Thereās plenty of thread on how to complete WaniKani fast. But what about the slowest way to getting to level 60?
I am a Lifer at Level 13 and learning Japanese is a personal lifelong goal. So I am in no rush.
Since pregnancy and baby, I have put WaniKani on vacation for almost 3 years. Now my baby doesnāt consume my life anymore, I am thinking to resume WaniKani.
Oh boy! How much WaniKani has improved since!
I see that WaniKani allow user to customise:
Preferred lesson batch size (3 - 15)
Maximum daily lesson (0-100)
There is also features like āAdvanceā and āLesson pickerā
Problem:
I am coming back after a long hiatus and have little time/ mental energy for WaniKani.
But I donāt want to give up WaniKani entirely.
Question:
How should I customise WaniKani with the goal of reaching Level 60 eventually without overwhelming myself?
10 to 15 new kanji a day is on the fast side, but 3-5 a day sounds pretty good to me. Never be overwhelmed, thatās for sure. However this really only works in the long run if youāre combining it with some other study where you might be learning kanji on the side like with reading.
If youāre sole kanji study comes from WK youāre gonna be here forever and not really improve and will just forget everything as your learning new things and canāt remember how you got here.
Simply put, just make sure WK isnāt your only source of Japanese learning if youāre taking it slow.
Those are only recommended/default numbers. How many lessons and how many reviews you do is entirely up to you. You can do as few as you like (all the way down to 0) or as many as you like (all the way up to the maximum number of lessons or reviews currently available at any given time).
If you want the slowest way to progress, then the least amount of lessons you can do is 1 at a time. Ignore the recommended lesson batch which has a minimum of 3 and used the Advanced/Lesson Picker to choose only 1 item. If you did 1 lesson per day, that would be pretty slow. Or 1 per 2 days, or 1 per week, etc. depending on just how slow you want to go.
Why not start off by setting the batch size to 3 and doing 3 lessons a day whenever there are some available. If that is too fast, cut back. If that is too slow, increase the daily amount of lessons.
If time is the constraint, then the number of reviews to do each day is really the determining factor. The frequency at which you do lessons will drive that. If you find that 50 reviews a day is the sweet spot, then manage your new lesson intake accordingly to keep your daily reviews at your desired target number.
Thank you for your input. Yes, I have edited my post that include my other study plan. WaniKani is not my only source of Japanese learning but it seems to me the toughest as it requires daily, active work.
The slowest way to reach level 60? That would be my way. I joined in early 2016 and only reached level 60 this yearā¦ But thatās because Iām just a very clumsy cat
Basically, on several occasions I let my reviews pile up then was too afraid to tackle it (and all that time new reviews kept being added to the pile), then finally did a reset, then rinse and repeatā¦ But in the end I managed to get there. And if a cat as clumsy as me can do it ā anyone can do it!
Hopefully, you wouldnāt repeat my mistakes. Basically, if you ever find yourself in a situation when your reviews have piled up and you cannot muster the willpower to do them ā then itās better to do a reset and start doing reviews again, than keep waiting for the energy to come
Take it as slow as you can, but keep it steady.
Start with small numbers, like 3 lessons a day. Do review twice a day on a fixed schedule.
Combine it with something that interest you like watching Japanese shows, anime, listening to jpop, writing the Kanji, reading NHK Easy, and so on. (This will help to keep things exciting).
After 1-2 months, see if you wanna increase the number of lessons per day.
If you want to get there the slowest possible way, like itās already been said, 3 is the slowest WaniKani allows.
I somewhat similarly burnt out for about 3 years and didnāt do any lessons at all during that time so I was essentially just stuck in place. Iād argue that thatās pretty slow
Biggest thing Iāve learned after āgetting back on the horseā was to initially keep it laughably easy. So easy that even your baby could do it. That way it becomes doable everyday. Donāt worry about increasing pace, worry about how to make it super easy instead. Making it extremely easy enables you to do it everyday without hating it (which could very easily lead to burnout). Especially when life comes around and says youāre suddenly too busy, because youāve designed it to be easy, youāre still able to complete it regardless.
If you have to focus on anything at all for WaniKani, Iād say itās more important to be able to clear out your reviews at least once daily than to do new lessons. This keeps all the SRS items fresh. So while yes, you arenāt āprogressingā youāre making sure that the current items you already know never get stale and forgotten. I think itās a big mistake to have a large review pile, just because the longer the item stays un-reviewed, the more likely you are to forget it. Therefore adding further to your pile of reviews in the future. Of course, sometimes life happens and reviews will pile up, but I think its very important that you clear out the reviews asap.
If Iāve learned anything at all these 5 years Iāve been with WaniKani, itās that designing for sustainability avoids burnout and is what gets you to the finish line. We just have to keep deciding everyday to put one foot in front of the other and weāll get there before we know it.
@trunklayer I hope you donāt mind me asking, but how many times did you reset over the years? From what level to what level?
There is another SRS app Iām using that I let reviews pile up on and Iām considering whether itās worth resetting all of my progress (itās only two months of progress, so not that much).
At least two times to level one ā once from level 37 and once from around level 20. Might have been another reset to level one, also from around level 20 ā not sure.
Then Iāve also done a reset from around level 30 ā this time to level 20. There were also a few times when I was about to reset, but managed to get through without it.
