Back here a month later to give my one month update.
Definite success on building a schedule thanks to this guide. The #1 thing I got from this guide was the tip to not be on WK many times sporadically throughout the day. That really stuck with me because it fit the bill exactly on what I was doing - I was obsessively checking back to do any reviews, even if it was less than 10. Using the Lesson Filter script really helped with this. I generally aimed to do a level in 15 days (which seems to have panned out, I completed my second level just yesterday) and so divided the vocab and kanji I wanted to do in 10. However, I found that some days I was busier so I just did 5-15 vocab lessons.
On a completely different note, and maybe contrary to points raised in this guide, I was really curious about why so many people swear by RTK. Since Iāve been jumping into a lot more immersion material, I decided on giving myself a challenge. I wanted to learn the main WK meanings of all N5-N3 kanji by the time I make this post. I used the Self-Study Quiz script to accomplish this, starting with filtering by level and later by JLPT. I also used the WK mnemonics because they really do help, of course.
When I started, I was doing entire levels, but realized it would be better to only cover the JLPT levels in the end. Having a good regular WK schedule left me feeling like I could take on a lot more. So I learned all the kanji meanings for levels 12-26, and then only N3 kanji from levels 27-51.
My conclusion: It was definitely worth doing. I think the main thing I got out of it was being much more able to pick apart a kanji, whether Iād seen it before or not, and that includes being able to differentiate similar kanji better. I also think that, with the same kind of method, I can learn the kanji readings a lot faster than climbing levels. However, here are the short-comings of this shotgun kanji method. The first is that knowing kanji doesnāt necessarily mean knowing vocab - although I might see words in the wild, they donāt always match up with the kanji meanings. Also, only doing kanji means I missed out on plenty of vocab that Iāll be learning as I complete levels. A point to note is that my retention has been pretty good - I consistently get around 97% of the kanji meanings correct out of the 580 kanji meanings I learned, and I almost always learned more than just the primary meaning. I definitely plan to get through all the kanji this way but STILL complete WK normally to improve overall retention and to also learn the vocab, but I do think this hybrid method is well worth doing.
Anyway, apologies if the post is too long. Iād just like to thank you again for this amazing guide, and I really do refer back to it over and over again to refine and rethink what Iām doing!
Hello! I just found this post while looking for motivation and advice about how to dig out of a review backlog. I traveled to Japan for a 3-month language course, and couldnāt keep up my Wanikani schedule because of other study obligations. I did some prepābefore I left for Japan, I finished my current level (8) and did no lessons in level 9 to move as much from Apprentice to Guru as I could.
When I got home I started Wanikani again. I dedicated this week to get through my backlog of over 1000 reviews. As you probably know, It looked easier than it was because because my accuracy wasnāt perfect and a lot of items moved back into the apprentice queue, creating a snowball of reviews. Iām not that upset because itās a marathon, not a sprint, right? If I donāt know something, Iād rather take the time and learn it thoroughly.
Iām glad to report that Iām on track to get my reviews back down to 0 by the end of the week. My Apprentice queue is a little high for me at 115, but I think I am ready to do the radical lessons for Level 9 and then Iāll be back in a regular cadence.
From a first read of your post, the things that I found most useful were kaniwani (how did I miss this before???) the explanation of how to control your schedule and the hack to use vacation mode to get your reviews into a more comfortable local timezone. When I go back to Japan in the spring, I want to try it!
Iāll let your advice marinate and check in again in a month!
I have a question about leveling (almost) full speed. Lately Iāve been maintaining a pace of 8 days per level ca. which I find engaging but comfortable. I just do every lesson as soon as I can, I can manage a minimum of 85% accuracy on reviews and its amount is manageable till now, but today I woke up with pile of 140 reviews. Luckily itās my free day from work so I did it quickly in one and a half hour while sipping a cup of coffee, but I was wondering if the situation will degenerate in the future with reviews further piling up.
Any suggestions from speed levelers on what to expect with the levels progressing?
Ps. Iām going fast not because I give any fucks about the level, but only because Iām kanji starved
Itās going to get worse. The lower the percentage the more items start to pile up under apprentice and guru making the volume of reviews per/day increase. The pace usually starts to pick up and turn to the worse around level 20. And the higher the level the more complicated kanji will emerge with similar meanings making the reviews a bit more challenging.
