I’m considering stopping using reorder scripts for lessons because I don’t ever want to build a huge vocabulary lesson backlog again. It seems like most of the information about level up times I can find is based on reordering the new lessons so that you get radicals and kanji out of the way first. What happens if you don’t do that?
Assuming you had 0 lessons in your queue and finished your current level. You would then get the remaining vocabulary lessons for your previous level before you would proceed to the new radicals and kanji. But that would probably be less than 100 since you already had gotten some out of the way before that. And are those new radicals and kanji then ordered randomly or do the radicals always come first?
If you did 10-15 lessons per day without reordering, would you end up at a 12-13 days level up speed or would you be going significantly slower than that?
– (Sorry for posting a new thread about this and I feel like I have read this information a hundred times before but now that I am searching for it, I can find it.)
Not sure about how fast you’d go doing 10-15 lessons per day, but once you get the vocabulary out of the way for the previous level you get the items for your new level in order. So it presents the radicals first, then kanji, then new vocab.
(I should say that this is the default settings - you can change this a bit under ‘Settings’ if you want to shuffle it up, but I’m guessing that’s not what you’re after. If you find you don’t get ordered lessons though, check your settings.)
I haven’t used the reorder script yet and I finished level 4 at around 9 days? That’s including the lag between starting the level and unlocking it (which was about a day, give or take):
So I guess ~8ish days to finish. I do have vocab from level 4 that’s still in apprentice stages, but none were pending as lessons after the first day of level up. That’s faster than you’re looking for, probably, since I do a big chunk of lessons at once rather than space it out. Probably something like 10 days (150 lessons per level/15 lessons a day)? As @Radish8 says, my experience too has been that the radicals always start first in lessons, then kanji, then vocab.
I do the lessons in bigger chunks than 10-15 per day, but I do the old level’s vocab on levelling up, then all new radicals the next day, kanji the next, vocab the next. Then you unlock the next set of kanji etc.
I think the largest factor slowing you down would be getting through the vocab unlocked at the end of your previous level before getting radicals. You’d have a few days’ lag before starting the new radicals. Your kanji probably won’t be delayed, because the second batch will be bumped to the front of your lesson queue when they appear (and I’m guessing it’s about 30 kanji total per level?).
First think about how many days you want to spend in each level.
Then, think of a good way to spread the radicals and Kanji through that period. This is the only thing that dictates your leveling up.
Did you find a sustainable way to do it?
No: then go back and try to fix this by adding more time per level or a better spreading of lessons.
Yes: then let’s move on to the vocab.
Divide the average number of vocab in a level by the number of days you’ll spend in a single level.
Ex: Levels 10 to 20 seem to have around 120 words per level and you want to level up every 10 days. This means that 120 vocab/10 days = 12 vocabs per day.
Now, you can do the vocab in one go or you can spread it throughout the day. Let me know if you have problems with lesson timing.
It’s okay to use the reorder script. You should use it, but in a smart way to do better, not less.
I have also given up reordering and now doing 10 lessons per day. I think there are 177 items in level 12 so I am looking at 18 days for the level. If I ever have fewer than 40 lessons in my queue (4 days to guru multiplied by 10 lessons per day), I will reorder to get the next level radicals done sooner so I don’t run out of lessons. So far though, not necessary
I do 12 lessons a day - 3 kanji and 9 vocab. When I level up I also do all the radicals on that first day just to get them out of the way. This has me level up in 14-16 days.
If the Reorder script was creating bad habits, perhaps try this script. I built it specifically to allow you to take a mix of kanji and vocab each day.
If you want to have a strict control on how many days you need to level up each time, I would suggest separating the radicals/kanji lessons from the vocab ones. By including everything in the same batch as lessons, you’ll take more time to lvl up than you should.
Thanks everyone for your replies, that was very helpful!
I just don’t trust myself with it anymore. Every once in a while I have months where I get really busy because of projects at work or because I’m traveling and working at the same time and have hardly any free time left. And the temptation to just do radicals and kanji during those times is too big. Afterwards, I end up with 250 lessons and no end in sight.
Thanks! That might indeed be a good compromise. I’ll give it a try.
Perfect, that’s good to know. Around 14 days instead of 7 is my new goal and seems more manageable in the long run. I realized that I’ll have to slow down and focus more on grammar for a while. WaniKani can be so addictive and has a tendency to take over your life but I guess that is not news to anyone here.
Well, that’s not because of the script itself. You’re not allowing yourself to have a healthy schedule for WK What I would suggest is: stop leveling up for now and focus on finding a schedule for WK during your busy day. That’s your goal for this next week. After that, you’ll be able to return to the daily lessons way easier because now you have a schedule for it.
If you can’t put WK in a healthy schedule, you’ll have problems no matter what scripts you’re using. Also, going too slow can bring extra problems (like distinguishing similar kanji).
I’m a proud 14 day per level-er. I use the reorder script on occasion, but it’s mostly pointless because at ~10 lessons a day, rushing radicals and kanji will only get you behind in the vocab.
I end up with about 50-100 reviews per day and it’s very manageable. I’m ok with this because I’m also working on reading Yotsuba and visual novels and practicing grammar in the background.
I’m a strong proponent of not going too fast, because everything I do is to avoid burnout. I’ve attempted to learn japanese ~4 times before, and each time I burned out early. This time it’s sticking, and it’s because I’m taking a slow but steady pace.
I started using Reorder around Level 15, I think. There was no difference in level-up time since I used to do all of my lessons when they were available. Reorder actually just allowed me to spread out my kanji and vocab lessons over 3 and 4 days respectively so I didn’t have to do them all on level-up day and at the halfway point.