Iād say that depends on how easy it is for you to start tackling that pile. If you can start right now without doing a reset ā then great. But if you canāt ā then Iād say it would be better to do a reset.
Iām very lazy, and also very easily distracted, so in order to maintain a consistent habit and not burn out, I like to keep my daily goal āstupid smallā.
My progress is very slow ā five years to level 38 ā but Iāve never had to reset.
I do use other Japanese learning resources besides WaniKani when I have the time and energy, but when it comes to the hard slog of learning kanji, I rely on the drip, drip, drip of a daily mini habit.
I use an Anki deck to practice additional kanji since I finished WaniKani and my pace for adding new kanji is very similar to this. I add a couple of kanji a week on average, based on the stuff I read. I just added ē„ and å§Ŗ today!
Progress is much slower than when I was speedrunning WaniKani but itās also generally more enjoyable, I donāt have to worry about going through hundreds of daily reviews.
I still think itās worth pushing for the first thousand kanji or so but after that youāre probably better off focusing your attention elsewhere instead of just cramming dozens of kanji every week.
After seeing all the replies, I mustered the courage to deactive my vacation mode. Lo and behold, Iāve collected near 100 reviews which many Iāve forgotten so I am unable to clear it before it pile up again!
I was overwhelmed/stressed and reactivate vacation mode again.
Resetting will kill my motivation to continue WaniKani so thatās not an option.
@nemurineko 's method is perfect for me in a long run i.e 1 lesson a day, never resetting, about 10 reviews daily, 5 years to level 38.
Strategy:
For now, I am thinking about memorising radicals/kanji Iāve learned but forgotten (Level 1 - 13). Then deactivite my vacation mode and start tackling the reviews until I get to manageable reviews (e.g 10 items a day)
Question:
Is this a good strategy to get back to WaniKani?
imo, zeroing out reviews everyday is actually the key to burning out, especially on a larger pile, or back from Master/Enlightened/Leech, and worsen with lower accuracy, not to mention adding new lessons.
However, limiting the number of reviews per day (or per session), and even despite many wrongs or poor accuracy, you will survive and try to remember better.
For a recipe of unchanging and tolerable SRS, probably
At least 1 lesson per day
10-20 reviews per day. If to increase to 40 or something, make sure you can really manage that every day.
It would be nice to put the most difficult first as well. In Anki, I tried to remember harder-to-remember stuff in a chunk of 10. (Easier ones may be the default 20.) And the repeat the chunk as many times as wanted. Thatās how I do more than 10 or 20 on a bad day.
WaniKani have a no-script option to sort reviews by lower levels first, but I am not sure thatās the best idea.
I donāt know if itās the absolute slowest, but something thatās worked for me on days when I really donāt feel like doing my WaniKanis is to say āOK, Iāll do 20 reviews and then if I feel like doing more, great! If not, I can stop there.ā
Talking about reset, Iāve done it 3 times.
First one to L1 after Level 20 something. I was too busy with enjoying life with my bestie riding our bikes around ASEAN and AU.
Second one, to L1 again. I was too busy with work. Again L20 something.
Last one, just a few weeks ago, I was back to L10 from L34. I was busy with work plus my triathlon training. But that L34 knowledge help me during one month stay in Japan for the mentioned triathlon race (IRONMAN Japan).
Now I take it easy, taking lessons when I have a chance. Doing review twice a day.
Letās see what it can take me this time.
-wawan-
The resources I use are constantly changing ā as I said, Iām easily distracted ā and they might not be terribly helpful for you, since my language learning goals are very different from most Japanese learners.
For conversation practice, I book lessons on italki:
I used the book ę°å®å Øćć¹ćæć¼ęę³ to prepare for the JLPT (I finally passed N2 in December 2023, yay!), but I actually prefer these books for learning grammar:
A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar
A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar
A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar
(The Advanced volume contains a useful index to the entries in all three volumes.)
For listening, at the moment Iām enjoying the new Podcast Club:
Iām not the best person to recommend resources for reading. Just in case you havenāt seen it yet, @Akashelia has created a truly helpful (and amazing) list of resources here:
Iām Level 25 and around level 20 I had less time, so dropped my lessons to 5 per day. Itās now taking me about 58 days to level up. But, like you, I have a lifetime sub and am in no hurry.
I think I spend around 1 hour a day doing lessons and reviews (including Kaniwani reviews - which I think is essential too).
I really focus on the context sentences for each piece of vocabulary, and try to decode at least 2 of them for each of vocab. Some of the sentences are just to difficult, but they seem to be reviewing and amending them, so many are quite accessible and seem to have been written to practice recently learned items. I feel that this is really essential for practicing reading and actually using the kanji and vocab Iāve learnt.
I find the Advanced Context Sentence 2 script super helpful for this as it highlights kanji Iāve already learnt and links for each if Iām unsure. This allows me to easily skip sentences that are full of kanji that I havenāt learnt yet.
Yomitan extension for Chrome also lets me highlight vocabulary and give me a pop-up translation in the browser for when Iām unsure, which saves loads of time.
The Hide Context Sentence script blanks out the English translation and forces me to decode it on my own.
I hope that helps and good luck - I think a small amount everyday is so much better than none at all - over the years, it all adds up - so just take it easy.
