I have been learning Japanese for 3 years give an take, starting with DuoLingo, then an intermission and for the last two years with WaniKani and LingoDeer. started the LingoDeer tree 3 times and WaniKani twice (after getting to level 9) due to forced intermissions of several month due to life circumstances.
I have been lurking around 88% success on level 10, traveled to Japan for a month in vacation mode in WaniKani. When I got back, I stumbled back to 70-75% success and can’t feel to go beyond that.
I used to do 50 reviews per day but now can’t manage to do more than 30 each day and having those 250 review debt is also discouraging.
I am 57 years old, have a business and family and learning Japanese is kind of a hobby (part of my love to Japanese culture) and way to keep the gray matter sharp. since I cam back, WaniKani became a very frustrating experience for me with all the mistakes I do.
so, I ask myslef:
Maybe Japanese is not for me ? maybe at my age and stage in life I cant invest the needed resources to learn it ? I believe in Kaizen (small & repeated changes) but maybe this is not applicable to learning Japanese.
Maybe I am doing it wrong ? maybe my Japanese learning is inefficient ? I doubt I’ll be able to commit myself to learning in a class or learn by books.
I hate to quit on projects but I start to feel that the learning has transformed from fun to suffering.
I’ll thank the community for any insights or suggestions.
I might reframe this as maybe wanikani is not for me, instead of Japanese. I experienced a pretty serious wanikani frustration myself: it felt like my accuracy was bad, I was frustrated by leeches, and then even for the words I did remember, I couldn’t actually use them correctly in context. I regained my love of Japanese by completely stopping wanikani, and I read manga and watched TV instead, and I looked up words when I felt like it, especially when I knew I had seen the word before, and just couldn’t remember it.
You say Japanese is a hobby because you love Japanese culture- what do you love about it? What if you focused on that as a hobby, in Japanese? There will still always be frustration, but the frustration is so much easier to overcome when you encounter it while doing something you already love or want to be doing. Flashcards are just a grind, they will never not be a grind, so if they are your main focus, it’ll just feel like a neverending chore. So my advice is decenter them, and focus on something fun.
I absolutely agree with Jules that it’s more likely that Wanikani (and perhaps Lingodeer) are just not for you anymore. Given that you like Japanese culture, I have 2 recommendations.
Wagotabi
This game is currently on sale and the idea is that you learn Japanese through exploring. The way I think of it is as a puzzle game where all the puzzles are essentially understanding Japanese. Additionally, the game works with local governments to showcase less popular prefectures, such as Kagawa and Tottori.
Renshuu’s Discord
Renshuu is another website where people learn Japanese. The Discord also has many community events and discussions. I think that the culture channel might interest you plus, if the timing is good, the community YouTube events are probably up your alley. As a group everyone watches YouTube videos together. Most of these videos have to do with Japanese culture. The events are typically beginner friendly as well, so I don’t think you’d have to worry about them being too hard.
I also stopped using Wanikani. I was barely able to finish Level 9.
Do you learn Grammar? Textbooks, Bunpro, etc?
I don’t know lingodeer. What exactly are you learning with it?
If you only do Kanji and Vocabulary flashcards since 3 years I’m not surprised that you get tired of it. Do something else. Change your learning material. And If you get tired again, change your learning material again. I did that a lot in Just 17 month.
I think everybody gets discouraged by failing SRS for the same words/kanji over and over again. I certainly have periods of <75% accuracy. For me it helped to be more picky about the words I’m actually interested in vs the ones I kept in SRS out of pure stubbornness.
The first step forward is a step back, removing words you are the least interested in from SRS until you can power through the remaining review backlog down to 0.
You know best which area of vocabulary you find interesting, but I think it’s helpful to first focus on a small subset that can get to reading and listening to small stories/news on your favorite topics.
WK is more rigid than any other tool in insisting you go through kanji in a predefined order. Especially if your daily available time is on the low side, I’d consider looking for more flexible tools where you can pick and choose what to SRS.
Lingodeer-like apps are in my opinion pretty good in the beginning, so you can build to a couple thousand vocab with furigana enabled and not be blocked by the mountain of kanji quite so much. They allow to a least choose topics, although not specific words.
In summary: remove leeches from SRS, focus on vocab in your preferred topics.
Firstly, I wouldn’t try and learn efficiently unless you have a reason to. I.e. you have a deadline. Efficient learning is extremely hard work and unless you enjoy the process itself is likely to become too much of a chore.
