Greetings. So I started casually self-teaching myself Japanese about two years ago. At some point I started using WaniKani, and was fairly consistent with it until I got to level 7. However, due to some IRL stuff that went down, I didn’t really have the mental energy to focus on it for a while. I’ve been studying sporadically in the past six months, but I’ve been inconsistent enough with WaniKani specifically that I’m quite rusty with a lot of the stuff I’ve learned.
I want to start studying consistently again, but how should I refresh myself on what I’ve grown rusty on? Is just going through my Burned items enough? I’ve been doing some of that, but it feels daunting having to go through 800+ burned kanji at random, divorced from the helpful context I learned them in initially. I definitely don’t want to start from the beginning, either. Any insight?
Doing this with Korean atm. For Japanese I had restarted countless times. But reviewing old stuff is key. If it is so easy you remember it just skim and move on. For WK more specifically, trust the SRS. Get stuff wrong and don’t add any new lessons until you feel ready to move on, which could be a while, but trust the process.
You’re a lifetime member, so it’s just a matter of timing… I’d say,
Look at WK Stats quickly: See if any level has enough unfamiliar items that you want to ‘re-learn’/review a bit.
Going back to level 1, 2, or 3 and then building routines for a few levels should help you gain momentum and motivation…
Once you get back up to Level 6 or 7, consider slowing down so that your Apprentice and Guru piles don’t get overwhelming. Find a pace that works for you. The main thing is how many items you can comfortably do per day without feeling overwhelmed/stressed about it.
How do you have 800+ burned kanji at level 7? I would expect you to have 0. In that case, the best thing to do is just do the reviews and continue with lessons. But with burned items… maybe unburn them and keep going? I don’t think resetting solves anything if you already got through it once.
well, yea ofc, thats how memories work www
i just don’t wanna level up and have to pay for wk LMAO
cause im cheap and i lost like all of my money recently
the last SRS Stage is called Burned - Items you-ve burned aren’t going to show up in reviews anymore. See here for more details: WaniKani’s SRS Stages | WaniKani Knowledge
that was over the summer and i accidatoary uhhhh lost my retainer and i costed after $300 to fix plus another $50 for room decco i had to pay my mother.
i used to have around $1000 saved up by the age of 11 but then my stupid kid self, LOST IT, I’m literally so mad at myself for that, the stuuuufff i would buy now that i can driveee
I mean depends on if you take your time. items can be burned around 6 months after you first encounter them, when you get them right every time they appear in your reviews.
when you’re on a standard pace of doing your new kanji once they become available you can complete a level in 10 days (maybe 14 if you’re taking your time) so after 6 months you’re somewhere around level 18 or 19 when the first items are going to be burned.
as for me for example - I also have like 800 items burned, but am only lvl 13. thats because i took a break in between for a longer period of time, and once i started again got a lot of items that got burned because so much time passed and i got them right one more time. that being said you only need to get part way to lvl 6 to have over 800 items so its not even that high
First of all, I’d recommend not doing any new lessons for a bit. Anything in your review pile, the SRS should sort it out (and if you do burn anything new that’s good because it means you remembered it)
For the stuff you’ve already burned, you could go through a few of the burned items each day. It saves your progress so you don’t have to do all 800 at once. Maybe take a couple weeks to check them and decide if there are any you got wrong that you want to unburn.
also idk on if you want to get lifetime or not, but WaniKani has a sale running between dec. 20th and jan. 10th (or at least around that time) where you get the lifetime subscription for 100$ less so 200$ i believe. might be good waiting for that. If you really want to start now, you could also consider going for a monthly subscription until the sale.
yeah it might be a good idea to just start your reviews without doing any lessons, until you reach 0 once, maybe even continue after the first time you reach 0, to get your daily reviews down a bit. the going through all burned items is something I’d recommend doing on the side form time to time. whenever you see an item that you think shouldn’t be burned since you don’t know it anymore, you can always use userscripts to “un-burn” it again and reset it to Apprentice 1
