Slow progress (am i doing it all wrong?) :(

WaniKani
#1

Hi! so as of writing i am level 2 and have been studying for almost 3 weeks. I have to admit my dedication to daily study was stopped during one of those weeks as I had University finals, but apart from that I have done all my reviews and 10-15 lessons a day (even on my birthday!). I love this site and I am definitely feeling its benefits, but as someone who lived in Japan for 2 years, I am worried I am going too slow or making mistakes that have kept me at level 2.

Any tips on the amount of lessons to do a day? or on tips to make stuff like spelling mistakes have less of a major impact on missing kanji?

thanks everyone! until then i will try to keep working hard!

2 Likes
#2

oops, seems it says I am level 1 still? not sure why it says this <3

1 Like
#3

Welcome to the community :sunflower:

Stop worrying and enjoy the journey. Mistakes are an awesome way to learn a lot in a very short amount of time. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

You have to log out from the forums / website once before the new level is acknowledged.

3 Likes
#4

The forums lag behind on level displayed. You can fix this by logging into the forums again.

The speed you go largely depends on how many lessons you do and which one’s you’re getting wrong. You need to get 90% of the kanji in a level to guru to advance to the next level. Some kanji won’t be available until you’ve guru’d the radicals that they’re made of.

Don’t feel like you need to reach a certain speed to be doing it right. You should go at the pace that works best for you. Keeping a consistent routine that you can handle is the most important part.

I recommend reading jprspereira’s guide to get an understanding of how the system works as well as a lot of other useful advice.

9 Likes
#5

Yeah, it can feel pretty slow in the beginning, but you get used to it. I think if you were to get everything right and do all of your reviews perfectly on time, the fastest you would be able to level up is no less than once a week. I started just about 27 weeks ago and right now I am at level 25 and from what I can tell that is faster than most people go, so level 2 at 3 weeks is pretty normal.

As for the amount of lessons you should do in a day, it is up to you. When I started out I would do all of the available lessons as soon as I had unlocked them. However, as you go on you will start to have more reviews for each lesson. When I leveled up, I found it comfortable to finish all of the previous lesson’s vocab and then do all of the newest radicals and a few of the new kanji and then save the rest of the kanji and vocab for next couple of days. When you get the radicals to guru, you unlock more kanji, and what I like to do is just do the lessons for the new kanji and leave the vocab for later like before. If you do all of your reviews and then do your lessons like this, you are able to spread the lessons out, but still end up leveling up at a good pace.

There isn’t really anything you can do about the impact of spelling mistakes, besides getting better at spelling :stuck_out_tongue:. If it’s the english that you are mispelling, I would suggest maybe just double checking your spelling before you hit enter. It’s usually pretty lenient about accepting slightly off english speeling as the correct answer anyway. If you’re struggling with the japanese spelling, I would suggest going over the mnemonics again and saying the kanji/vocab out loud to yourself a couple of times to really cement it in your brain. And just to be clear, there is nothing wrong with getting the spellings wrong or misremembering the radical/kanji/vocab. It’s an important part of the wanikani/srs process. Sometimes you might end up with an item that you keep getting wrong over and over again. People usually call these “leeches”, and everyone has their own way of dealing with them. I usually take a moment to really think about and internalize the mnemonic. Sometimes it’s helpful to try and come up with a new, different mnemonic for the item. jisho.org can also be helpful for vocab leeches because it usually has more definitions and a ton of example sentences to look at.

I wish you good luck in your japanese learning endeavors. 頑張て！(don’t give up!)

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#6

You can actually do something about the spelling mistakes. Use a double check script. You just have to be honest with yourself and not abuse it for legitimate mistakes.

3 Likes
#7

Good point, I forgot there were scripts for that.

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#8

More like…forums get stuck xD I’m on level 7 for 40 days now (progressing reaaaaaallly slowly because I have other stuff going on now) and the forums still display me as level 6 xD

#9

For your level you should log out and log back in and your level indicator will be updated.

This really depends on how many reviews you can withstand. This is not an issue at level 1 or 2 but the more you do lessons the more reviews you end up doing because the lessons of today are generating reviews in the coming days/weeks and months. The proper rate varies greatly from individuals. At one extreme some people can binge all the available lessons in one go and cope with the avalanche of reviews that ensue. Other people crawl at a rate of 5 lessons per day. Most people are somewhere between these two extremes. You will have to figure out which rate suits you.

A common trick is the watch the apprentice count. The idea is the bulk of your reviews are for apprentice items. If you control the number of apprentices you control your review workload. 100 apprentice is a good starting number. When you have more than 100 apprentices you stop doing lessons. Eventually the apprentices will become guru and the count will fall under 100. Then you resume doing lessons until the apprentice count is back over 100, at which point to stop again doing lessons. The 100 target is a starting number. You can adjust it upward or downward depending on how you feel about the resulting workload,

1 Like
#10

Embrace the slow
Let’s Durtle the Scenic Route :durtle_hello: :turtle:
Team Snails on Vacation :snail::beach_umbrella:

2 Likes
#11

Thank you! I will try that!

1 Like