This shouldnāt be a problem since my main goal is to just develop basic kanji knowledge as soon as I can, letās say that Iād like to get to level 20 before slowing down. Reading has become a lot easier just going from lv 7 to 9 and the majority of kanji I keep encountering are lev 10-18 soā¦
What is the most reviews in a day you happened to do while going fast?
wellā¦ that depends on your accuracy and the number of you apprentice items, some people had around 300-400 reviews/day on the higher levels (35 and beyondā¦)
no problem. I understand your point of view, itās similar to mine in a way. My plan is to slow down around level 30 and catch up with the pile before I speed up again until level 40. Letās see how itāll go
Nice, I didnāt think of that, you mean stopping with new lessons, taking time to diminish the apprentice and guru pile, and when the daily reviews are not too much, speed it back?
Not really many atm, I think some times 20-40, and other days 50-70, and this is even easy to manageā¦ today was an exception and I woke up with a pile of 140 elements without counting the ones Iāll do throughout the day.
What is a reorder script? I do everything by iphone with the app Tsurukame which is awesome, and I have some filters that show me the elements in the lessons in this order:
-radicals ā kanji ā vocabs (prioritize current level)
Indeed it is! And yes, Tsurukame has reordering capabilities which makes it really easy to spread your lessons out through the week while still maintaining a fast pace. Once I started using it, my WK reviews became much more manageable.
So instead of doing every lesson at once, you could try this. Every day youāre going to do a total of only 20 lessons.
At the beginning of each level for the first 4 or 5 days, your lessons will be like this:
10 radicals/kanji
10 vocab (just move āvocabā above āradicalā for lesson priorityā-remember to move it back!)
Then once there are no more kanji in your queue, youāll just do 20 vocab each day until you level up.
Awesome, gonna give it a try with the only exception that I will slightly increase the kanji number since radicals are incredibly easy for me to remember and reviewing them takes almost no time. The ones that feel more engaging when going though reviews are vocabs for sure
Makes sense, thanks!
This isnāt precisely true. The kanji on later levels arenāt any more complicated or difficult to memorize than those on lower levels, but the nature of any language is that there are many ways to express the same ideas.
Higher levels are harder, but not that much harder, and mostly for three reasons:
The cumulative total of items under active review has increased. (But this effect is mitigated by burning items.)
You start to encounter more synonyms, as you say. (But this still doesnāt seem much harder: I only just realized that Iād learned two ways to read āuncleā: åē¶ and ä¼Æē¶, for example.)
You run into many visually similar characters, forcing you to pay more attention to radicals, tiny differences in stroke lengths, and other little differences. (Iām looking at you 鳄 vs. ē and ę« vs. 夫.)
I found the third reason to cause the most difficulty.
Thatās very hard to sustain. I averaged around 140/day, but took three years.
Better, imo, to slow down but still finish than to try and fail due to an unsustainable workload.
Your daily review pile is mostly a function of the distribution of items across SRS stages. Items in stages 1 and 2 are guaranteed to show up today and tomorrow. Items in stage 8 have roughly a 1/120 probability of appearing on any given day.
Thatās where the common rule of thumb of āno more than 100 apprentice itemsā comes from. Maintain that and you should never have hundreds of reviews on any given day. (Assuming you do all your reviews every day.)
Personally, I preferred āapprentice + guru/10 <= 150ā as the rule of thumb.
Thanks for the extra informations, very useful! In fact at this point already the small differences between similar kanji is what freaks me out the most, there is a handful of kanji which I keep confusing again and again
All considered, I find focusing on the single parameter of apprentice + guru items the easiest way to manage the situation.
Anyway, since what I really want is to know a bit more useful kanji asap, I will progress as fas as I can till level 15 and apply brakes later
(Iāve been slacking recently so have a large number of outstanding reviews atm).
Configuring it to look out 120 days like this by SRS stage is helpful. I can see at a glance that my enlightened item reviews are nicely randomized (with one spike of 45 reviews on 4/25). Since I only have 2 reviews scheduled on 4/24, I suspect itās because I skipped a day just before Christmas, then did a whole bunch of reviews in one swell foop.
