Hello I access wanikani in the morning and for the past few months I am usually greeted to 90-130 reviews. The last few days it has been up to about 160-190. This level is almost unmanageable now and now that I have graduated college when I get a job I will only probably be able to access wankani 2-4 times a day instead of the being around every hour. I have been doing five new items every day for most of the year and am confused by the sudden increase in reviews. I have 325 in Apprentice, 410 in Guru, 232 in Master, 320 in Enlightened, and 185 in burned. I realize I can stop lessons but I think it is important to keep moving ahead and was wondering if anyone has any advice to keep reviews low without totally stopping lessons.
Probably more burn reviews?
Edit: if you install ultimate timeline, you can see whicj SRS level items are coming in every hour
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Good Lord, get that apprentice queue down. Most people say about 100 items is manageable. Some people can handle more, that depends on the amount of available time, accuracy etc. 325 is definitely quite large and that means you have a very big pile of reviews every day. The best you can do is stop doing lessons for at least a couple of days. I know it feels like you are not advancing, but if you keep adding stuff to your apprentice pile, you are going to get overwhelmed by it at some point.
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Yeah I just do not want to be stuck not doing lessons for a long time, maybe I should have done this earlier but like I said things were pretty consistent for a few months.
Oh yeah this! I canât believe I just read over this! You should probably pause lessons for the next week, keep track of the srs, especially for the apprentice 1/2 items. Your daily reviews will go down fast as you get most of those moved up to guru
yo, that is a lot of apprentice items, you are definitely going to want to chill for a little bit and do fewer lessons. maybe review the portion of those apprentice items that youâve recently gotten wrong to make sure you can get them moving up.
150 apprentice items is about the most i can handle
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this is why we keep on saying that WK is not too slow at the beginning , it is made to avoid having too many reviews afterwards and being stuck like you are now !
the apprentice items should not be above 100 so stop the lessons for a while and review your apprentice items till you only have 100
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You are just starting out and the behaviour will change as some of the older items come back for Enlightened and Burn reviews and add to your overall workload. And if you forget them, then it is even worse.
I think maybe the good old âyou are hereâ chart helps. Even if you are not exactly where the arrow points it makes clear why things are changing and will continue to do so for a while:
And if you are forgetting a lot of the old items, the chart would look even more dramatic.
Could it also be possible that you are doing all your lessons at once? If you start to space them out, either naturally or e.g. by using [Userscript] WaniKani Lesson Filter then you reduce the chances of being hit by one giant mountain of reviews all at once.
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Imagine it this way as well⊠unless you are burning the same number of items as you are taking lessons on, your workload will increase.
More than 150 apprentice was never manageable for me and nor was more than 10 lessons at once.
For lessons, I liked the following strategy: If the review queue is empty, take 5 lessons. Wait 4 hours for those reviews to come up, plus any others. If that session went well (say 80-90%), take 5 more lessons. Repeat. NEVER do lessons if the review queue has anything in it.
For reviews once you get busy with a full time job, I also like this: Use the wrap up (or auto wrap up script) to do 10 reviews. You can sneak in 10 reviews during a coffee break or something.
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Sounds like youâre getting way too many items wrong. You claim to only do 5 items a day and yet you have 325 in Apprentice? Thatâs a recipe for catastrophe.
You should stop leveling up and fix your foundation first. Thereâs no point in leveling up and learning new items when you canât properly remember the items youâve learned a week/month ago.
I know the feeling when you want to move on and learn new stuff, but in your current situation thatâs simply a bad idea.
Get these two scripts:
Ultimate Timeline: This will show you when and how many reviews youâll have, itâs EXTREMELY useful.
Override Script: This will allow you to ignore a wrong answer, also very useful BUT DANGEROUS. Donât play yourself and misuse it, it will only hurt you in the long run. Only use it if youâve made a typo or an honest mistake.
For example WK asked for the reading of âèȘæźșâ, my very first thought was âAh, this is âsuicideâ, so ăăă€!â. Thatâs the wrong answer though, I only glanced over the kanji and didnât pay enough attention to notice that WK isnât asking for âèȘæ±șâ but for âèȘæźșâ, which is read as âăăă€â. They both have the same meaning (in this case), but a different reading. I know both readings by heart so I used the Override script to get a another chance at the answer without dropping an SRS level for a word that I 100% know.
