When I first joined WaniKani a little over a month ago, I was a bit confused by the gauge telling me I was “outside the learning zone” even though I was averaging 97-100% correct. So I read the FAQ article about it, which explained the guidelines and reassured me that this was typical for new users with not as many reviews, and it would most likely level out as I progressed. However, about a month later, I’m on level 4, and I’m still above the learning zone.
Is this typical? Or is it just my perfectionist tendencies? I eventually removed that widget when it became a bit frustrating, but I’m still curious. The FAQ article explained that the 95% upper guideline was to make sure that you were challenging yourself enough, but I’ve been doing all my lessons and reviews whenever I get them. Maybe I’m just at too low of a level to see the challenge increase. Is there anyone else who doesn’t find this a very helpful metric? Or if you do really like this widget, why? I’d love to hear other users’ perspectives.
I’m level 16 and the learning zone gauge is still mad at me despite having 120 reviews on average a day, because I’m consistently at or over 98%.
I don’t really pay too much attention to it. I expect my accuracy to drop once I’m expected to start burning kanji from level 10 upwards.
It’s just a silly indicator and I don’t understand why it’s still here after all that time. It’s been discussed a bunch of times already but Wanikani simply doesn’t give you the tools to adjust this (changing SRS intervals for instance, or marking easy stuff as known and immediately moving own to trickier content) so it’s absolutely pointless and just generates confusion.
I think the idea behind it is good. But it becomes pointless when it’s not actionable on WK itself. What are you supposed to do more to challenge yourself if you’ve already done all the lessons and reviews?
Just ignore it in that case.
You are level 4 so there’s not a lot of vocab or complex kanji yet. I don’t think that widget is very useful for you at this moment, but as others have said, if you are at 100% at level 20 then you are likely not challenging yourself enough because I promise it will get harder.
for me, when my accuracy is in the “learning zone”, my subjective experience is often kinda one of anxiety? like “shoot, i’m getting so many wrong” type of thing? and looking at the lil widget being happy with me is cheesy but is a little helpful for reassuring me that it’s fine, mistakes are part of learning.
I agree with others its not useful at level 4. You’re doing every lesson and review you can so there is no way to challenge yourself more by increasing workload. At higher levels it can serve a purpose in letting you know your percentage is too low, so I like it for that reason. I have it set to track the last 7 days and I keep an eye on it to make sure I’m not missing too many reviews. But as for it telling you you’re above the learning zone? I don’t really see the value in that honestly. Because the amount of lessons or review sessions you do a day is really just up to how much time you have for it. If you’re doing all of the lessons and reviews that you want to, and you’re still at a high % correct, then that’s perfect. It wouldn’t make sense to me to increase the workload just because the percentage is too high, you should only do that if you have the time for it. So IMO, it is valuable in letting you know your % is too low, but “too high” doesn’t matter.
Just to add to what others have said, “The Learning Zone” is there to help you find that balance between challenge and success, but there will always be situations where it doesn’t apply. I’m sorry to hear this led to you removing it!
In general, I think the metric is more useful the more data you have to draw from. It can give interesting insights when looking at your study habits over a month or more, but it’s also not necessarily a bad thing to get over 95% on any given review session (in my opinion).
Maybe WK expects us to deliberately give wrong answers to lower the accuracy