This is now the third time I'm restarting (Or, how to stop quitting?)

[sirati97]

heya. I have also been through some resets.
I have done 1 → 60 then reset → 30
then 30 → 55 then reset → 20 → 29
and now i did a long pause (not with japanese just wanikani) and just started again

What i can tell you:

1. make it a habit. fixed time every day. no skipping of days.
2. dont rush. decide on some modest amount of cards a day. e.g: 10 vocab or if available all new radicals/kanji. never break this rule
3. if you want to pick up speed do it gradually. mind you that full work load for a fixed amount of cards per day (e.g. 10) will only reach peak after 3 months. due to how SRS works this long delay is inevitable

i want to hammer down that skipping is really the biggest catalyst of failure. both because the not-done cards stockpile and because you now passed the optimal review interval. From my experience skipping increases workload 3 fold. That means skipping a 20 minute session, means that you now have to spend 40 minutes of work extra (one hour total) over the next week.
Skipping review session once a week means that the total workload will be the same as ~3x the new cards a week. i.e. 10 cards a day with one day skipped = 30 cards a day while never skipping. just that you now only achieve 1/3 the outcome.
The lesson: never skip

[KaranVess]

@Fryie

But I think what they’re usually saying is that you will have to decode sentences with a dictionary and grammar reference

“Decoding” sentences is what I was expecting to do but isn’t being able to read a requirement to do that in the first place?

@Fryie

if you think that you “can actually read” once you’ve done WK.

I was under the impression that that was true, at least to some extent.
What would you suggest I do in addition to WK to be able to read Japanese at some point?

[Fryie]

@KaranVess

“Decoding” sentences is what I was expecting to do but isn’t being able to read a requirement to do that in the first place?

Depending on what you mean by “being able to read”, I don’t think just learning Kanji is enough. For example, it may be difficult to infer word boundaries without knowing some basic grammar and vocab.

@KaranVess

What would you suggest I do in addition to WK to be able to read Japanese at some point?

Study grammar and (non-WK) vocab, at least the very basics.

I think you need at least to understand how to conjugate, how sentences are structured, etc.

After that, you may just look up grammar on an as-needed basis, if that’s what you prefer, but I think it’s gonna be hard without some foundation.

Also, I highly recommend to start immersing to some extent before you finish WK. Remembering all the Kanji and vocab if you never encounter them anywhere is going to be hard and there are enough people who forget things even after burning them. Furigana texts and/or certain browser extensions can help you with unknown Kanji. I can also recommend Satori Reader which will adapt to your WK level and show Furigana only for kanji you haven’t learned yet.

[PoolsJones]

Try pacing those lessons and if you quit once more, look into a different method. RTK and Refold present methods that also work… Whatever fits your learning style. I like WaniKani precisely because I like the polished environment, I like the program and the immediate feedback. (Where as I have to grade myself with Anki -which I also use.)

Bottom line is WK works because it is intrinsically motivating for me and it makes it easy for me to pick it up even on the days when I don’t feel like it as much.