Pre-review script, leech script , overide ... are those usefull for my learning, is this cheating ?! and why people are reseting?

WaniKani
#1

I know this is probably a redundant question …

But this how i work atm with wanikani,

  • im doing a variable amount of lesson depending of my apprentice pool, if it around 120 ill stop doing lesson, until i reduce it under 100, to limit the amount of review per day
  • iam writing everything that i dont know on a paper on every lesson , kanji = meaning - kana
  • im using script to review last failed ( before every review) and new learned ( around the next review)
  • i do use override during review when i think it not fair , exemple the meaning was close or another exemple is 大 だい /たい that i mess very often and few other that really pissing me.
  • im using a plugin to review my leech , and that give me some work to do every few hours
  • i try to cement what i’ve learnt with iknow.jp wanikani by level

I’m starting to doubt my way of doing , because :

  • i have the feeling i spend way to much time doing it , let say if i have 200 review a day , it’s like having 400 review …
  • if i dont do all the thing previously mentionned above my percentage of success is bad let be honest , so im wondering if im really remembering something …
  • the iknow.jp wanikani is good sometime, but to remember i need to know the kanji first tru wanikani otherwise it wont stick, the other issue i have is some meaning are not the same in wanikani and iknow.jp
  • i have the leaderboard plugin and see most of the people progressing extremely quick and it’s piss me off to be bad and slow.
  • i have some vocab that never stick !

I feel that i cheat myself and my capacity of retaining what’ive learn , i need to see a percentage above 80% to be happy, it’s like an addiction … at the end im doing a triple srs and im not sure if it really usefull…

Does people reset because they have the same issue than me ?

Maybe im wrong and everything is prefectly right ? what do you think ?

2 Likes
#2

why people are reseting?

life happened :smile:

A serious answer is maybe you come back from a quite long hiatus. You forget most words and have a bunch, oh actually thousands of reviews that you couldn’t manage to solve. So, a popular way is reset back to a safe threshold or even back to level 1 again

2 Likes
#3
  1. SRS is intended to space out reviews as to be efficient, so extra reviewing is not really necessary.
  2. By “pre-reviewing” you are cheating. You are looking at the answers before you get the question so that you can trick WK into thinking you know the items better than you actually do. Extra exposure between reviews is no problem, but “pre-reviewing” sounds bad.
  3. You should not be using override for errors such as だい / たい, as in these cases you are actually wrong
  4. Some people will disagree with me on this, but accuracy doesn’t matter. What matters is that you do the reviews
38 Likes
#4

another question i have is :

  • to be efficient do i need to do the review as soon they show up ( multiple time a day by small amount), or one time a day is ok ? if i remember the interval they are 4 - 8 hours and so on but it’s depend on when you learned what ?
1 Like
#5

I think most of your points were already covered so I’ll just add my 2 cents on something I feel is pretty important. The first 2 intervals I think are critical and I always do them on the same day.

I do new lessons in the morning so I can do the 4 hours and 8 hour during that same day and I think it helps me have those items settle down.

I do “pre-lessoning” where before a level up, I will look at the new level radicals and make sure that I can knock them down as soon as they come. I also look at kanji readings/meanings before doing the lesson to start getting a hang for them. Once they go into the SRS system then the game is on and I don’t consider cheating because I have that believe that it’s just gonna make it harder for me to learn anyways so why do it.

3 Likes
#6

If you find the solution to this particular problem, it will be fine imo.
Also other ppls progress is not important at all. We are working hard to learn stuff.

1 Like
#7

:slight_smile: Maybe uninstall that script to feel better about your learning? WaniKani isn’t a race, and your pace doesn’t seem to be that slow in reality!

I’ve only been on WK for a little while, but I find it more efficient to do lessons and reviews on a schedule – so that you always get them in batches at times that suit you.
If you’re really worried about speed, you might want to try logging in 3 times a day instead of just once…(to fit with the SRS algorithm).

5 Likes
#8

For maximum efficiency you probably would need to review as soon as the items are due, but I always did at most one session a day, and it’s worked out well enough for me

3 Likes
#9

I have unburned items as far back as level 5, lol

13 Likes
#10

Repeating some stuff others have said but…

This is actually wrong though, so I’d suggest you try to see if it can frustrate you less instead.

Perhaps consider that it’s not a failiure to answer wrong, it just gives the algorithm more accurate data to work with (i.e. this is something that’ll be beneficial to you if you see more often)

Then don’t use it! :slight_smile: Only compare yourself to others if it motivates you. If it demotivates you, you probably shouldn’t be doing it! :slight_smile:

Everyone’s circumstances (and the severity of their OCD personality…) is different, so these comparisons are hardly fair anyway.

Don’t worry. You will not (and in fact can never) learn all the words (even in your native language!). It’s all about knowing enough of them. If some don’t stick they’ll be compensated for by all the words you will learn in the future.

