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Here goes my question. I’ve studied kanji with Wanikani since mid-August. Initially, my goal was to finish the first 30 levels within a year.

If I study between 5-10 items per day and try to do the reviews once a day (twice a day isn’t always possible, due to lack of time), do you think I will be able to reach my goal? Will I get even close?

Edit with another question: how much should I study if I wanted to reach level 30 no matter what…

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same question here hehe. Also started in August. 5-15 items per day, two 50-70 item review blocks a day.

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With one review session a day? I don’t think it can be done.

If we keep the maths to just the kanji (and I personally see no merrit whatsoever in skipping vocab unless you are actively learning vocab outside of WK):

Apprentice 1 → 4 hours → Apprentice 2
Apprentice 2 → 8 hours → Apprentice 3
Apprentice 3 → 1 day → Apprentice 4
Apprentice 4 → 2 days → Guru

If we take into account how long it takes for an App item to hit Guru, the one review session a day means it will take about 5 days to get items to Guru (and that is if you never make any mistake whatsoever.)

Doing some additions, there are 347 kanji in levels 1-10. If we triple that for the sake of convenience, you already have well over a 1000 kanji. Divided in batches of 5-10, that will take a long time. And unfortunately the one review session a day will slow things down by a lot.

I’m both tired and horrendously, embarrassingly bad at maths, so someone much smarter than me will probably be able to tell you how far you might be able to get in a year with that study schedule. But at the minimum, I’d say level 30 in that time frame will not be possible.

Plenty of people talk about what’s needed to get to 60 in a year, so I guess: do that, but cut the number of items in half. :joy:

But on a more serious note: having a review schedule of three times a day. For example reviews and lessons at 08:00, reviews at 12:00 and again at 20:00. It will move Apprentice items up significantly faster.

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Highly recommend, given the time constraints, trying to fit in the three times a day review schedule. Trick to make it more manageable - use a script to reorder reviews by SRS stage so that you can just review the items at apprentice 1 at the midday review - if you’re only doing 5-10 lessons a day, that should be less than 5 minutes of review at the 4 hours mark after lessons - basically a bathroom break.

Not sure if you prefer to have your reviews in the morning, or in the evening - personally, my main block is in the evening, so I do a few reviews, and my lessons, between 7 and 8 am - usually for about 15 minutes - then my apprentice 1 reviews quickly at lunch at work (usually about 10 minutes) - I used to do these on my phone when my internet access at work was spotty. My apprentice 2 items come back around 7/8 pm (depending on when I get to my lunch time reviews) to join the once/day big block of reviews. I understand some people prefer a big block of morning reviews - you could do lessons at 5 pm, first review at 9 pm, and then your reviews would accumulate around 5/6 am (but you could certainly do them at 7 or whatever).

Frequent reviews are important to move items from apprentice to guru - after that, the time of day/ number of sessions per day don’t matter that much. I hope that’s a little helpful - I know not everyone can pause even briefly during the work day for reviews, but it is the most effective option to progress at a steady rate. Even regularly twice/day helps things move more effectively.

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Level 30 in a year is a level up pace of around 5 levels every two months or a level every 12 days.

That’s doable at 10-15 lessons per day but not at 1 session per day.

Like @Omun pointed out, if you don’t hit the Apprentice 2 and 3 intervals in the same day, you add an extra 2 days to your level up. Since Kanji are in batches of two, that’s 4 days

At that rate you’ll probably end up with a level every 15-20 days.

Do everything the same but split it into 3 sessions per day.

I did it this way and finished in 2 years while spending around an hour total per day.

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Yes, I started having the same amount of reviews per day. After being stuck in level 4 for more two weeks, I decided to do level five a bit faster. I think I will have finished it within two days.

My schedule is a mess, so I don’t really care about that. I try to review kanji whenever I can.

First things first, thanks for your detailed explanation.
To be honest, there are days when I can take three sessions (morning, after-lunch and around 11 pm) and days when I can only take two sessions.

So that is the key. Will try my best.

