(Vent) Almost my 1 year anniversary

WaniKani
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I just finished another +200 review session, and I’m feeling really discouraged. I’ve been using WaniKani for almost a year now, doing reviews in the morning and afternoon. Throughout the day, I try to revisit my recent mistakes to understand why I got them wrong. I often confuse meanings or kanji that look similar.

Around level 20, almost 2 months ago, I noticed my progress “slowing down”, and I started getting more frustrated with the increasing number of mistakes. I decided to take a break from learning new kanji and vocab to “catch up,” but I think it ended up doing more harm than good. My accuracy has dropped significantly. It was around 93%, but now it’s fallen into the 80s and even occasionally into the 70s. It feels really discouraging, like I’m forgetting a lot of kanji. My recent mistakes have been climbing steadily, and now they’re sitting at 134. I just downloaded a script to check my leeches—343.

At this point, I’m not sure what to do. I feel like quitting, but I also don’t know how else to continue with learning Japanese since WaniKani is my main source for kanji. Really want to continue learning but I’m not sure how to procede forward.

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Have you been studying grammar as well?
If you have – then now might be a good time to start reading simple resources like

https://drdru.github.io/twc.html

or

If you haven’t studied grammar – then you might want to start doing so. Diversifying your studies would, of course, eat at your WK time, but it would nevertheless help with overall studying, including kanji and vocab.

Anyway, every Japanese learner has been through times like that. As long as you keep studying, it would pass. Best of luck with your studies! wricat

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I’m very close to you - level 23, one year anniversary. I know the feeling! I burned out and reset a few years ago around level 21/22-ish and reset and restarted a year ago. It’s very common to struggle and burn out in the early 20s.

It sounds like you did the right thing and stopped taking lessons when you started to struggle. My advice is just to keep doing what you do. Spend some extra time looking at your mistakes, really learn the mnemonics and vocab, and the SRS will help you catch up again.

I agree with @trunklayer - start studying grammar if you haven’t already, and start reading! Seeing your vocab in the “wild” is a great motivation.

Don’t give up! You have come too far to only come this far!

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I am very slowly going through Tae Kim’s Guide. I don’t think a traditional textbook works great for me. I started using Bunpro about a month ago and like it so far. I have watched almost every Cure Dolly video on youtube. I think I negelect reading actually Japanese content since I don’t understand a majority of the vocab that I read.

Thank you for the encouragement as welll @Marifly

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In this case, another resource you might want to check is

Unlike the other links I posted, it’s not free, but it does teach both reading and grammar. I mean, it is a reading / listening resource, but it has a lot of notes on grammar. And it is, in my opinion, the easiest reading resource for beginner. Definitely worth checking!

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You could try the Absolute beginner bookclub here on Wanikani, either the current one or one of the previous ones. They all have vocab lists so you can look up the vocab you don’t understand. The discussion threads have questions and answers about grammar points that you may have problems with.

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I heard of Satori Reader a couple times and casually tried it. I am going to make a commited effort to using it over the next month. I’ll update you then :smile:.

@Marifly Similarly to Satori Reader, I read through half a manga and didn’t commit to finishing it. I think I just need to tough it out and read more.

Thank you both for your suggestions.

How would you recommend continuing Wanikani? Should I keep pushing and do 5-10 lessons daily or just hammer leeches for a couple weeks?

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Personally, I felt I hit a wall around L28 where there was a big drop-off in both Kanji and vocab that I could recognize.
I slowed down and I started with Satori reader. I think it fits. I think Wanikani has worked well to get me Kanji exposure and now it’s time to mix learning methods and tools.

I set my lesson target to 9 per day. Normally I don’t exceed that, and if my reviews are above 110, I try to limit lessons further (though I like to do at least one Kanji plus one vocab on a ‘bad day’), and so far I’ve been consistent with getting my daily reviews in. I aim for 100 daily reviews. I haven’t specially targeted leeches yet but I might soon. I used kanji.sh to print out my current level’s Kanji - I haven’t been consistent yet but my plan is to write new Kanji more, to make their initial learning stick better.

