Alright, hi everyone. I’m about… a year into learning Japanese, although the first half year was just DuoLingo, so more realistically it is about half a year ish.
One of my weak points is Kanji, as I mostly spend time immersing with podcasts, anime and YT as content.
So, WaniKani is great! I put the daily lesson count to 30, as I have no issues within my schedule to spend a decent amount of time on this platform, as my only other tool is Renshuu, which I use for vocab.
However, after blasting through Level 1 and 2 in about a week each… I kinda seem stuck at Level 3. And this results in low review counts, and new lessons popping up. Granted, I learned from it, because I had issues with certain kanji looking similar (north vs outside, life vs cow vs noon). I mostly got through it… but it will take some time to guru the Kanji.
Then again… maybe this pace is fine. Should I get used to 15-16 days being normal? I am historically bad at learning languages, so me picking Japanese out of all things is funny.. But yeah.. am I doing something weird, or have others gone through something similar?
My average has been around 13-14 days for a level so I would say it’s fine, but more than that I would try to focus on spotting what item in particular is giving you trouble and stopping you from levelling. If you need, say, 27 level 3 kanji at guru level and you have 24, but those last three keep dropping down in apprentice level because you keep getting them wrong, you’ll never going to level up no matter how many days pass.
So find what items you are getting constantly wrong (you can use the “critical items” widget) and review those
I’d say that’s a great pace. For my first year, I maintained a pace of about 2 levels per month (after levels 1-2, which are fast). That was a fast enough pace to keep me feeling like I was making meaningful progress. Since then, I’ve slowed down, as my life has gotten busier.
Just keep in mind that it’ll take about 6 months to get up to full load - that’s when you should start seeing Enlightened reviews. If you try to maintain a pace of 30 lessons per day, your review load at that point will be very heavy. Some people can manage that, but other people try and find themselves burning out. Just be forewarned that it’s a lot. Make sure you’re leaving yourself time to study grammar and practice reading.
If you’re struggling with the kanji at level 3, you might want to slow down a bit and focus on learning fewer kanji each day, to make sure you’re learning them well. It only gets harder to keep them all straight as you learn more of them.
Honestly, 15-16 days seem fine. It’s much more important to be learning well and diligently rather than fast. There’s no reason to get through all 60 levels in a month if you don’t remember any of it in a week for example.
Doesn’t seemed to be mentioned yet, but unlike Duolingo and Renshuu, WaniKani only allows you to access the first 3 levels until you pay a subscription
One thing I wanted to point out is that the time between stages is reduced for Levels 1/2 compared to the rest, which is why level 3 also seems slower. But also, as you said, it takes time to set in the differences between kanji you can be confused between that look similar, and the process is to let yourself practice them repeatedly till you are able to do that consistently.
I used to take about 12 days and currently try to keep a 10 day pace at 20 lessons a day, and that works out at my level because I unlock enough stuff to learn 140 items a week. if you set it to 30 at level 3, you will very quickly find yourself out of lessons, since kanji are locked behind radicals, and vocab behind kanji. Instead, I think it’s better to pace yourself, and take the recommended 15 for now, increasing it later when you are happy with your rhythm and also are unlocking a lot more vocabulary and kanji to keep up a daily flow, instead of rushing and cramming a lot at once which you end up taking more time to learn because they look similar or forget (because that’s completely normal, unless you already frequently use them daily!)
Ahh.. Yeah, makes sense.
For some reason I did not notice that widget yet.. definitely keeping it up for next level.
Did finally get which kanji were a problem, and will probably level over the weekend now. Next time if I get the idea I am getting stuck, I’ll use it sooner!
I honestly do think I can manage that. I do have the time to spend. It was just a few similar looking specific Kanji that were being tricky. It’s not that the entire concept of Kanji is tricky to me. I love Kanji tbh, part of why I love learning Japanese. The system just.. makes sense.
But yeah, I currently spend about ~4 hours on Japanese a day. But your advice does make sense, thank you!
Right… valid point here. I’ll consider lowering the amount.. There are some terms I already know from immersion/Renshuu though, which kinda does make it tricky at times. Sometimes I get a batch of 5 all new items, sometimes I get items I already all know..
oops…