Well - I guess I finally made it. A few minutes ago I got to level 60. By a comical twist of fate, it happened during a JR train ride from 鎌倉 to 東京 while on a visit to Japan so it was entirely appropriate! Now, I’m not done with WK just yet - I still need to actually do level 60 so I have a couple of hundred new lessons to plough through in the next few days, and I figured I still have about 3k entries to eventually burn.
I wish I had words of wisdom for people struggling through their path, and I don’t know if there’s anything novel in what I’m going to say, but here are some reflections:
- WK is a means, not a goal. Many times I forgot that and I prioritized WK over other parts of Japanese language learning to my own detriment. - if your goal is to learn how to read, then read. But to be able to read “real” material you need far more than WK. it’s a bit like if someone was trying to read in English knowing only nouns and verbs without knowing how sentences are put together. I read somewhere here in the forums that the “official” recommendation was to start learning grammar when people hit level 10? I vehemently disagree with this and I’d learn grammar from day 1, almost from the time one learns hiragana!
- kanji and vocabulary learning don’t stop with WK! So I’d think about WK providing a scaffolding from which to build a solid structure around it.
Eventually my daily review load will die down - so I’m using my visit to load up on physical books (I know that ebooks are lighter and cheaper but I somehow can’t focus with them!) and then I’ll use my time to prioritize grammar, read and practice conversation somehow!!
皆さん、頑張ってね！