Not sure if this is the best channel to post my question, but I was wondering how people manage new lessons. I’m on level 6, so far I’ve just been trying to do lessons every day as they become available but I find myself a little overwhelmed. Basically I remember very little of new lessons and as I start doing the reviews I slowly memorise new kanjis, vocab, etc. until I do new lessons, and this is pretty much a repeating cycle.
In the last few weeks I’ve set myself the rule of only doing new lessons when I have less than 50 items at apprentice level.
This works well, but this is completely arbitrary and it has slowed down considerably how many new lessons I can do.
Just curious as to how people approach this, and what might be the best balance between speed (how many new lessons you do) and efficiency (being able to actually remember things quickly).
For extra context, I started doing this because I use Tsurukame (iOS app, which I really recommend btw) on the side, and limiting new lessons based on number of apprentice level items is one of the options.
You’re going to get a lot of different answers for this because it varies per person. And even for a person, this can change over time.
For me, I do 20-35 new lessons per day regardless of apprentice count. I use the lesson picker in Tsurukame if I’m on iOS, or I use a bunch of item limit rules on Smouldering Durtles if I’m on my Android e-reader, but either way the batches usually look like:
2 radicals
2 kanji
1 vocab
Or if I don’t have any radicals:
2 kanji
3 vocab
Sometimes if the balance is off I’ll switch it to 3 kanji 2 vocab.
I also do a lot of practice outside of WK by importing into another SRS to get double the practice. This is not required and WK has its own additional study tools in the Extra Study section, and so does Tsurukame . Personally I find , especially in the apprentice stage, that I need double the amount of exposure to learn.
Do keep in mind I go at a fairly fast pace though, and I’m an intermediate-lower advanced learner. Also sometimes I do 0 lessons if I’m feeling overwhelmed which does happen because life doesn’t always care about my plans
I’m in no hurry, so I do 10 lessons daily unless I have more than 50 apprentice or ‘too many’ reviews for that day (‘too many’ is based purely on vibe). This keeps my daily reviews down to a level I’m comfortable with. More lessons per day and I get overwhelmed with the reviews. I have tried doing 5 lessons per day but I found this didn’t clear the old vocab by the time I started a new level and things started to back up.
I’m doing Wanikani at max speed so I changed the account settings to max lessons and review
I do reviews every single hour that I’m awake
When you do Wanikani every single hour, they divide stacks into smaller ones. Other than the first stack that I do after I wake up, every other stack should only take 5 minutes to do
As people said, it depends on you. If you are doing reviews once per day, andfeel that you’re not recalling too many stuff, it may be worth it to add a second review in the day. As long as you have time of course.
As for me, I do WK 3 times a day:
In the morning, while working out
After Lunch
After work, there’s usually a big bunch around 8-9 PM
I’m doing around 20 new lessons per day, and I feel that having around 100 to 150 apprentice items is a good number for me. More than that and I pause the new stuff for a little bit (but I’m only on lvl 6 and this happened once)
I love wanikani but I mostly want to use my time on grammar and reading. So i try to do 12 lessons (3 kanji, 9 words) each day in the morning and then review at lunch and evening. That gives an ok amount of reviwes
20 lessons but only if my success rate is relatively good like 80+%. And only if I’m below 160 on apprentice items to avoid having too many reviews.
I think you should try to listen to yourself and how you feel to find your own personal rhythm to wani kani. Do you feel overwhelmed? Do you feel a strong sense of determination?
Dont be afraid to review your cards in study mode. Its insane to expect them to stick on seeing them just once. And always do your recent mistakes first.
Last of all be patient with yourself its still early wani kani levels.
I do 15 lessons per day, 6 days per week, taking an extra day off if things get too busy. This lets me maintain a target pace of 2 levels per month, but it means up to 60 Apprentice items for part of the week (more, if I get any wrong in reviews). I have a pretty busy life, so this has been a stretch for me. I’ll probably slow down after level 30, to provide more time for grammar and reading, now that I’ve gathered a reasonable baseline of kanji knowledge. Don’t be afraid to just do what works for you now, and adjust down the road as needed.
Just remember that learning the vocab is intended to help review and retain the kanji, so whatever your pace, try to arrange your lessons to cover at least one reinforcing vocab word while the new kanji is still in the Guru stages (preferably Guru 1).
I have a lifetime subscription (they go on sale once per year), so I can go at the speed I want without worrying about subscription payments.
Basically, I did 15 lessons per day on the lower levels, then decreased to 10 after maybe 4 months, and now I’m at 7 per day. When I found the reviews to be too time consuming and I felt that I was getting overwhelmed with new items, I decreased the number of lessons per day. Outside of Wanikani, I am reviewing for the JLPT, practicing listening, and working through a textbook, plus I have an online Japanese class once per week. Since I work part time, this schedule works for me.
I also do lessons to keep around 50 apprentice items. I am generally quite busy, so it often dips lower than that, but above that right before leveling up cause of the motivation associated with that. I do 0-20 lessons a day, with an average of maybe 3 at the beginning of a level and 10 around the end of a level.
At first I was going at max speed, but then had to do months of overtime at work, so the reviews became overwhelming to the point of getting completely buried in reviews and then I dropped off completely. When I came back I had to dig myself out of thousands of reviews and the lesson count kept increasing cause they add more vocab to early levels regularly. Now most of my items from previous levels are actually burned, so it’s like I’m in earlier levels.
I’d suggest making sure the number of reviews is always very manageable for the time you have and do a little prediction for if you know life is going to be super busy. Getting buried in reviews is super demotivating, but you can power through by only focusing on that review count and setting the reviews to the setting that gives the master and enlightened items first, so you can actually make progress as opposed to constantly getting apprentice items you don’t remember.
If you’re having a hard time with remembering new lessons, I would recommend actually doing the lessons on the WK website instead of tsurukame because it presents the information in a more progression-like manner instead of dumping the entire thing on you all at once.
Personally, I used to do 25 lessons a day, daily for like… 6 months straight, but recently, I’ve been a bit less motivated and only do around 20 lessons a day, depending on if I feel like it on not. Back when I was doing more lessons, my apprentice count consistently hovered around 150, and I was still getting around 85-90% accuracy on my reviews.
If you’re having trouble remembering your vocabulary while doing reviews, slow down on the lessons for a while. Adding more reviews isn’t going to help you do any better on the ones you already have.
I base the number of lessons I do in a day on the number of apprentice items I have, and that’s worked well for me so far. I try to keep 50 to 60 items in Apprentice, which I think averages to 5 to 10 lessons a day depending on how many I get correct. With that, I get 50 to 100 items per day to review, and I always finish them. It takes me about a month to level up at that rate. I’ve been considering speeding up a little (to 60-65 items in apprentice) since I’m sure I can handle it.
Don’t feel bad about not doing new lessons for a while. There are times where I get busy or have trouble remembering Guru+ items, which can send them back into Apprentice if I’m not careful. It’s pretty demoralizing to end a review session with more Apprentice items than you started, so slowing down is perfectly okay if it makes things better for you later.
My method is based on my method of practice. I study WaniKani 6 times a day, with the goal of studying 5 new lessons at the end of each review session. If I don’t reach the goal (or don’t have time to review 6 times a day, which is becoming more frequent as the year comes to a close), I have one last reminder at the end of the night (around 11pm) to “wrap-up" any loose ends in regard to Lessons.
Honestly, I don’t really think that timing itself matters. There are going to be days where you miss lessons and that pushes you back a little, and that’s ok. Experiment a little bit until you find something comfortable!
