Milking much?

I’m getting frustrated with this extremely slowness of this program. I just answered all radicals correctly and now I still have to wait 13 more hours. I started yesterday and I’m still waiting for more lessons. It seems to me that it’s designed to slow things down in order to milk money out of me. In other words, I’m not getting my money worth of this program if this keeps on moving so sluggishly. Yes, I understand the value of spaced repetition but this is a bit too extreme for my taste. Can I please move on to Kanji or vocabulary???

Just a heads up, the first two three levels are free so you didn’t need to buy a subscription just yet.

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The first 3 levels are free :slight_smile:

EDIT: And these levels feel somehow slower because the goal is for the users to get used to the system. After a month or so of continuous usage, you’ll have reviews available every waking hour.

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They are technically faster to combat this very complaint.

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Edited my post to be more precise with my words :stuck_out_tongue:

But also understand the issue particular to SRS where people don’t realize they’re shoveling an unsustainable workload on themselves. Every lesson you do now comes back to you 8 or more times over before it’s burned.

Your time is going to be well consumed by
[(lessons) + (apprentice reviews) + (guru reviews) + (master reviews) + (enlightened reviews) + (burn reviews) + (whatever non-wanikani study you do)].

Right now you only have the lessons and apprentice reviews. Make up for it with non-wk study, not by setting an unmanageable pace. The other parts of the balance will pick up shortly.

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I’m going to Japan in three weeks so this isn’t going fast enough for me.

Sorry to hear you’re frustrated right now! It’s not uncommon among people that are just starting out. For those that don’t drop out due to their frustration, they are unanimous that is picks up. Oh, it definitely picks up.


(This graph gets generated by a user script, if you’re curious.)

As you can see: I have 113 reviews tomorrow (230 in the next 2.5 days). Depending on how many lessons people do at once, they talk about 200-300+ reviews per day (trust me - you’ll be to a point in no time where you can do a 100 lessons in one go if you so choose).

The thing about the SRS intervals: it all snowballs. You have very little things learned now, so it’s slow-going. In the SRS intervals you have right now, there is nothing to do. But if you stick with it: those spaces of nothingness get filled up by past levels’ words, coming back for their SRS upgrades.

You don’t have to believe me, but there are dozens upon dozens of people here that can swear to you that you will have more to do. Soon. Just some perseverance right now. :muscle: In no time, you’ll be lamenting along with the rest of us the times where you had to wait 13 hours with nothing to do.

Hope you’ll stick around. Good luck!

Edit: ah, just saw that you were hoping for this to be something that can help you prepare in three weeks. No, I’m afraid the speed is set.

Perhaps Anki or Memrise can help you?

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If your plan is to learn as much as you can in 3 weeks to help you in japan, this probably isn’t the place for you.

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if you went more quickly in the lower levels eventually the lessons/reviews would pile up to a point it would take hours to get through in later levels so it seems slow at first but eventually builds up as you unlock more levels/content, if that makes sense? but if you only have a limited amount of time to learn vocab this probably isn’t the most effective way of doing that? maybe just memorise useful phrases/ vocab instead?

Everything you need to know to get through pretty much every social situation known to man:

どうぞ
どうも
すみません

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I recommend BunPro in the WK waiting times, which lets you go as fast as you want and is free for some amount of time (more than the 3 weeks before your trip)

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But 13 hours? C’mon! I’ve already mastered level 4 kanji and was hoping to build on top of my knowledge. It’s like having already earned bachelor Td degree and then being forced to go through first grade math would get me crazy. :slight_smile:

Yeah but I’m stuck with first set of radicals. Just when will I unlock more stuff to study?

Yeah well, since I have to wait 13 hours and by the time it’s ready, I had forgotten all about it and moved on to other shiny objects.

WK is based on a long term perspective. So if you are going to Japan soon, it’s not for you. Get any repetition system app that will throw random Kanji at you and you try to guess. Or you can use something like Duolingo or LingoDeer, they teach daily stuff and they display Kanji as well.

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Learn some set expressions, basic sentence structure and pronunciation. No one learns a language in 3 weeks. No, you’re not a hero. You won’t be different :v:

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oof chill, I dont think he is trying to learn the language in 3 weeks, just prepare himself as well as possible.

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As others have said, it’s not that WaniKani is slow, it’s that you just started an SRS system.

If you stick with it for a few months, you can pretty quickly find yourself at the point where it takes 1-2 hours a day to keep up with WaniKani. But it has to ramp up to that, otherwise it would become completely overwhelming.

But yeah, I would recommend focusing on something else right now. If you’re trying to cram for three weeks before a trip, you should instead look for lists of important kanji and phrases to know in Japan. Things that will help you in restaurants, stores, finding emergency exits, stuff like that.

If, when you get back, you’ve decided that you’re absolutely in love with Japan and want to take the time necessary to really learn the language, I’d suggest coming back to WaniKani then. It’s an effective and enjoyable way to learn kanji, and if you’re a real speed demon, you can learn about 2,000 kanji in around a year.

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Not trying to be an hero or anything. I studied three different languages in college and taught myself a couple or so more languages. I guess it’s my hobby. I’ve already started studying Japanese a while back. Currently, I’m using Human Japanese, Duolingo, Kanji!, etc. anyway, excuse my whining here, patience isn’t one of my virtues. :slight_smile:

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