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Never ever ever do lessons if you struggle with reviews. Just don’t. Do reviews until you get them under control and then start lessons again.

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How do I go about studying Guru items? It used to be in the low 400s. I have been getting the same items wrong every couple weeks. Seeing them once every week or so is just reinforcing my mistakes.

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If you are particularly worried about vocabularies, maybe reduce the barrier to looking up. For manga, like in Book Clubs picks, you could try Mokuro, though I haven’t set up this one myself. You might need to search the forum.

Perhaps setting up for reading on the web is the easiest. Use Yomitan or 10ten or similar to look up words, e.g. in example sentences or social networks. I think Migaku is another possible tool.

Grammar or reading experience is different. Maybe book clubs or Satori reader can also help you somehow.

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→ Items
→ Wanikani

will allow filtering per level, so at least you can check which are Guru etc.

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If you haven’t been reading much (or any) Japanese beyond that, I definitely recommend doing more of that.

Yes, you will encounter vocab you haven’t learned yet. That will always happen, even if you were to finish all of WK. It’s something you will have to get used to as a language learner.

For example I was reading Finding Nemo in Japanese two days ago and it has words like 熱帯魚(tropical fish) and カクレクマノミ (clownfish). Neither of those words are taught in WK or really any resource. If I were to wait for something to teach them to me, I’d be waiting forever. But the first one does use kanji that is taught in WK 13, 22, and 7.

That means an opportunity to go “oh I recognize 2 of those!”, or “oh I recognize 1 of those while reading, but when I looked at the kanji breakdown in a dictionary I realized I should have recognized two”.

Also, I would say when you finish a Meaning card, read the Context sentences, even for words you know well. They can include other kanji to force you to practice them.

For example, this is for 学院, a very easy word for me:

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But it includes 主に, a word that I do find easy but that I haven’t seen much in the books or short stories I’ve read, so my brain would likely forget it when the SRS reaches into being weeks apart rather than days apart. Same with 心理学. Although it slows me down I read all of the context sentences to practice reading in context, which helps retention.

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I’ve reached level 20 2 times already, only to reset to level 4 and 6, respectively.

I’ve also noticed that kanjis from level 20 are really tough in comparison the the esrlier levels (as expected, to be honest).

If you didn’t have a month long break and are only now overwhelmed, I recommend trying to use the self study function and go through all levels again individually, just to reinforce potentially burned items that you didn’t see in a while. Go through all previous levels one by one, and then use the self study later to repeat the ones you got wrong. This is what I did to decide to reset to level 6. I reset to the first level of where I didn’t get a really high accuracy anymore.

Also, don’t neglect vocabulary (like I used to do). They are really helpful at making sense of some kanjis and are good to reinforce, too.

Another tip: take your time with the reviews. If you get somwthing wrong, go back into the details and try to reinforce the meaning and reading notes again.

Most importantly, don’t throw the towel and stop doing reviews! If you’re overwhelmed, reduce the amount of reviews you do at a time and do a few every few hours. The worst thing you can do now is stop doing reviews and wait for motivation. Trust me, I’ve been in this journey for a few years and made all those mistakes…

Good luck!

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Use the Reorder Omega user script. It lets you do self study, independent of the SRS timeline, and you can filter by SRS level, so you can study just Guru items if that’s where you’re struggling.
It has a great many other uses, as well.

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I hit a similar wall in the early level 20s. Level 21 and 22 took me much more than my usual level up pace. There were some kanji there that just wouldn’t stick, so I stopped doing new lessons completely until I had gotten my number of apprentices items down to a manageable level.
I was a bit worried about the following levels, but level 23 and others didn’t feel particularly much different.
So, there’s simply some kanji or vocabulary that just won’t stick.
Also the level 20s are those where both kanji and vocabulary start getting a lot more abstract compared to the previous levels, it feels like. I know that has been adding to my confusion.

