What is an average / good speed for leveling up?

Jesus people are fast here
Yet here is me, one of the slowest snails in existence…

Poor memory is fun :[

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The tipping point is usually around level 15-20. That’s when those lessons come around for Enlightened or Burned and you get hit several hundred at once.

Think of it like this. If you do 60 lessons in one day, that’s 60 items coming around again all at once.

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yes, “bad” is the nearest English equivalent to 悪い but it’s not exactly the same.

For example if you would think 掃除したのが悪かった would mean “I was bad at cleaning” if you thought 悪い is exactly equal to “bad”, when it means “It was wrong of me to have cleaned”, or “It was a mistake to have cleaned”.

I should say this is kind of alleviated for 悪い since 悪かった can be heard while apologizing almost on a daily basis if you watch enough Japanese. 例えば、「ごめん、悪かった!」 :laughing:

I remember a friend of mine recently said IRL ゲームを遊びました trying to say he “played a video game”. This is because he had internalized 遊ぶ as “play” and did a direct translation of what he would have said in English to Japanese, resulting in an unnatural sentence.

In fact just today I came across 襲う in my immersion. After I had learned the word I just checked in WK to see if it would come up in later levels and it did, and the meaning said “attack”

However the definition in the Japanese dictionary reads as following:

おそう オソフ [0][2]【襲う】⁎
(他五)
(一)〈だれ・なにヲ―〉 〔油断している所を ねらって〕攻めかかる

The 〔油断している所を ねらって〕part tells me it’s more of an assault or ambush rather than a regular attack.

In short, learning the meaning solely from Wanikani is a bad idea. I treat the meanings more as a “hint” or a “mental hook” to knowing the real meaning and try to learn the actual nuance from immersion or looking it up in a Japanese dictionary.

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If you watch Haikyuu, they say 悪い a lot when they miss a shot or something. Honestly, it’s probably equivalent to something like, “my bad”.

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There is a difference of opinions out there. Fact is that speed is something highly personal. It depends on so many factors: time available to do lessons and reviews, and individual capacity to memorize the readings and meanings for example. One has the task of finding out what speed is good for him, and it will vary from other persons’ speed. Trial and error is the only way to go.

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Yes, different opinions & the experience is highly personal eventually !

I think I’ll keep doing it my way and see in a few weeks where I stand. I still lack experience & understanding to decide upon a “learning strategy” :grimacing:

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Ok indeed after reading the guide (impressive, by the way :+1:) it’s more clear.

I will give a try to some scripts - but in honesty I feel like just following the system is good enough for my case (no time pressure, no real objective in mind).

I also noticed that sometimes I can remember some vocabulary (purple) more easily than some kanjis (pink). So the vocabulary helps me in remembering the kanji :slight_smile:
For instance I was having difficulty with “king” alone, but after learning “prince” & “princess” & “queen”, well “king” suddenly seems obvious !

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Yeah indeed, my kids still come before my reviews :joy:

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Same for me, I just understood recently (2 days ago) why sometimes the system was expecting a different answer depending on the card type (blue/pink/purple).

This seems to be what most people say on here, suggesting one should spread out the lessons.

But, I thought about it like this: regardless of how many lessons I do at once, not all of the new items will pass through to Guru at the same speed, the items will spread about naturally as you get some on the first try, but also lose some.

I still haven’t had it too bad with reviews I feel, and in the few instances when that has happened - there is still no demand on me to do all reviews at once! I can simply adjust my reviewing tempo to something manageable and spread out the items more evenly, i.e. do them in chunks of <50 items or so, until the reviews are gone again.

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I’ve noticed that a lot of the active forum members are the “faster” group and many have a considerable amount of prior Japanese knowledge. So I wouldn’t get disheartened that everyone is saying they level up in 1-2 weeks, there is no “right” speed as long as you feel you are making progress.

Remember why you are using WK, and pay attention to the advice about setting a sustainable pace FOR YOU.

My advice from the first 6 levels:

  • Try and get 80%+ in your reviews. If you can’t hit this, slow down.
  • Get your reviews to zero before you take any new lessons or the pile will keep growing.
  • Do the vocab - it reinforces the Kanji and teaches you the readings (this is one of the best things about WK for me over something like Remembering the Kanji 1). Skipping it to go faster is only cheating yourself. (The only exception I make to this is doing the radicals first when I level up using the re-order script. The radicals are much easier and unlock the rest of the Kanji for the level.)
  • Don’t overload yourself before you start getting burn reviews (6 months in) - only then will you see your peak daily review count
  • Control your workload by limiting the number of apprentice items. I’ve found 100 is about right for me, so if I have more than this I won’t do new lessons.

Using this, I’m currently at about 10-12 days per level, which feels quite fast to me! I have no intentions of doing a “speedrun” as my focus is on learning the language and retaining as much info as possible. Language learning is a marathon, not a sprint!

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My advice is to just do it at your own pace. Whatever is comfortable for you is the best pace. Yes, sometimes we need a push and yes, sometimes we might wanna slow it down but ultimately, it’s just a matter of getting into a comfortable routine since you’ll want to be doing Wanikani everyday.

I started Wanikani in January and it’s been nearly 6 months and I’m at level 20. I’ve slowed down recently because of a new job but I try to maintain my learning pace however I can. Supposedly I should have seen some burns a couple of levels ago but it still has not yet happened for anything.

With regards to burnout, I have not yet felt that. I treat Wanikani as my daily routine. Even if I’m dead tired or injured, I always clear all my reviews for the day within the day itself. If there’s lessons, I do a minimum of 10 but I usually average 20-30 lessons everyday if I have that many. It’s all about discipline. Even if you think you’ll fail all the lessons, just do it. Committing to the routine is the one thing I think most people have trouble with.

Tldr: Proceed at your own, comfortable pace because maintaining the routine is far better than hastily levelling up. Do your available Lessons. Do your reviews. Do them every day, without fail. Probably even on Christmas.

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Waou, congrats !
It;s motivating to see that in 6 months it’s possible to reach level 20 - I would be super happy to be there end of year :grin:
Understood, the key is really consistency, coming back every single day. I’m now really doing it thanks to the mobile app on my iPhone - when I started it was not the case ! Now I see the difference !

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I can’t agree more. I am actually doing RTK in parallel and WK is superior in term of “retention” for me !

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Sure, but even a 60% accuracy means that 40 of those lessons will get through. So the higher your accuracy the more load you’ll get at once.

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I guess, but you can always readjust the review load as you go along. Gradually spreading them out through Apprentice-Guru-Master. :woman_shrugging:

The difference is spreading it out at the beginning rather than when you get hit with reviews.

I’ve seen people get to 60 by doing all the lessons but it’s a slog and if it works for you that’s great. I just learned the hard way that I couldn’t keep it up past the early 20s.

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Well, I’m pretty newly arrived in the 20s, so we’ll see how it goes. I do keep one foot ready on the break in case of emergency. I guess, my own impatience might get to me. I’ll see how far I can push it. :sweat_smile:

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That’s always a good idea. :slight_smile:

Aye. I should probably take my own advice. :laughing: I’ve been doing 8 days per level for the last two levels just because I’ve been feeling “in the groove”. We’ll see how long that lasts.

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And quick reminder: it is often the case that you are making progress even when you feel you aren’t. For example, doing 0 new lessons for 3 days in a row feels like no progress, but you’re still reviewing cards every day, solidifying some, missing others (which is part of the learning process).

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