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…
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I’d also remember that a lot of the speedrunners fall into one of these categories:
- Prior Japanese knowledge or coursework
- Multilingual (it’s easier to learn a 3rd or 4th+ language than to learn a foreign language for the first time)
- 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 
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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 =)
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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.
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Like a lot of people have already said, don’t worry about being slower. About half the time, I take 3 weeks and the other half, I take 2 weeks.
As for people able to level up in 1-2 weeks, many of them have learned Japanese prior to starting WK or they read/practice outside of WK. This isn’t cheating at all unless you’ve determined to treat WK like a game. Good repetition only helps you better learn and retain the meanings and readings. SRS (Spaced Repetition Systems) like WK are designed to optimize your recall with minimal repetition in the fastest amount of time possible. This isn’t feasible for everyone though and that’s fine.
If you still don’t like your speed after reading all these comments, I recommend joining a book club (absolute beginner would be fine, although if you’ve studied grammar, you could aim for a higher level) or writing out the kanji/vocab either during lessons or outside of reviews. Physically writing out what you’re trying to learn helps with acquisition (even writing in air with your finger), so you could give it a try and see if that helps.
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i feel like i ‘almost’ get it…need to let it incubate for a bit…
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maybe I am too simple but I have a routine every day. After lunch all reviews and one lesson. In the evening after dinner I will do any reviews. If any lessons have been easy for me to learn, such as nouns I can use, I might do another lesson. My little brain would explode if I did 15 lessons and I would rather keep it in my head. What do other think?
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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.
I dunno about that. I feel like the difficulty to learn the language is proportional to your interest in it and how much motivation/attention span you can muster.
Just with any kind of exercise, you need to put in constant and not give up until you get over the learning barrier, when dumb repetition and memorization finally switches over into the fun of actually learning by doing.
I know 3 languages at native level - or close enough to it.
Learning a fourth - Latin - at school was a nightmare to me - I did the bare minimum to not drop out of class, and the result showed. “Markus ridet et clamat” is probably the only sentence I can reproduce today.
Learning Japanese is also not particularly easy I’d say. I had hoped that by watching Japanese shows with subtitles I’d naturally learn the language eventually - that didn’t happen to a worthwile degree. Only now that I started putting in real effort - like 1-3 hours of practice each day - that I feel some progress.
The one thing I feel that helps me is that this time around: I actually set myself some goals. It makes a difference in all the small decisions you do every day - like if you can allow yourself to slack off “just for today”. If you see how those bad decisions directly affect your ability to reach your goal, you tend to align those decisions with reaching the goal.
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maybe I am too simple but I have a routine every day. After lunch all reviews and one lesson. In the evening after dinner I will do any reviews. If any lessons have been easy for me to learn, such as nouns I can use, I might do another lesson. My little brain would explode if I did 15 lessons and I would rather keep it in my head. What do other think?
Routine is a great idea.
I have tried your approach of doing a handful of new vocabs / kanji per day for a couple of levels. It was not bad, but it really hurt the bottom line of how long a level takes. Now I’m trying again to do as many as humanly possible as soon as they drop. That means it sucks for 2-3 days when you have to dedicate like an hour more to learning.
The biggest advantage however in my opinion is this: You bring the Vocabs / Kanji into SRS circulation ASAP - means you just need to worry remembering it “somewhat” on the day you first learn it - just enough to pass the initial quiz. Then some of them will just stick on their own - while the more difficult ones will just naturally repeat often in your daily routine until you start remembering them. That means making mistakes on them don’t hurt your bottom line as much as if you started learning it days later.
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I struggle with this too tbh. I’m also doing about a month between level ups, and unfortunately since I used the reorder script rather heavily a few levels ago I have a large (1195) pile of lessons to go through. I have no idea how to tackle that since if I start them in batches it’ll inflate my apprentice count and make it harder for me to keep up. I do wish I was going faster as it’s been almost 3 years since I started and I still don’t know all that much. I also worry that I might start to forget some of the burned items as I learn new ones.
What makes it easier for me is reminding myself and remembering that it isn’t a race. Like has been said in this thread, the only person I’m competing against is myself, and as longa s I can do some reviewing every day, I’ll be making progress. I’m currently on a 571 day streak of having done reviews, and since March 20 2019, I’ve only missed 2 days of reviews. Every other day I’ve done at least 1 review, if not 10, 100 (my daily aim), or 200 (when I’m off). I’m also more than halfway through the levels and I notice that knowing the kanji via WK helps me in other studies as I don’t struggle with it nearly as much.
I don’t know if that’ll help any, but keeping at it is really helpful. It is a lot easier if you show up, day after day, and even if it takes you a while you can still get there. I didn’t think learning kanji was feasible for me when I first started to study, and now I’ve burned 557 of them along with 1834 vocab items. It’ll get memorized if you keep on showing up, day after day.
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Thank you for your response. I am not in a great rush to get to level 60 so I have found a balance with learning and life. I can appreciate that for some other people it is more urgent. I will continue to plod along.
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Sure, whatever works for you.
My urgency in this is a self-set goal. The realization that WaniKani will not teach you Japanese (it’s just a means to get you a serious head start to learning Japanese) is what motivates me to keep it as brief as possible, to then get to the actual learning of Japanese.
Your personal goals may differ, but I was kind of assuming that people in a “am I progressing too slowly” thread were in general interested in progressing faster. 
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Obviously I only speak for myself, but I don’t necessarily think that everyone who thinks they may be progressing too slowly want to go faster, but may just be wondering if they can still achieve their goals (albeit taking longer) at this rate. Perhaps also needing some reassurance that they are doing just fine.
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What I realized in my case is that until level 19 I took around 7.5 to 8 days to level up
but now it is taking me 11 to 12 days.
I dont know what happened, the pace is the same, 20 lessons a day and keeping apprentice to 100, usually it gets to 103 or 105.
My accuracy is still aroung 96% since early levels.
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did you watch anime shows with Japanese subtitles? I think there even was a study done in Spain where they went through a test where people learning English were divided into 3 groups/.
1st was watching English tv shows with Spanish subtitles
2) tv shows with no subtitles
3) tv shows with English subtitles.
2d group had an 11% improvement.
3rd over 20%+
The first had 0 improvement
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