I need advice from those of you whom have reset. I’m level 8 and have been using wanikani for five years now. During these years I’ve moved three times, had a second child, and finally the owner of my own house.
But that put japanese study on the back burner a number of months at a time. When I do my reviews I regularly score 86% or greater on remembering the past kanji. But I feel like I have lost much of the early levels.
I have not stopped my speaking or immersion practice, and use several other apps that let you have conversations with native speakers. But I’m having to rely on Google translate recording me speaking Japanese out loud to actually get a transcript of what I want to say before I say it in these conversations.
Would a fresh wani kani start be the best way to avoid my 300+ review back log and actually internalize those early lessons?
Sincere advice needed
-matabooa
I myself have reset several times, so if you do decide to reset I wouldn’t blame you. However, resetting is a pretty drastic measure considering you can’t speed up wanikani or skip things you already know. If you’re getting 86% on reviews, I’d say you don’t need to reset.
It sounds to me like you need to reinforce wanikani with other kanji study/use. I always recommend reading. If you don’t want to spend money, try the bookwalker freebies or maybe a local library? I read a lot of free manga on bookwalker. (There’s a thread for this somewhere in the forum.) Reading can be slow and painful, but manga really lowers the barrier to entry, because even if you don’t know a single word on the page, the pictures can give you a sense of what’s happening, and you can choose how often (or not often) you want to look things up.
Another idea could maybe be to add a writing practice into your routine? I think there have been studies that show writing things by hand helps you remember them better. I can imagine a scenario where you choose one of the messages you sent to a native speaker (that you used google to get the kanji for) and spend a bit of time transcribing, paying attention to stroke order and radicals, etc. This has the added benefit of using words that you actually want to know, and would probably help you express the things you naturally want to be able to express.
Anyway, that was a lot of (maybe unasked for) advice, feel free to take it or disregard it. In any case, good luck with your studies! (we need solidarity!)
just understand that if you reset back to level 1, it will be a slow build up for the first several levels before it returns to full speed ahead. not necessarily a bad thing if you need a core refresh; just know you’ll need to be patient.
I’m not very intimidated by the slow buildup. Even if I do already know it the refresher is really nice. Then I feel like I’ll be able to stay on top of the reviews much better. And maybe I’ll pace myself a little more. I usually get excited and do all 50 or 100 of the available kanji to study at that level in one sitting… but I retain an average of 80% of it.
86% seems good. Better than me for sure 
Before resetting, why not do some self-study with the items that you feel you have lost?
Regarding the review back log, if you do them at a daily consistent rate and do not do any additional lessons, the pile will go away quicker than what a reset and review it all again would be.
Thats excellent advice and I will be looking up book walker. I guess i just feel really intimidated by my back log of reviews. First time i touched it in 4 months and i got a 54% on 11 out of 250.
Yeah i typically aim for finishing 10 out of my 240+ per review session and have not taken any new lessons … in a long time.
I haven’t done a reset, but I would say if you’re getting 86% that means you’re remembering a good amount.
I would say go forth and try reading some books, news, short stories, etc… yes you won’t know everything, but just try to be on the lookout for what looks familiar. You’ll be surprised how much you can understand with even just a few hundred kanji in your arsenal (depending on the material, obviously).
Seeing things come up and going “wait? I think I know that” is great for putting those brain cells to work.
I know manga is suggested a lot, but novels can be good for beginners too. I would recommend Disney Movie Books (my first one was Finding Nemo and it was awesome), or older children’s books like The Little Prince. With dictionary lookups , it’s easy enough to look up what you don’t know and focus on what you DO know.
I’m also a big fan of children’s books! My library has a bunch of kids books from a bunch of languages, and I’m there every week. The books usually aren’t even boring, I’m reading one right now about rats foiling a bank heist.
I’ve reset 2x (both from around level 22 iirc) and both times it was a good idea for the moment.
You’re at level 8, this is still a no-regrets reset!
I suggest you go through each level, starting at level 1, and do a selfstudy session on all of their contents once. As soon as you notice you are starting to struggle, reset that level. I did that and reset to level 6 and it was the best idea.
After resetting, don’t go at super speed again. Take maybe new 5 items a day and go slowly but steady.
Wait…So I don’t have to reset to level one I can just reset whatever level I’m currently on? 
exactly
Unfortunately I live in a pretty small town with a population of 30,000 people. Our local library does not have any books exclusively in Japanese. there’s like one Japanese language for busy people book that is 40 years out of date. They do have an extensive manga section but it’s all in English excellent stories I really enjoyed reading them and reading the onomatopoeia in Japanese.
Thank you for that insight
I’d say that I’m pretty heavily a ears on language learner. So I learn best by playing those audio samples and internalizing it as well as the mnemonic tools that they have.
Bookwalker is a great way to get some books! Cheap thanks to the weak yen and so many sales!
lol i’ve reset so many times. i currently have 188 streaks and my last reset was on the day before my 1st streak. i kept getting lazy, but this time i know for sure that i’ll be able to keep going until level 30 without taking a single break
Your 200-300 review pile isn’t so big that it can’t be chipped away at over several days or weeks. You’ll need extra reviews for the ones you’ve forgotten, but the ones you still remember won’t need to be learned from the start again. 80%+ accuracy is good enough that resetting would be a significantly less efficient use of your time.
I reset to level 1 to “fix” a 3k+ review backlog. Re-doing the levels seemed more manageable than trying to recover, and this time around I’m much more conscious of how lesson pacing affects review load.
Ooooh id love to see my version of this metric, is it available on the moble version?
The trouble I have is after weeks of working through my 200-300 back log, I then get really excited about learning new kanji that I over do it. I just need to wait like 3+ days between sets of 5 new Kanji?