So if youâve made a typo or an honest mistake where you 100% know the answer, IMO use the script. If youâve missed a rendaku, or a small tsu, DONâT use it. This is very important, you donât want to stat a bad habit.
I hope this was somewhat helpful, everything I wrote is just my opinion of course but Iâve been where you are, so, learn from my mistakes. 
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Wow, did not really know I was supposed to keep apprentice below a certain number, I am not really active in the community at all. Will keep this in mind when moving forwards and will use the scripts, thanks!!!
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Sorry. No. You must stop lessons or it is only going to get worse and worse. Use the self-study quiz with leech training, use the settings to practice Apprentice 4 and Guru 1 items with leech factor > 1.5 After you get down to 140 apprentice items, resume the lessons. Also try to to reviews in smaller batches (40 items), use the wrap-up button, to increase your success ratio. Try to do reviews along the day, not only during the morning. Good luck!
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Itâs not that youâre âsupposed toâ, exactly. Itâs a combination of three things.
When items are in apprentice, they are at their most intensive - youâre going to be seeing things pop back up every few hours, even if you just reviewed them.
The second thing is that Apprentice items are the ones that you have the most control of. You can reduce adding apprentice items by slowing down how many new lessons you get.
The third thing is that a high apprentice count is a flag that thereâs a problem. It suggests that somethingâs not quite right for you, and that could be that too many of your guru items are being forgotten and dropping back into apprentice, or it might be that you get a lot of reviews wrong, or it might be that the workload is just too much for you right now.
Reducing your apprentice items is a really great way to identify what the issue is.
If your apprentice reviews are great, then maybe itâs that those guru items arenât sticking in your memory, and a bit of self study on those would help your Japanese learning.
If your apprentice reviews are not so great, then try not doing any lessons until you get 90% each time you review items as lsh3rd suggested.
ITâs important mostly to find a way to keep things manageable and keep your motivation and progress good.
ăăă°ăŁăŠ! - good luck!
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Well I have given it about three months and things have generally improved with 180 apprentice, 371 gurus, 247 master, 434 enlightened and 254 burned. The issue is I have been at the level of apprentice for the past month and a half. I had it down to less than 140 twice for a day or two but then they started to creep up to the 180+ level. At this point I was thinking it might be better in the long run to just start over. Hoping to get some good advice before I erase my progress.
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Hi! Please donât give up. The system works in a way that from time to time some items will come back and create spikes on the number of reviews.
I personally have been keeping my apprentice level between 90-115 avg. My daily reviews are usually about 120-140 a day, but can shot up to about 180 or so.
If this gets too overwhelming, the only workaround itâs to lower your apprentice count even more until you find a pace that suits you. Maybe you could just avoid doing new lessons until you reach about 80 items, and then see how it goes from there. Just take it easy for a couple of weeks man!
After that donât do your new lessons all in a single day, spread them out and the system will be nice to you.
Also, if you havenât already, check out the wkstats site. It has data on your accuracy. If itâs too low then it might also be a sign that youâre overdoing on the new lessons, and thus overloading your apprentice items.
Be safe and good luck!
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Whatâs your typical accuracy rate when you do reviews? If youâre struggling with something and thereâs an issue with your process, I think that warrants attention more than just starting over. What do you tend to do well with or poorly with? If we can get your accuracy and retention rate up it could be a game changer.
Edit - Iâd also just stop new lessons entirely (if you havenât already) until you get the apprentice count down to say less than 100 and really get the overall workload down.
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I just moved house. It was a nightmare. My apprentice queue is hovering at about 40 because I didnât do lessons, but always did reviews. Iâm in a sort of paradise at the moment, the house move is over. As Iâm typing this post, I am procrastinating doing new lessons 
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Well my accuracy rate is all over the place, mostly about 50-60 percent sometimes better sometimes worse, I have not done any new lessons since very early December. I have a feeling that ~60 are just not being remembered at all and are causing a lot of difficulty but donât know a way to really pin them down yet.
Eh that seems pretty normal. Iâve been waking up to 100 reviews or so every morning.
If you want to cut your reviews down, donât do lessons for a while and just keep doing reviews. Once youâre ready to do lessons again, spread the lessons to maybe 10-20 a day.
If you want to improve your accuracy, I suggest writing down the items you have issues with, and their meanings. Sometimes the sensory input of writing things down really helps with retention.
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