Which subscription option should I go for?

WaniKani Requesting Help
#14

If you are serious about learning Japanese you will need a resource for learning kanji. Japanese for Busy People, and Genki are not kanji resources. The only mainstream alternative to WK, as far as I’m aware, is Remembering the Kanji. It’s a very different system, so I’d recommend researching it a bit to decide whether you think it’s for you. If it’s not, you’ll find WK difficult to replace.

If you go the WK route, you should almost certainly buy lifetime, but you should wait until the holiday sale to do it (when it costs $199 instead of $299). There isn’t much difference between going monthly vs. annual until then: 7 months is $63 at the monthly rate and $52 at the pro-rated annual rate (you’ll get a discount on the lifetime membership according to your remaining annual membership duration).

Since $11 isn’t enough money to break a sweat over, I’d say go with monthly if you have any hesitation at all. Otherwise go annual.

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#15

my suggestion is to go for a monthly for starters, it will take you 2 or 3 levels to see if wk is for you.

Kanji learning has ups and downs and at some point, you will feel the urge to reset. minimum 2 years is a must for kanji stuff imo. so take a year long plan and it will take you up to 25 or 30. up to this point, if your reading capabilities are not good enough, take another year… that is what i do.

idunno.

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#16

If you’re serious about learning just get the lifetime, it is lifetime after all, so you can go at your own pace and always have it as a resource.

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#18

It depends. I personally don’t plan to use WK for more than 2 years, so Annual is what I went with. I’m on my first annual plan, getting another in December/January (can’t remember when). Really ask yourself, “How long do I plan to use this service? How long do I plan to be here?” Lifetime might end up being a waste of money if your plan is to get in and out. My suggestion is to buy annual, and if you need Lifetime, buy it when the sale happens.

#19

Thanks everyone, some good suggestions there!

General motivation not an issue - I’ve been taking weekly classes for about a year but my reading skills are non existent as the classes are almost entirely speaking and listening, and my class is cancelled until at least September due to coronavirus. Not expecting to complete at speed, but not sure what level I will need to get to. Someone previously suggested N3 is good enough for casual reading, and then look up the occasional Kanji you don’t recognise.

I’ve got remembering the Kanji but so far found it hard to get into without the context and I love how interactive WK is - as well as feeling I can make progress with 2-3 small sessions a day. Typing is a great skill to master as well, since I’m unlikely to need to hand write Kanji based on my current goals and building my vocab alongside Kanji suits me nicely.

So yeah, sounds like a few more levels and hopefully a Christmas sale or annual subscriptions are the way to go once I’m sure WK is the one for me.

#20

Here’s a userscript you might be interested in:
Progress Percentages by @Kumirei: Calculates the percentages of kanji you know in each of the JLPT levels and displays this on the dashboard.

You need to install tampermonkey or some other script manager and Wanikani Open Framework in order to use it.

What it does is adds a progress meter to your dashboard that displays how much of the kanji/vocab you’re likely to know on the N5~N1 tests and on sites like NHK, Newscasts, Twitter, and Wikipedia based on the frequency of the words/kanji you’ve learned. Here’s what it looks like:

Screenshot from 2020-05-18 21-02-35
Screenshot from 2020-05-18 21-02-351483×267 110 KB

I’m only past level 11 and I’ve got 55~65% on media site comprehension. Also according to @jprspereira:

  • By level 30, you’ll be able to identify 88.07% of kanji used on Twitter and 86.48% of the kanji used on Wikipedia.
  • The extra 30 levels on the other hand, will “only” give you an extra 10.11% for Twitter and 11.71% for Wikipedia.
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#21

Wow does that actually work?
Cos if it does thats a huge money saver :thinking:

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#22

Yup. They’ll even prorate if you’re on a monthly plan. I’m on monthly and if I buy Lifetime right now I get $8.66 off. :slight_smile:

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#23

Yep, if you really want to learn kanji, then lifetime is the only option. I wish I had gone for that from the start, rather than wasting my money on annual subscriptions first. Well, at least I eventually got my lifetime in a Christmas sale.

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#24

Exactly, I see WK as a resource like a dictionary. Even after L60, you’ll want to dive back in and check-up vocab and kanji. Also, people seem so time-focussed, “I only want to use this service for a year, two years” etc, why the short-termism? Kanji learning is a task which takes a lifetime, even for native speakers. If you’re serious about learning, I feel you should just suck it up, pay the lifetime, trust the SRS, do ya REPS and move on imo. Peace. Mic drop*

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#25

Thanks. I have WK stats just now but this looks pretty good too so will check it out!

#26

You’ll reinforce the Kanji by consuming native material. WK is not the end goal of learning Kanji, consuming native material is. That’s why people are time focused, they don’t want to spend time on WK when you could be using it for something better. WK is a stepping stone, not the end goal.

You can check Vocab and Kanji on multiple online dictionaries, Jisho being one of them. If you just want to use WK, then even after the subscription has expired, you can still use the site to search for vocab and Kanji.
You don’t internalise words by going through a dictionary, you do so by using them.

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#27

Kanji Learner’s Course as well, with a free SRS in Memrise

#28

Hey this talk about subscriptions has gotten me wondering

Say I got a month subscription, and during that month I made it to level 5 (for example). Then that month ended and I didn’t renew my subscription, so the next day I was back to only being able to access levels 1-3

Would I still be receiving reviews for levels 1-5? or will my reviews only be the free level reviews (1-3) ?

#29

I just faced this after my annual subscription ran out a couple days ago lol. I logged in only seeing 5~ish reviews when I’m used to seeing 100+. So yep, you’re reviews get cut down to levels 1-3

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#30

awwwww thats so annoying ;-;

Thnx for letting me know anyways :'D

#31

Your level stays where it is, though. The items from level four and up will still be there waiting when you continue your subscription.

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#32

Yeah thats really good
imagine such a thing didn’t exist and you would have to go from level 3 to the more upper levels once, then lose ur progress. Then start again. Then lose your progress. Then start yet again. . . etc :tired_face:

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#33

If you have a completely perfect run you can do the whole thing in 1.5 years. I’m talking never getting anything wrong and never leaving a single review or lesson hanging for more than 1 second here. Consider how much you will deviate from that.

  • The lifetime usually gets a pretty significant sale near Christmas time. For me it was from $300 to $200 but people say it goes all the way down to $100 these days. <= Forget that bit

  • There is a secret 50% off promo code floating around applicable for the annual subscription, that lasts forever. So you would be paying roughly 50$ per year if you found/used it. It doesn’t work for Lifetime.

So it all comes down to: do you think you’re a good enough boy to complete the whole thing in under [math] years? If yes go annual if no get lifetime.

#34

A completely perfect run takes somewhere around a year and ten days, give or take a few depending on how many fast levels we’ve got at the moment. However, the only way to manage that would be to live by a 23.5-hour clock for that whole year. :slightly_smiling_face:

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