For some reason I get really angry when doing reviews and it keeps making it as wrong because the english answer isn’t worded how they want it or I make typo in the kana or I spend ages doing reviews and keep my apprentiship items below 100 and get about 75-85% correct in reviews but it still then just floods you with loads like it doesn’t respect the user’s time. Sometimes I just can’t remember things or confuse visually looking kanji or similar meaning words, which is a me problem. Most of my problems are me problems that are frustrations associated with learning kanji in general. No matter what tool I use to study the words will always pile up if I hope to review them at any point. So it feels like a losing battle. Please can I have a pep talk?
I also got really angry sometimes when doing wanikani, I find flashcards frustrating. My advice is to reconnect with other parts of the language. Remember, wanikani is just a tool. Why are you learning Japanese? Is there something you’re trying to achieve besides “fluency,” like maybe some short term goal? My advice is to put wanikani in vacation mode for a short time and do something else. When I got too angry during reviews I watched TV shows or read manga. Or I focused on calligraphy for the kanji I already knew. Taking a break is something people on the forum sometimes recommend against, but for me it was always the right call.
If you are absolutely committed to not taking a break from wanikani, then my pep talk is this:
Accuracy on wanikani is a short term reality. If you continue, you will improve. Don’t think of yourself as not doing well, think of yourself as working to improve.
Pep talk portion:
I know!!! It can be super frustrating! you spend so much time on WK and yet you don’t feel progress! BUT, you probably know more than you think! Also, you’ll recognize kanji better in context bc. a similar kanji wouldn’t make sense in a particular sentence! Everyone has those very dry stretches where motivation is low and all that keeps them going is habit and consistancy! You’re already learning for 1 year, so I’m sure you can keep going!
Maybe helpful portion:
I understand your frustration. A couple of things which might help:
Changing your review schedule. I used to do my first batch of reviews at lunch at work. It stressed my out because it was usually a large amount of reviews in an environment where I could not fully concentrate and also had a time limit (my lunch break). At some point I started to do reviews before work at home in bed. It was a game changer. I was relaxed and not pressed for time.
Changing the way you do reviews. Personally I like to see 0 reviews before I go to bed. But I have been on hiatus without turning on vacation mode, so I came back to over 1000 reviews. The way I got through them was setting a number of reviews I will do every day (for me it was 150). You could also set yourself a goal of e.g. 100 reviews per day.
Try understanding why you fail reviews. If it’s really just the english wording, you might want to add synonyms. English is not my first language and I have added plenty of reviews which include english typos (because I will just never remember how to correctly spell “neccessary”), words in my native language, english synonyms which do not fully represent the meaning of the kanji, but I can’t remember the correct english word. If you keep confusing kanji though: Try building your own mnemonics with the radicals or re-reading WK’s.
Hit the clock button when you feel the rage coming. Sometimes I have a really bad start. If I’ll get my first 3 reviews wrong, I’ll hit the clock. Sometimes you’re just unlucky so resetting helps.
Don’t give up! (but give yourself permissions for breaks). Are you stressed? Do you have other things to do? Maybe not taking a break from Japanese, but a break from WK is in order. You could instead try and read an article of NHK easy news every day for a month and put WK on vacation mode. Maybe this will change things up for you and not frustrate you as much.
Please be kind to yourself. First of all in my humble opinion, Wanikani is just a tool to help you learn Kanji using SRS. That’s it. No need to get yourself worked up. Find yourself a good core resource and then enjoy Japanese in different contexts. For example, reading, watching whatever you fancy in Japanese, keeping a little diary, listening to music etc. You will get natural exposure to Kanji as you go along. Don’t stress. There is no set speed that you have to go at. Some people get to level 60 but find they are literally crap at Japanese. Get good at what you know so far and have fun. 頑張って
I’m not so sure the me problem you refer to is the me problem you really have and that me problem is a little bit of a me problem when it comes to choice but it also has to do with the thing you choose. So what am I talking about?
If the all the tools you choose behave in the same way - making your mistakes into a review pile, then yeah, that’s what you will get, and if it happens with most of those tools, perhaps words srs is not for you. There are many other tools that don’t panelize you for not remebering a word, in a way that the only way farward is to do it again and again, but put your mistakes in an optional mistake review section (like doulingo for instance not a recomendation just an example). or let you review new words in context and your previous lessons don’t pile up in any way, you can choose to practice vocabulary you’ve learned in a practice section or not. You’ll encounter words you’ve learned and don’t recall in a new context where they are not the main subject of the lesson and you will gradualy memorize them while progressing with the material (like lingodeer).
So perhaps learning from context instead of rote memorization will be better for you?