The easiest way to learn as a hobby is to learn via things you like doing anyway. Like watching TV or films? Watch Japanese TV & films. Like reading, read Japanese books. Outgoing and talkative? Talk to Japanese people. Spend a lot of time driving or just by yourself? Listen to podcasts or do an audio only course. Cooking? Japanese YouTube ha a ton. Culture, English YouTube has loads of for-learners cultural content.
When you are doing things you enjoy in Japanese you can use them as jumping off points for more focused learning: use https://migaku.com/ to add words from your TV show to an SRS, or use something like https://jpdb.io/ to revise the most common words in a book as you read it. Many iTalki teachers will work from a textbook, which allows you to go back over the lesson.
If those leeches get in your way then you need to find a way to clear them. Write them in any sentence best you can, write them down on paper over and over, have the AIs describe them to you and then quiz you on them. They are something you both need to clear, and also something you shouldn’t worry too much about because sometimes things just don’t want to stick and nobody really knows for sure why and eventually they will clear.
As for motivations of others getting stuck at low levels, they need to look deeper within and examine why they want to learn Kanji. It is not easy, but it is very rewarding.
Also, we all have a bad patch sometimes where the performance drops a bit. I had one last year where I was in the 70s and even 60s and it was looking horrendous. I was even like “maybe this isn’t for me”, but I looked for a solution and that solution was intelligently using self study quiz. Focusing on apprentice 1 and apprentice 2. If you are looking at your correct reviews percentages, I would set it to measure over 7 days. We all have bad days so measuring off the day itself isn’t accurate.
Finally, you could stop the avalanche of cards and stop doing lessons and focus on clearing your reviews and being patient with yourself. It will take a while but just do them in bites of 50. Maybe 25. When I have 300 because I was late to my reviews I have to do them in bites of 50 because the 300 is too hard for me unless im especially inspired.
Yes, I think it is actually possible that there may be other ways to use your limited free time that would do more to enhance your life than studying Japanese. That said, it depends on why you are studying Japanese. I love Japan. My main goal is to increase my comprehension of spoken Japanese to make my trips there more fun. I go there a lot. For me italki has been the most time effective way to do that. A few half hour sessions every week have been much more effective, by far, than anything else I have done until the recent month I spent at a language school in Japan. I am older than you and I look at time in terms of hours in a day/week, but also years going forward. Your time is very valuable. I have decided to continue wanikani very slowly 1 to 5 lessons a day. It helps me learn and retain new words which furthers my goal of increasing my comprehension. Only you know the answer to this question.
Thank you all for very insight full answers. As I have waniKani lifetime subscriptions (I new it will take time..) I am a bit hesitant to change platform even though focusing on a more personally relevant subset seems like a good idea. Maybe future functionality of WaniKani will support that. I have been watching NHK in English for a long time and maybe this is a good advice to switch to Japanese for better immersion.
Lingodeer teaches you Grammar and also vocabulary. You see the Kanji but this is not the focus. refreshing the method I use is a good idea and may rejuvenate interest. Thanks.
So I think the first thing is to assess a little more deeply why you want to learn the language - or at least see if you can make it a little more concrete. A love of the culture and mental sharpness are good reasons, of course - they’re yours! - but if there’s something that’s deeply personal and tangible, that can help provide the motivation when challenges arise.
In terms of the mistakes, I’ve always looked at them as those words/kanji letting me know that I need to spend more time with them, and that mistakes are simply reinforcing the learning. It can be frustrating to see the same words over and over - and especially when you get them finally up to enlightened and then they end up falling back down into the apprentice levels after several failed reviews. But learning is messy for almost everyone as it is, and working around the constraints of life complicates things.
One thing I might suggest if you haven’t already is consider adding some userscripts that allow you to redo mistakes - especially if you frequently put in the wrong answer initially but as soon as you see that it’s wrong you know what it should have been, or if something gets lost in translation between your brain and your fingers.
But really, the only judge of if it’s for you or not is you, and it’s not necessarily whether it’s easy or not that should decide that. If you feel the progress you make isn’t worth the effort and it’s not important enough to you at this point in your life to continue, then it truly is not right for you now. If it’s hard but you feel like it’s important enough to learn it even if it’s “slow” then it is right for you. Either way, the community is here to support you in any way we can, and wish you the best of luck whatever you decide!
I cheat on leeches. Because I feel that I am etching in the wrong answer more than anything else if I trudge on. Cheating gives me the correct answer, reinforcing that instead, and I get to move on. If I end up not learning it because of this I will find out later and go back and study more. So that works for me.
