I would like to echo a little of what @jprspereira said. It doesn’t get easier, but you definitely learn more and are able to start understanding how everything works, seeing patterns, and figure out the best way for you to understand how to learn kanji/vocab/grammar…whatever about Japanese you are learning.
It’s like anything really, especially if you are brand new to Japanese. Think about a sport like ski jumping, or figure skating, or one that resonates with you really. Sure you might know what it is…but if you try and learn it yourself you don’t go from putting on a pair of ice skates one day to magically being an Olympian the next week. It takes, practice, dedication, commitment. Japanese is the same way, it is one of the most difficult languages to learn in the world.
You have to take your time with it, learn at your pace, but learning and making it a habit is what will make you better at it “easier” down the road. Every so often I have days where I just feel like I don’t know any Japanese, but I have to remind myself how much I have learned throughout the journey, when I literally only knew the wrong way to pronounce ありがとう.
The other good thing about Wanikani is that you can control the pace! You can learn as many or as few lessons as you want…if you want one less per day do it! If you have 30 do it! If you want to take a lesson break for a day or two do it and focus on reviews. The point we always come back to though is making it a habit, it definitely won’t be easy…but imagine how proud you will be with each milestone and accomplishment that you stuck with it and persevered! It is a great feeling! Good luck with your journey!! 頑張ってください！
I agree. Reading helps alot for retention. Also, I am learning kanji to able to read japanese text, so wanikani is my primary tool for achieving my japanese text reading skill. So while learning kanji, if I don’t read some text material, so I would ask why bothering wanikani.
What I did until now was reading stuff on social media, wikipedia, etc. and I tried to decipher as much as I could. If I struggled with word, I would often remember it better after reading it somewhere outside of WK.
I’ll also buy an easy book soon, so that should help aswell!
Ohh that’s nice!
University is gonna start soon so I don’t know if I will be taking part in reading the manga, but I’ll definitely take part in reading the book after the manga!
The only problem is that I haven’t done that much N5 grammar yet, since I just recently started (I’m using Bunpro and I have 30/106 items for N5)
personally i’ve found it goes in waves. it gets harder due to increase in kanji difficulty, but it gets easier as i improve my study skills and methodology. right now i think i’m in an easiness swing; i was able to study 20+ new kanji at once and get almost every single one right at the first review. but i’ve also had levels where there’s a difficulty spike or a bunch of difficult kanji at once and i have to take them in smaller batches or make more mistakes.
I’d recommend finishing N5 grammar and learning a few key N4 grammar points (like なければならない・なければいけない) before reading a book. You can learn more as you read (asking for help as needed), but starting with less than that could be very painful.
Note that the graph you’re referring to, that people post all the time, is inaccurate. That’s not a graph of “workload”. It’s a graph of the number of items you have done lessons but not burned yet. That doesn’t mean you see those every day - the vast majority are locked for some time delay until you can review them again.
If you were to draw a graph of wk “workload”, meaning average reviews/day, then it would have 3 phases.
Phase I, from start to when your first burn reviews start coming. Something like:
Where the dotted line is about 9x the rate you do lessons. That’s because every item goes through every SRS level at some point, so you should see them all 9 times. By the time you start burning items, all 9 streams are coming at you at once.
Phase II, from starting to burn items, to level 60 lessons complete:
[flat line]
Phase III, once there are no more lessons:
Now one by one, you’re finishing off each SRS level stream and re-doing straggling failures. The bulk of the workload is gone very quickly, but you’re not done-type-done for months still.
That doesn’t take into account the difficulty of each item, which is kind of subjective. I don’t think the later levels are “harder” in some sense, once you’ve done the previous ones as building blocks. (plus or minus a little)
I would like to share with you a quote that I have always gone back to whenever I have doubts about overcoming something I set about in doing. This is from Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield who was an English man of letters. The French attribute it to the painter Nicolas Poussin instead so take your pick in who to attribute.
Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well. ― Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield
I find that it always brings me back to why I wanted to study in the first place. I think that having a good command of the Japanese language would be worth doing and that is why do it well, or at least try to whenever there are days where I am demotivated.
I agree with @jprspereira and @PortCityBricks and echo most of their points. It definitely does not get easier. Keep in mind however that your capacity for learning and absorbing more at higher levels is different than when you are in the lower levels. So while the levels did not get easier your ability and capacity to handle said levels have improved! Think about this and ponder for a few moments
Many things in life happen or do not happen because of our brains. Some people see something and take it as an obstacle and challenge themselves to see if there is a way through it. Others see the same challenge and think it is an unscalable mountain that you just can only avoid and must go around instead. The brain likes what it knows is safe so it will keep you there, that is why there is an initial difficulty in doing WaniKani. The brain is going to question you: why are doing this, what good is it for, is it even doable, can you handle it, and all sorts of other stuffm but only if you let it. Once you decide that you are going through with it, guess what? You go on doing it and then you guru your radicals, you guru 90% of your kanjis in a level and level up, next thing you know you have done 5 levels, the next you are at level 42 and so on. This also applies to the person you like, if you do not tell them how you feel you will only be together in you thoughts. But I digress…
You are already at level 6. The fact that you are out of the free levels means you can do it. You are already paying for the service! Which means that somehow you have decided that it is doable and that you can see it through to the end. Do not take yourself out of the game, keep in it and see it through. Let me give you one last quote to finally squash that demotivation of yours. This is from Napoleon Hill:
“Remember, the thoughts that you think and the statements you make regarding yourself determine your mental attitude. If you have a worthwhile objective, find the one reason why you can achieve it rather than hundreds of reasons why you can’t.” ― Napoleon Hill
It seems to get harder. Until level 9 the amount of time required to level up was around 20 days. For 10 it took me 40 days and 11 more than the previous level already. (Even though there were some holidays in the mean time).
To be honest this is not demotivating at all. I feel more common and useful kanji and vocabulary are coming up and I already manage to read simple things.
Levels can be seem as a form of gamification, but to me they only represent a learning order, so I do not mind at all to be stuck in a level and progress slowly as long I am learning properly.
I resurrected old kanji after level 60 and it got harder!! Lots of old kanji started looking similar to kanji I had been more recently exposed to… it was/is a great thing to do, though. This really helped sort things out in my mind, but I’m still forgetting massive amounts of “burned” material. If I get exposed to something forgotten in the wild, it comes off the burned pile. I’m really getting my money’s worth out of lifetime…
Anyway, I saw a graph estimating the WaniKani work load, and it suggested that there was a linear increase in reiviews until about the early 20-levels.
That graph is misleading. It shows the total number of items you have learned but haven’t yet burned. In a way you could say that’s your total workload, yes, but that’s not really the case. An item in Apprentice adds way, way more to your workload than an Enlightened item.
