WK Dropout Rate

they said “look to your left, look to your right, one of you will be gone by December.” Real motivating XD

LMAO. If I ever become a teacher, I’ll probably use that line :laughing::laughing:

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I think it’s a bit of both, honestly. A lot of people definitely underestimate the amount of effort required to learn and study Japanese and end up quitting. On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of people correlate WK level with whether or not they’ve given up entirely.

I’m sure there are plenty here who quit completely, but there are a fair amount of people who’ve just reset, are on “Team Taking It Slow”, and/or who use other study materials simultaneously (or move away from WK to other materials). I’ve definitely slowed down here since I started studying grammar, but I still spend about 45-90 minutes studying Japanese every day :slightly_smiling_face:

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Losing 1/3 of their students in 3 months? Maybe that teacher just isn’t very good!

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Well, since according to this thread only around 1% get to level 60, you’re more in that rare 1%, which is impressive either way. :slight_smile:

Also, JRPG’s are a guilty pleasure for me, so that reason would be good enough for me too, I think.

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It always depends on the subject. Many advanced subjects are very tempting to try, but many people quickly realize that it’s too much for them, or not rewarding enough.

@acm2010

That’s a good point actually, because when your subscription runs out, your level gets temporarily reset to level 3.

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I’m here to confess as a WaniKani dropout.

My ability to keep on top of reviews dropped exponentially over time.

I’m headed to Japan in a few weeks and doing some final brushing up and found I had almost 1000 reviews in my inbox, that I can say with certainty will never be cleared. And once my Japan trip is over, my major incentive for learning at a faster rate than “whenever I’m in the mood” is likely to evaporate

Still, it was a good experience! I’m planning to keep up with Genki and Duolingo, and maybe some day I’ll reach the point where my Kanji skills are slipping behind my other language skills, and look into attempting to climb this darn mountain again

Ever thought about resetting to lvl 1 and starting with a slower pace that’s bearable to you?

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Nah, quitting forever and talking about how Japanese is just “so hard” is a better idea.

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Maybe-- I’m going to check my motivation levels after my Japan trip, rather than committing to a pace/plan now (it feels like I’ll still be motivated now, and I’ll do what I can to make that a reality! But I want future-Ril0riley being the one assessing what is achievable and desirable)

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I’m the same pretty much. I don’t have any real reason or need to learn it - reading manga in Japanese is appealing but honestly it’s easier and cheaper to get hold of Japanese media in English. But learning and knowing another language is just super fun, and it’s like opening up a whole new world of possibilities.

I guess I might go faster if I had an impending goal to meet. I hope I don’t become a WK dropout =P

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I mean, the reason to continue learning always changes. I thought about learning Japanese as a challenge first, then as a reason to improve my entertainment (started watching a lot of anime at the time), then I fell in love with how different the culture is and so on. Right now, I would say that I have 2 main motivations: to give nutrition advice to Japanese people (I already do it in both English and Portuguese) and to travel to Japan. This last part is because the day I get to travel to Japan is the day that I realize that I became economically independent from my parents (I’m 22).

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Only if you ignore all the Japanese media that never gets translated to English.

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That’s true, there’s so much manga that doesn’t get picked up. And I guess it would be cheaper if I could make my peace with buying digital haha

one day…

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I don’t think we can really trust that graph too much. Once I make it to level 60 I would stop paying for wanikani and my account would reset to level 3, so I’d show up there as a ‘dropout’. I may even dropout of wanikani once my year subscription runs out by switching to a free resource or building my own system. Dropping out of wanikani doesn’t necessarily mean someone has given up on Japanese. WK is not bad, but it’s far from perfect.

If you talk about things that aren’t Manga or Anime, most of it never gets translated.

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When I started my intensive ancient Greek class in uni back in '08, the lecturer came into the classroom munching on a sandwich and saying ‘whoa, there’s a lot of you here. … don’t worry, half will be gone by the middle of the semester.’

He was right - at the end of the year we were only like a third of the students that started the class.

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I am not active in WaniKani anymore because my goal is to pass the JLPT N5 and hoping to go up to N3 at least. For this purpose, WaniKani generates unnecessary work for me. That is, I have to learn words and Kanji that are not part of the JLPT. I prefer to use my limited time and memorization capacity to prioritize learning the words, Kanji, and grammar that are in the JLPT.

The JLPT doesn’t have Kanji or Word lists. So if you’re using those you’re also wasting your time because you’re just using some list that god only knows who put together.

Then again, If you can say これはペンです you can pass the N5.

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Mmh… but… JLPT exams except for N1 has zero use in real world. They are only useful to motivate you to learn and study, and you are saying you stop learning to focus on N5?.. I don’t really get it.

And as @Syphus commented, N5 is too easy, I don’t think it is worth studying for it.

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I think I read they changed this, and that you just show as your current level even if you stop paying. I might be wrong though.

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