I notice that I’m pretty much a level behind in my vocab lessons - I finished the last ones from Level 13 just now, but if my reviews go well, I’ll be level 15 tonight.
At some point I was more focused on trimming down my average level time, but I’m beginning to think it’s not as important as I once thought. (I haven’t set myself any official “deadlines” as I’m pacing myself and seeing how much I retain.)
My question is this: Would it be a good idea to stay my current level, spread my 108 vocab lessons out over ~10 days or so? Or should I plow ahead with my reviews, most likely level up, and then start them?
(There may not be a right answer for this, but I just wanted to hear some opinions/constructive criticism from the Community.)
This really depends on how much review workload you can take on. If the workload of doing your current vocabulary plus the newly unlocked radicals and eventually kanji does not overwhelm you then go ahead with the reviews. But if this workload is too much you should stay your lessons an focus on the current vocabulary until they are gurued.
A commonly mentioned guideline is to check the apprentice count. You should set a target number. When apprentices are above the target stop the lessons until they are back under the target. Then you can resume the lessons. This procedure manages your review workload because most of the load is from apprentice items.
Which target should you use? This varies from an individual to another. 100 is a good number to start with. You may then raise or lower this number depending on how you feel with the resulting workload.
I always finish up the previous level’s vocab before starting lessons for the new level. I find that the vocab is much easier when the kanji is still fresh in my mind.
I also keep my Apprentice items under 100 like @prouleau mentioned.
I find vocab easier to learn than Kanji, so I would do 20 lessons per day depending on my apprentice count. Try it and see how the workload feels to you.
I think I’ll do my reviews and balance the vocab with radicals for 15, but I won’t start on kanji until my apprentices are down and/or I’ve chipped away at my lvl. 14 vocab.
It’ll add some time to my lvl. 15 duration, but hopefully I can stay on top of them more in the future.
I actively encourage letting vocabulary linger in the lessons. WK likes to put a bunch of words with similar contexts together, partly because they share kanji. I hate having a review session where I see one vocab item at the beginning and then get a set of similar words that have suddenly gotten much easier due to the boost. Feels a little too much like cheating.
So, when I was running in the twenties before my reset, I always shuffled the vocab when doing lessons. Because I was only doing a couple at a time, I would pick from words from generally the current and last 2-3 levels in the batch, leading to less of that cross talk help that happens when things are too related. Rather I get a constant stream of ideas that loosely reinforce shared context.
If the random shuffle leaves behind a word for too long, like a word from 5-65 levels ago just because there’s lots of vocabulary, every once in awhile I’ll do a ‘sweep’ lesson where I do all the oldest lessons, to get those old vocabs into the mix. But generally having the entries mixed from different level makes me feel like I am proving I knwo something and not just getting lucky because there was a similar word earlier.
However, I don’t find related kanji being too easy; I find the vocab becoming somewhat more difficult. (Setting up with a new batch of kanji while also apply the ones you just learned into vocab can trip me up, sometimes.)
I’ll probably get at least half out of the way, the “100-Apprentice” tip seems smart as well.
I try to zero out all of the previous level’s vocab while leveling up. Doing roughly 20 new reviews a day has me keeping that pace.
I have stopped doing new Kanji lessons for 3 days to catch up on Vocab (I never stop doing radicals when they appear, no matter when I get them).
I also am one of the folks that tries to keep at 100 or below Apprentice items. My accuracy has been mostly good enough to keep the pace but as I said, I’ve stopped Kanji lessons for 3 days at a time to catch up on vocab from the previous level.
I guess the answer to your question is, do you feel like seeing previous level vocab is demotivating you? If it is, then absolutely stop what you are doing and get those vocab done.
If it isn’t demotivating you and it is not dragging your pace down, then keep going as you are, knowing that if you keep this pace you may end up 2 levels of vocab behind eventually.
I got into the WK as a Race, must level up in 7 days mindset. It killed me for a month and eventually reset my brain. My goal is 60 by Oct/Nov this year and I am well enough ahead of that goal to not fret about not getting a level every 7 days.