I’m at least 100% sure this has been done before, but I wanna see not what anyone considers “correct”, but what your current lesson and review strategy is. Do you do all your lessons the second you get them? Do you only do them when your apprentice is below a certain number? Do you wait to do reviews until it’s a waning crescent in Uganda? No judgement for speed, accuracy, or logic, just curiosity on what everyone does!
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I’d like to imagine I do 10 lessons every day after I finish all reviews in the morning, but some days I don’t finish all my reviews, and other days I’m exhausted and know I wouldn’t learn anything by doing lessons, so it’s more like 50 reviews a week.
So, what I do is weird and probably not for most people…but I will tell you anyway. I am trying to go full speed for the last levels which are each around 3 days 10 hours at full speed. So I actually learn the kanji for the next level in the two hours before I level up. Then, I just type them in quickly to get that step over with. Then some time in the next two days, I learn 70-100 or more vocab in one sitting and let SRS deal with the ones that do not stick.
As far as reviews, I try to do them first thing in the morning. And then, once around lunch time if I can and then late at night I do one last review session to clean up for the day.
I’ve heard of the study the time before leveling up strategy quite a bit, actually. Don’t remember who though. (Maybe I’ve only seen you, a bunch of times.) You give way more time for reviews than I do, which is probably why I end up having to do ~200-300 every morning. But also, how many reviews do you get each session, approximately?
20 lessons a day, review whenever I get the chance! Usually my reviews come later in the day after all my classes are over so I can do them as they come up.
Morning is usually my biggest by far for some reason. Like this morning I had 200 reviews in one sitting with a small 5 minute break in the middle. Then lunch and evening each end up being somewhere in the 50-100 range.
I stole that strategy from someone else. I cannot remember who either…
I have no idea why, but as of late it’s so hard to focus while doing reviews at my house, so I hardly do them after school/practices/etc. (which is why the class I got was a blessing XD) But I am also thinking of doing all 80 of my lessons today if I really hate myself get tired of being level 20 whatever it is and all the lessons. I have all my kanji done, all I have are vocab.
Some people dedicate a certain part of their house to only studying japanese. This way, they associate being in that place with learning japanese and it becomes easier to focus. May be worth trying.
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It depends on what your brain is like. Are vocab hard for you? Or do a lot of them just stick the first time around? For me, most just stick the first time around if I know the kanji well. So I learn them all at once, and then the 10 or so that do not stick get fixed by SRS soon enough. But for some people, the vocab is on the harder side, so if that is your experience, then maybe do the 20 lessons a day strategy and finish up this lesson gradually. Definitely make sure you do whatever works best to actually learn the new words…
Also, from my time on wk, I can definitely say, habit is king. Whatever you want to go with, turn it into a habit and do it consistently. That will get you through rough patches where you do not feel like learning new things or doing reviews.
3/4ths of what I get wrong are transitive vs. intransitive verbs, and mixing the Japanese readings of 2 similar kanji together. Lessons are never specifically hard, I just usually feel what I’m going to call dread knowing I’m gonna forget them.
I’ve tried doing that to a small extent, but I may fully dedicate a room for it soon. Problem is, only like, 3 rooms in our house are heated, which means i’ll be freezing when I try it Xd Oh well. I wake up early for WK, why not be a little chilly?
Oh, same here, those are the main ones I get stuck on…those and the new readings for kanji introduced with verbs. For some reason though, SRS usually gets those to stick for me within a day or two…
Do all of my reviews in the morning, then all of them again in the evening, and if I have time try to knock out a few more throughout the day or before bed. Tryna hit some goals this year. Make some gains. ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ
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I remember polv talking about pre-studying quite a bit. I only feel it’s really important if you’re trying to max speed the 3.5 day levels…
My goal was to go max speed as reasonably achievable without waking up at odd hours, so, basically 7 day level ups, although at levels 46+, I still maintained 6-7 level ups.
When leveling up, I did radical lessons right away, and then spread out the kanji lessons, although I made sure to finish all of them before guru’ing the radicals. Every level, I’d divide the total number of items (radical + kanji + vocab) by 7 (number of days in a level) and that’d give me a guideline on how many lessons to do a day. Lessons at 6 am every day, reviews at 10 am, and 6 pm makes sure your level ups happen at a predictable time. I do reviews whenever I can, during lunch, while in line at the grocery store, sitting on the toilet, etc, and no matter how tired I am at the end of the day, clear all my reviews.
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I do lessons whenever I have the energy to do so. I do all my reviews at least twice a day, and if there were a lot I might be to exhausted to do lessons as well. However sometimes I do a bunch of lessons in a row.
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Oh yeah, you are right…that was polv…and agreed. I have not used it until these last levels. It is really helpful though if you are trying to go full speed for these levels.
And yeah, yours sounds like probably a more reasonable fast pace for most people. I just have a lot of free time at the moment and am moving to Japan soon, so I am trying to get through WK before I leave so I can focus on vocab, grammar, listening, speaking, etc, more while I am there.
I do my reviews every day in my class breaks! This usually means in the morning, around lunch and once in the evening. I try to keep caught up on them because otherwise they pile up and then they take too long to do… ;o;
I do all my lessons at once as soon as I get them because sometimes I know the word, or it sticks quickly. This way SRS can catch all the ones I screw up, but the ones I know are out of the way quickly!
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I just do them (reviews & lessons) whenever they come up.
I try to keep my next day reviews to ~30 since it’s a rate I can sustain casually on the side of my busy work life. I’ll end up doing reviews on the bus, etc. If I have less than 30 reviews I’ll do as many lessons to fill up my queue again.
A few years ago I tried to do lessons as fast as they came in but I ended up burning out at L10 and it took me two years to come back to WK and reset my account.
- Starting new level I do all the vocabulary left from previous lvl then all the radicals for the new lvl
- Second day I learn 15 new kanji
- Third day I learn the rest of the kanji available plus some (up to 10 of the new vocabulary)
- Then whenever new kanji/vocabulary become available I learn them immediately.
I do reviews whenever they come up - before sleep I like the counter to show 0.
This way I level up in +/- 2 weeks. Maybe for some people it’s way too slow but I’m quite busy person…
I did everything immediately when available 'til level 9, then realised that wasn’t gonna be sustainable.
I then did sets of five at 6/7 AM and every hour until noon through to level 20, when I found I actually prefer sleeping until 7 consistently and going to sleep by midnight, but I liked the predictable scheduling that comes with doing lessons only in the morning, so I switched to doing sets of 3 at a pace of up to nine per hour, depending on how much I felt I could retain.
Starting at level 26, it felt like everything got harder (might’ve been subject matter, might’ve been fatigue), so I started capping myself at a hard 21 new items per day, sometimes only getting in nine.
From level 31, though, it seems to have become easier again, so I’m aiming for four sets of four items, sometimes with a fifth.
I’m in a position where I can almost always do reviews each hour, in parallel with everyday work, and I use public transit to commute, affording enough time for grammar and separate vocab studies.
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