Hi everyone, I wanted to share my experience of WaniKani 6 months after resetting. I put the post into the tips and tricks category because I have a lot of tips to share for newcomers and people struggling with motivation (which was the main reason why I abandoned Wanikani and reset to level 1 six months ago). Keep in mind though that of course different things work for different people, these are just tips that I have found to work well for me.
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Make WaniKani your home page. This is really easy to do and it will save you from forgetting about wanikani, and it will make it easier to do as you will have your lessons and reviews ready as soon as you open your browser.
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Set the WaniKani app to autoplay audio in lessons and reviews. To do this click on your circle on the top right (on wanikani.com, not community.wanikani.com), then click app. It will help improve your listening skills and will encourage you to repeat back the reading of the vocabulary.
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Donât complete all your lessons in one go This may sound like a strange and maybe even controversial tip but I honestly think I wouldnât still be doing WaniKani if I didnât keep my lesson learning at a minimum. Sometimes you may have the motivation and the drive to complete those 50 lessons in one go, but the problem with motivation is that itâs fleeting. Those 50 lessons are going to come back as reviews all at once, perhaps on top of even more reviews. Basically what Iâm trying to say is that it is much better to do a small batch of lessons consistently every day.
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Stack WaniKani on top of your current habits. From my experience the best way to make WaniKani a daily habit is to do it right after something you do every day. For example I complete my reviews and learn 5 lessons right after Breakfast. It helps if you can stack WaniKani on top of a habit you already do.
As you progress through WaniKani, you may want to find some resources to help you study what youâve learned in WaniKani. I find Quizlet for vocabulary and Kanji Study app for Kanji to be really useful.
Kanji Study is an absolute lifesaver, especially if youâre looking into writing the Kanji you are learning from WaniKani. From my experience itâs the perfect companion to WaniKani. I think it does require a 1-time purchase of about a few dollars but the benefits are well worth it in my opinion, as you get to practice writing with stroke detection and create customised quizzes. You can also try writing the kanji your learning from memory, which in my experience is a game-changer in terms of how easy they are to memorise. Here is the link to it, itâs a free to try out so have a look at it if youâre interested! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy&hl=en
Quizlet Can make memorising vocabulary really fun because you can play games using your own created flashcard set. For each set I make 2 cards, one for Japanese to English and one for Kanji to Kana (e.g. ç«ć±± â ăăă). Once youâve made your own set it gives you a lot of options to help you memorise your set.
The main feature of Quizlet are the games. Granted there are only 2 but theyâre both a lot of fun to play and actually quite addicting. âMatchâ is a game where you have to match the term to the definition from a scattered section of your flashcard set. You also have a game called âGravityâ where you protect planets from falling asteroids by typing in the correct answer in time, with each level having faster asteroids. You can even choose a difficulty.
I hope this post was useful for newcomers and if you have any advice or questions you want to share with me feel free!