Reflecting on where I went wrong: resetted from 23 to 15

WaniKani
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Hellloooooooooooooooooooooooooo \ :grin: /

Yup. I did full speed to feed my ego. After level 40, I could have slowed down and focused on other stuff. My mistakes were with not giving as much attention as I wished to vocab extra WK, reading and speaking (in this order).

The whole point is to do a bit better every day, week, month. Because that practice after some years turns you into a much more confident person.

So @Daru if you once gave up from WK, the next step is to not give up by making WK a habit (coming to WK every day to do the work). Once you get that solid, you can then focus on improving your WK routine, building a routine for grammar/anything else you wish to practice. The problem with most people is that they either do too much at once and give up or they do too little everyday but end up stagnating and giving up due to lack of progress. Find your balance. Take one step at a time, but take it :slight_smile:

And please keep us updated \o/

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22

WE’RE BEST FRIENDS, THAT’S WHY :heart_eyes:

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Will not! Thank you for your advice.
My new icon will keep me going.

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I’ve gone through a massive catch-up twice now since starting WaniKani. I’m still in the middle of the second one, actually. The reason being that the month of November is always hellish for me. I participate in and volunteer with National Novel Writing Month every year, which means the whole month of November is basically just work and writing and helping with our chatroom events. Last year, I thought I could keep up with WK at the same time, and I did for about a week, then crashed and burned so hard that I just couldn’t face the review pile. I probably should have done vacation mode, but didn’t. I didn’t touch anything until January, when I majorly rebooted.

This year was even worse. I started a remodeling project in my house that was supposed to be done in October and still isn’t finished, plus had my usual November nonsense. I finally started digging myself out of the hole in late December. I started the year with a review queue of about 2100 items, which I have whittled down to about 850 at the moment.

It’s worth noting that I am far enough in that the site updates with the changes in radicals really messed with me. I was on the fence for a while whether to keep using the old mnemonics and radicals or update, and finally did add the new names into my lesson queue. I’ve been trying to do lessons for the radicals only (using userscripts on my computer at home) and sorting my reviews so radicals get priority on reviews, too. Then I tackle a little at a time. I do some reviews on my phone or at work, some on my laptop with my userscripts. When on my laptop, I tend to alternate between sorting by type and sorting by level (oldest first) so I can clear items that I still know really well. I have burned over 200 items, which is heartening to remember when my review session accuracy is still crap.

I decided not to reset because for me that would be so disheartening that it would probably cause me to avoid doing lessons and reviews altogether. So I’m just plugging away at reviews, and won’t do any lessons other than the newly renamed radicals until I get my apprentice and guru items down significantly. This will probably take a few months, but my overall learning will benefit from it. I’m also boosting my grammar studies in the meantime, so that I can reinforce what I learn here by understanding how it works within the language as a whole.

Best wishes to you as you move forward. It’s hard, but the hard way is often the best way.

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25

Many have already commented on this, but I’d like to add a few points as well…points you probably already know.

Anything worthwhile takes effort and time to accomplish. And lots. We live in a world obsessed with speed and instant results, preferably with minimal effort. “Get hot, sexy abs in just 5 minutes a day with our AbCrusher2000 :tm:!” Literally today, I saw an add for a product to learn Spanish in three weeks. That’s ridiculous. I think we’re so used to reaching max level in video games, and the instant gratification in basically everything that the internet now gives us, that we’ve lost touch with what mastery truly means. But learning a language is not something we can just “microwave.”

When I started learning Japanese, it was a vague goal I had had for several years. When I finally began, it was the right time for me, but I couldn’t help but feel like, “Man, if I had only started this five years ago, I’d be good at it by now!” But that was the omg-five-years-feels-like-such-a-long-time me talking. I promised myself I would never again look back and wish I had just started something. Instead, I would look back in five years with a sense of accomplishment because I started the thing five years ago and stuck to it.

All of this is to say, for me, mentally/emotionally, it has been really helpful to just come to terms with the fact that this is a multi-year process. I can’t have Japanese right now. And I can’t have it ever, if I don’t put the hours into it - hours over the course of many days, weeks, months, and even years. The key, is not to love the result, it’s to love the process. Love learning Japanese more than you love the idea of knowing Japanese. Love the reviews. Love logging into WaniKani. Love learning new kanji and vocabulary and grammar. Love listening to podcasts and anime. Love reading. If you do, you’ll one day have reached your destination and look back, grateful that you started all this five years before, and having loved every step of the way. Trust the process.

