Hey! Wanted to ask here and get some perspective from people!
Love the app overall, been using it for a bit over a year, have made it to 25. Been decently strict about clearing all my reviews every day no exception, it gave me a pretty good habit, and I’d say I’m somewhere between N3 and N4 at the moment. Honestly, overall I mostly got no complaints
However, as 30 and the halfway point looms closer, I feel more and more like the app is consuming a lot of my potential study time, as despite my attempts to keep my review piles short (I tend to stop at level ups to guru words a bit to let it naturally flow back down), it has gotten bigger over time. My listening (trying Supernative for it, is pretty nice) is very behind my reading (not to even mention my speaking!) – I still struggle with a lot of kana words and I don’t have much time to read Satori’s stories in a consistent manner either, or participate in the language exchange groups that I have tried to join because of the pressure I feel to not let my reviews pile up
Giving it serious thought, I’ve considered finishing Hell and stopping at that point – I don’t think I want to stop earlier, it seems that, if my math is correct, entering 31, it’s more or less where I should be hitting 1000 Kanji, and that’s such a massive milestone that I definitely don’t want to turn around from when I’m so close. But I’m definitely curious to hear thoughts from other people on this, especially on how worth it the app is to use past that point. An option I’ve considered is turning on vacation mode and taking a break to do other apps once hitting 31, but wouldn’t vacation mode turn off if I stop paying? My fear is trying to come back, and seeing a wall of thousands of reviews on the way
My advice in general for all apps and study supports is not to stop brutally and move on to something else, instead have things overlap. Slow down with WaniKani and experiment with other things.
You have used the app consistently for a year, don’t let the good habit go to waste and use it to bootstrap the next step of the journey. The risk of brutal shifts is that if you stop WK and start something else but you don’t find your footing you may end up not studying anything for a while and lose your momentum.
That being said the general idea of spending less time on the site after level 30 is certainly a good one, with a thousand kanji under your belt you can do a lot already!
As simias advised, I wouldn’t stop cold and take a break. At very least, keep doing the reviews until you get most level 30 items to Enlightened. Like you, I considered stopping after finishing level 30, but when I got there, I found there were just too many unknown kanji showing up in my readings. I posted about it here: What level should i quit at?
Instead, I slowed way down. Within 3 weeks, the number of reviews dropped significantly, so I was spending less time on WK and could use that extra time to read more.
P.S.: in that post I linked, I said I planned to stop after finishing level 41, but I’m still going, though unlike the 30s, I think it’d be ok to stop in the 40s.
I also wouldn’t stop completely, just slow down instead. The habit is much easier to keep alive than restart at some later point (speaking very much from experience here…)
There’s plenty of absolutely essential kanji on the higher levels. I’m constantly surprised how useful even these last levels have been. It’s so much easier to do lookups when you have at least one reading down. This will speed up reading a lot when you’re just starting that.
I considered slowing down somewhere in the 30s, but I keep running into unknown kanjis often enough that I want to go further ahead a bit more every time.
If you can somehow slow down and meaningfully invest the time elsewhere then I’d say it is a good thing.
My spirit right now is to go to level 42 and reassess, but indeed the number of daily reviews is invasive at this point.
I’ve been having the same feeling as you. I decided to just stop doing lessons until my reviews got down to 150 or even 100. They were between 200 and 300 a day. After not doing lessons for 10 days they are nearly down to 150 reviews a day and its feeling much better
I did slow down. Still, as slowly as I’m going, I’m running into kanji and vocabulary here that I have just seen or see the very next day in my reading the newspaper, etc. So I don’t feel like quitting cold turkey would be completely harmless, if that makes any sense. (That said, I’m right about where you are, so can’t speak for 30+)
Im close to level 35 now and just keep doing it because it has become a habit and I don’t mess myself up about forgetting stuff and move it further anyway (reducing reviews by a lot). I basically need a very good reason for myself to let an item fail.
I personally don’t really see any use for WK anymore and will stop at 40 just because its a multiple of ten and feels cleaner. “Unknown” Kanji in written text are easily processed without learning them here and writing is not a real problem anymore either. I think around level 25 I felt a hard drop in usefulness for me. Maybe try reading more and spend less time here and after a while I’m sure you will be able to decide if you want to continue or not.
As everyone else as said, slow down (or even stop) lessons, but keep up the reviews. The reviews will drop off, and you’ll get the time to do the other things you want to. This might take a few weeks, but in the grand scheme of the years it’s going to take to learn Japanese, it’s nothing.