When you make a mistake, try to analyse what exactly you got wrong:

  • Did you confuse the kanji with a similar looking one? Go back to really look at it and focus on each radical, maybe try a mnemonic to really distinguish them. I still sometimes have trouble with 持つ and 待つ at a glance, and I remember them thinking “you hold something in your hand”/“someone is waiting outside the temple” by looking at the left side radical.

  • Did you forget the reading of a kanji/word? Try reading the mnemonic again, or maybe you need to see it in a very memorable context by reading it somewhere to really memorize it.

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I think you need to step back and determine what you want out of WaniKani. For me it’s been an amazing launchpad. But here around the mid-point especially, it’s beginning to feel that my time is better spent engaging with traditional learning materials and native content versus spending hours in queues.

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I could be wrong, but if you stop doing new lessons I think it is inevitable that your accuracy will drop. When you are learning lots of new words, quite a few of them will be easy and you’ll guru them without even noticing. If you pause then you will have a much higher proportion of leeches which are much harder to burn.

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I think it’s normal to experience moments of frustration and discouragement🤗.

Remember that what you are doing is not easy and it takes a lot of grit and tenacity. There will be many moments where you will be tested both mentally and physically. But what’s important is to keep showing up and trying your best.

I think that losing the sense of making progress is also natural. The deeper you get into your language learning journey, the less noticeable progress will become.

Going from knowing 0 kanji to knowing 200 or from knowing 0 vocabulary to knowing 500 words is noticeable and feels great. But what happens when you already know 1000 kanji and then you know 1100, or you go from knowing 2000 words to 2200.

I think that, although those are still major changes and improvements, your likelihood of noticing it will probably be lower🤔. So to a certain extent, you just have to believe in yourself and in the process and keep showing up to put in the work.

Somewhat similarly, the deeper you get the more the mistakes might begin to creep up. When you know 200 kanji or 500 words, it’s still feasable to review them somewhat regularly and keep them fresh in your mind. But once you hit a certain point, of let’s say knowing 1000 kanji and 2500 words, it becomes less and less feasable to regularly review all of that without taking a substantial amount of time.

So I think that being in this state of flux between learning new things and kind of forgetting old things is natural too😅. And it’s important to just keep showing up and allowing yourself to make some of these mistakes while trying your best to reinforce them as they come.

Lastly, if you begin to feel discouraged to the point of wanting to stop, try breaking up your learning with something a little bit different. For instance, if you feel like you need a break from learning/reviewing vocabulary or kanji, take a couple of weeks to read up on some grammar, or maybe try getting through some graded readers or manga. Watch something and see if you can make out the subtitles or catch some words that you are familiar with.

Interestingly enough, if you include some of this variety, it’s almost like you are taking many breaks from one thing by just doing a different thing😄. And your japanese learning journey is constantly progressing one step at a time.

Think about how far you’ve come already​:hugs:. Remember yourself 1 year ago and look at where you are today! You probably know way more now than you did back then!:grin:

I think that you’ve done an amazing job getting to where you are now and I am proud of the work and determination that you have put in!

I know you can do this, keep going friend!:hugs:

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My recommendations:

Commit to reading something every day.

Look up any unknown grammar and vocabulary in the material.

It can be as little as one sentence if you don’t have much time.

But do more if you do have time for it.

Satori Reader should streamline the process, making it a lot less painful.

It’s all right if you forget grammar and vocabulary and relearn them when you encounter them again later.

Keep at it day after day after day. As much as you can or as little as time allows.

Over time, your brain’s pattern recognition will kick in. You’ll recognize more grammar and more vocabulary. And kanji.

If you don’t mind a little pain (constantly manually looking up unknown grammar and vocabulary), it’s worth it to find native material that you want to read.

If the material doesn’t compel you to keep reading or make you want to look up words to understand what is happening in a scene entirely, it’s all right to drop it and try something else.

Just don’t fall into the trap of constantly dropping and switching.

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