Christmas approaches and a sale on lifetime membership is being teased… so naturally I’m contemplating it - but I’m wondering how useful it will be after reaching “all burned”.
So, I have a question for people who have already reached those lofty heights: what do you use WaniKani for once there are no more reviews to do?
Is continued access to WK’s database of kanji and vocab still useful, once you reach a post-review state?
(I know there are a couple of similar-ish threads out there, but they tend to focus on people not finishing, or resetting, rather than using WK after finishing all reviews.)
You can continue to review kanji and vocab after reaching level 60. You can reset your level or use scripts to review. Personally, after reaching level 50 I created an anki deck with all the kanji from wanikani and started over using that everyday and have slowly been learning new things on here. I learned many kanji that I have not seen in years since joining wanikani. But I would say the lifetime membership was worth it for me. I bought it a few years ago and it was not very expensive compared to paying monthly for it.
I expect I would keep unburning things occasionally. I’m not going to forget 日 or 犬, but plenty of others would escape within a year’s time without being reviewed again.
In the past additional vocabulary has been added to the site. But either way by the time you hit all burned, you’ll probably have paid about the same amount as a lifetime subscription either way.
One thing I’ve seen a good number of people doing is actually resetting their accounts so they can go all over again once they reach lvl 60. A good way to really learn those kanji and vocab, I’d say
Re @rfindley - I agree it’s a vibrant community, but free users get to interact here too, so it’s not a motivation in deciding whether to go lifetime paid.
Re @snowwater - Hmm… I guess people have different ways of learning, but I really can’t imagine just doing it all over again being a satisfying (or efficient) way of studying. Personally I’d get far too annoyed trudging through the material I had already absorbed properly, which would reduce the time I had available to spend on productive learning.
According to idigtech’s progress tool I’m currently on course to reach all burned within two years, but I think I’m going to switch to lifetime in the upcoming sale.
My reasoning is that I don’t think I’m going to get much use out of WaniKani after reaching all burned, but that I need the peace of mind provided by lifetime to slow down my WK progress a lot.
My study time is currently far too biased towards WaniKani, and I need to rebalance to spend time on grammar, reading comprehension, and recalling kanji shapes rather than just recognizing them.
I guess it depends on the person, but I’m seriously thinking about going through and getting a lifetime this year as well - I used to think it wasn’t worth it because of the time spent to get to level 60, but once you realize you really need to slow down, it really is helpful - either because you want to change your schedule and focus on other languages aspects, as you said, or because of other factors, like real life, which really limited my access to the website
Sometimes you’re just not able to keep up with the rythm of wanikani (like leveling ever 8-12 days) and start having to take breaks, reviews pile up… that kind of stuff
I’ve maintained a pace of about 8 days per level fairly consistently so far up to level 27. I’m thinking of stopping trying to optimise for prompt level-up, and starting to prioritise bunpro.jp grammar lessons and reviews over wanikani for a while, and also try to do more non-computer study.
Good question. I’m a lifetime member, but have not yet reached the lofty heights of Complete Burndom.
The reasons I got a lifetime membership:
To have the ability to take it slow and balance WK usage with other resources
Also, by going slow, I can really get the basics solid before learning the more obscure/vocab at the higher levels
The ability to reset to, say, level 40 if I wish
Also important to know is that once you reach level 60, you’re not even close to being finished! You still have a long way to go to burn everything, including that last stubborn leech you’ve been failing since level 14.