It can work well with WaniKani since you’ll be exposed to some of the kanji and vocabulaty in a less piling up way…
Not sure it’s a pep talk, but sometimes it’s really not a me problem, just that the app is not compatible with what you need and hoping it will change someday is (literally) wasting your time.
You can always use scripts or a third party app that will help you with undo or skip and maybe keep your apprentice under 70 or even less for a while to see if a smaller load will yield better results for you.
Gamification can really get on your nerve sometimes, sometimes having a more positive feedback loop will give you better results. I don’t know what your end goal is, but there are so many other ways to learn Japanese and WaniKani is just an aid. Unless that’s the missing puzzle piece for you and only Kanji stand in your way. Wow this is the worst pep talk ever, could have written “You can do it Charlie Brown!” same effect.
If it makes you feel any better, those aren’t “you” problems, they’re a normal part of doing this. Learning kanji is hard. Japanese people get to spend their whole childhood doing it, you’re concentrating the pain into a year or two (and without the ubiquity in the environment to contribute by osmosis). You’re doing the right things, and you’ll succeed. Just like exercise, the pain means it’s working.
For some reason I get really angry when doing reviews and it keeps making it as wrong because the english answer isn’t worded how they want it or I make typo in the kana
Just checking in a few months later, I hope you’ve downloaded the WK Double-check script by now as that easily solves that problem
Sometimes I just can’t remember things or confuse visually looking kanji or similar meaning words
Not just a you problem, that’s most Japanese learners, especially me too! There’s a script that can show you visually similar kanji and guess which one you probably mixed up called ConfusionGuesser. Sometimes when I review I go too fast for my brain to actually process what I’m seeing, and it helped me realize that 資 (resource) and 羨 (envy) are NOT just top/bottom reversed! You also might want to try Jitai v3 by marciska which rotates between different fonts during reviews. It makes me actually slow down and read the kanji, not just assume based on similar features/patterns (of the radicals) in kanji.
I’m just making sure you aren’t giving up on your kanji journey! I’ve been doing WK for like, 6 years now, I didn’t have the money for it my first 2 years, and then I was busy with high school for the other 4. Slow is better than nothing!
I have the same problem sometimes. I finally realized part of my problem was that I’d look at the kanji too fast and type a wrong answer. I have slowed down some and that helps. I also write the Kanji I confuse with look alike kanji next to each other to see the differences. That has really helped. Don’t give up. Learning kanji is not an easy task.
I know someone else recommended it earlier but the doublecheck userscript is awesome, has made me enjoy Wanikani a lot more.
When I get a wrong answer, I’ll judge if it’s really something I need tested again if I get it wrong. If it’s a radical with a name that’s only loosely connected to any kanji…I’m a lot more loosey-goosey with it and will click retry it if I’m “close enough”. Like, do I really need to know “Triceratops”? Not in the grand scheme of things and hey, I ended up learning it anyway!
Is it a word that I definitely knew as soon as I hit send, and just brain-farted on? I might retry it anyway because, hey, I just reviewed it there and I KNEW the reading, that counts for something.
But if it’s an important word, one I feel I’ll mess up later, then I’m a bit harder judging whether to retry or not.
For ones I slip up on often I will pause to try and read the description again, try to find a specific mnemonic for it, etc. Maybe try even making flashcards of just the leeches somewhere. Try writing sentences with them, or look at the example sentences, to put them into context.
An SRS system is not penalizing us by moving an item we have just demonstrated we have not yet fully learned back into the study/review rotation more frequently. It is doing us the service we want and expect it to do and letting us know that “you don’t seem to have gotten that one down yet and need to study it some more so I have arranged that for you”.
Yeah, what I ended up doing to alleviate similar frustrations was use the doublecheck script. And then write a full row of every character I’d struggle with during reviews after. It massively increased my retention speed and gave me much more familiarity with characters in different fonts and styles after.
WK’s form of SRS instead of Anki having multiple levels of confidence wasn’t really working being fully immersed constantly anymore anyway. So I didn’t mind playing loose with it. Whatever works, works. Some people get really weird if you’re methods aren’t what they want to believe to be pure. But if you’re learning, you’re achieving the goal.
If you’re doing reviews on your phone and can’t install the double check user script, download a wanikani app (not official!) like Tsurukame, it comes with a similar function.
In the beginning I used wanikani without it, and it sucked so much!! I hope the double check/typo correction will mean as big of a difference to you as it did to me.
Yeah, I realized this later. I stopped doing Wanikani 2 months ago so all my notes related to it are old.
I had to double check a lot of kanji on jisho over that radical in particular. And I kinda feel like I started struggling with that sort of thing more after the font change. I still don’t like that newer font.
