WANIKANI Pace

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The intervals technically don’t change, but at the same time you have much more work… so the workload increases.
Currently I have about 1000 reviews within the next week :joy:
Also, the first two levels can be finished around 3 days, most of the levels after that take 7 :slightly_smiling_face: Once you reach higher levels (Late 40s and 50s), you’ll get a lot of 3 day levels as well.
Basically, it may seem slow at first, but trust me, it speeds up very quickly!
If you’re impatient to learn more, however, you can always learn something in advance, or use Kamesame/Kaniwani along with Wanikani to increase your current workload :slightly_smiling_face: You can even get a head start on grammar! :grin:
Hope that helps!

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Thank you for posting this chart it makes sense. I’ve gotten disheartened a few times lately about my progress.

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I personally ignore the wanikani radials and simply add the synonym “fake” if they are fictitious or “pass” if they are not a radical but a kanji. That has sped things up considerably. I feel I am able to learn the kanji without learning their radicals and feel they are holding me back. I know most of the real names for radicals and know the stroke order and how to write a great deal of them and can recognise the patterns easily so it has not been an issue for me ignoring them.

The other idea for them would be to open up the free lessons up until level 10 that way people can subscribe later and even if they didn’t the knowledge they have is still relatively basic

I have only had two years of formal lessons at high school but that was 25 years ago and on that I was able to pick up Japanese by working with Japanese people at a major tourist resort and using my own resources. Initially the BYKI flashcards to learn the vocabulary then the JLPT textbooks and another online web course for grammar and sentence structure.

That’s actually a pretty fast pace. I think most of us who do this in addition to life and/or a regular job settle into an average of 8-9 days per level. I know that’s what I’ve been able to do consistently so far. Any faster than that and the workload starts to become unmanageable unless you have a lot of time to dedicate to WK.

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Explain this then!

I’m really slow please help me I’m only on level 6

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What’s your accuracy % like? And how many lessons and reviews do you do on a daily basis?

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I try to zero my reviews whenever they come up, and I’m keeping my apprentice items around 100

Those are decent numbers. I have no idea why Level 6 would take you more than 2 weeks with those numbers unless you’re holding back on doing lessons for some reason.

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I was already on the point of passing the N2 when I started WaniKani, and indeed the early levels were excruciatingly slow, but on the whole it was good for me to refresh everything from the beginning. I recommend signing up for bunpro to have something to keep you busy while in the early levels of wanikani.

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Yeah I had taken a hiatus on new lessons while I worked on getting my apprentice number down, so once the new kanji start sticking in my brain it shouldn’t be more than two weeks to level up, it is pretty frustrating knowing it’s been over two months of basically no progress haha. It happens though, and as long as I’m learning new kanji, however slow, I’m happy

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In answer to the original question- the pace doesn’t change, but the volume changes greatly (creating a feeling of greatly increased pace.)

You have to get 90% of your kanji in your current level to Guru 1 or higher before in order to raise your level. So if you do reviews 3x a day at 9am, 1pm and 9pm, (and don’t get anything wrong), each lesson item will become guru 3.5 days later.

Radicals have to reach Guru before they unlock the appropriate kanji (the ones that raise your level.) So if you don’t get anything wrong, it would take ~ a week per level. I find 10days to be about normal for the lower levels, since I’m far from infallible : p I also expect that rate to slow as the workload increases.

The amount of stuff you get will increase significantly. I’ll be level 6 tomorrow, and I had over 100 reviews today, and that’s still the tip of the iceberg. The reason it starts you off slow is to get you to build strong habits, so that when it gets heavy you’ll already have a good pattern.

As a beginner I found this guide super useful by the way. My Journey of 368 days (+ The Ultimate Guide for WK 📖 ) - #2 by jprspereira

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It should get easier the more practice you get. Also, don’t be afraid to stretch yourself a bit. You can try increasing the number of lessons by a few Kanji for maybe a month or so until you get used to the volume and then increase again. I think a lot of people don’t realize that they get better at memorizing the more they do it.

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Honestly, even at level 3, I’m seeing a lot more than I was doing at level 1. There are more radicals, kanji, and vocabulary in the later levels and the stuff you cleared at a lower level start coming back. The first level is slow, possibly a little too slow. I was very tempted at level 1 to make the Eric Andre Let Me In meme with Wanikani as the gate.

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There are other SRS systems on the market that are cheaper and flexible. Not mention an abundance of free non-SRS resources so you can even study every kanji in one evening. I think WK is an expense alternative if you are not going bother with its system of mnemonics and radicals.

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You’re right at the top. :hear_no_evil: Stay hard! :crossed_fingers:

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My chart lives, somehow! Although that is clearly updated because my chart only went up to level 50. Who made that one?

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I looked at your beautiful Charts and was like: uuhhh yisss, only 9,5 Levels more to go! Then i’ll be on Level 27 and 50% of alle the Kanji will be unlocked.
So for about 5 minutes i was super motivated. Then i realised that the Charts only went up to Level 50. :man_facepalming:t2:

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Back in my day, we only had 50 levels and we were grateful for it!

We also had to find a literal turtle shell and burn it in front of @koichi every time we wanted to burn an item!

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