% of correct reviews

WaniKani Tips & Tricks
1

Hi all, i’m almost lvl 11 here, and really liking my progression right now.

One thing that i was wondering for a long time is what is considered to be a good review session relativily to the % of correct answers.

What sould we aim for realisticaly (I know we always aim for 100% but it’s not always doable).

My intuition tells me that (let’s say for review session >10 items)
95%-100% : Excellent review
85%-95% : Good review (Should always aim for that range)
80%-85% : Ok review session
75%-80% : bad session
<75% : need to study more

Is it the score you would give or am I completly wrong?
Thx for feedback

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2

I think it’s kind of pointless to care about percentages. Sure, remembering is good, but thinking you had a bad review or didn’t do well somehow is only going to tear you down. Knowing your percentage isn’t going to make you remember better.

My list would look like this:

  • 0-100%: It’s progress.

Really, it doesn’t matter how well or poorly you do, as long as you review.

59 Likes
3

Yeah, I’m gonna second Kumi and say that any % correct means you’re making progress. Getting an item wrong or doing “badly” on a review session just gives you the chance to review the items you’re having trouble with more frequently.

If your goal is to go through WK at breakneck speed, then yeah, having your accuracy below a certain percentage on most sessions will make your workload of reviews larger over time. But I’d say that any session means that you’ve studied, putting effort into learning kanji/vocab, and to me, that’s progress.

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4

Alright, i absolutly see and understand where you are going here. Progress is indeed progress and that’s important. Personnaly, my motivation comes from how good i can perform, that is why i’m fixing goals to myself to try to push myself the best i can. hence why i’m making those "subjective success %) But yeah, prog is prog :slight_smile:

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6

Another in the progress is progress train. The thing to remember is that it’s not a school test that’s gonna get you a grade that matters, it’s you trying to teach yourself to read in another language and any correct answers are great!

7

I see it both ways. Personally I always want to be above 90%, but I think it’s bad to feel down if you miss it. Some words are just perpetually hard to remember and I feel like the only way I ever learn those words is to get tired of getting them wrong. So it would actually harm me to try to prevent them from lowering my percentage by using a script or something.

1 Like
8

I agree with Kumi that >0 is progress. Before that you had literally 0. I’d actually prefer to interpret this whole thing as 1>0.

Now, if we’re talking in terms of efficiency in learning, I’d say that anything above 80% is quite good already.

I think that percentages should not be interpreted as a way to (des)motivate you, but as a way to guide your learning.

  • Too low of a percentage? It tells you that your next step should be in reviewing again what you got wrong.
  • 80-95%? You’re going well. Keep it up.
  • 96%-100%? You’re going too well. This shows that what you’re doing is too easy for you. This means that you can push yourself an extra step and learn more content.

Don’t take these numbers too seriously. The idea was to show how our percentages can show us the next step to take. If it’s too low, you should focus on that you have at hand. If it’s good, keep it up! If it’s too good, you can do more. :slight_smile:

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9

Hmm, sometimes my percentage of correct answers is 60% and sometimes it’s 95%. I personally don’t care a lot about the percentage but it gives me a clue if I should study some item a bit more. At least when I have to review a certain item like ten times, hahah. But yeah, don’t be too harsh on yourself when it comes to percentages. What matters, is that you do reviews and lessons consistently, even if it’s just a little!

10

I like the rosy attitude of “Any progress is good progress”, but I like the feeling of moving forward, and keeping up my accuracy is really important for keeping my level schedule, which in turn is important for my motivation.

I have about the same understanding as your breakdown of percentages with the caveat that I care more about the newest Kanji reviews than other items, and I’m the most “relaxed” about vocab. I figure it will all stick eventually if I just keep doing the thing.

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11

Afaik, making mistakes is not a requirement but a big part of learning process. You either have a very accurate mnemonic or lots of small mistakes…

12

I don’t worry about what percent I get correct on my reviews so much but I do worry about critical condition items. If an item is in the critical condition zone for longer than a day then i’ll make sure to write it in my notebook because clearly I need a little extra practice on that item :durtle_megane:

1 Like
13

If I were to go by your scale, nearly every single review session I’ve had would be considered bad.

14

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that anything above zero is better than nothing if you’re on any plan other than the lifetime one.
This is why:
A “better than nothing” mindset sets the bar so low that a 30% accuracy can be considered acceptable. The knock-on effect of low accuracy is slow progress. Slow progress means longer subscription period. Longer subscription period means more money. This mindset is also the “participation award” mindset that really grinds my gears.

Having said that, please bear in mind that I am not advocating speed. I am discouraging slow progress due to low accuracy when such accuracy can be improved in a way that would aid the learning process and not be too taxing on the individual.
I am a supporter of Team Slow myself, but it has to be for the right reasons. Slowness due to low accuracy is simply uneconomical on a subscription plan. Also, there is a difference between being slow in order to spend time internalizing, and being slow because one is satisfied with low accuracy. The former depends on the speed at which individuals internalize things and can vary significantly between individuals, while the latter does not have to be a drastically limiting factor as there are ways to improve accuracy without burning out.

