WANIKANI Pace

At the moment the pace of WANIKANI is fairly slow. I know that this is intended by WANIKANI but will the pace change once you are on a higher level?

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Unfortunately the pace will not change. I had to endure months of torture since March to get to level 10 of which all of the Kanji I already knew were learned and refreshed.

I think they should have an assessment of your ability when joining to assess what level to insert you into the course however that suggestion has not come to fruition yet. I did suggest it and they were open to it.

However my main goal was to learn more Kanji to get me to at least JLPT N3 level and thankfully I am now happy to be at a level where I can actually learn something new and not have to refresh old stuff I already knew.

That said the pace will not change. I wish it would but it wont.

That’s not true, the pace goes up significantly, especially compared with levels 1 and 2.
Don’t complain about an app that teaches you kanji being slow if you already know the contents.

@chubbygringo The pace at which you level up the kanji is always the same from level 3 upwards which is not a slow one, but the contents keep coming back so the amount of work you have to do increases by a lot.

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Since you are always adding items, the workload increases steadily until you start burning them.

At the very end (last 15 levels or so), the levels can be done in half the time of a typical level, as well, so you can go especially fast then.

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As the rest said, the intervals don’t change, but the amount of items stack pretty quickly.

Many level 1’s complain about the speed of start-up, but there is also a fair number that quits or resets to lower levels because they struggle to deal with the few hundred reviews a day that you end up getting as you continue.

Patience, and soon you too will feel the burn. :fire: :+1:

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It may not be immediately gratifying to try working through vocabulary for familiar introductory kanji like 一 or trying to associate some radicals to guns or leaves. But I do treat it as practice or a reminder to always still be alert and how quick one can still recollect some of these terms. There still is a wealth of content that will be pleasant surprises throughout the beginning, and as the reviews pile on, there’ll be plenty to keep busy with.

I think we also do ourselves a disservice if we can skip out on stuff. For one, I’d overestimate or spend more time judging my competence for certain words, and they won’t be properly burned or memorized within myself. I’d lose out on so much potential kun’yomi or on’yomi that I’d otherwise gloss over. After all, my evaluation would simply be: “Ah, 光 is light”, often without realizing that I don’t really remember its on’yomi as こう.

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Though it was a while ago, I remember having hundreds of items each day through the majority of my WK levelling.

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I have hundreds of reviews a day

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Sorry I don’t have the source anymore, my apologies to the original creator. However, this is an indication of the workload you achieve the more you advance through the levels, if you do your lessons when they come up.

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I guarantee you didn’t know all the readings provided by wanikani so you’ve learned something?

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Yes by the time I reached level 10.

My experience so far… first few levels, maybe even up to L10 - pretty easy. Especially if you’ve had any previous kanji exposure.

Up to L20 - workload feels consistent but manageable, especially if you have ample free time through the day to sneak in some reviews here and there. Averaged ~8 days a level through this point.

When I started hitting burn reviews in the low-mid 20’s felt like a noticeable step up. Not only do you have the extra reviews in general, but for ones you fail that bumps them back down to Guru and like doubly adds up. I’ve definitely had to slow my roll a bit to keep things manageable (also, while doing more side study for an upcoming N3)

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As others have stated, worry not, the workload will increase. Of course, even when it gets slow (sometimes it still does for me, but I know I’m not on the max workload yet), there’s plenty of Japanese material to digest outside of WK to whet your appetite for the language. All of these sources together will help you master Japanese.

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The pace is still slow, it’s the workload that goes up significantly.

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That’s a useful distinction, since I assumed OP meant workload :slight_smile:

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This would lead to a lot of confusion very soon. And more people would be upset because they hastly skipped content without really knowing how WK works.

Yeah I also used pace to use the same terminology as OP but meant workload because I understood it that way.

No, what I suggested was to open up all levels up to the persons ability based on a test. For example if someone has credentials that they have formal education in Japanese but only need to learn the Kanji from say level 10 onward then based on credentials or an entrance test all earlier lessons should be immediately unlocked for such people to complete in their own time as they progress with the new ones.

That would definitely speed things up for people with past Japanese experience, but its probably not possible. First, theres no exam that happens to teach the same material (select readings and vocab for specific kanji) as wanikani that could equate to the first few levels. Some higher JLPT kanji are in lower levels, and lower JLPT kanji in higher levels, as you’ve probably already noticed. And then theres the radicals. Since many classes don’t teach radicals (mine in university sure didn’t) and wanikani’s radicals are different anyway, it would make it a lot harder for users to jump into say level 11 without knowing the radicals from levels 1-10.

I studied japanese for a while before WK (genki 1&2, tobira, japanese language school) so I get where you’re coming from. But going through that material again is still a good review so its not all bad!

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