I recently took a week off from WK because all of the typing was hurting my hands. I thought maybe at level 11 I could set sail into the unknown and rely on other resources that didn’t involve as much typing.
Anyway it turns out typing the answers really does help you learn them, and not having the structure of WK is really difficult. So here I am facing down 300 reviews with regret on my face.
I’m just wondering what resources do people use to learn after level 60? Thank you for coming to my reverse TED talk.
I’ve mostly turned to immersion learning, so yeah, what I did before WK.
But, I’m supplementing it with Anki as well.
There are a ton of other SRS apps out there for those with the patience and time. I’m taking it pretty easy considering. I just wanna have fun right now.
Ooof, sorry to hear about that big pile of reviews, here’s some motivation: 'YOU GOT THIS!!!, 頑張ってね ! ’
Everyone uses something different, some people are just getting started with grammar, others just keep studying grammar, listening, speaking, reading and many focus on JLPT, it depends on what your goals are and what your weak spots are as well.
I had a same problem with you. But I used little bit diffirent tactic to get a break from WK. For one month I haven’t did any lessons and only worked with reviews. Now I’m level 11 and I have from 30 and up to 60 reviews a day. I don’t feel much pressure any more and started to do my lessons
As mentioned, now I am trying to watch more dramas in netflix just with Japanese subtitles and real readings like newspapers and such, just depends on your weaknesses, but whatever you do that is related to Japanese and keeps you motivated is the right way, ps. hurting hands problems as well bc all the typing,
cheers
During WK I also watched grammar videos on YT while taking notes, did BunPro, and used koohi.cafe to SRS vocab from books I read. Naturally, I started reading and watching as much as possible as soon as I was even a little bit able.
You have to use knowledge or lose it, so you’ll be doing non-WK stuff looooong before level 60, one would hope. After 60, just keep doing what you’re already doing: immersion, immersion, immersion.
You’ll stumble over words or grammar you don’t know, which will highlight what to learn. Then you immerse some more. ^^ Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.
Don’t know why I responded to you, @ekg , but… hiiiiii
By the way, I can very much relate to this problem and it was certainly a problem for me over the course of WK.
I did try to use LipSurf for a while for this very issue:
In the end I stopped using it, because I suppose my English accent is too wonky for it to understand me properly (raised on strictly Brittish English for most of my life, but then a lot of exposure to American English as well as an American spouse, coupled with the fact that English is not my native language.)
Edit: I was using LipSurf when it was first being rolled out and was free, so I also don’t know what changes has been made since. I can’t comment on how much it has or hasn’t improved on that front.
It could be something for you to look into, since dual-language, WK compatibility is a big feature of it.
I also resorted to using Anki Mode for a while:
Best of luck finding a solution for that problem! There were days that my wife sat next to me for 100+ item review sessions, so I could dictate the answers to her because I couldn’t type that much.
I’ve slowed down WaniKani drastically to focus more on reading and grammar, but I’d recommend you push on until at least level 30-ish. That’ll give you a good base of Kanji for reading most simple stuff. Don’t wait until then to start reading though, you should do that asap, but around level 30 was when reading came a bit more naturally for me and became less of a struggle.
I still find WaniKani very useful though, and will carry to level 60. After that, I’ll probably reset and start again.
I talk about this often, but on the topic of what you do after level 60 theres a very important pitfall to avoid that ties into what you said. Wanikani provides a lot of structure and basically tells you “here, learn this” and you don’t actually have to think about what you need to do. Thats great if you’re just starting out. The pitfall that I see a lot of people fall into, however, is they get comfy and want to keep that structure. They either repeat wanikani entirely, do the core 10k deck, go through textbooks for grammar, etc… This is the equivalent to wanting to become a competitive swimmer while doing nothing but reading books about how to swim and never getting in a pool.
I think you had the right idea trying to sail out into the unknown early. Try out some standalone srs resources (like anki), and start trying to build small habits like reading/watching some native content and adding words you don’t know.
So following that, the resources I used post 60 are koohi.cafe for learning words from books I was going to read and anki for basically the same thing. If you like typing out your answers and the general wanikani interface, koohi.cafe is probably your best bet. Pick a book you want to read and start learning words for that book and read it as you go. Anki I use more as a replacement as of recently just for convenience purposes. If you want to type your answers my anki setup wouldn’t be for you. For anyone else though, heres the setup I use
I sort of feel opposite. On WK, up until ~L20, typing answer felt reasonable. But after ~350k review of going through all the content here, I feel typing answers has largely been a waste of time for me and I see no personal evidence that there is any learning advantage whatsoever (not that WK was wasteful, the mnemonics are great). However the time investment took away from other learning; I usually strictly kept to ~150-200 daily reviews on WK but on other SRS I can easily fit 400-600 which also include sentence cards, grammar and Eng → Jp study, comprehension so 300 is pretty easily managed. With WK and life schedule, an app is essential so the effort of typing on my iphone just to pound down daily reviews…terrible. You can type answers with kitsun.io if you want which is what I use exclusively now. The flexibility, the polished community content w/ feedback loop, subs2srs, reader tool w/ integrated known word system and extremely quick learning curve has made it my single best resource I ever used (no 20+ page tutorials on how set up needed) plus I mine vocab daily and still import anki decks that I like. No need for a bunch of scripts or extensions to make life livable either, they are already native features plus a great native app as well.