Ways to improve accuarcy:

  1. Reading: personally, I’m not a fan of this because I am currently terrible at grammar. This would work quite well for people who aren’t though.
  2. Writing: my favorite way of practicing. This method aids recall, and teaches you to write. Skritter FTW.
  3. Grammar study: you get to learn grammar while being exposed to the characters.
  4. Chrome plug-in to see kanji on all pages: this allows you to see your characters repeatedly, even if they don’t necessarily fit well in the context you will see them in.

To sum up:
“I’m going slow” is a good justification for “going slow”, it is not a good excuse for low accuracy. There are ways to improve accuracy. Some of which are listed above.
Striving to improve one’s accuracy is an opportunity not only for better accuracy, but also for exploring alternative and complimentary ways of learning that would allow you to choose to go slow as opposed to being forced to go slow because of low accuracy. Go slow for the right reasons, not because of low accuracy.
Good look pushing your accuracy up, it’s never a good idea to do well, even if you choose to do well slowly :wink:.

Your scale seems alright to me.

5 Likes
15

0% - 100%: Hey, you did your reviews! おめでとう
Only 1% is at least necessary to become better. It adds up!
1,01^365 = 37,783
Doing nothing, however, has bad output
0,99^365 = 0,026
But you can’t achieve -1% while reviewing =)

Be proud of yourself!

16

Hello everyone, first-time poster here :slight_smile:

Personally, I set this bar for myself: If I’ve recently devoured a bunch of lessons (I always try to go through them as soon as they are unlocked), I am satisfied with 80%. If I am more or less familiar with the material being reviewed, I aim for 90%. If I fail to meet these quotas, I devote some extra time on memorizing the things I got wrong.

I see a lot of people here don’t really monitor the percentage, fine by me. However, you should be aware of one aspect of Wanikani: If you scored really low, it is actually possible that you’ve made negative progress (in the “advancing through WaniKani” aspect, not “learning Japanese”).

Any item you review has to go through nine levels in total: Four levels of Apprentice, two points of Guru, and then Master, Enlightened and Burned have one level each. Every wrong answer sets the item two steps back, while every correct answer makes it move one step forward. The basic line you shouldn’t go under, in my opinion, is 66%, since that’s the point of equilibrium between your advances and setbacks (two right answers for every wrong one, the wrong answers have twice as much impact).

There are also some other factors: If the item is on the lowest level (Apprentice 1), either because it’s new or because you get it wrong often, it has nowhere to go if you get it wrong, it just stays where it is. Therefore, the point of equilibrium gets more forgiving if you are reviewing something new or troublesome. I could also factor in the time intervals for different levels: When you fall from Apprentice 3 to Apprentice 1, it’s not nearly as bad as making a mistake just when you’re about to burn an item, and falling all the way back to Guru.

Obviously, if I was to calculate the individual point of equilibrium for every set of reviews, I would go mad. So I disregard all the side factors and set 66% as a line I must never cross. If you score under this number regularly, your amount of reviews is actually going to increase over time instead of decreasing. You are bound to get swamped eventually.

Of course, it’s your WaniKani paid for with your money and you can use it however you see fit. This is just one opinion from one guy who spent too much time pouring over the mechanics of WK :wink:

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17

Technically you do have to average above 65%, or you’ll actually be regressing in WaniKani, since your items will, on average, be decreasing in SRS levels :wink:

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18

Wahh pshhhh keep it away from logical level! :stuck_out_tongue:

19

I agree with everyone who’s saying “there’s no point in beating yourself up over a bad review session”, but I do track my review scores in my hit-list book. For each review session I write down the date, approximate time (Am, Lunch, Pm, Eve), accuracy for that session, all of the kanji I got wrong and their readings and meanings, and my final Wanikani numbers for each stage (Apprentice, Guru, etc). Then at the bottom of each page I calculate my accuracy for that page.

What I find is that even on the sessions where I get what I consider “low accuracy”- under 85%- when I look at my overall wanikani numbers, there’s been progress up from Apprentice. And apart from a party weekend, my page averages hover around the 90% mark.

I like tracking my accuracy because high accuracy tells me my study methods are working, but tracking my progress shows me that even when I mess up, I’m still moving forward :tractor: :bullettrain_front: :bike:

1 Like
20

Keeping in mind that in the wanikani system, getting one wrong answer cancels out two right answers, a percentage above 66% means you’re moving forward as a rough rule of thumb. This is referring to the number at the end of your reviews, not the number displaying as you’re reviewing. With that information in mind, I would say that 83% is moving at an okay pace, while 90% and above is moving pretty quick.

To go a little further, say you have 100 reviews with all of them having at least 2 points already.
60% accuracy = +60 - 80 = -20 (negative progress)
70% accuracy = +70 - 60 = +10
80% accuracy = +80 - 40 = +40
90% accuracy = +90 - 20 = +70
95% accuracy = +95 - 10 = +85

So contrary to what others may say, I do think percentage matters a pretty big deal for words that are beyond the first few points of apprentice. A 10% increase in accuracy can double your progression speed.

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