I set the number of new items to 20 per day but after a few days on a new level I don’t get any new lessons or maybe just a few. I do all of my reviews every day with an average accuracy of 90% according to wkstats and a typical level up takes me 22 days. With this speed it will take 3,5 years to finish and that is just too slow…I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.
I feel like I could advance a lot faster if I really got my 20 new lessons per day but I don’t…
Any suggestions?
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How often do you do your reviews during the day? And are u aware of the SRS interval? (4 hrs to reach Apprentice II, 8 hours afterward for Apprentice III, etc.)
If you are setting it at 20 lessons per day and it take you 22 days to level up despite the high accuracy, it’s a bit odd. So only factor I could think of is the review frequency.
Usually once a day in the evening but sometimes once in the morning once in the evening, but i don’t observe any change if I do it in two batches. I mean if this is the key then I would be willing to do it twice a day but more frequently than that is just not for someone with a job…
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Only doing one review session a day makes a big difference, because of the initial short (4/8h) timing of apprentice reviews. There are some graphs in this post which show that at the theoretical maximum pace (all reviews perfect as soon as they arrive) you get to level 60 in less than a year. If you instead do only one session a day then you only get to level 37 in a year even if you get all your reviews perfect.
As you say, review at any time is unrealistic for people with other commitments. Fortunately “two review sessions a day” gets most of the benefit: a graph a bit further on in that thread shows that you can get up to level 49 in a year with a schedule like that.
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Yeah I think that’s probably the key. Wanikani have set intervals for all these so to maximize sometimes people would plan their review time accordingly
the timing is like this (from WK wiki )
So while you don’t have to follow this pattern, it’s good to be aware of it i think.
And even though it doesn’t seem different when you do twice per day, if you consistently do it, i think it’d definitely make a difference.
Another thing you can do is to pick Apprentice first or Lower SRS Stage
which if you want to do more reviews but have limited time, they can ensure you go through your apprentice items first.
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What level are you on? If you are still new you may just need to give a little more time. If you are doing 20 reviews a day, then you will eventually have a couple hundred reviews a day or so. I started off the same and I eventually turned it back down to 15 and then 12 a day. It was too much. I also do my reviews throughout the day tho as they become available. I am at level 11 right now and I have around 120-150 reviews a day on average. It’s manageable for me.
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The other thing here is that if you feel you aren’t getting enough new lessons available you should make sure you are prioritising first learning the items that gate new lessons, so radicals first (to unlock kanji) then kanji (to unlock vocab) and vocab last.
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I’m at level 6. That’s another thing I don’t understand: at first it seemed like I started to get too many reviews per day (around 150) but now I only get 90-110 so I didn’t chage back the 20 new item / day…
Thank you, I will try apprentice first, but I didn’t think this would have an effect since I do all my reviews when I start doing them.
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Incidentally that entire thread is worth a read – it was started by somebody in more or less the same position as you and has some great advice and experience from various posters on what you might want to adjust and the kind of workload to expect.
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In my current level I only have vocab left, and I still didn’t get 20 new vocab today. (if you only have vocab left then I guess all the prerequisites are done.)
You probably need to level up some of your kanji then.
Go to https://www.wanikani.com/dashboard-customization and add the widget called “Level Progress”. That will let you keep track of everything you’re learning on the current level.
If you click on the “vocabulary” or “kanji” box it will give you a color-coded list of which items are waiting in your lessons and which items are locked. Kanji with a partial or broken green line below them are apprentice-level, which means you need to keep reviewing them before they’ll unlock more vocabulary.
This is part of what mine looks like. 秋 has 4/5 dashes which means I need to do one more review:
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Just as an update:
In the past days i did my reviews 2 or 3 times a day, my accuracy went up, I always scored around 95% because of the more frequent reviewes, yet I barely recieved any new items to study.
In these 4-5 days I was so close to leveling up (it only required a few more kanji to guru) but I couldn’t do it sooner and in the meantime it didn’t give me anytrhing new to learn. It was so frustrating… I finally leveled up and I instantly got 20 new items to learn. This doesn’t make sense at all… why divide the levels like this? why couldn’t i study level 7 kanji before I finished with level 6?
Anyways I don’t expect answers to these questions, I just think its a pretty dumb system…
Thanks everyone for your support!
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I didn’t like it either and I didn’t have the time nor patience to stick through it for years. Plus, the idea of eventually burning items is just misleading. So, I didn’t play by the rules, did wanikani “my way”, got the most that I could out of it in a time frame that I found reasonable for my goals and moved on.
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