This:
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Wow, I spend like maybe 1 minute max on one item ^^ Maybe with kanji a bit more with the mnemonic, but the vocabulary is (usually) pretty self explanatory. Just let the SRS do itâs thing.
You donât need to do all of them at once! doing ~20 lessons a day every day practically guarantees something close to the fastest possible speed.
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For kanji I really need at least 5 minutes, I feel like burning the mnemonic makes the reviews much faster and efficient (could be wrong thoughâŠ) I believe that the SRS isnât enough if what you are revising is not really something you know. But yeah, you are right about vocab, that is often slightly shorter (still, for me at least, two example sentences can take 2 minutes 
)
Yeah, I know, but it happens to everyone at some point, I believe. If you skip the lessons for a couple of days (like I did last week) you have to do 40 a day (if you want to keep a ~7/8 days per level speed).
Anyway, that wasnât the point I was trying to get across. Having the first review in 3hrs (instead of 4hrs) means I can start doing the lessons one hour later (and have the reviews at a reasonable time). And that makes reconciling WK and life much easier.
Since there is no real reason to be so strict about the SRS time intervals, some flexibility would keep WK as powerful, but easier to do.
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Well if it comes up often enough you will know it eventually.
Yeah I mostly skip example sentences entirely. I have too much other studying to do anyway, like reading and bunpro.
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if you want to make a kanji yours, staring at itâs mnemonic wonât be enough - or at least thatâs my experience.
i read the story, visualize it, take my time with it. 2 min later i review the item and wonder if iâve seen it somewhere before.
what sometimes works for me is finding familiar words containing a kanji. sometimes even that isnât enough.
maybe i should try handwriting from scratch.
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This is what I always did. Unfortunately, because I donât have much real-world experience with the language, at later levels I often didnât know any words that used the kanji. I still found words using the kanji, and it was still somewhat helpful. But it didnât work nearly as well as when I already knew a word that used the kanji.
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There comes a point where you must just give in to the system. The only things you can control are when you do your lessons and if/when you do your reviews (post lessons, that is)⊠resistance is futile⊠
itâs hit and miss, but itâs 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, thatâs 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 Iâm 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 wonât screw up your ability to learn it. Iâve 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, èŠ (to give an example) had me stumped for a long while. Then I discovered that itâs in éŁèŠ.
I donât 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 donât have time or donât feel like it I donât. 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 youâll need it. Nobody perfects a language in a year (and then doesnât 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 donât 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 didnât stick. In this way I optimize my effort in studying only the things that arenât easy. Sometimes it takes 2-3 cycles on Apprentice 1 before I get them, but thatâs why the SRS is important.
The Kisei script also helps immensely for this approach. Any time the reading is similar to kanji Iâve already seen, it is a lot easier to remember.
For vocabulary, itâs 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 itâs 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 donât try to do your reviews at least somewhat close to when theyâre scheduled to happen, youâll miss their SRS timers, which means, the system canât test you on them when youâre 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 wonât be able to review in time, the correct course of action is not to put the items off, youâll 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 donât 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 donât. 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 doesnât 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 âslowâ 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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