I agree absolutely: I have to find a schedule that works better for me. My first step was to not do any lessons at all and just do reviews over and over again to get my Apprentice queue back down to 100. And then, two days or so ago, I started to do some lessons again, without reordering, just very slowly starting to chip away at the mountain of vocabulary waiting for me. That was working fine because I can easily pace myself with the vocab items (harder and not as fun for me).
But just now while this thread has been going on I did install the WaniKani Lesson Filter script and the first thing I immediately did was to disable my Anti Burnout script so that I could to more lessons and did 20 kanji and 0 vocab lessons. sigh
I apparently can’t be trusted around these reorder scripts. It seems to me that I have to work my way through the vocab lessons of the last level first so that I can get to the kanji as a reward. Otherwise I might always end up going too fast and I keep neglecting other parts of my studies. I was just talking to someone who has been studying about as long as I have and is now done with Genki I & II and almost done with Tobira while I have been idling on Genki I, chapter 9 for a month now.
That was my main concern but I didn’t take the time yet and verify that gut feeling so thanks for letting me know.
Oh, 50-100 reviews per day sounds like heaven. If you can still level up every 14 days that way then that is what I will try to do.
I hadn’t even consider that you could also use the reorder scripts to reorder the other way around. That sounds like a very useful thing to do for a sane person who can pace themselves (which I’m apparently not).
Exactly. Like I said, the reorder script is very useful when used to your own good. With the WK system, you were obliged to do 20 Kanji and 0 vocab lessons, which doesn’t contribute at all to your studies in the short term The reorder script solves this.
No it is the other way around it: I was fine without scripts, WaniKani was giving me the vocabularies from level 11 and level 12 that I have been neglecting and that I still need to work through. As soon as I installed another reorder script, I (ab)used it to get ahead on kanji once again, ignoring my pile of vocabs from older levels. And if I kept using the script, I would keep doing this, then level up in maybe 8 days which is not enough time to finish all my vocab lessons and then end up with an even bigger pile of vocab. And then rinse and repeat…
My impression is that this will also depend on your goals: how fast do you want to go through WaniKani, how much time do you want to spend here per day and what are your main language goals. The reorder script is very useful for someone like you who is speeding through WaniKani and seems happy about it because I’m assuming it matches your goals (I think I remember reading somewhere that one of your goals was being able to write Japanese tweets for example) and you have enough time available to do your WaniKani studies and also study other resources properly.
I initially just wanted to be able to understand and talk to people while I’m in Japan (OK, and maybe read some street signs and food labels too, that would be nice, I admit it). I’m not into comics or fiction in general and am only forcing myself to read because everyone keeps saying how important it is. And somehow I ended up here, spending hours every day on a kanji learning site because it has been so successfully gamified that I can’t stop myself. Don’t get me wrong: I love WaniKani and am convinced of its usefulness, I just need to learn better how to pace myself and for me, not using reorder scripts seems to be a necessary step to do that.
I’m curious, you seem to find the vocab lessons more draining/harder than kanji lessons. For me it’s the other way around, as with the vocab I can guess most of the readings and meanings right off. So with vocab I tend to do huge batches at a time and let the SRS deal with exceptions and leeches.
Have you tried doing larger lesson batches, particularly for vocab? Part of your problem seems to be the amount of time it takes to get through them. Perhaps sacrificing some accuracy early-on would be a fair trade for getting through more of them?
Well, that’s my two cents. I suppose it all works differently for different people.
This is my system. I spend the bulk of my time on learning new kanji thoroughly. When I learn vocab, I learn a ton at once and then most stick and the few that don’t I learn within the next two days from SRS and focusing on the ones that give me trouble. Seems to work pretty well for me at least.
I’ve noticed that I’m not the only person who feels like that and I have been thinking about this for a while since I find that interesting. I only have a few thoughts so far:
I started from absolutely 0 in May and I’m neither living in Japan nor am I consuming a lot of content (I always try but it is still very slow and painful to get through) so I don’t have a broad vocabulary knowledge to draw from. I notice that every time I learn vocab for words that I already know, it is super easy and everything falls into place; with most of the vocab that I see here I don’t have that advantage yet and I have to try much harder. I’m assuming people with a better general knowledge of Japanese will find the vocabulary part easier for that reason.
Maybe it is because I’m a more visual person or something like that but a new radical or kanji is almost always easy: it has a distinct shape, it consists of a set of radicals and you just have to find a good mnemonic and you are done (at least up to level 13, I’m sure things will get more tricky later)
With vocabulary however, there seems to be so much ambiguity and randomness: 交わる vs 交じる vs 交ぜる and then all of a sudden 交番 is a police box? Or 年中, 〜年来, 年内, 近年, 年次… oh god. I keep reading that people find vocab easier than kanji but I just don’t get it. My only guess is that I don’t have enough exposure which is what I’m trying to fix by slowing down and focusing more on other areas.
Yes, I tried that last month and I thought it was a great idea and the SRS would just magically sort this out for me over time. The consequence was that I was drowning in reviews and my Apprentice queue was never shrinking because I kept getting those items that I hadn’t learned properly wrong again and again and again. I barely managed to get them to Guru only to get them wrong again shortly after. It seems to have gotten better now that I slowed down and started to work harder at those items.
I don’t know what it is. I’m hoping that this will get better when I have had more exposure to Japanese but I’m just guessing. Completely open to other suggestions though!
What I would suggest is: stop leveling up for now and focus on finding a schedule for WK during your busy day. That’s your goal for this next week. After that, you’ll be able to return to the daily lessons way easier because now you have a schedule for it.