Btw, my ideas on learning and particularly, mastery, have been heavily influenced by the book, Mastery, by George Leonard. I highly recommend it to anyone trying to truly master a skill, especially if you’ve failed in the past:

Best of luck in your journey!

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26

I forgot I also wanted to comment on this…I know you’re frustrated right now, but do try to be positive. It’s cliche, but believe in yourself. When I was a kid, I read a book on improving your memory, and one of the points was to trust your memory. Believe you can and will remember things. Don’t put yourself down. That “dumb” brain of yours was smart enough to see where you went wrong, come up with a plan to fix it, and move forward with new resolve. Your brain isn’t dumb; you simply didn’t use WK in the way it was intended to work. Few people on earth could remember the sounds and meanings of these chicken-scratch pictures we call kanji by just seeing them a couple of times over the course of months. Especially not in a pile of hundreds at once. So, no, you’re not dumb. Quite the opposite. You got this!

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Hi Daru! Can I ask how are you memorizing each kanji and vocabulary? Are you using the story provided by WK? If so, I would not recommend it. Its just too silly, koichi this, koichi that. You need to create a visual and a narrative with each radical and each kanji … it must make sense to you instantly. For example, when I get a new radical, like 殳 (Weapon), I put the computer down and get out some paper and draw an anime character standing on a stool holding a table over his head … I created a whole scene … it’s a Western, and the cowboy is in a saloon bar fight, he hops up on a stool and raises a table over his head to use as a weapon. Now, when I see this radical, I actually laugh … bc it’s such a ridiculous story but I will never forget it. Another thing I do that seems to be working is always always learn new kanji as part of another word. For example, I was having trouble remembering that 池 (pond) is pronounced as chi … pond, chi, pond, chi … it wasn’t working for me, but 電池 makes sense … a pond (reservoir) of electricity is definitely a battery, and for some reason denchi feels right to me for the concept of battery. I hope these two tips help you … story and context. Now, if anyone has tips on listening, I need them!!! Japanese people sound like mumble mumble to me. Aaaaaahhhhh!!

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You just have to change the way you think about it. Partially because of thinking like that I didn’t study for 10 years. I would pick it up, then decide I don’t have enough time for this and drop it. If I had studied for even an hour a week for the past 10 years I would be much farther along than I am now. If only I had realized the value of small steps earlier.

This is exactly what I mean. It’s hard to overcome, but I hope that others can learn from those of us that didn’t study for a bit and regret it. We look forward now and know that time will pass, but this time we are going to learn the language.

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I went from 23 to 1 because I felt overwhelmed; Don’t feel bad about it!

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This is the exact thing I’m afraid of, going too fast, then forgetting stuff, failing a lot of them, getting everything to apprentice again, having too many reviews, and getting demotivated, and I’m only level 3, which I won’t start lessons on new radicals until I can name every single vocab right from the previous levels.
Maybe it’s not the best idea (going though the level page and hiding meaning/readings, and recalling all of them) but I’d rather be sure than do 20 lessons and fail stuff I shouldn’t.

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I’m still 8 so maybe i have no right to say, but still let me add some thoughts

  1. be extremely honest and no cheating “skip wrong”, but if you use it within self-control when you made a typo (my anime-influenced brain often types -ri instead of -ru), it somehow ok. skipping wrongs helps you not to stockpile words just because of your typos.
  2. try reviewing plugins and sites like kaniwani and self-study quiz, though i personally consider it as SRS regime violation.
  3. there’s another tryout cheat - you can start review on smart, and if you see you’re making a lot of mistakes - then drop it for a better time.
  4. don’t learn any new lessons if wk shows you have apprentices or “review next day” more than 150. just don’t learn it.
  5. no matter now much reviews or lessons are in queue, you can just do only just how much you please. for example do only 40-50 reviews no matter now much in queue and then - just close wk page.
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Hahaha…listen to everything…even if it’s background. Spotify for example has tons of Japanese music. You can probably find something you like to listen to, even if you cannot understand it. Eventually you’ll start to make out more and more words. Television is a great resource also. The more you listen the easier it gets to hear the pieces. I’m still terrible at processing things quickly, but I try to listen to as much as I can. The more you listen to the easier it gets. :slight_smile:

I haven’t tried it yet, but I have heard rumors that some Blue Ray DVDs have a Japanese dub if you put your DVD player in Japanese mode. I’m a little scared to try it because I might not be able to get it back to English again :rofl: (at least not until I get more WK) Anyway…then you can watch something you already know in English :slight_smile: Good luck!