By the time I got to level 60, I had already finished a set of beginner textbooks, so I jumped straight into reading. At first, for a year or two, I read mostly easier things, like short stories, fairy tales, graded readers, articles in Satori Reader. Then I started reading light novels and playing video games. I didn’t do any focused grammar study (beyond the textbooks), but I picked up the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series and any time there was a new piece of grammar (or anything old that didn’t quite make sense) I looked it up there. I also got a 電子辞書 / electronic dictionary and started to gradually shift towards using monolingual dictionaries. I didn’t use Anki or anything else for vocabulary – just the natural repetition you get by encountering words over and over again in different contexts.
Now I’m doing a second tour of WK to refresh my kanji knowledge and practice pitch accent with the vocabulary I learned here and I can say without hesitation that all that reading has been super effective. I can tie kanji to words that I know and the words to specific places I’ve seen them and it makes them much easier to remember. I still mix up some kanji and forget some meanings and readings from time to time, but it’s like night and day compared to first time around.
LipSurf has had a ton of improvements since then. If you want to get an idea: Updates | LipSurf
I’d love for you to give it another try. Regarding accents, now you can select dialects. And we have one for UK english The other thing I can recommend is using a headset or external microphone. Those work significantly better with the speech recognition.
I’ll start learning basic grammar on YouTube, and also find someone to speak to, whether it’s a japanese friend, or a japanese tutor. Maybe I’ll watch a few Japanese dramas without subtitles too, and try slowly reading some of the JP manga I have
I originally started learning Japanese because I was a major otaku and thought it was fun to do, so once I got enough knowledge to read without giving myself an aneurysm I tried knocking out some of my favorite series.
Manga:
Mushishi
School Rumble
City Hunter
One Piece
Solanin
flowers of evil
Games:
Final Fantasy 1,4,7,8,9 and 10
Clannad
Breath of the Wild
Books:
Welcome to the NHK
Haruhi Suzumiya (all)
Kino’s Journey (1-10)
Kiki’s Delivery Service (all)
夢を叶えるゾウ (The elephant that makes dreams come true)
and more
Textbooks:
3 World Histroy books
1 Music History book
several programming books
and of course a ton of anime
After finishing Wanikani I tried out Anki but I didn’t really like how it messed with my enjoyment of reading. It caused me to be very neurotic about memorizing vocabulary and took the fun out of Japanese and reading in general for me so I eventually dropped it and put more energy into learning from the books as opposed to the sentence by sentence vocabulary and grammar rule dissection which it had become. While I may not be “studying” the language I feel I have a more healthy relationship with it now focussed on enjoyment rather than grinding up my stats.
As a side note, I started actively reading in Japanese when I was around level 20 in Wanikani. Even though it was difficult I put more attention onto reading than I ever did into the SRS system. I admit the SRS helped me out a lot but I’m human and as a human, I want to enjoy things too.
Also, I wanted to anger a few people near the end; I think grammar study is a myth, and the more rules you study the more unnatural you’re going to sound if you haven’t supplemented your studies with enough immersion. You’ll probably find yourself trying to fit a cylinder into a square hole, even though you have the right tools for the job you don’t have enough experience with Japanese to know the difference between what might work and what might sound awkward and land way out in left field. JLPT is for masochists who want to take the fun out of everything or I guess for people who want jobs (although I managed to become a 入社員 without even an N5, although that’s probably because they valued the skills I had other than Japanese too)
Anger people?! Hell I wanna give you one of those jumping bro high fives right now lmao
Screw grammar study, but we actually are very different when it comes to srs. I personally don’t mind it, and actually really enjoy the learning/study side. Like maybe more than the actual content lol. So anything that I feel supplements my learning is something I enjoy doing. I don’t know if it’s a curse or blessing, but I’m always hyped when I come across new words I can add to my deck.
Regardless, I respect the focus on immersion and making things fun for yourself. Two most important things hands down.
I immerse (reading, playing games, etc.), and whenever i find a new word or kanji that i look up that i find common or interesting enough, i add it to my Anki decks.
Also, i just wrote a website that inserts word frequencies into your Anki cards, so i can learn the most common words i encountered first.
And for learning grammar, i’m using Bunpro. I like that it lets you practice constructing sentences at the same time.
Wow yeah this is exactly my problem. I didn’t go into much detail in my original post but I’ve started to play a few games and read a little it’s just while I don’t always have time for those activities it’s so easy to show up for WaniKani.
Reading through the thread though I realise that’s not really true and I think I can eventually always just replace that time when I finish WK with at least reading, especially if it gets easier like many of you say.
It’s good to know I’m not alone! I’m going to look into that Anki script haha.
Thanks everyone it really helped me get out of my slump reading all of your replies!
