Reviews at odd hours?!

it’s hit and miss, but it’s one more tool in the box.

sometimes i speak out these words loud. hearing them together can make it work better - dunno why.

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Hm, that’s one way to look at it. I feel like, if I study every item the way I would need to study the hardest ones, that only means I’m wasting a bunch of effort on the easy ones. I let the 4-hour and 8-hour reviews tell me which are the hardest, and reserve the intensive mnemonic-studying for those. Some just pass through after a cursory read-through on the lesson.

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Just do your reviews the first time you are able to. There is no rush. If a review pops up and a few hours pass before you get to it, nothing bad happens. It won’t screw up your ability to learn it. I’ve gone a few days without doing certain reviews, and I am progressing fine.

Just take it easy and try to do your reviews at least once a day. I can assure you, that nearly everyone does not always do their reviews the hour they become available

Aye, 芇 (to give an example) had me stumped for a long while. Then I discovered that it’s in é‚ŁèŠ‡.

I don’t get why people are so stressed that they build their whole life around Wanikani.
I just do it as an extra to my usual studies. So if I have time I do reviews (provide I have reviews I need to do) and if I don’t have time or don’t feel like it I don’t. What is the point in becoming a lv. 60 in a year? Unless you die in two years you have the rest of you life to really learn japanese and you’ll need it. Nobody perfects a language in a year (and then doesn’t need to review anything) anyway.

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Waking up earlier / staying up late just to do reviews?
HAha, nope, DeFiNiTeLy not happened to me.

oöpsie

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I basically feel the same. I find that I remember around 50% of them from just reading the meaning and readings once, so I do lessons pretty quickly (~30 seconds per kanji). I don’t want to waste time on something that feels right and just sticks. The first review, however, I spend time reading in detail on those that didn’t stick. In this way I optimize my effort in studying only the things that aren’t easy. Sometimes it takes 2-3 cycles on Apprentice 1 before I get them, but that’s why the SRS is important.

The Kisei script also helps immensely for this approach. Any time the reading is similar to kanji I’ve already seen, it is a lot easier to remember.

For vocabulary, it’s much the same, with one difference. During the lesson, I try to determine the reading from the kanji before going to the Reading tab. This is what I do for new words I encounter elsewhere anyway so it’s good practice. On WK, I get immediate feedback rather than having to look things up in a dictionary, which is really nice.

This practice really helps because while exceptions abound, so my success rate is limited, I have a much better feeing about when to rendaku or use gemination, etc. It takes more time, but I find the practice really valuable.

To get back to the original topic, letting the SRS work does create a lot of weird times for reviews. Oh well.

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if you don’t try to do your reviews at least somewhat close to when they’re scheduled to happen, you’ll miss their SRS timers, which means, the system can’t test you on them when you’re most likely to have them on the brink of forgetting, which is the most efficient point in time to do them.

if you know beforehand that you won’t be able to review in time, the correct course of action is not to put the items off, you’ll get more out of refreshing your memories early.

what cements the kanji/vocab, is the repeated exposure and quizzes. the timers just try to make it so you do the least amount of reviews necessary, to save time and energy.

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Wanikania has one single version of SRS intervals. There is nothing personal about it. So the system has timers where some people are most likely to forget them. Everyones memorizing ability is different. There is not a single retention interval for all. Studies even show that there is no fixed retention interval for one person (for example Kann 2016, Cepeda et al., 2009). That depends on too much factors and I don’t even know if Wanikani system is based on a Primsleur, Leitner or HLR Algorithm. For some Wanikani set intervals might work the best but for many others they don’t. So the way of doing them when they pop up is definitely not the most efficient way in that regard. There is simply no point for me to do reviews at 3 a.m. no matter what the algorithms say.

Wanikani doesn’t fit my learning style in a lot of ways. The way Wanikania teaches Kanji is simply not a way I learn efficiently. But I stick with it since it is better than the alternatives. So there is even less point for me to adapt my life to Wanikani if the way it teaches me Kanji is mostly inefficient to me.

And most of all: I actually have a life. I know that many people on Wanikani basically do nothing but learn japanese. But I learn japanese in my free time as a hobby.

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for “slow” levels, you can fully control the load, actually.
there are important items for level-up (dozen of radicals [first phase], or kanji [second phase]), which can be done at any moment (but not half-sleeping, though).
anything else can be done when there is enough time (learnt, reviewed for apprentice I/II/III grades - that is, the optimal is to start/learn in the evening, 4 hours before sleep), so that SRS is not broken too much. for apprentice IV and above, few hours do not matter, so they can be delayed and done whenever possible (though, for kanji there is limitation of level-up timeframe).

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Every Monday, I wake up at around 4:00 AM and do my review. I usually have up to 200 reviews at that time. The items in this review are from the previous levels. When I finished my review early, I will take a nap.

Then at 5:00 AM, I level up the second half of kanji and vocabulary (of the current level) to Guru I and move on to the next level. I immediately start the lessons at 6:00 AM.

Also, I wake up before 6:00AM on Friday and Saturday to finish the review for the second half of the level.

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But why though.

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Back in college, that is the most logical time that I can use WaniKani. I am also a morning person so I usually wake up around 4:00 AM to 7:00 AM

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i’m aware that wanikani isn’t personal. it’s algorithm is an estimation, very much like leitner, supermemo et al.
the principle doesn’t change though: it’s the most efficient (not effective) way to review.
these intervals are only relevant for time saving purposes anyway, they’re designed to keep your workload the smallest it can be.

i believe i mentioned already that going the extra mile to check upcoming reviews you won’t do in time is what will help you most.

whether you do this as hobby, or with a gun to your head to save your life is utterly irrelevant. by all means, do as you please.

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Remember to also rest! Saw this in the news today and it’s pretty amazing.

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Same here. I try to memorize the stuff as good as possible but I will never spend more than a minute for a new kanji, for new vocab not more than 20 seconds; most of the stuff sticks fairly well and when it doesn’t, I will realize it when the next few reviews come in.

But even then I rather review it a few times and get it wrong than trying to remember the mnemonic that hard.

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Have you tried Kanji Study app (https://mindtwisted.com) for Android? I can’t stress anough how great this app is. But it has kanji writing training and kanji writing quiz modes. I always handwrite kanji there in parallel with WK.

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thanks for the link, i’ll give it a try :slight_smile:

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