New People Questions! ~~~<3 [Lost?! Confused?! We're here to help!]

This ended up way too long, but you asked for it!

I’ve been interested in the Japanese language for at least 20 years now. When I ended up studying it every day, it turned out to be a passion that I don’t want to be without. Having seen the positive results of consistent and daily study, it’s much easier to find the drive to keep it up.

I mostly want to be able to read and watch native content. :books:

At this point I can enjoy things like watching JP Let’s Play videos, and re-watching JP shows with JP subs. I can enjoy myself reading random manga, and played through two Ace Attorney games. My comprehension is very far from perfect, but I can follow along well enough to have a good time.

For me personally, comitting to a year sub on WK was the moment I started studying Japanese every day. Rather than my previous attempts at Japanese self-study (disastrous and laughably brief) WK gave me a clear goal. Do reviews. Do lessons.

Thanks to already having a WK study routine, I managed to include grammar, reading, and listening practice over time.

WK also has a huge amount of useful vocab, even though it is a kanji website first and foremost. Yes, outside vocab work is definitely necessary to be able to read comfortably, but even with just WK, something like the Ace Attorney games already became doable, when I got my grammar up to snuff.

Around higher N4 and solid N3 level is when I noticed a huge leap in my general comprehension, espcially since my slow grammar start meant I had already progressed through most of WK. With my grammar woes, I got to that point now-ish - about 18/19 months after I started studying every day.

I tried a lot of different grammar resources, but the combination that worked for me was the youtube channel KawaJappa CureDolly and then the grammar SRS website BunPro.

Everyone is different, of course, with different circumstances, but some things that worked for me:

  • I tried to remind myself often that this wouldn’t always be fun. Consistency was and is very important for me in order to make good progress. I repeated to myself that there would be times that reviews would be that last thing I’d want to do. But a habit is hard to build and easy to erase, so I try to stay consistent. I often actively learn on the weekdays, and just do review maintenance on weekends, but I always do something. In the past, one day of telling myself it was okay to do nothing turned into… well, we don’t need specifics. :eyes: Many. Months or years.

  • Be wary of burn out. I added and dropped additions to my study routine numerous times because my chosen load meant studying felt like pulling teeth. Several weeks of trying for force myself onward through that feeling would make me want to throw in the towel. Slowing down might not feel good sometimes, but if you end up turning your back on studying for days / weeks / months, you know you definitely won’t be making progress. I chose to gamble on consitency.

  • If you use PC: Semantic Phonetic Composition Script and Ultimate Timeline are your friends. ^^

You’re the best judge of that, of course! With the SRS stages, the more items you have in Apprentice and Guru, the more reviews you have. A common piece of advice given, and something that helped me, is to keep your Apprentice items around 100. This can keep your review numbers in check a bit more. Feels like too much? Less Apprentice items, then. Feel like you can handle more? More Apprentice items.

Nothing wrong with that! You can stop doing lessons for a while and just review what you have in the hopper right now if you think it’s still too tenuous.

Thank you, and you too! Hope to keep seeing you around the Community.

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Thanks for this! I got caught up with school and finally had the time to continue this. I’m now almost at level 2 :smile:

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Thanks for your help! I read the resources and am slowly progressing now :smile:

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Goodness gracious, this was completely the best response I’ve gotten on the internet in a long time! Thank you so much for your time and effort in writing such an extensive reply- it really helps me out more than you know!

How would one measure their approximate JLPT level? You said you’re around N3- how did you know when you were at that point?

Just out of curiosity (promise this is the last question) do you have much experience with speaking Japanese with other people- and do you feel that WaniKani helps you to do so?

When I made that first post, it was after getting a huge wave of new material that I wasn’t even sure how to go about learning. I’m roughly 50 items into level 2 now and I’m really noticing that I actually was learning, even when it didn’t feel like it.

Your post definitely helped with both my motivation and my strategies, so really, thank you so much! I’d add more if I had more to say, but I don’t really, at the moment Thank you so much again, and I’m certain you will see me around! Hope to see you again as well!

