the people who are level 60 or even 45+ aren’t geniuses, they’re just consistent in their studies for the most part.

Although JP’s guide may seem like it’s geared toward speed demons on the first read, the underlying techniques are solid for any speed. Because it’s not the speed that matters, it’s about making a routine that works for you, at a pace you can handle - one where you can show up every day to do the work.

Even trying something as simple as 5 lessons a day and no more can have a positive effect if you find that pace works for you. It makes it a lot easier to disregard +110 lessons if you know that you’re only showing up to do 5 or 10 lessons and all of your reviews for that day.

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Wow! That was a lot of responses to read through. Thank you all so much for your input. I’ve had the Journey through Wani Kani in my “Read Later” list since I hopped on the community board a month or so ago. I’ve also been interested in the scripts people have proposed using. I simply haven’t pursued the top two as I have a dirty secret:

I do 90% of Wani Kani from a work computer. I’ll probably set aside a lunch break to read through the 368 Day Journey, but I am fairly certain installing anything on this computer would be a no-no.

I’m such a bad employee. I have Wani Kani and Bunpro open all day while on the clock doing reviews when they pop up. Still working on memorizing the final bits of N5 before moving onto N4. When I’m not listening to news or music, I watch Japanese Ammo videos. It’s to the point that I see my work as a way to break up my study sessions.

Again, thank you all for your responses. I’ll test the waters with some of y’all study methods to see which bits and pieces work best for me when amalgamating what I need to trigger my brain to work correctly. I’ll only directly respond to a couple of standouts.

@KinokoNeko
It is the point which is why I plan on lifetime subscribing the next it goes on sale. The struggle for me is that I’ll make a mnemonic that I think is memorable, but really isn’t and I have to go back to the drawing board. Like I will only remember part of it or will forget the device I made altogether. The “solid” part of it means that the mnemonic actually works, which is like trying to strike a match to see which one my head remembers.

@Krispy
I’ve always wanted to believe that memory is something you practice, but memory for me isn’t a skill or ability, but rather an adversary I’ve been fighting my whole life. For example, when I was in my teens, I never got in trouble for misbehaving, but I constantly got in trouble for forgetting things. My current job (the one I do in-between study sessions), I do the same thing twice or three times a day, but I actually have an exhaustive step-by-step list on how to perform my job that I consult every time I start again or I will ultimately miss two or three steps.

I do not say this as an excuse (though I admit it boils down to one), but rather something I’ve consigned to a simple reality which I contend with every day. Sure, I could rely on my crutches less like not using my phone alarms and calendars to outsource my memory to a prompting digital device, but that risks forgetting things that I can’t afford to forget outright. I usually write important things down physically so I have the “feeling” of the words I am trying to commit to memory, but it seems more like a crapshoot than a strategy for remembering things.

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you could install a browser on a USB stick, complete with scripts ^^

and don’t think you’re exceptionally bad. we’re all the same. i sneak reviews in on the toilet when my phone should be in my locker :wink:

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@OmukaiAndi

you could install a browser on a USB stick, complete with scripts ^^

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Do you ever write down your original mnemonics in the notes field? Then you’ll be able to read them again to remind yourself later (and even edit it if it’s really not working for you).

I find it helps to set aside particular times of the day for reviews (I do 3x/day), then my brain can go into “review mode”. I’ve noticed that when I try to do reviews in a different location or different surroundings my accuracy is lowered.

I also read somewhere about using various senses to help trigger your memory - associating particular sounds or scents with a certain memory task. So the idea is that you always do something like listening to a certain musical piece or putting on a distinctive smelling lotion when you study Japanese. That becomes another trigger to let your brain know that we’re thinking about these sorts of things at this time.

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what i do to combat leeches is, i make a deck with them on quizlet. 2 cards per kanji, looks like this:

何 reading
何 meaning

a few rounds of drilling, painful, terrible, but it works for me. i dread it every time, but repetition is another tool in your box, and why not use it?

quizlet is not an SRS, so no schedules, no “punishment”. just clean and simple repeated reviews, where you can fail and keep failing until your brain stops resisting.

this is not something i’d recommend as normal routine, but it gets the job done amazingly well for those asshole kanji that defy your most lovingly handcrafted mnemonics and weeks of coming up again on wanikani.

some things need to be done in minute intervals to stick, wk’s hours long timers aren’t always enough.

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@Saruko

Do you ever write down your original mnemonics in the notes field?

I don’t know how people do without that and the additional synonym feature. Thankfully I noticed those fields the first day. I’ve got all sorts of rhymes, stories, and examples. One of the most recent Kanjis I have is Area, and I have a whole story of a weirdo riding a scooter swinging a sword loose in the area. The weirdo is for the reading HEN.

@OmukaiAndi
Not a bad idea. I have been avoiding Flashcards to be honest as I hate assembling the decks. I just need to get off my lazy butt and find them. Im sure I saw a link for a few in one of the FAQs on the boards.

My method at the moment (at least for Kanjis) is to utilize Kanji Tree on my phone for studying. I have a Note 9 so I can use the pen to draw the lines to get a feel for the Kanji beyond the on’yomi/kun’yomi drilling in WK.

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I have the same problem every time I get a new wave of kanji!
So, you’re a level higher than me, but I hope I can still throw some advice in here!
-I read somewhere on the forums to keep your apprentice count below 150. This has been a HUGE help for me. Counts above 150 and I can’t keep things straight.
-Also, I sense a little bit of “imposter syndrome” in your post; a feeling that you’re not actually successful, that it’s a fluke and you secretly should be getting “F’s” this whole time. I’ve done this about EVERYTHING my whole life (thanks a lot, mom). Level 7 feels small compared to 60, but you have to learn a TON just to get to 7! And I’d bet you didn’t have all this vocab memorized from college (and if you did, that’s incredible!). You’re obviously a very hard worker and have been very successful in your life.

Hope that helps!
コーヒーさん

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This, a lot. As we like to say here in Australia, “don’t shit on yourself”. Everything seemed overwhelming at that level for me too, but when you’re climbing Everest don’t worry about the summit, worry about the next step. Glance back every now and then to see how many steps you’ve taken, too. There’s no finish line, and you can always learn more. Enjoy what you know, anticipate how good it will feel to know more.

That’s about as much feel-good as I’ve got in me haha

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Googles Imposter Syndrome

Hmm… wasn’t so much that as a like a healthy does of “Oh! This is where my GENKI foreknowledge might start falling a bit short.” I believe in the mantra “Fail Faster” firmly since I write a lot. First drafts are always gonna suck. No reason to get down about it, but a good dose of reality grants some perspective on how to avoid such problems in the future. This was just abnormal for me since if felt like I just couldn’t seem to absorb any of it. I tried to force it through and gave myself a headache, like how you try to start a car that just won’t and you flood the engine (that’s a thing right? I know nothing about cars).

The only thing I’m truly down on is my ability to remember things. I know I keep harping away at this in my responses, but just for some perspective on what I mean by memory struggles: when I am in an interview for a job and am asked what my greatest weakness is or similar questions along those lines, I always answer memory. I don’t wanna get lost in the weeds here, but I don’t feel too bad not remembering things I am studying. It hurts in the moment cause I hate seeing those red “Apprentice” boxes appear, but that is to be expected. But when I am asked to perform a task and I forget to do it 5 seconds later as I’m walking to go do the thing I was asked to do, that’s when I get down on myself.