Progressing too slowly?

Things that are ahead are behind the object or point you’re talking about. If you say after 30 minutes, you mean at the point behind(after) the 30 minutes.

hmm…so like hereafter or igo is like “after this behind”?

dont worry this is the part of your journey where you try new methods and really learn your brains strengths and weaknesses. dont let getting answers wrong discourage you. I constantly get answers wrong and use it as an opportunity to either let my brain learn the word through sheer repetition (takes longer but less effort) or i stop for a minute and really study the word (write it down, review similar looking kanji, make a new mneumonic, etc). whatever you do just don’t give up. ganbatte!

your speed is a function of how much time you can and want to invest in WK. some people have a lot of time available, others don’t, that’s just how things are. i’m going near max speed, but i’m doing almost three hours of WK every day. others take a month per level, and finish WK in five years.

honestly, i’m more in awe of the people who take five years than of the speedrunners. i can imagine myself doing something like WK for a year, or a year and a half. i can’t imagine myself sticking to something like this for 5 years.

the right speed is the speed which keeps you coming back every day till it’s done ^^

3 Likes

They are abusing scripts or they are writing the kanji down and referencing that during reviews. No way you get to level 60 with an average level-up time of 8 days only using your memory.

1 Like

The one level a week are speed demons.
Going slow is just as normal, if not more so.
Find your own speed, don’t try to rush cause others do.
And yes, WaniKani works wonderful at this speed too!

I am planing to use 3 years, give or take.

You can join us here, to have others taking a slower approach to compare yourself with and find encouragement:

1 Like

That’s just not the case. Plenty of people have legitimate level-up times around 7 days. Saying that going that fast is naturally impossible is both wrong and deflating to anyone trying to push themselves to be better.

To OP, the absolute best way to do WaniKani is the way you feel comfortable doing it. If you really want to do 7 day levelups, it’s more than possible – if you schedule your day around it and dedicate over an hour to your daily lessons/reviews. It took me 30 lessons per day and averaging over 200 reviews per day to get to level 60 as fast as I did. I spent 256 hours doing reviews and 74 hours doing lessons in just over a year. I was a student doing online classes who could build my schedule as I saw fit. In other words, I had a really good situation to speedrun WK. And it was still stressful.

If that sounds like something you want to try, it will definitely help your speed. But what I’d recommend doing instead is deciding on a set amount of effort and accepting whatever speed that gets you. I’m a big fan of pushing oneself, so if you think you want to push yourself, I say go for it. But I think doing WK by deciding on effort and letting the levelup times be, rather than the opposite of deciding your levelup time and working however hard you have to to reach it, is the way to go.

8 Likes

thank you!

1 Like

image

I reorder lessons with scripts so I get radicals and kanji first, but I do all lessons (including vocabulary) every level, and I go down to 0/0 (Lessons/Reviews) multiple times per level. Am I “abusing scripts”?

WaniKani isn’t a contest to finish as “legitimately” as possible, and looking down on Quality of Life scripts as cheating or abuse is ridiculous. The goal is to learn Kanji and to learn Japanese, and it’s silly to badmouth people who spend multiple hours a day on getting through resources like WK at a fast pace, when the goal is to move on to get more time to immerse in native content after finishing WK.

100% agree

3 Likes

I don’t believe this and you cannot convince me otherwise.

1 Like

It’s all about keep pushing your limit and know where is your at. I’m not using any script and leveling up 7-8 days per level. (I’m the guy that playing skyrim without any mod lol) So it’s all up to you, wheter it’s too slow or too fast.

I’m still so far so good. I think I might hit my limit around level 35-40 when there are too many Kanji and vocab to memorize.

1 Like

i mean, if you’re convinced that we’re all liars and cheaters, that’s your thing, not mine… shrugs

8 Likes

I think he’s sarcastically joking.
Or I’m just being too naive lol.

I mean I sarcastically joking frequently in real life and get misunderstood quiet often lol.
So I could sense the same vibe from him, …probably…

2 Likes

I’d also remember that a lot of the speedrunners fall into one of these categories:

  1. Prior Japanese knowledge or coursework
  2. Multilingual (it’s easier to learn a 3rd or 4th+ language than to learn a foreign language for the first time)
  3. Dedicating 1-2+ hours per day to studying

Also keep in mind that only the most enthusiastic learners will venture into the forums to talk about their progress. Forum posters are probably in the top 10% for motivation.

