What level marks the beginning of the intermediate wall in WaniKani?

I’m level 26 right now and still waiting for that wall even though I’m almost going full speed at 8.5 days/level on average. I’m coming to the conclusion that’s it’s entirely outside factors that determine if you have trouble or not, not Wanikani itself. Life gets in the way, interest wanes, etc. Even the flood of Enlightened > Burned reviews people talk about are more of a time issue. There’s nothing inherently hard about them except that the add more reviews.

I’m not working right now so I spend my entire day studying Japanese. I never run out of time for Wanikani, so my reviews stay low and I’m able to quiz myself on leeches and other missed reviews. I never take a day off, so they never build up.

This is impossible for a lot of people because they have responsibilities outside of Wanikani.

I would think of it more in terms of ‘when is this going to become too much to fit into my schedule? When am I going to start losing interest?’ because those are the real culprits, IMHO.

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Can confirm, at least for myself. I hit several walls already (started in 2017) and it has always been due to life events of some form another (mostly relation-based complications). I had been going at a steady 7.5 to 10 days at most speed for the time from July up until December, when my relationship started falling apart. Now I have been on level 20 for 35.5 days and am in the process of getting the amassed reviews back down before continuing lessons.

I hate that I am taking such a long time, and seeing others advance much more quickly frustrates me (still glad for them, of course), but in the end, I’d say the point is not really how fast you get there and whether or not there will be one wall, or several. For me, it is in having fun while I get there and dealing with complications as (if) they come up, but never let them ruin the fun, and never giving up.

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Don’t know about WK in particular, but N3 is probably ‘intermediate’. I’m at N3 in terms of grammar, however my Kanji is sorely lacking (hence the WK level). This year will be my year though! I’m going to conquer all kanji once and for all!

I hope…

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I see what you mean. Also, I think that as long as there is time, reading native material is a big plus, at least starting out. There are plenty of times so far where I either see a word in an anime or manga that I just learned in WK or vice versa. I have bit of a theory about using Wanikani with regard to the “Wall”. I think that starting out, at the beginner/absolute beginner phase, that there seem to be a lot of common words to learn. In learning the more common words, it feels like breaking though a wall in the sense that (from my experience so far) it is motivating to be able to understand the vocab and grammar when parsing sentences. Maybe, mid way through WK, that no longer has the same effect, (you don’t notice the same amount of new words due to frequency). My thoughts are that when this happens, its probably most important to start consuming as much native material as possible and allow the natural absorption of vocab from context. Then later, after maybe N2ish level, WK would be more stressed as a resource because of all the N1ish level kanji that are rare to find in the wild.

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Well if Vocab is the meat, then Grammar are the bones that hold everything together. I think that its easier to build the vocab around the grammar as apposed to building the grammar after memorizing thousands of words. But that’s just my opinion. Best of luck to you in your studies. Hopefully in a year or two I will be able to read manga and not have to look up every other word lol.

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Hmmm… thats a good question. Not sure to be honest. I’ve tried reading with a bit limited success couple years before wanikani. I picked up reading in Japanese again few years ago and was in late 10s early 20s level, but kanji there were still mostly familiar to me. I think maybe around late 20s you should be able to understand most of the shounen manga in Japanese. Also shounen manga usually has furigana, so it’s easier to look up words. Just don’t give up or get discouraged by not knowing something - you already made big progress compared to beginning.

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I’ve been hard stuck on 27-28 for a while now. There are just so many freaking reviews and lessons at this point, and more leeches than ever with so many kanji that look extremely similar. Then frustration kicks in and yeah, here we are.

I’m actually thinking the past couple days of turning on vacation mode for a month or two. It’s just become an exercise in frustration and it is taking way too much time every day AND it’s taking away from grammar, etc. I’ve been doing this for about 9 months and while I can read a fair bit as far as recognizing kanji, I want to put more effort into actually communicating, listening, etc. As it is, WK is my main learning source at the moment by far, and it just isn’t effective as that.

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Pretty much. And the majority are people who don’t really understand how the system works and go full speed without meaning to.

If you’ve got a plan to get the work done then it’s fine.

