I’ve been lurking a lot on the forums and have been using scripts early on, most notably is:
Double check
Reorder script
Leech Training
Now should I slow down? No matter what I do, some vocabs are sneaking back to me multiple times, due to it being kinda far from the original kanji meaning. or is this normal?
Here’s my accuracy:
Here’s my apprentice count(for judging if im taking so much?):
I’ve been doing 20 lessons a day, Radical > kanji > vocab, to achieve 8days/level averagely.
Can I keep up? Yes. Even the reviews. I’m just mostly worried for items that keeps on biting me back, if I should be cautious with this in the long run.
I’m at level 5 right now, just hit it yesterday and should be level 6 in four days if all goes right, excluding a one week hiatus to purchase a membership I’m coming up on 4 weeks on the sight tomorrow or so. It really just depends what works for you, I prefer to move quick and not waste any time because I can spend more time doing Anki or learning grammar etc that way. But I will recommend that every so often you just go from the top of your vocab down without looking at the answers on the right to see if you know them all.
it’s quite normal that some items will come return repeatedly. even if your errors are distributed randomly, you’d have some returning regularly. of course it’s not just random, some items are harder than others, but that’s also normal.
you’re working on your leeches already, that’s good. beyond that i’ve found that with leeches it’s often useful to review the lesson for them. i work out a better mnemonic (which addresses the aspects of the item which cause you difficulty, or which just sticks better). and often i also have to compare it to similar/related words/kanji in order for the difference to stick.
i’ve been doing 20 items per day myself, and find it a sustainable pace. but i’ve got plenty of free time, you have to know what works for yourself ^^
It is as @Alton says, it depends what works for you. If you want a prescription, it seems a commonly used standard is to make sure you don’t do new lessons until your apprentice count is below 100.
That being said, my apprentice count is consistently above 100 But I spend two-three hours on review every day right now.
after the first 2 levels, each level takes at least 7 days (3.5 to guru the radicals, and 3.5 to guru the second wave of kanji). until you hit the fast levels in the 40ties that is
It is normal. Everyone has their own leeches. I think the question you should be asking here is: are these leeches taking a big portion of your SRSing time? If the answer is yes, then maybe having some self-study sessions regularly with the self-study script will be nice. This will help so much with taking care of the leeches, freeing you more on your usual SRS routine.
If you indeed do that, I’d recommend self-studying not the “leeches”, but recently failed items. I feel like this usually tends to help me more with preventing leeches.
I use the lesson filter.
When doing a new lesson, scroll down and you can see a bunch of input texts, in order: batch size (if null the default is used), radical, kanji and vocab.
It’ll use ascendance level order then type, but you’ll do what you set
There are no right or wrong answers to pacing. Learning a CJK language is a lifetime commitment; you’re going to be at it for so long that a few extra days (or months or years) aren’t a problem.
Your percentages look good; I don’t see anything concerning at all. Depending on your goals, if you want to beef up your kanji, you can do what I do and make a second SRS deck of vocab that contains kanji that you want to learn. An easy place to do this would be japanese.io; they just started an SRS a week ago and it’s really useful. I don’t think that’s necessary, though. It looks to me like you’re doing just fine.
You might also consider writing out kanji as you learn them. I started doing that a few levels ago and my confidence has skyrocketed. It will force you to tell radicals apart. That will become a huge advantage for you in a few months.
Just to throw a completely different approach in here: I am writing out almost all reviews with basic calligraphy strokes and a brush pen. I average ~25 seconds per item (for both the reading and meaning) and reached level 17 in 157hours on wanikani having been active on WK on 251 of 323 total days (14.5 days per level if excluding my breaks, 19 days per level for total days).
The learning depth is of course much greater, I learn to produce/write kanji (helps with speaking, too), and I get >98% accuracy. It will take me 2.5 to 3 years to get through all levels, but I don’t feel like its “slower” because I just exchange quantity for learning depth. I do not think either approach is per se superior, it depends on learning style and goals.
I tried going for high quantity with some vocab on duolingo before I discovered WK. I did not go very far and I lost most of the vocab I “learnt” there quite quickly, simply because of the lower learning depth. By committed immersion one may compensate for lower learning depths, which is just a different way of committing more time to the project.
Thanks, this feels like the best solution for me, I’ll go ahead and install the self study! I’ve been ignoring it in the past, didn’t know it had a very useful specific filter like that
on the reorder script, as you do your lessons/reviews, there should be buttons down there. Basically the prioritization method would be doing all the radicals as soon as the new level starts (which is for me, 20 lessons a day, and radicals is around that), then, first batch of kanjis isn’t a mandatory, so to lessen the load, at least 10 kanji only + 10 vocabs, the last batch of kanjis tho, I do them all at once to compensate for faster level up time.
Oh I might be able to handle my current load but not more than an additional big portion, since I’m also juggling it with other responsibility, so I was looking more for wanikani specified solution, but as you said I might just be worrying so much, so I’ll keep up it for now
I see, that’s also good, though I kinda notice for the most of the items, I can have that bit of retention and still managed to keep it up, I usually just study around 2 hours or so a day, along with grammar textbook and learning kanji and vocab here, on top of anki
Edit: it didn’t help that it took me about 2 years to realize I had 2 flash cards for 起きる, where the english side on one of them said, “To wake up” and on the other it said, “To occur”
Got me so good, you have no idea.
But I spend two-three hours on review every day right now.