I’ve started cheating a bit over the last year or so. I came to the realization (pretty late) that some words that wanikani was adding are just useless. Why I am getting worked up by getting “liberal democratic party” wrong… it’s not a useful word for me. Sure it’s nice for the kanji readings, but not great overall.
I’d suggest you asses some of the words coming up and if they add any value to you and if not, just cheat to get them out of the way. If you feel the amount of reviews is too much just don’t add anything until it drops to a comfortable level. If possible add a tutor lesson per week. Actually speaking the language is a huge motivator!
The LDP has been the governing party in the Diet of Japan almost continuously since 1955, aside from two three-year terms, so if you’re ever in a position where you’d need to pay even the tiniest bit of attention to Japanese politics… I can see the relevance.
Edit: And in yesterday’s general elections, the LDP won in a landslide victory, giving the party a two-thirds supermajority in their own right, essentially giving Takaichi carte blanche to do what she wants, even change the constitution.
I think it’s best to be realistic about learning Japanese. This is a famously difficult language to learn and with good reason. It genuinely is an enormous challenge which requires a huge amount of commitment to reach even the sort of level where you can make some small talk.
Wanikani is just one small part of learning Japanese. It will teach you a good selection of everyday kanji, although you will encounter many more should you try to engage with Japanese written media. It will teach you some basic vocabulary too, but you will need, many, many, MANY more words in your brain if you want to read a book in Japanese or even read a Japanese website.
But as difficult as it is, over time you will start to understand more. Bit by bit. I have a very long way to go. Now I watch anime with Japanese subs and I pause often to look up words. I read manga and pause often to look up kanji. And I’m even playing some JRPGs in Japanese, but the language used in those is really not easy at all. It’s a slow, slow process.
What has worked for me so far in terms of balancing effectiveness and enjoyment has been Genki 1 + 2 (textbooks), daily listening to Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners podcasts (while walking or driving or doing housework/gardening), WaniKani, one lesson of Duolingo just to keep the streak alive, and reading using the Miraa app (AI translation of Japanese language podcasts / videos to written Japanese with furigana and English translations). I listen to podcasts using Podbean, where I can slow down the speed to 90% or 80% if needed. Maybe one of those might complement your arsenal?
I gave up on WaniKani once before, it didn’t make any sense to me at first - tried Remembering the Kanji (book), but that was a complete waste of time to me, since you only learn the meaning and not the readings (pronunciation), and then came back to WaniKani and it finally made sense.
I’m 62, I restarted Japanese after I retired - “we do things these not because they are easy, but because they are hard”.
Like you, I am an older learner (62, started 2 years ago) doing a mix of Wanikani and one-on-one lessons. It is hard, all of it, and my progress is slow and often dispiriting. I’m always (unhelpfully) comparing myself to younger people who don’t seem to struggle at all Hearing, especially is difficult; my brain just doesn’t seem to distinguish Japanese sounds and needs a lot of patience. However, I keep going by reminding myself I always know more than when I started.
Framing one’s motivation is important: is it a brain workout? a desire to converse? to watch films?? For me, it’s a mix of these, and also, I’m quite hooked on the unexpected joy when I triumph. I also have a role model: a 84 yo woman I met in Kyoto, who is valiantly learning English purely for the challenge and joy of learning something difficult. She helped me understand it’s the process of learning that matters, not the end result. So inspiring!
Might it be helpful to view Wanikani as a tool, rather than a specific goal; it gives vocabulary, reading practice and pronounciation. Does it really matter if it takes forever to get there? that we don’t retain everything we encounter, and that we have certain word blocks? Having lessons (using the Mina nohongo books) in combination with Wanikana works well for me, as there is a lot of overlap, and therefore reinforcement. A friend also, kindly, pointed out to me we learn by making mistakes (watch a child learn language!!)
There isn’t no one way to do this, but I hope you find a way that makes you happy.
Have you tried using the smoldering durtles app with wanikani instead of wanikani directly? It has some quality of life issues including undo, batches, etc and I likely would have given up with some of the frustrations if it wasn’t there to let me be more flexible in my learning.
One thing to consider is that learning Japanese is a huge time commitment. Learning little bits at a time probably won’t get you there in the time frame you’re expecting. You may want to consider learning Japanese a job instead of a hobby.
And of course, if one learning tool doesn’t seem to be working, try others. Due to your age (I don’t mean this in a bad way) you may wish to try to learn Japanese from textbooks. Think back to how you learned to learn in school and try to replicate that at home today.
