Hey everyone 
I was just wondering how YOU study with Wanikani, do you go through the lessons and then review with trial and error till eventually that sucker sticks OR do u sit down, have a special connection with that kanji,vocab,radical and make it youāre friend.
what works best for you? and if you have done both which one did you find you had a better success rate with.
Just thought it would be interesting to hear everyoneās point of view
Thank you
Well I just started myself and I have a pretty good grasp of hiragana and katakana so I find the mnemonics a bit annoying because it tends to get in the way when Im trying to find the reading. I write the Kanji down on a piece of paper and write the reading above it like furigana and study it. If the Kanji looks complicated Iāll look up the stroke order but other wise Ill just study it while Im waiting for the next review. I work a security job in a racino overnight so I tend to have to stand around in one place without a lot of people going in or out so I study the Kanji so I have something to do. Ill probably eventually transfer those Kanji from the paper to Flashcards at some point.
oh cool thanks for the reply, u should look at using anki for your flash cards i find it useful
This is a question Iāve been thinking of asking here as well so Iām gonna stalk your thread haha.
As for myself, I tend to blow through new lessons as soon as they are available. If I leave any waiting my brain starts telling me that Iām gonna make it take longer to get through this levelās items if I donāt put them all in rotation now. I am by no means a kanji savant either, so this usually means the first few reviews of those items are rough. Now I know logically if I miss them a bunch in reviews the srs may take just as long if not longer than if I spaced my lessons out in smaller doses overtime, but I still do it every time any lol. However, I have very little free time atm where Iām not dead tired, so Iām never really in that mindset where I can go through item by item and really get familiar with the mnemonics. I feel if I tried to wait Iād start really procrastinating on getting them done at all and thatād be even less beneficial. I tend to pick up most up the stuff after 2-3 semi rough reviews, so my method seems to working well enough for me. Iām still in the pleasant category atm though, so will see how viable my method is when I get into some really high number of lessons and reviews.
Korbelious, I have been doing the same way when I entered painful and itās really painful that my belly acted up. Recently I am slowing down a lot and it seems to take half a month per level and my mind is telling me duh youāre too slow. Before it was 8-9 days/level, I think. From now on I will try to return to the fast but painful way, itās so effective that I love it, lol
HAHAH please do
its an interesting topic I think and we might even learn something form each other atm iām doing pretty much the same as you. I got this really great set of documents for studding things like kanji sheets and new vocab but iām still in the beginner leaves as well and I find atm just review, trail and error works for me butā¦ BUT iām sure when we hit that 10 above leaves its going to get real
Yeah, thatās my fear. I like surpassing a level at a little over a week. I hate when it takes longer than that. When I get down to those last few kanji before unlocking the next level I am on my phone every hour waiting for them to come up. Then I remember that when I level up I get a ton of reviews. It starts the cycle all over again, and I start drilling through them asap to get them thrown into the review mix. Itās a love/hate relationship that I never want to leave lol.
I started off blowing through lessons and reviews an hour at time, as much as I could do. Then there was lag between finishing the free levels, and me subscribing. What did I learn in the interim? without the SRS, sounds meanings and shapes got mixed up in my memory and I had to spend the last two weeks doing just reviews to get back on track and reset the pace of the SRS to something less mindwrenching. Now Iām going to take a slower more deliberate pace. Any suggestions on what that might be?
I started out burning through all lessons as soon as they came up and leveling up every 8-9 days. It got to be burnout and WK reviews were crowding out any other Japanese study. Now I only do lessons if it wonāt put the Apprentice queue over 100. More relaxed and spending more time on grammar, reading, and listening outside WK.
At the moment I already know ~80% of the items, so I just want to get through them as fast as possible. I use the self-study add-on to āpre-learnā the unknown kanji of next level(s):
When the next level comes up I am not slowed down by a few odd kanji. I donāt want to be stuck at 89% kanji completion for a few days because of a single kanji I know I can handle eventually.
I probably hit new territory soon so my strategy might change, but the userscript is also valuable to review for example all kanji of a single level in a few minutes.
Hello!!
Well, I use a bunch of scripts to optmize the process (reorder lesson/review, ultimate timeline and wk overwrite)
I usually take all the radical lessons day-1 (counting from level up) + half of the kanjis. Day-2 I study rest of the kanji + some vocabs. Day-3 I finish the remaining lessons. If I feel that Im becoming a bit overwhelmed with reviews I put a day or two before starting the kanjis. You should try to find a pacing that seems right to you. I try to level AT LEAST 3 lvls a month. Its not so fast as some people and not so slow that could bore me to hell.
Oh, I also try to do my reviews at least 3 times a day and usually dont go to sleep before doing all my reviews. Sometimes, when I have to sleep outside because Im in a date or something, I will do them the next day, but as soon as I can.
I normally do the same thing, like whenever i have lessons i finish all them up, and do reviews once per day, and always use āignoreā button when I fail something (because I want to learn new kanjiās as fast as I can, so even if I donāt get 100% everything, Iāll still be getting new lessons and learning more).
I try my hardest to keep up with my lessons and reviews daily, which is pretty easy for me because Iāve got access to a computer at work. But I definitely feel that writing practice, especially consistent writing practice, had helped me really burn kanji and vocab into my memory. Itās a manual way for me to keep track of trouble words. It really keeps me honest!
Hereās my notebook:
Vocab
Kanji
Radicals
Suggested alternatives to Anki
For wanikani I do the same thing every day.
ā Wake up early and first thing I do is my reviews. I only do reviews once a day, so every morning it tends to be somewhere between 80-150.
ā After I finish that I do my lessons. I do only 20 a day, with max 5 kanji per day. I use a reorder script to make this easier. I found that 5 kanji per day is a good amount for me to learn. Any more and I forget them the next day way more. I also write each kanji about ten times as I learn them. I tend to remember them more when I write them down.
ā I usually review the new 5 kanji I learned at some point during the day, usually have my book on me that I write them down in to do this.
Doing this I average a level about every 11-12 days, and find I donāt ever get too overwhelmed.
I love the note book great idea
what a great break down thank you so much
After I get my small break at the hospital I do my reviews (usually about 50-100). I then do 20-25 new lessons a day and a write all new vocabs and kanji down in this little notebook that I have. I then do reviews just before bed!
I would invest more time in it but unfortunately its not conducive to my timetable D:
Worth noting for everyone who feels they need to do all of the reviews immediately: I calculated it out a while back, and on average, WK will only let you do about 22-25 lessons per day with even the fastest level-up time. Thereās little point to going much faster than that, at least as long as you use the reorder script to hit radicals and kanji on day 1. This is something like what my week looks like:
Day 1: Level up, New Radicals. Maybe Do New Kanji, too
Day 2: Do New Kanji if I didnāt yesterday. Otherwise, do 25-35 Vocab
Day 3: 25-35 Vocab
Day 4: Burn Radicals, Learn New Kanji.
Day 5: 25-35 Vocab
Day 6: 25-35 Vocab
Day 7: 25-35 Vocab
Day 8: Repeat
I usually choose the actual amount of vocab to be split evenly among the 4-5 Vocab days, so if I have 100 new lessons, Iāll do around 20-25. If I have 150, Iāll do 30-35ish. I make it a goal to finish out all of the open lessons before leveling up.
I also spend a good amount of time with the lessons, since I do relatively few at a time. I probably spend around 30-60 minutes a day doing them.
Doing all of this, my accuracy is:
