Returning After 1 Year...What to do?

[CuteAnimes]

Hello people!
Having a nice day? Good.

I’ve been away from Wanikani and studying Japanese in general for one year.
I am level 18, around 1000 items burned, but going trough them makes me realize I do not remember most of them.
I have been very much idle when it came to keeping what I learned.

So I was curious, what would be the best course of action to take?
Would the smart thing to do be resetting back to level 1, breezing trough the stuff I remember and at the same time relearning the stuff I forgot?
Or would there be a better way going trough with this?

Thank you for the advice in advance, I look forwards to studying Japanese again.

Just need a bit of help where to start!

[Aechen]

Hey there!

I was in a similar situation to you a while ago, though I didn’t have quite a long of a break as you did.
It probably won’t be the best use of your time to reset everything back to level 1, you will be quite bored through a lot, even if you get some refreshers.
What I found is that setting a daily goal for reviews, doing a bit of your huge pile each day, allows you to break down the pile in a matter of weeks or days, depending on your specific situation. You just need to make sure that you are completely honest with what you don’t remember, not using the ignore button, and reading up on your mnemonics and explanations on items you don’t remember.

[Mirella]

Welcome back!

Maybe you can also look through the levels, (for example on wkstats.com) and see in which levels you can remember most items, and from which level on you start having problems recalling them. On wkstats you can also see which items are already burned and which are not. That way you can maybe avoid resetting all the way to level 1 and still get a clean start, maybe level 5 or so is good enough!

[shikaji]

hello fellow returnee i’m pretty much in the same position (>1 year break and now restarting).

i resetted 13 levels back (too much in hindsight. 5-7 would’ve been better probably) and resurrected all my ~1500 burn items with the burn manager script. i’ll at the very least guru them all again to reacquaint myself with them (almost done by now) but i already retired the first three levels, because i found them just too easy. they really still are quite burned into my memory. others in low levels surprisingly not so much

a ton of reviews await you either way but imho it’s more fun to browse through tons of formely burned items instead of slowly levelling up again. matter of personal preference, though, i guess!

[rfindley]

Hey… I recognize that eye. Welcome back! (You changed your username, right?)

[shikaji]

@rfindley

Hey… I recognize that eye. Welcome back! (You changed your username, right?)

thanks, it’s good to be back! i once had another username but that was even before then there also was one other quite similar looking eye-user so you could mean him but i did have various script- and feature requests or questions over the years, so we did cross paths a few times

also, have my sincerest gratitude for the burn manager - it is currently not just nice-to-have but integral to my WK experience

[CuteAnimes]

Well, I looked trough to see the stuff I didn’t remember, and I even didn’t seem to remember level 1 stuff anymore…

Here we go again, I guess!

[rfindley]

@shikaji

there also was one other quite similar looking eye-user so you could mean him

I’m probably combining memories of both of you. I remember people’s images more than I remember usernames, and I remember thinking how close you two’s images looked.

Anyway, I’m glad you are finding Burn Manager useful. It always seemed like such a low-profile script, so I’m always glad to see people are still finding it useful.

[Kumirei]

The other one is (I think) @caracal. She’s not really around anymore either

[shikaji]

ah, found him - the one i’m thinking of is @chezmax. he even started WK just one day before me

[Kumirei]

Oh right, he also did that. There are too many of you!

[SayouEffect]

As someone who’s been in a very similar situation, I suggest either letting your accuracy score drop but not losing your current level, or only going back a few levels, going back to level 1 would be a mistake, just picture yourself groaning and rolling your eyes when you have to answer what “dog” or “big” is, not worth the time you’ll be spending just to get back to your current level.

[chezmax]

I’m alive, and still Wanikani-ing, but not much time for forums. Love ya’ll! I appreciate the tag

[Reveille]

I was in the same situation when I returned a few months ago, though my break had been even longer (so that I also had to deal with coming back to the 2018 radical/mnemonic overhaul). After trying to manage my review queue and being generally discouraged because there was so much I had no memory of, I ended up looking through the levels and rolling back to the highest level where I felt like I remembered most things. In my case, I reset from 17 down to 9 (and also resurrected a couple of random lower-level kanji that I didn’t recall well).

I have zero regrets about doing the reset. I might have been able to (eventually) get through my queue, but there was so much there that I didn’t remember (and which built upon other stuff that I didn’t remember). Sure, it took a couple months to catch back up to where I’d been, but it was also much less frustrating.