Too long to learn (burn)

As a life member, I decided to start over when I hit level nine and was seeing 700 plus reviews every day. This time I will not take a new lesson until I have learned (burned) all previous lessons. Months are passing and the reviews are down to about two a day when total lessons were about 50. I don’t understand why I don’t see more items of completed lessons more often. According to your algorithm, I should have seen every radical, kanji, several times for every lesson completed weeks ago. At this rate, I will never get past level one. I guess that’s ok because, someday, a few years from now, I will learn (burn) all of the level one kanji and vocabs.

Burning something takes like 6 months, iirc.

Don’t do this.

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That doesn’t sound like a good idea, especially if WaniKani is your only source of remembering kanji.

The goal is to progress at a pace that is comfortable for you, but also to some extent challenging.

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See the WK SRS explanation here. I’m not going to do the math, but you probably won’t live long enough to complete WK using this method. Just pace yourself. I think it’s recommended to keep your Apprentice items around 100. You should not see more than maybe 150 reviews per day (in my experience) assuming you are completing your reviews daily.

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Burning is based on a time span as mentioned above, with a 6 month wait between the final stages before you can potentially mark something as burned.

There are ways to control your levels whilst still continuing through the course. I cap my self at around 80 apprentice items at any one time, so I don’t get overwhelmed with reviews. It’s been a huge help for me

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I don’t really think you need to go that far. It really only depends on pacing. It also will depend on how many reviews you get wrong. I would recommend trying out a userscript called GanbarOMeter. That script could help you pace out those lessons. If you are on mobile, I would follow the advise the people above gave, keeping the number of apprentice items below 100. I know it is also a bit too late now but you didn’t really need to completely reset your level. Just holding off on the lessons would suffice as you get less reviews for items that are a higher stage on the SRS system.

Looking forward to your level 60 post when half life 3 comes out

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Hi @seiko-and-mike! :blush:

Chiming in on what a couple of others have said - I keep my apprentice items at around 50. For me, that’s the sweet spot. More than that, and I see my accuracy start to fall, as well as my motivation. For other people, their sweet spot is 80, or 100, or another number.

I do roughly between 3 and 9 lessons a day (kanji/vocab) and when new radicals unlock at the start of a level I usually do all of them at once. I do reviews multiple times a day, in short lil batches (usually 10 to 20 items).

Why not try having 40 or 50 apprentice items at a time? This way you will have a lot more progress and satisfaction, but the review queue shouldn’t get too crazy. If the pace isn’t right for you, you can always decrease or increase this number :slight_smile:

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Since i started Wanikani, about 5 months ago i’ve completed all lessons and reviews the day they’ve appeared and not missed a day. I’ve never got more than 250 reviews in a day. Were you getting 700 reviews a day because you were missing days?

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Not to be a jerk about it, but according to wkstats by the end of level nine (assuming you’ve done all level 9 lessons) you only know a total of 1141 items. Taking into consideration that to reach level 9 all your level 8 and below kanji and radicals would need to be at least guru, there’s no way you were hitting 700 reviews daily.
The only way I think you could actually achieve this is to have an accuracy in the single digits, but then of course you wouldn’t have leveled that high to begin with.

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I’m sorry that you’re having such a difficult time. I’ve had a few struggles myself but I’ll share with you what I’ve learned so far. Regardless of whether you have 1 review or a million even if you review every day and burn them all, if you’re not applying what you’ve learned you’re wasting your time. Don’t worry about the speed but also don’t cut your nose to spite your face lol. Remember, the whole point of WaniKani, or studying Japanese for that matter is to be able to communicate in Japanese as you would in your native tongue ペラペラになるね. Don’t forget your end goal. Apply what you’ve learned in the wild (everyday Japanese media, real-life Japanese conversations, etc) As Koichi said there’s one more level after burning lol and that’s reading in other words applying what you’ve learnt and that starts from day 1 not level 60. Also, you’ll begin to notice that a lot of the things are connected and certain things will make more sense than they do now as you proceed, like literally, you can actually use Japanese to learn Japanese (blew my mind ngl lol​:joy_cat:) Know this, there are gonna be days when you feel like you wanna give up or heck even question your sanity for learning Japanese in the first place but remember you can do it no matter what never give up. Remember the more mistakes you make, the more effort you put in the closer you are to your goal. I’m rooting for you, you can do this. 頑張ってね(がんばってね):muscle::100::fire:

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I look forward to your level 60 post in 30 years!

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Only if

  1. He does all of his reviews on time, which is hard, when the last two stages are 4 months apart
  2. He doesn’t make a single mistake, which is hard, when the last two stages are 4 months apart
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@seiko-and-mike, how’s it going? :slight_smile:

What strategy are you working with these days, and how is it going for you? :green_heart: Really hope you’ve found a good rhythm and are enjoying your Japanese learning journey!

I think the problem you’re having is your definition of “learning”. Even if you burn every kanji it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve learned it. I know people can relate to this as strange as it might sound but there are times when despite being able to answer correctly in WaniKani if you encounter the same kanji in the “wild” you end up getting it wrong. Don’t judge learning by how many items you burn judge your learning by how well you’re able to use what your learning. Wanikani and any other platform can’t guarantee that you’ll learn something they merely provide a means through which to do so. That said misunderstanding what the tool you’re using is trying to accomplish can also make the process harder . So don’t go that route instead tackle them but do it consistently and use what you’re learning whether it be reading, speaking etc. May not be today nor tomorrow but you’ll get their someday. 頑張ってね、応援してるよ

How the hell did you get 700+ daily reviews at level 9?

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