Thank you so much, everyone!

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Don’t think of a review session as an hour long beast that’s a pain to get through. If that’s the case there are probably other issues behind that.

Try seeking out those scraps of time that are spent doing nothing or traveling or whatever and use those. 5 minutes should be able to get you through at least 10 items. A few of those (and believe me, they are more common than you’d think) and you’re set. This works especially well if you use public transit as that’s a good few minutes to review

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Did someone find a cure for covid where you live?

I mean… Ye? Kinda? 70% of the country is vaccinated, public transits are usually safe enough. By travelling I really meant commuting.

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Are brazilians welcome as immigrants

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I guess it’s more of a question about the wk forums, but can anyone explain what these poll threads are? There seems to be a bunch of them (we’re in the 42nd version apparently), the title changes to mimmick a popular thread’s title with POLL added on it, and the convos there don’t seem to follow any specific topic. It makes me quite confusdd

The POLL threads are basically a general chat thread with a bunch of polls drizzled throughout it. People are very chatty in those threads, that’s why the threads reach 10’000 posts in matters of just a few weeks and they have to start a new thread. Oftentimes, very silly conversations - sometimes very serious and dramatic conversations. As you’ve observed, there’s no specific topic. Anything can be discussed as long as the general forum guidelines are being followed :slight_smile:

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By the way, if you grow weary of them always appearing in your ‘new’ list you can mute the entire campfire category (ahem, as I have… I can find enough distractions without them) :slight_smile:

confused between the kanji readings - it seems like WK teaches mainly on’yomi, but then example words have completely different readings sometimes, so i get confused. e.g. i learned today that the kanji for woman is read as “jo”, but then the word for woman is actually “onna” - i understand that the “jo” reading comes up in words like “girl”, but why am i not learning both? or does it come later?

From what I gathered up until now Wanikani will teach the most used/common reading for the kanji (I may be wrong on that.) so that you can already guess most readings once in vocabulary. Usually there are two possibilities with words:

  • Kanji+hiragana then it will use the kun’yomi reading

  • If the word is composed of one or more kanji so what is called a jukugo word it will be the on’yomi reading (of course there are exceptions where it will use the kun’yomi but they will clearly say it is an exception and teach you a way to remember that reading).

I think jukugo words are the reason wanikani focus on teaching the on’ reading for most kanji, because for most of the words it will teach you and even new words you may come across elsewhere (that are jukugo) you will be able to read it on your own and if the jukugo is an exception that uses the kun’ then it only has to teach it to you for this occasion and after some practice you will remember it without even thinking about it.
To answer more directly, once they teach you the on’yomi reading with the kanji, vocabulary lessons will come (once you have the kanji to guru level) and with those you will learn words that use the on’yomi (you already know it thanks to the kanji lessons) or words that use the kun’yomi and with those you will learn the other readings and mnemonics that comes with them.
If there are any mistakes in this people more experienced than me will surely be able to correct me.

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In general WK chooses the first reading you learn by deciding it will be more useful to you. It’s often onyomi and sometimes kunyomi. Usually in case when you need additional reading it will give you mnemonic for it when it’s relevant. It’s more manageable way of doing that rather then memorising sometimes many readings that won’t be necessarily useful.

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It comes up later. At level two you learn vocab for both readings, e.g. 女の子 and 女子

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This is a sort of weird question and I hope it fits here; does anyone feel a strange sense of unease when they decide to learn a kanji that they won’t learn in Wanikani for a while? I’ve done it before, decided to stop doing it, and now at my current level I’ve decided that it is necessary again if I’m going to read, even though I’m going to relearn it through Wanikani down the line. I don’t really know what exactly IS bothering me, but it is.

I hope this still counts as a “new person” question.

I don’t think there’s a reason to overthink it. If a kanji comes up in your reading then it can’t be helped. When you learn it in Wanikani later, you’ll just breeze through the reviews, that’s all there is to it. It’s not like learning it early is a waste of time. At least that’s what I think.

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I think that’s the philosophy I should pick up.