I had my first large review today which was 34. I was a bit concerned before going in, but I was very interested in how affective my learning so far has been. I was super surprised! I only made 3 errors and the rest I got correct. In-fact the 3 errors, I sat and pondered a while about the answers where the other 31 I didn’t even have to think that long about it, I knew the answer in seconds. After getting one of the three wrong, I realised my error. For the vocabulary reading for Eight Things, はち is Eight but やっつ is Eight Things. I forgot the mnemonic of, you have eight yat-tsu. I never felt like I didn’t know that, but it was also a reminder that I have to remember the difference between them and I still have a bit of confusion when identifying the vocabulary. I feel like I’ve never had that kind of feedback even while learning my native language of English.
“So SRS worked? What a surprise!”
I’ve never learned using SRS. I learned Hiragana and Katakana by just drilling it every single day. I’d take what I learned for the day, drill them until I got them all correct 5 times in a row. Then add everything I have learned and drilled it until I felt comfortable. At no point have I done the same with WaniKani and so I’m very pleasantly surprised on how affective it really was. You all told me to trust the system, and I’m so glad I did.
I’m sure a number of you are sitting thinking, “Hahaha… those are some rookie numbers.” I agree! And yet my confidence isn’t shattered at all by the idea that someday I may have 10x the amount of reviews. I’m actually excited to see how I will go.
All in all I think this has only strengthen my desire to continue learning Japanese. I’m so thankful I came across Tofugu’s guide. It’s hard to know if I would have had the same results using other websites and guides, but after reading almost every tutorial guide on Tofugu’s and listening to their podcasts, I’m glad that this has worked so well and the accumulated knowledge by the staff shows real passion, competence, and a desire to provide a real way of learning not just a bunch of guru fluff.
Know that learning Japanese isn’t a race.
Ignore Wanikani’s level system and go at your own pace.
If you rush through it now you will only have reviews piling up and get a learning burnout.
After a while, Guru, Master & Enlightened stuff will come back in your review pile and it will drastically add to those numbers.
If I can give you any advice, then it’s to lower your lessons. or have days where you only do reviews on a day.
He is giving some solid advice, you might reach a point when you"ll have too many reviews per day, while still have lessons on the pile. It is a smart strategy to slow down your lessons and waiting a bit for your reviews to progress a bit so that they calm down, before digging through more lessons.
The most important thing is to keep your review pile reaching 0 every day. Having lessons at 0 is not as important but will dictate your speed and how much you have to review per day.
Ohh, yes this is how I read it but my confusion was more why I was receiving the advice. My post is more a post-mortem or maybe you could say a coming of age story.
After reading this article posted which I read on day 2 of my WaniKani journey I’d say I was pretty much setup for everything I could need to know as a beginner. This is such an incredible post that goes into so much depth.
I was more expressing gratitude to those who have freely given their experience on these forums. That why I was confused why I was getting feedback on the system despite saying;
I was a bit concerned before going in, but I was very interested in how affective my learning so far has been. I was super surprised!
I’m sure a number of you are sitting thinking, “Hahaha… those are some rookie numbers.” I agree! And yet my confidence isn’t shattered at all by the idea that someday I may have 10x the amount of reviews. I’m actually excited to see how I will go.
I’ve read my post a few times and I was hoping it came across more of a sign of comprehension not of naivety. I started WaniKani doing 15 lessons in 2, 10 and 5 lesson blocks. I reduced that to 10 Lessons in 2, 5 lesson blocks and I separate these lessons by an hour. This gives me enough time to concentrate on learning more content while not moving past the average 7 limit of total number of things that the mind can handle at once - I’m only learning 5 at a time and I’ve found that very comfortable.
I certainly agree about the lesson and review balance. I had this conversation in another post;
I discussed the fear I was having and got a huge amount of great feedback which was super helpful.
Thank you both for reiterating though! It’s always important to be reminded of these things during the journey.