The later levels have fewer lessons?

Well, i’m only at level 9 right now so take my advice for what you may. But maybe try some graded readers. WK is more of a supplement to reading in my opinion. Grammar is just as important as vocab. Like, if you were driving a car, you may have everything you need to move forward, but without road signs on the road, you would not have a clue where you are going. I think of the particles and conjugations as road signs. They tell you everything you need to know about where you are going. The vocab is just the vehicle that gets you moving. Maybe this is a weird analogy, but I was actually just thinking of this while driving today lol.

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The fast levels starting from the mid-40s have almost no radicals and all Kanji are unlocked at the beginning.

There are only 10 radicals total from 50-60.

The point there is that if you do all lessons as soon as they’re unlocked you’re going to get massive review batches.

Doing about 20 lessons per day and keeping apprentice at 100 should lead to around 150-200 daily reviews given a pace of 11 days per level.

Doing all lessons at once from level 1-15 is going to lead to 400+ reviews per day. That’s going to massively increase the workload once those burns come around if you’re not prepared for it.

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Thanks! Its encouraging to know that level is within grasp. Having small goals are good I think.

I want to answer your question as accurately as possible, so could you clarify what you mean by intermediate wall?

“alo” explained that (among other points) its the point where the burn items pile on top of each other (paraphrasing).

Also when the work load doubles due to said reviews.

I had heard the phrase “intermediate wall” and assumed it was when more difficult (similar looking) kanji in later levels of WK begin to make learning more of a grind. Also, the percentage of the reading (recognition) chart on wkstats begins to drag (by number of level increase) over a longer period of leveling up.

Maybe I’m comlicating this. I guess I was wanting to know in addition to when I could expect to see it, what is the intermediate wall?

I think I have a little better understanding of it now, thanks to others responses.

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Ahh, that makes sense.

Well usually I hear intermediate plateau/wall thrown around a lot which refers to something different than what alo was talking about. That more refers to an intermediate language level rather than an intermediate wanikani level tho which is why I was confused.

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I think the wall varies from person to person based on the speed they’re going through, their goals for how quickly they want to continue, and how they mentally feel about items piling up and how many reviews they’re willing to do a day. The method of leveling up doesn’t really change as you progress through levels, although there are potential speed changes (fast levels). However, I do think there are a few things that I do think make it harder as you progress:

  • Your enlightened/burn level items start to come back and increase your review counts, and your recall is really being tested now.
  • Kanji do get a little more “complex.” They are made of more radicals than the earlier levels and look more intimidating. The increase in radicals also requires a little more memorization (mnemonics with only 1 or 2 radicals are probably easier to remember than those with 3 or more).
  • As the library of your radical/kanji/vocabulary knowledge increases, you now have a lot more things you have to remember and recall from, meaning you have more things that you can mix up and get incorrect.
  • The number of similar-looking kanji in the library of your brain increases, further increasing the chances of mixing things up.

Level 30+ is when I started to feel the additional pressure due to having to burn items, and that’s when I felt like the kanji started to look more intimidating.

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Thank you for explaining. And it didn’t occur to me that there are intermediat japanese vs intermediate wanikani levels. Since wanikani uses its own grade, that probably makes a difference in reaching overall fluency.

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so interesting to read all of your comments on the topic. I am actually working around 45-50h per week and WaniKani helps me a lot relaxing and getting off work after a long day. So I am not that fast but still enjoy it. I actually will reduce my work soon to get more of a proper work-life-balance. And I am really looking forward to spend more time studying Japanese!
I am soon finishing level 3 - can’t wait and am super motivated.
All of the comments motivate me too and I am eager to see how long I can continue :slight_smile:

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If you mean wanikani alone. I have no idea but if the japanese language someone told a defintion which i believe to be true. “You become Intermediate learner when beginner stuff are too easy, advanced stuff are too difficult”
To this definition i consider myself an intermediate i don’t use wanikani only and i advice anyone to not use it alone (unless they already experience learners only here to solidify their knowledge)

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The only problem is then you just leave two more questions to be answered:

What counts as beginner stuff?

What counts as advanced stuff?

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