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My thought had been that “lifetime” would be my retirement gift to myself. It turned out to be a cost/benefit deal. I had returned to Japanese studies with varying intensities, thinking that I was taking advantage of residual memory, thinking I could recover what was now moth-eaten, plus the one-more-step. It’s easy to think too well of one’s self. If you’re not a prodigy, settle for being gifted. If not gifted, take advantage of just loving to write those little pictures and speaking believably to the wall. Do you recall when a vocabulary item has three or four further as-well-as uses? Why WK rejects a meaning for a kanji that it accepts for vocabulary? Why, exactly, does one of the example sentences translate in the given way? It’s possible to get close to learning everything that WK is teaching. In this way you are learning grammar, possibly conversation, surprising vocabulary, all at the same time. You can’t outlast your subscription. And only WK knows for sure what your capacities truly are. Real thoroughness and the reviews will be so soothing. It will all be good right up to the ennd, nng?

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Honestly having just hit level 17 and still keeping reviews to 0, I’m now thinking of WK reviews like doing dishes. If you do them every night, you’ll get that satisfying feeling of looking at a fresh and empty sink. Let them stack up though, and you’re in for some trouble and a lot of effort.

The satisfaction of hitting 0 reviews every night keeps me going, honestly. I’m surprised how long I’ve lasted considering I struggle with committing to anything longer than 2 weeks.

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When your reviews stay zeroed out, you know you are not flagging, you’re still in the game. Think of it like being in the batting cage. When SRS gives you an old one, it’s fine to just look at it, think through what you know about it, the radicals, any fragments of mnemonics you can pull back–maybe it will pop for you. Maybe it goes in the special notebook. You can start looking for the next review, the next kanji for you to smack-down. You can get so proficient that anything above “0” errors is irritating; what have you missed? If you are not doing reviews, think of it like not being in training. You’re not staying ready for Japanese. 17 is an achievement. It’s a real try. You have already lost a lot of company, people who were just kidding themselves. Take a break for 15 minutes. Read through some entries in Remembering the Kanji. You can handle this.

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One way I now think of it is this- if I’m going fast on WK, I’m doing it wrong! Wrong for me that is-- everyone is different, obviously.

I’ve noticed that for me to really master a word, I need to hear/recognize it when it comes up in anime and songs, read it many times in newspaper articles and stories, and finally be able to use it in conversation or in practice with my Japanese teacher. And that just takes time.

Learning Japanese is a lifelong adventure. To benefit from it fully, one can’t spend all one’s time on WK. There is so much good stuff out there-- like actually speaking and reading real Japanese!

So here’s to us slow WK learners! Kind of like the slow food movement or maybe WK mindfulness :slight_smile:

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So true! It doesn’t become real to me until I recognize it in context … watching anime, or tv, or seeing it in print. Otherwise, it is just trivia.

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Just wanted to check in to see how things are going since you reset. I know setbacks can be really discouraging, and I really hope you are starting to feel better about your learning progress. I took a couple weekend days to really put a dent in my review pile and so with steady work I finally started doing a few of my lessons this week. If I can come back from a review pile of over 2000 items, you can come back, too! Just take it at your own pace and let us know if there are things you’re struggling with. You can do it!!

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2100 to 850 is something big.
Good job.

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Thanks! I actually got my review queue down to zero by the end of January. I haven’t hit zero every day, but I have most days, which is good. My apprentice items skyrocketed at first, of course, but I finally have that number down. I’m waiting to go full speed on lessons until I get my guru numbers down. I’m still sitting on over 1000 guru items at the moment. It’s a slow climb, but it’s going well so far!