What's a normal level up time?

[Saimin]

@catsnpizzas

Typically, the way I gauge my kanji progress and how much I’m retaining is through reading and chatting with people in Japanese. And so as long as I feel that my reading and my communicating is improving, and my ability to recognize and retain at least some of the kanji is improving, then I’m content, and I don’t particularly care how long it takes me to burn every item.

that’s a perfectly valid stance, i’m happy it’s working out for you

[McFadge]

For what it’s worth, adding my level stats for another data point.

As of a few levels ago I’ve been trying out doing 20 lessons a day (on the way in to work on the train), and then spend the rest of the trip there and back doing reviews (I’d say about 150 per day on average). This lets me keep progressing and it’s always possible to keep my end of day reviews at 0 (though that doesn’t happen every day).

Previously I found when I smashed through my lessons as quickly as I could I’d end up finding them harder to remember, and producing unmanageable chunks for review. So far my new method is working out pretty well for me. I won’t be the fastest to level 60, but it feels like a good pace.

With N4 JLPT coming up in December I’m slowing down to 10 lessons per day to focus more time on grammar, since I have the Kanji required.

[Thud]

Had a long break where when I got to lvl 15 and didn’t get back into till a few months ago. Tracking it myself level 15 took roughly 21 days.

Used to do all of the lessons in one go, but that’s not really feasible anymore. I try to keep my apprentice pile under 100 items and do 25 lessons when available (or I do enough lessons to leave behind multiples of five). As I don’t reorder stuff, this does make me do most of the kanji in one go and I haven’t really found a good way to make them stick yet (the first reviews of them are always bad). But yeah I’m still progressing rather well for now, the system works.

[stevenhowe]

Here’s my progress so far. Some mixed results in the middle as I tried to figure out my most efficient way of studying and dealing with life, but you’ll see the last few levels averaging around 3 weeks.

I do reviews 3 times a day and 9 lessons every evening.

I don’t use any scripts.

I don’t use mnemonics either.

The radicals tend to be a mixed bag for me; those that are directly aligned to a kanji (something obvious like ‘moon’ or ‘mouth’) are very useful, but really abstract ones like ‘loiter’ or ‘mullet’ are just trash in my brain. I guess they’re useful for the mnemonics.

Anyway, as many others have said, there is no “normal”, just go at a pace that you find comfortable. Get yourself a schedule, but don’t beat yourself up too much if you need to flex in or out every now and then. Language learning should be fun, if you’re not enjoying it, it won’t matter how quickly you get to level 60.

[Candygaming]

i currently have some of the vocab in my level on master since i keep messing up the last few kanji i need to level up.