Took some time off, should I reset?

Hey there,

So I haven’t touched wanikani since around late jan/early feb, but really had been focusing less and less on it starting around november. I put it in vacation mode around the middle of february and then didn’t touch it until now. You’d think with all the covid quarantine happening I would’ve gotten back to it sooner, but things were hectic and I put down Japanese entirely (I had just finished Genki I last year too and now I’m going through the whole thing and reviewing) and here we are. Nice thing is I don’t have a ton of reviews because of said vacation mode, but I’m trying to churn through some of the reviews I left myself and I realize I’m completely blanking on kanji in some of the vocab that I apparently burned last year, which has me concerned.

Considering just trying to churn through everything past me left today me, and dumping out my burned items into an anki deck to review… or of course a reset. Looking for some advice.

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I did the same kind of thing recently, got back from a semester study in Japan and took a while off and I think I was somewhere in the 20s… Anyway, decided I would reset because what the heck. Then I picked it back up, got to level 4, and stopped again lol. Lately I have been pretty consistent with it and I am honestly glad I reset it. I guess it depends on how much you feel it would benefit you. I think it was worth it for me, but I took way more than 6 months off.

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I’ve been studying Japanese on & off again for years so I can tell you… starting from scratch is not the way to go. You will fall into a serious Bill Murray Groundhog day situation that will do more harm than good. Better to be frustrated by what you’ve forgotten as you painfully work through that reviews pile than to ever start from scratch. Let the algorithm work its magic and prompt you with everything you ACTUALLY need to study some more.

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I second this. I got stuck on level 9 and mess up a lot back then (for a month) to finally get to level 10. If i had reset i would have given up by now.

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I wouldn’t reset.

If you reset, everything goes back to square one, whether you know it or not. If you don’t reset and get something wrong, it goes back to square one (or maybe just a lower level, depending on what it is). So for stuff you’ve totally forgotten it’s going to be the same either way.

But why throw away all the progress on things you do know? Even if it’s only 30-50% that’s still going to be a lot of content!

I’ve mentioned this before - I took 6+ months away and came back to 3000 reviews. Took a couple weeks to get through all that, but then before long I was back on track like normal. Glad I didn’t push the reset button.

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You can always reset a couple of levels instead of a full reset. I’ve done that twice already. I was like 15 before I quit for 3 years. Did some non-system practice (went through the kanji using a script) and chose to reset to level 8.

A few levels reset feels pretty good imo. But I could also see just going through with sending the reviews back down the ladder without resetting too.

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If you feel like your apprentice items are starting to pile up and your accuracy is tanking, reset down a couple levels, but no more than that. Resetting all the way to 0 is not the way to go.

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I would just like to also mention that you can always unburn kanji cherry pick style

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