Well, the thing is that youâll have to do that vocabulary at some point and it serves to both reinforce the reading of the kanji you learned along with the kanji as well as teach you the readings you didnât learn when first learning the kanji.
Since youâre at level 13 right now, letâs run a few numbers of what it would look like if you were to do that right when you hit 13 while making a few assumptions.
Level 12 consists of 40 kanji and 140 vocabulary items. You need to guru 36 of those kanji to level up. Then well over 100 of the vocabulary items are locked behind the kanji you need to guru at level 12 to unlock them. So, letâs just say 100 of them unlock and also that you do 10 lessons a day for simplicity.
Typically, the kanji is done in batches and thus, if you did of them the same day, they will mostly reach guru status about the same time. So, you would have a 4 day run unlocking new vocabulary while leveling up on the 4th day.
Now, even if you were to do those 10 lessons of all vocab during those 3 days leading to the level up, you would still have to get through 100 - 30 = 70 level 12 vocabulary items.
Next, level 13 consist of 17 radicals, 37 kanji, and 132 vocab. You need to guru 34 of those kanji to level up. Similar to the previous level, well over 100 of those vocab are locked behind the kanji you need to guru to unlock them, but again, for simplicity, letâs just say itâs 100, meaning the other 32 level 13 vocab is also outstanding at that point.
Then, you go ahead and decide to use the lesson picker to do all the radicals for level 13 first (doing more than your 10 lessons per day even!). You still have those 70 level 12 vocab, and 32 level 13 vocab items looming. Only about half of those kanji are unlocked until the radicals guru, so letâs call it 19 of them. So, the next 3 days while waiting for your radicals to guru, you do your 10 lessons per day using the lesson picker to do the kanji which means you did the 19 kanji and 11 of the outstanding vocab leaving 59 level 12 vocab items and 32 level 13 vocab items.
Then, the next day your radicals will guru unlocking the other 18 kanji. The next 3 days you do your 10 lessons per day using the lesson picker again to the kanji first which means you did the 18 kanji and 12 of the outstanding vocab leaving 47 level 12 vocab items and 32 level 13 vocab items.
At that point all of the level 13 vocab locked behind your initial 19 kanji you did at level 13 will unlock. Letâs say itâs 50 of them for simplicity. Now, youâd have 47 level 12 vocab items and 82 level 13 vocab items.
Over the three of days, you do your 10 lessons, reducing the counts to 17 level 12 vocab items and 82 level 13 vocab items.
Then, your other 18 kanji have gurud and now you both level up to 14 while unlocking the other 50 level 13 vocab. Thus, your counts are now 17 level 12 vocab items and 132 level 13 vocab items and 23 level 14 vocab.
So, in other words, you will be level 14 and you wonât even have finished your level 12 vocab yet.
That means, you basically only have a few choices:
- Do a whole lot more lessons per day
- Take longer on the levels
- Ignore the vocabulary and other readings essentially until you eventually reach level 60 and then spend the next year doing them when the kanji is no longer fresh in your mind