8 Likes
#11

I’ve been here for 5 years and I have unburnt items from level 2 :woman_shrugging:t2:

9 Likes
#12

Just thought I’d point out that OCD isn’t and can’t be a personality, it’s a disorder (hence the D, in OCD)! Lots of people use it as a “quirky/liking things neat/in a particular way” type of word but in reality it is a very serious mental illness that people suffer from! Given other people would be reading your post, I thought I’d mention so that others can be informed. :slightly_smiling_face:

8 Likes
#13

I wouldn’t be surprised if I could be diagnosed with at least a mild case of OCD, and I guess to me it kinda seems like part of my personality, but yeah, I did use the term kinda flippantly!

Being a bit obsessed with my current project as well as somewhat dependent on routines has proven to be a real advantage in learning languages though. And I feel that more “normal” people might not be able to replicate this to the same degree… (This was kinda what I was getting at in my post, if jokingly)

Sometimes I do notice that my reliance on things being a certain way can seem a bit odd to others… but I guess most of the time it’s not that big a deal.

(Well there you go, help yourselves to some barely-related overly personal information!)

2 Likes
#14

The goal is to learn Japanese, right? Not to “win” on the leaderboard.

As others have noted, the “extra” reviews that you’re doing can easily make the algorithm think that you know characters better than you actually do. You’ll get a higher success rate, but it won’t translate into actual reading ability. Personally, I’d recommend using the time to immerse yourself in more native Japanese content instead. Actually using your vocabulary is the best way to make it stick.

Same with the override script. Yes, confusing readings is annoying, but what do you gain by pretending you knew one when you didn’t?

Katherine

5 Likes
#15

Of course, having OCD for a while does lead it to become part of your personality! (As in, part of you, not removed from you). I’ve had it for over half of my life and it is definitely ingrained in me, so to speak, but that’s very different from it being a personality trait! (Not what you were meaning though).

I think the thing about OCD people forget is that while it might seem useful, and it is possible to take plus sides out of things (and important to do so!), the thoughts are what make OCD OCD. Constant horrible thoughts that you can’t stop thinking, leading you to do certain compulsions obsessively, that you don’t want to do (but feel you have to do or else [unreasonable unlogical bad thing] will happen). It’s great to have habits and routines! But the thoughts that are constantly plaguing people with OCD that make them do those habits and routines are often overlooked by people and thus OCD becomes something people “identify” with, the butt of jokes or just all about cleaning (even so many OCD types aren’t based on cleaning at all!).

But I don’t want to digress the topic! :blush:

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#16

I have been having this as my mantra - do your reviews all else will take care of itself :innocent:

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#17

Why do people reset? Here is one all too common way;

There is script use, and script abuse :wink:

One of the most useful yet most dangerous is the reorder script!
I can’t work without it! I’m in a different state of mind with radicals, kanji, and vocab. I need to do one at a time, not mixed.
But this can also help you get to the lessons in that order, which makes is possible to level without doing vocab. I fell in to this trap once. I didn’t feel up to doing the vocab at the moment, but couldn’t slow down. Thought I’d catch up later. This leads to forgotten kanji, as the vocab helps you solidify it. I ended up so frustrated I reset all the way to level 1! Had done all items up to the twenties somewhere.

Other is if you’ve been away too long and have forgotten too much.

I have reset twice. Above was my second time. First time I simply pushed too hard, got swamped and reset from lvl 20 =P

This time I took a long break when I had a burn out (I have a condition that leads to fatigue easily)
I had almost a whole year between level 31 and 32 O_o
But this time I just kept at it! I stopped leveling, kept doing reviews for as long as I could push it, took a long break! Started doing reviews again in November and slowly started leveling again in January =P

This is also a “Go at your own pace” speech I guess. The goal is to learn as much as possible, not reach a number. They don’t matter if you don’t remember the stuff you have learned. Take your time, learn those leeches by seeing them often enough.
And let the srs do its thing, No pre-review. It makes you feel better, but gives a false positive on the score since you just saw the item.

1 Like
#18

Just to add another angle on why this is bad, if you keep overriding your wrong answer and progressing you will just keep reinforcing the wrong answer in your head. This is likely contributing to why you keep getting it wrong over and over. You don’t allow the feedback loop to correct you when you answer incorrectly.

As a real example from my studies, I used to have this same issue a lot with even simple words like 大事 but if I kept overriding the system and letting it progress, I would probably still be having issues with it as I would have never allowed the system to correct me.

What you should be focusing on is learning correctly, not advancing your level number. Being level 60, but knowing words by incorrect readings doesn’t actually benefit you in any way.

100% agree with this which is why I won’t ever install the override script and am perfectly willing to accept even when I get the occasional, horrendous sub 60% review score. Bad reviews are simply a positive feedback loop from the SRS telling me I didn’t actually learn something as well as I thought I had so I clearly need to review the item more. Not that I need to trick myself and the SRS into thinking I know it.

5 Likes
#19

I would add the caveat that it matters in that you may need to adjust your lesson load to keep your overall load manageable if you have low review accuracy. But whether that’s necessary depends on the person.

5 Likes
#20

When you encounter a reading or vocabulary word that you don’t immediately know, do you guess? Or do you take a minute to think through the mnemonic? Since your time is limited, more reviews is likely to mean less time spent on each, which in turn might lead to less thinking, more guessing … and more errors.

There’s also pretty clear research showing that the number of items people can keep in short term memory is limited. More lessons means more items in that transition between short and long term, which means more are going to slip through.