If you are progressing slowly, don’t feel dumb. You might just be comparing yourself to people who are in different circumstances, and it’s not a fair comparison.

6 Likes

I can personally approve this. It’s much easier to learn 3rd or 4th langauge even a langauge that has next to no relation to the others langauge you have learn before.

It’s because you know the method of learning a langauge. You know what type of learner you are, your learning behavior, your brain, your own limit. So their progress will be noticalbe faster than who just start to learn 2nd langauge.

So to each of their own. It’s only you who can decide whether it too fast or too slow.

2 Likes

Think about it like this. There is a person in front of you, and your destination is behind him. If you walk in that direction, you will reach your destination AFTER reaching him, and your destination is also BEHIND him.

2 Likes

I must admit I can’t imagine how it’s possible either. I can’t imagine having such a good memory that I’d be able to recall everything perfectly every time for a year. And even if you get a few things wrong it sets off a cascade where you have less room in your apprentice pile for new lessons, and then the level takes even longer to work through. When I was at home in the lock downs I was doing about 12 days per level. Two levels ago I had a freakish moment and did one in eight days (I don’t know how this happened), but since then they’ve both taken about 23 days, yet I don’t feel I’m doing anything different in terms of time input. I am relatively accurate (well, 80% perhaps) in the morning but in the evening I am so tired from work that my accuracy really drops. And I can’t do sessions at work. So it’s had a big knock-on effect.

I’m happy for people if they really can get through it all so quickly (I don’t have much energy left for all the other important language learning aspects and I guess they must). And I’m not surprised such people are proud to announce it. But the forums probably give a false impression that that such speed and accuracy is much more common than it seems. They’re unusual people if they’ve got that good a memory (to the extent where I wonder what use WK is to that sort of brain… WK’s method is based on the fact that if you can’t remember something, it’s the repetition that eventually hammers it in after you’ve got it wrong so many times). I’d bet some people have a sneaky cheat sometimes so as not to ruin their record. Or pile up their vocabulary through reordering scripts. But that ‘plenty’ of people can do 99% accuracy at maximum speed? - I doubt there’s many to be honest. This kanji learning business is a hard task. This is why WK exists.

1 Like

Well, you only have to recall radicals and kanji well in the first few SRS stages in order to level up fast. When it comes to leveling up fast your short term memory is really all that matters - it doesn’t matter if you get them wrong at the long SRS stages (weeks, months) in terms of leveling up (although it obviously matters in terms of the amount of workload that ends up accumulating, and understandably not everyone has the free time to spend hours upon hours in a single day just to do WK reviews)

Personally I used to have an accuracy probably around 80%, but in the past few months I have been feeling quite motivated for some reason or another - and I’m not sure to what extent this applies to others as well - but for me at least this (at least I think this is the reason) has helped my accuracy go up to around 95% more or less without any change to the work i put into WaniKani. So I think motivation is a huge factor as well, not just having a good short-term memory - or maybe I’m just weird :thinking:

2 Likes

Haven’t read all the comments, but I can confirm. As part of POLLfam since it started, I’ve seen some blast to 60, but the majority is going much much slower. (Note: I’m using the POLL as a basis as it has many active users who stay active over a long time. On other threads it is more random/rarely lasts that long. POLLfam is by no means slower than the average) I am over 4 years in, and not even the slowest there! Of people who are actually progressing steadily there are active users in the POLL thread who have been on WK longer and is yet to reach my current level. I’m not sure what the average complete time is, but wouldn’t be surprised if it was 2-3 years, possibly even more. But my guess would be around 3 years.
The 1 year speed demons are often encouraged to make threads about it though. We slow pokes aren’t as likely to make lvl 60 threads (but there are those who do, so should be possible to find some)

I’ve seen many statistics on progression, wonder if there is one for speed. I’d love to see the numbers =)

3 Likes

I’m not people who have that “sort of brain” (I’m dumb) but I’m subscribing to service like Wanikani or Kitsun because I don’t want to waste my time on creating a system on something like Anki. I just need a well designed system that I can trust in and go along with it. (I always random generated my character in video games lol and never create a level on Mario Maker)

I rarely use Wanikani mnemonic. I just briefly read through it and memorize them my own way. This also because most of the mnemonic not really click with me, since I’m not an English native speaker.

I’m going at around 7-8 days per level by drilling those mandatory items really hard. I just make sure that I always answer radicals and second wave kanji correctly. I spend my off-screen time repeating them over and over to make sure I don’t miss the leveling-up chance.

1 Like