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

New person question!

What is a log? I’ve seen them here and there, and I love daily journals, I find them motivating. But some of the ones I’ve seen have graphs and things! So, what is a log? How do I keep one here? Do people like them?

Hey, welcome to Wanikani! Study logs seem to be posted in the Japanese language section of the forum. If you would like to keep a log, feel free to make one! It will give you a sense of accountability towards your study and you might have some mutually beneficial interactions with other forum members. There are no requirements for what needs to go in a log so just include whatever you feel comfortable with. As long as it complies with the WK forum TOS / basic internet etiquette, you should be good.

Your personal graphs / WK stats can be viewed via the “wkstats” website. You will need to generate an API token which can be accessed via the top right icon on your lesson / review page. Best of luck my dude.

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This might be a simple question but I couldn’t be sure and I couldn’t find it(Guidelines seems to doesn’t have how to do). So, if I were to create a study log and if I wanted to update the topic do I edit the topic or do I reply to the topic itself? Or another way what I’m asking if I want to update an information in a topic do I edit or do I reply?

I’ve noticed WaniKani stresses the importance of waiting between reviews to ensure your memorization is optimal. I’ve also noticed once you reach a certain level with specific kanji or vocab it immediately unlocks more for lessons. As a result I have multiple lessons and am wondering if It is recommended to do them at a certain rate or all at once.

Summarized: Should I space lessons like reviews?

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Some people do all their lessons at once, some spread them out. The main thing is that the more lessons you do, the greater your number of daily reviews will be - and it snowballs very quickly.
One of the most common techniques is to a) only do lessons if you have 0 reviews waiting; b) only do lessons if your number of daily reviews is manageable (this can be measured by the number of ‘apprentice’ items you have - the more apprentices, the more daily reviews).

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And another common rule of thunb in addition to the above is to aim to keep the number of items in Apprentice status below 100. i.e., if you’ve got 20 lessons waiting, and scroll down the homepage to see you already have 95 items under Apprentice, maybe do five new lessons and then stop until you’ve done some more reviews and moved some older items out of Apprentice into Guru.

Of course, adjust to fit your preferences as you learn more about the system.

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What kind of dark magic is this:

and how can I get a hold of it? Thank you.

WaniKani Heatmap userscript. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hello all, I’m very new. I know that I will get past this but I’m having issues so I’m going to ask here and then read the rest to see maybe if it’s been covered.

Basically, I keep missing review questions because my brain automatically types the katakana sometimes, for example. It’s not always that but essentially I replace words with the thing I already know them to mean, or like that example.

The only one I’ve had this issue with this time was the radical “fins” which I keep calling “ha” or “hat” (because for some reason my brain is mnemomnicniczizing the fins shape into ha katakana. The other times for example “ground” I keep typing “one” or “ni” somehow I got over this but I just keep doing it with “fins”.
I don’t really know how to ask the question but essentially like how do I avoid this in the future? I think maybe I’m missing a step between learning hiragana/katakana (i got this down 100% in like 2 days) to where I am now, which is that I’m having almost 0 problem with this because I /know/ what it is but I keep using the wrong “phrase” for the WaniKani system. I do realize this is my own fault but I’m worried that it will become a real issue in the future with something I have yet to learn perhaps. Obviously there’s no point in worrying about it right this minute but I figured maybe I’d see if anyone has had a similar experience or any pro tips. Thanks for reading, sorry for the book, lul.

edit: also I was curious, sometimes it says “did you know this has multiple meanings” like on “prison” but when I look at the pop up thing there’s only the one meaning? I’m clearly missing something but I don’t know what (i’m clicking the “info” button at the bottom (maybe it’s an eyeball?) it’s in the middle ish.

Welcome to the community :sunflower:

It is kind of multiple questions, I think … I’ll try to answer :slight_smile:

Retention: I would not worry to much at an early stage like this. You’ve just learned the kana if I understood correctly. So it kind of makes sense (to me) that your brain tries to apply what it has learned recently.

For the radicals you can go two ways: either give yourself a couple of days to distinguish radical “fin” and katakana “ha”. Or you can just add “ha” as a synonym. The “fin” meaning is just used for the mnemonics on WK. No further impact on language learning.

Each item has different, well, kind of “stages”: primary meaning, alternative meaning or allow-list-meaning. (The last one is not visible.) If an item has more than a primary meaning the message as quoted by you will pop up. Similar message pops up if an item has more than one reading.

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Welcome! You can add user synonyms by going to the item’s page - these are other answers that WaniKani will accept as correct.

(Technically, the “fins” radical is a katakana ハ. That said, “ni” for 一 would definitely be incorrect. :stuck_out_tongue: )

As for the “prison” issue, sometimes there are hidden synonyms. If memory serves, it also accepts “raptor cage”. Probably “enclosure”.

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For fins I meant that I say “ha” but I get what you mean. Thank you to both of you very much that totally solved my issue and actually gives me a much better way to do it (for me personally). I think somehow I missed that I could add synonyms which just totally solves all my problems! Lol. Thank you again, so much, you two and thank you to WaniKani in general this is a very amazing place I can’t wait to spend 8,000 hours roaming the halls. :smiley:

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Just to add a little bit to what @tls and @Belthazar have said already, the radicals will always be blue (kanji and vocabulary have different background colours) so you know it’s not a katakana, kanji, or vocab word and will always be the thing WaniKani told you :blush:

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How can I make the audio play automatically during a review? I heard this was a thing.

There’s a setting in settings->app->autoplay audio in reviews. I think that might be the one you’re looking for :grin:

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Ah there we go.
A hearty ありがとう

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Hey there! I’m new and just read through a lot of beginner posts, followed links, read the FAQ and welcome mails etc. So I just found www.wkstats.com and I’m a bit confused by the stats under Charts > JLPT. Since I’m not used to navigating forums I’d appreaciate if you guys could direct me somwhere with further explanations :slightly_smiling_face:

Can you clarify what exactly confuses you?

Essentially it’s a table showing what percentage of JLPT kanji you know at each level.

The thread for WKstats is here:

Some of that may be a bit out of date with the APIv2 changes.

The Charts->JLPT shows you how much of the JLPT kanji you’ll have covered at each level.

For more info on what exactly the JLPT is, go here:

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What confuses me is that the JLPT kanji level percentage does not change for each WNKN level reached after the one I’m at now.

Surely this can’t be right so I’m confused how to read it. :thinking:

Also for level 2 which I’m at does it show which percentage I’ve already reached or the one I’ll reach once I complete the level?

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