Training 158 (! ! started at 328!) apprentice turtles ~ A review log

kimera · December 31, 2020, 9:25pm

Inspired by these two threads.

I’ve mostly chipped away at the review mountain since I came back to WK, but right now I have 300+ turtles that rolled down the slope and turned into apprentices again and they. Just. Keep. Coming. Back. Every single day, more turtles.

Now I need to corral them, train them up to Guru, and ~~kick them out~~ send them off to live fulfilling lives.

Incoming class on the left, some other troublemakers on the right:
wk_2020_09_14

If you have your own turtle infestation please join in and we can work on this together!

kimera · October 3, 2020, 3:58pm

Kimera’s Training Regimen:

Goal: 80 Apprentices (20 at each of the 4 levels)

Tools:

[Android] Flaming Durtles - Android app with offline support - items reverse-sorted by SRS.
[Userscript] WaniKani Dashboard SRS and Leech Breakdown - to see the real numbers.
BishBashBosh: Cram Apprentice 1 items and recent failures - to run through failed items right after the review is done.

Daily routine:

~~Climb a mountain at dawn~~
Finish all Guru and higher reviews.
~~Get at least 10 correct answers. (This might increase if my % accuracy is less awful than I think it is)~~ Switching to 20 reviews/day unless accuracy drops below 50%, it’s a bit simpler.
Stop and read the mnemonic every time I get an item wrong.
Use BishBashBosh to prod the failed apprentices after each session.

Milestones (will add dates when they’re reached)
Apprentice IV < 20 turtles - Sept 16
Apprentice III < 20 turtles (try to keep IV under 40 or so) - Oct 2 (or possibly earlier?)
Apprentice II < 20 turtles (try to keep III and IV under 40) - Oct 2
~~Take a break to clean the leeches out of the turtle pens~~
Apprentice I < 20 turtles (try to keep the others under 40)
Zero reviews!
Turtle final exams, get II-IV back down to 20 each.

Liras · September 15, 2020, 5:36am

I can wholeheartedly recommend this script/site thingy here: BishBashBosh: Cram Apprentice 1 items and recent failures!

Especially the “recent failures” part, I always do that after my WK review session. Sure, it’s painful to have to go through all your failed items again, but it’s really worth it.

Anyways, here’s a cat gif, you gotta have one of those.

kimera · September 15, 2020, 5:56am

More reviews? (Kidding, this is really helpful, I just ran through my failed apprentice items and maybe 話 will finally stick in my head now. Going to add this to the training.)

And thank you for the cat gif, you know what really keeps us all going here!

kimera · September 15, 2020, 6:28am

First day of turtle training:

Accuracy: 55% (11 correct, 9 incorrect) … hopefully that’s because I’d just gotten up from a nap

Troublemakers:
Confusing meanings for 根 (root) and 植 (plant) -> I think I got them now though.
Confusing the pronunciations for:
– 森（もり）and 林（はやし） -> hint: the bigger forest has the shorter name
– 話(わ) and 言（げん）-> need to think about a good mnemonic for these (it doesn’t help that I’m also mixing up 話 with 語)

How are everyone else’s turtles doing?

kmurgs · September 15, 2020, 6:36am

Over the last week I got my apprentice turtles down from 220 to a respectable 93, included the 15 lessons I JUST did

You can do it!!

ekg · September 15, 2020, 9:00am

300+ Apprentice durtles. Yikes! O_O That’s indeed a tough situation.

If you have the energy to cram them, do so. I addressed my leeches recently and they were around 160ish, so not a small number, but half of what you have. I used the Self-Study Quiz to beat their meanings and readings into my head. That script is nice since you can decide exactly which items to cram on there. And it forces you to redo the ones you fail…until you get them right.

I think for your situation a bit of patience is key. Don’t demand the impossible from yourself. Take it in bits and pieces, and take a break in-between to rest your brain. But, also be firm and cram the items to push them up to guru (just remember to break up the review sessions so you don’t get another avalanche of guru items later on!).

In any case, I wish you luck with your studies! You can do this! 頑張って!

Mericchan · September 15, 2020, 9:35am

Another little mnemonic to help: the forest has more (sounds similar to もり) trees in it than the woods/small forest.

kimera · September 15, 2020, 9:11pm

Congratulations, one week is impressive! Hopefully it’s easier to keep them under control now.

@ekg - Will look at the Self Study Quiz, thanks!

(Yeah … I once got all motivated and blasted through a big pile in a weekend and then they all came back again on Tuesday)

More trees! Perfect! Thank you!

Day 2: No sign of the Guru squad today, I hope they’re not ganging up on me tomorrow.

Accuracy: 65% (20 reviews: 13+,7-)
Did two rounds of 10 and got 80%, then 50%. :facepalm: Resetting the app to do 20 at once so I don’t know my score until the end, maybe that’ll prevent distractions.

Troublemakers:
度＆角 -> degree and angle are almost but not quite synonyms. Just sloppy memory and lack of practic.
交ぜる(to mix)＆交わる(to intersect) -> kept thinking mazes, need a mnemonic with either まぜ or just ぜ.

