Hey everyone! so, i’ve been doing wanikani for a bit now and I’m struggling with two things
I’m great at getting through kanji but never know how much vocab to do. Since kanji learning is so intense (and I’m a student, doing this on the side) and I level up every 8-9 days, I often don’t do vocab lessons and have lots vocab pile up.
How do ppl deal with this? Do people do set numbers of vocab per week or per lesson? I usually pick vocab selectively to help learn kanji readings I need to most review on (like, I need help with 警 so I learn 警官）
I also find it frustrating that i remember readings for words but NOT the vocab itself. so it’s only like i’m half learning vocab. i tried doing anki on the side for pure vocab but two SSR programs are just too much. I also incorporate listening, reading, and grammar bc doing just WK isn’t good…so it’s tricky to fit in more into this schedule. any advice on this or is it just “devote more time”?
If you find that you manage to remember the kanji well in spite of not going through all the vocab, then maybe you’re not doing anything wrong.
The best way to check at your level is simply to read simple Japanese and see how you feel about it. What’s the biggest issue? What should you work on in order to read better?
What I did personally when I was going through the levels fast was too always finish the vocab of the previous level before moving to the next. So if I was on, say, level 27 and I saw that I’d level up to 28 in a couple of days, I made sure to finish all level 26 vocab in the interval.
An other way that may work for you is to set a level target (say, level 30) and you keep your current pace until then, then you slow down and catch up on vocab. The second half of WaniKani is vastly less important than the first so it may be a good place to spend less time here and more time reading.
@simias thanks for this! i like the target level catch-up plan. i also really need to read more – i like have physical materials and that’s harder to find if you’re not in Japan.
Leaving aside for the moment whether you “need” vocabulary to learn, and purely about WK mechanics - it’s helpful to think of it in the “bigger picture”. A level has about 150 items (radical + kanji + vocabulary). So even if WK lets you level up, you’re falling behind if you’re not averaging about 150 items per level.
I find that’s the key to retention, for me. If I start seeing vocabulary “in the wild”, I remember it longer - and in turn the kanji meanings and readings that make up the vocabulary.
For free material, I’ve been noticing a lot of WK vocabulary pop up in my daily practice of attempting to decipher Asahi Shinbun headlines from their web site. Even without a subscription, there’s the headline and enough “teaser” text in each story for me to pick through, and I find it more interesting than News Web Easy, which bores me to tears.
@ctmf@flionweya1555 thanks for your replies. i’m really trying to have the best japanese i can before moving to japan in sept 2025, hence the fast pace. but i think you all are right that i need to incorprate vocab.
thanks @ctmf for your rec of the asahi shinbun. i agree that news web easy is rather painful to get through!