Way to increase practice sessions?

[DaniM]

Hi. I have just started trying wanikani, but the amount of session items I can work is very little.

Is there a way to increase the number of items or sessions?

This is way too slow.

[ShotgunLagoon]

Hi DaniM! Welcome to WaniKani. The way SRS (Spaced Repetition System) programs works is by spacing when you review items in order to force you to recall them when they are on the verge of being forgotten. This is to maximize the efficiency of the time you spend studying. The first couple levels are indeed a little slow since there aren’t very many items, but I’d recommend taking this time to check out the forums and figure out the other resources you’d like to use for your Japanese learning journey! This is a great time to pick out what you’d like to use for grammar and start to make a study routine.

FYI, the first two levels are actually accelerated compared to the others, and things start speeding up quite a lot when you get to level 3-4.

I’d recommend looking at these following forum posts to start off:
The Ultimate Guide to WaniKani
Ultimate Japanese Resources Lists

[Joeni]

\textcolor{pink}{\huge \textsf{WELCOME! ^-^}}

Take the time to check out the FAQ and GUIDE if you haven’t already.

There’s also a lot of good stuff on the forum to help you, like:

The Ultimate Guide for WK
The Ultimate Additional Japanese Resources List!
The New And Improved List Of API and Third Party Apps

I hope your Japanese learning journey goes well and that you enjoy your time with us on the forums.

Given how the SRS (Spaced Repetition System) works, there is a maximum possible speed at which it’s possible to progress on WaniKani; 6 days 20hours per level. Most people would probably say though that this isn’t strictly required and that you’ll be better off setting up a manageable routine. Doing twenty lessons per day is the recommendation I see most commonly and keeps you reasonably busy with reviews while not overwhelming you.

That maximum speed is because you can only progress to the next level when you’ve gotten the majority of kanji for the current level to Guru. When you level up, you get just over half of the kanji for that level unlocked and you must get these up to Guru before you unlock the rest for that level.

So if you look at the maths this way:

Unlock Kanji = 0hrs
Apprentice 1 → 2 = 4hrs later
Apprentice 2 → 3 = 8hrs after that
Apprentice 3 → 4 = 23hrs after that
Apprentice 4 → Guru = 47hrs after that

So the total levelling time for first batch = 3 days 12 hours. You then unlock the next batch and must spend 3 days 10 hours again on those. Also, as @ShotgunLagoon mentions, the first two levels are accelerated versions of these times.

I wouldn’t be overly impatient, because the reviews will start to come in more frequently as you progress, because…

You’ll see items you have at Guru 1 after a week. Then again after two weeks. Then again after a month. Then again after four months. So the longer you progress, the more reviews you’ll start to see coming back from the earliest stuff you did. Once that happens, you’ll have reviews galore.

[dunlewy]

@DaniM

This is way too slow

Don’t worry. It will pick up in a huge way, and you’ll be screaming for it to slow down very soon!

[Sharpevil]

To put it in a more concrete way, if you keep going at maximum speed, because of the way Spaced Repetition works, you’ll end up with over an hour of reviews to do every day once you’re a few months in. If you were to unlock more early, it would quickly become completely unmanagable unless you decided to either learn Japanese as your primary job (Probably a bad idea) or use WaniKani as your only means of learning Japanese until you finish it (Definitely a bad idea).

This is the reason the first few levels are free. Do your reviews when they crop up, put the bulk of your study time into another form of study, and within a few weeks you’ll have plenty of WK to do every day.