For what it is worth (and I’m a total begginer at this, so add a huge amount of the proverbial salt):
I’ve noticed that with NHK Easy articles, the bulk of kanji and vocab comes from WK L2-12/15, followed by a significant amount of items from L32-46/48. Comparatively, the amount of items from the in-between levels is quite small.
Their usage of those higher level items would suggest they’re “easy” and not uncommon in regular use, at least as far as news pieces go.
While it’s likely that by the point one reaches L30 one will be able to glean out the meanings/readings of upper level WK items, I’d second what most others have suggested: to carry on with WK albeit at a (much?) slower pace. In the grand scheme of things, I think it’s better to “know” (instantly or near-instantly recognize) the kanji and vocab than to spend a few seconds trying to figure them out.
Well anyway, that’s what I’m now thinking of doing when I’ll reach that turning point…
I know many people say that the usefulness of Wanikani is greatly reduced after level 40 but i’m thinking that surely a lot of the vocab between levels 40 and 60 is made up of two or more kanji, one of which will be kanji from an earlier level, so surely coming across those kanji again is good reinforcement and practice of those kanji
I know this feeling. I hit that when I was in the late 20s as well, so I ended up stopping at 30. A nice round number.
But I was also at the point where I could read simple light novels and manga without furigana. And lookup new kanji as I encountered them and learn them that way. So a lot of the lessons just felt redundant to me at that point. If you can get yourself to fully immersing, it’s probably better to go for something that lets you pick and choose what to learn so you can still get a feeling of going at a good pace. Otherwise it’s going to feel like you’re sinking hours into something that isn’t all too beneficial anymore and burn out.
But the whole point of Wanikani is leaving the choice to others so you don’t have to worry about those kinds of things, anyway. That’s not a bad thing, especially if you’re just starting out and don’t know where to start.
There’s something to be said about a lesson tool that actually makes you good enough at understanding and learning that you can eventually move on naturally from it, instead of trying to make you feel eternally dependent on it.
Something i’ve been thinking is that levelling up is only connected to the radicals and kanji, not the vocab. So one option for us i guess is to ignore the vocab and just learn the radicals and kanji. This should make reading easier and maybe we can pick up vocabulary as we read. I don’t know if this would work in practice.
Level 40 something. Diminishing returns and all that. But in general as you are learning the language, you should spend less and less time with WaniKani and more with listening and reading resources.
I agree with that. While I do encounter the words I’m learning in WK in the last levels in the wild, it’s maybe every 5/10k characters I read. So if possible my advice is to slow down the lessons after around level 40, so that there is more room for actually getting exposed to the Japanese language via native material, instead of being busy doing WK reviews and not having an opportunity to reinforce what you learn.
I’m going all the way to 60 because I have a lifetime subscription. But, if you are on a monthly / yearly based subscription, and are trying not to use too much money on WK, I would say rather drop the subscription and learn kanji and vocab another way (JPDB / Anki), rather than do the last levels of WK as fast as possible.
I’ve found that for the visual novels ive been going through, the levels from 35-45 have been incredibly helpful. However, because I’ve been speeding up more to get to 60 before the end of summer, it does take more time/mental capacity away from immersing more/studying more grammar. Level 30 became a turning point for me in that reading became significantly easier, but the 40s are reducing a ton of lookups for me in the dictionary so if I have a problem with the sentence, its usually grammar related. I think finishing wk and having 2k kanji and 6k vocab ultimately at the end of the road is a good place to be- but to each his own
Keeping in mind though wk has never been my full resource, over the past year and change I went through Genki and Quartet 1, and was reading manga magazines (painfully, for a very long time)
My perspective. Maybe because it’s what I did.
Don’t stop. Don’t slow down. Double down.
Let your other studies suffer for six months or so. Complete the course and then move on with the 60 levels under your belt.
I didn’t burn much after I finished but I don’t think it matters. Being able to read really helped me with my kanji study and life in general.
To voice my opinion, don’t over-estimate what WaniKani really teach, even regarding Kanji and vocabulary forms. See the world outside well.
Dunno, but around Level 40 or something, WaniKani sometimes doesn’t teach good vocabularies regarding the Kanji, not counting that sometimes On’yomi or some common readings aren’t taught. I recalled Level 39 Kanji or something.
Still, only if learning Kanji and vocabularies in advance is that important. Learning alongside reading, while taking note of the radicals, is a viable route.
Perhaps my regret was not making reading a priority enough then. Amount to keep the vocabulary coverage and flow.
Good transitioning out point might be around 30-40.