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Yo, not sure if this question fits here but it really doesn’t deserve its own thread.

Is there a script like [Userscript] WaniKani Lesson Hover Details but for reviews? A script that tells you how many items of each type you have left over while you’re reviewing.

Thank you.

There is this one, it only shows the amounts during reviews though. Though you said while reviewing so I thought it might be what you’re looking for

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nice, nice, nice, very nice

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Is there a way to separate Radicals/Kanji/Vocabulary into three parts while reviewing? :))

You can do that with the reorder script.

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much love for this speedy reply <3

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You’re welcome! ^^

BunPro’s standard lesson order goes by JLPT level, so it’s mostly based on how far I’ve progressed through that.

I actually do not because I always find an excuse to avoid speaking to people I’m too busy. :eyes: That sounds like a pretty good excuse. I’ll go with that.

While I really wish it wasn’t the case, passive recognition and active recall are pretty different things. I cannot easily produce what I can read without difficulty.

KameSame and KaniWani (both free, user-created additions) are “reverse WK.” So you get an English prompt and you must answer with the Japanese equivalent.

The vocab SRS app Torii (PC and Android) also gives you the option of learning items both ways, to practice recognition and recall. Since it was created by a WK member, it also has a WK mode, which goes over the core 10K (10K most frequently used Japanese words) while excluding WK items, so you’re not doubling up.

For more direct application of the language to train your production, you can check out something like LangCorrect. It’s a pretty new website meant for people writing small entries in the language they are studying, to then be corrected by natives of that language.

There is also italki - a site where you can look for native Japanese tutors or teachers. I hear it can be quite affordable. ^^

And I’m sure there are some resources I’m forgetting right now. You can always glance around this thread:

The power of the crabigator! :crabigator: Great to hear!

I hope things keep going well for you, and best of luck! 頑張ろう!:muscle:

Hello, I’m lv3 and I have questions.
I’ve already learnt the meaning of the 2200 jouyou kanji in 3 months with the quite popular anki method presented on a “mean fish” japanese blog, but I’ve lost a lot of it and I never learnt the readings in the first place. This is why I’m considering getting lifetime WaniKani, the tool is excellent and will force me to learn readings in a funny way, and I know that kanji SRS is the best way for me to achieve kanji knowledge.

However!

Since lifetime, even with x-mas discount, is quite pricey (roughly 22 months worth of content that I’ve read is achieveable in one year average), I’m wondering what else is in the box for people buying lifetime. As far as I can see there is no official app and no other goodies that I’ve been told about. Tofugu promises “and all future content and features of wanikani”, but what’s in the pipe ?

Sometimes they add new kanji and vocab. They might add more levels in the future, it’s been done before. If/when an app is released, you’ll get it. AFAIK they wanted to release a iOS app soon, but I’m not sure what stage that project is in. Basically lifetime gives you everything you already have, but forever ¯\(ツ)

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Not sure if I overlooked the answer to this somewhere, but is there a way to do more than 10 lessons at a time on the site? I see that it seems to go up to 100 on the Flaming Durtles app, so I’m not sure if that’s just a part of the app or if it’s from an existing userscript.

Lesson batch size setting at: WaniKani — Log in

This is the official setting. It does indeed seem to not go further than 10. Think I’ll stick to the Flaming Durtles app myself.

Nothing’s stopping you from doing multiple batches though. My size is still at 5, and i do 5 batches for 25 lessons every day.

If I had to do lessons on my PC I’d indeed do about 2 batches of 10.

This script allows you to set larger batch sizes, among other things. :slight_smile:

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Yeah, I saw that and have it set to the max.

If @jneapan is like me, maybe they want to do one big batch of X lessons instead of in smaller batches :man_shrugging:

Thanks! I’ll check this one out when I have lessons again.

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Hey, I’ve been wondering, how many lessons/day do you guys think is enough? I’ve been doing around 15-20 lessons a day (and can remember them decently), but I’m not sure what others do. What do you guys think?