Wayyy to slow

Not at all. It has to do with learning for very many people. I never said it incentivizes everyone.

Generally, I’m giving WaniKani the benefit of the doubt that they have done the appropriate analyses to have determined that they are gaining more revenue than they are losing by having a leveling mechanism (among other things). From two years using this website and my interactions with many of the employees during that time, they have earned my trust in that regard.

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I think a “I know this already” option would be nice. It could start you at Apprentice 4, which skips about 3 reviews and 36 hours, so not such a big leap forward that it should mess your reviews too much, and you still need to prove you actually know it to level up.

Also, what if I want to drown myself in reviews? :sob:

Anyway, at level 2 you can start using KaniWani and KameSame. KS might be usable at level 1 even. They help me have more patience with my kanji reviews.
That and posting in random threads on the forum :upside_down_face:

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Bingo…I have the time now so…

Only level six and I have plenty to learn/do, frequently enough that I often am too busy with work to keep up with the flood of reviews…

You’re not the first person to think they have a profound learning capability and that a website would dare insult their prowess by pacing them slowly in the beginning, though you certainly won’t be the last…

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Why do you have to go here? Seriously?

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Are you doing any study outside of WK?

EDIT: Ok, let’s just suggest something extra to do that involves 0 kanji (so no WK stopping you): a deck with 4500 words in katakana. People think they don’t need to learn katakana vocab because they can read most of them, but can they recall them? They can’t. So let’s learn them \o/ They are super useful. Japanese people agree.

Sign up to Kitsun and check the community deck section. The deck is there.

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You’ll be okay. As you say, “adapt of [sic] die.” Perhaps people need to adapt to WaniKani and not the other way around, especially when they have gone out of their way to address their system in length and why they stand by it. No one is forcing anyone else to utilize it.

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@CyrusS Requesting to close. Getting arguments and off-topic.

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I definitely second this. That’s something I regret not doing earlier, studying outside of WK. Floflo, Bunpro, and Anki are also all great options. (Italki too if you’re up to it.) Same with incorporating textbooks like Genki, Tae Kim, etc. Don’t be like me and only use WK until like level 20 x’D

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I agree. However, I think people would use it on radicals, which is their prerogative but may be inappropriate if you use them for mnemonics. That would get the kanji faster if you could use it on radicals but have the problem of bypassing the premise of the lessons. Early on one should try the radicals at least to see how the product works. So the way in which content is structured and unlocked presents an issue for testing out.

I think the slowness is not really a problem in the greater scheme of things because there are other things to study. But I don’t think people’s ability to use the SRS properly would be warped by being able to mark 一 as a known kanji. (Of course, kanji unlocks are tied to radicals and levelling to a kanji threshold, so it would only really be useful if you know most of them in a level.)

The thing about the free levels though is they’re a really good way of sampling the lessons, even known material.

Generally: I think getting personal is inappropriate. And the reality is some people can go faster than WK, investing great amounts of time and effort into RtK or their own decks etc. It’s equally arrogant to think that because the design is this way for a reason, people are presumptuous to question it. WK is set at a medium for its target demographic. It is not an arbitrary medium but it still obviously can’t be ideal for everyone. And still others won’t understand. That’s okay.

In general, the pile ons in these threads are more hostile to new users than the unintuitiveness of SRS (or the lesson structure), imo. Nobody is making anyone repeat themselves to these threads. Just move on if you don’t wish to provide unpaid customer support, which is your right. Someone will explain and the discussion can be had again.

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Posting because I asked the same question (can you speed this up?) when I first started, too.

I know it feels slow in the beginning, but it’s really not if you stay on top of reviews and look at the big picture:

Started 7/04/17, reached 60 on 7/15/18. Lots of people have achieved similar times.

If you’re serious about speed it’s definitely doable.

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Yes…general vocab with Anki, sentence practice with the examples here and speaking/listening practice with YouTube and people.

Good suggestion about katakana…although I loath that system.

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Don’t forget dedicated grammar study! It can really end up a bottleneck for reading longer materials.

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The deck is also available for Anki. :man_shrugging: Though Hine added his template which makes it way more user-friendly and I asked Baggy to have a bot order all vocab in a decreasing order of frequency (On bing, cuz free). So the Kitsun’s version is actually better.

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give it time. You’ll soon feel like you are a castle under siege and it’s all you can do to keep the hordes back for another day.

On top of that: this is not a way to learn Japanese. If you think this is too slow or you finish your reviews and still have more time for Japanese, start using an actual Japanese language learning method. Get a textbook; if you have one use it in your down time. Get an exchange partner. Get a teacher (over Skype or in real life.) This service is a supplement, not a method in itself. (It’s still the single best kanji method out there)

I knew about 100 kanji before I started using this site and I was annoyed when I saw kanji I knew. But it’s useful and reinforcing, just accept it:)

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Also even in English loanwords, the pitch accent choices being so different from the English stress-accent placement can make remembering a nightmare. ボランティア sounds like a fantasy country.

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スケジュール is the worst!

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A little off topic, but how do you get the reviews timeline to show at the top?

Ultimate Timeline :smiley:

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Ah yes, my favourite loanwords are Mekeeshko (Mexico) and tekeesto (text).

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