My Wanikani experience 6 months after resetting - Useful tools and some advice

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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Don’t complete all your lessons in one go This may sound like a strange and maybe even controversial tip but I honestly think I wouldn’t still be doing WaniKani if I didn’t 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 it’s fleeting. Those 50 lessons are going to come back as reviews all at once, perhaps on top of even more reviews. Basically what I’m trying to say is that it is much better to do a small batch of lessons consistently every day.

  • 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 you’ve 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 you’re looking into writing the Kanji you are learning from WaniKani. From my experience it’s 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, it’s a free to try out so have a look at it if you’re 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. 火汱 → かざん). Once you’ve 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 they’re both a lot of fun to play and actually quite addicting. ‘Match’ 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 ‘Gravity’ 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! :heart:

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What level were you before you reset? How far along are you in Japanese in general? What was your reasoning for resetting, if it isn’t too personal?

I also reset about 4 months ago, from level 51. But I am pretty far along in my Japanese studies, (halfheartedly) trying to work towards N1 at the moment. This means all of this early stuff is pretty easy still. I am mainly trying to pace myself, just so I don’t get overwhelmed with the sheer volume of reviews, even if I skip a day.

I did this, too! Also put the Flaming Durtles app in the bottom app bar on my phone. I select it automatically, even if I know I won’t have reviews for hours :laughing:

I usually look at the projections for the day, before doing lessons. Also try to stay around 100 apprentice, except on level up, I guess. I like most of my apprentice items to be in appr. lvl. 4.

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I was about level 5 before I reset, but I was going a lot faster and that’s probably why I was emphasising not to do all your lessons in one go, because that’s what I was doing at the time anyway. Looking at projections is a great idea though, I find doing a small number of lessons a day a good rule of thumb for me at least.

In terms of progress in Japanese as a whole, i’d say it’s kind of mixed. I think I’m probably worst at speaking since I just repeat back audio snippets for my vocabulary readings on Wanikani (which I forgot to tell people to enable!), but that’s not really proper speaking practice. Listening I’m probably a bit better at because I’ve watched youtube videos about Japan and “What japanese people think of X” but it’s say it’s still not great.

I have started to look into grammar, now that I have enough vocabulary to construct simple sentences. There was a great website called lang-8 where I could construct sentences and get them reviewed by a native, but the site seems to be down at the moment and it has been for a while.

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Hi, any tips for better memorization?

If you’re struggling to memorise something I find that sticking the vocabulary or kanji on the back of my bedroom door can help a lot. Putting post-it notes on places that are easy to see each day can really help!

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