Good luck to everyone else!

kimera · September 17, 2020, 3:34am

Day 3:
Accuracy: 67% (14+,7-)
Troublemakers:
相 (mutual) & 組 (group)
働 (work) & 動 (move)
絵 (painting) & 紙 (paper)
終 (end) & 後 (behind) … those don’t even look alike what the heck?

Had very few higher-level reviews so I did a second batch in the evening.

Accuracy: 85% (17+,3-)
Troublemakers: two current level ones (鏡＆養) and I forgot the う on 業。Not bad!
Remaining Apprentices: 142 / 29 / 97 / 16 - hit the first milestone!

Liras · September 17, 2020, 5:44pm

Nice, you’re getting there.

kimera · September 17, 2020, 8:13pm

Day 4: Got through IV, working on III now.
Accuracy: 70% (14+,6-)
Troublemakers: Mostly meaning problems.
正&止 -> correct has a hat.
話＆言 … again.
速 is fast, not speed.
始めに is in the beginning, not firstly.
But I got 林 right!
Turtle Class: 142 / 33 / 85 [you are here] / 21

evethemighty · September 19, 2020, 2:27pm

Any progress?

kimera · September 19, 2020, 5:43pm

Thanks for checking in! <3 Still chugging along here, just forgot to post yesterday’s log.

Day 5 (Sept 18)
Accuracy: 75% (15+,5-)
Troublemakers:
近＆辺 -> axe=kin, sword=hen
料&科 -> rice=fee, tree=science.
And some silly things like forgetting that old people (老人) drink gin.
Turtle class: 142 / 36 / 73 [you are here] / 29

Started a second round but got interrupted so there’s 5 more unaccounted for. I’m sure they’re behaving themselves.

Day 6
Gurus on the horizon, better do this quick!
Accuracy: 45% (9+,11-)
…okay maybe not THAT quick.
Troublemakers:
院 (institute)- mixing up the different “b is for building” kanji here
回転 (rotation) - that rotate/revolve/turn set always gets me. Going to write out all of those in a row and compare them.
I think the rest was just forgetting pronunciations or brainfarts
Turtle class: 142 / 47 / 54 [you are still here] / 31

Time to get off the computer and go 植物を植える!

kimera · September 26, 2020, 5:00am

Yeah, it’s been a while. We had a family emergency that threw Japanese studying out of my head. (I mean…yes I could’ve knocked out few reviews on my phone here and there while waiting for a call, etc, but I was focused on other things and it just didn’t cross my mind.)

Anyway, things are improving right now so trying to chip away at this a bit more. Cleared out the higher-level reviews at least.

Turtle class: 142 / 47 / 82 / 25 [you are here]

Saida · September 26, 2020, 6:26am

Family emergencies do that to a person! I hope everything was solved in a satisfactory manner. これからもがんばってください

kimera · September 27, 2020, 5:35pm

ありがとうございます。Thanks for the kind words, certainly not solved yet but thankfully improving.
がんばりましょう！

Day ??
Accuracy: 68% (27+,13-)
Troublemakers:
正 - correct is when you stop without losing your hat.
Moving (動) only counts as work (働) if the leader is watching you do it.
Turtle Class: 279 -> 142 / 54 / 69 [you are here] / 16

Did some more poking through the afternoon but didn’t have the energy to properly track sessions.
Overall accuracy: 63%
Turtle Class: 283 -> 142 / 65 / 45 [you are here] / 33

kimera · November 19, 2020, 5:25pm

EDIT: Putting the numbers under a cut since they’re just accuracy and item counts which probably aren’t interesting to anyone else.

Sept 30-Oct 3

Sept 30:
Accuracy: 85% (28+, 5-)
Mostly Apprentice IV items.

Accuracy: * 64% (16+, 9-)
Mostly Apprentice III items

Oct 1:
Been kinda poking at these throughout the day.
Accuracy: 62% (56+, 34-)
Turtle Classes: 265 = 161 / 37 [you are here] / 34 / 35

Oct 2:
Accuracy: 73% (48+, 18-)
Turtle Classes: 253 = 163 / 43 [you are here]/ 8 / 41

Accuracy: 54% (19+, 16-)
Turtle Classes: 253 = 179 [you are here] / 8 / 27 / 41

Oct 3:
Accuracy: : 77% (23+,7-)
Turtle Classes: 241= 180 [you are here] / 2 / 33 / 28

Apprentice I time - working on lazy turtles and the troublemaking turtles now! D:
(Also my review pile actually dropped below 200)

kimera · October 30, 2020, 10:05pm

I didn’t vanish, I promise!
wk_oct_2020
See, still working on this! (…depending on how you define working.)

Anyway, I’ve got phone reminders now so hopefully that’ll help.

Oct 30th:
Apprentice Turtle Status: 282 = 164 / 9 / 79 / 32 [you are here]
Review pile: 209

kimera · November 2, 2020, 4:20pm

Nov 1:
Apprentices: 275 = 164 / 33 / 44 / 36
Review Pile: keeping it at 200 or so.

Went out to do early voting, it was surprisingly non-crowded!