Looking for some input here. The story is that I had reached level 12 around April of this year and then when final project season for uni came about I kinda tossed WaniKani on the backburner and “forgot” about it. Basically, by the time I felt like I had the time to invest in it again I had like 900 reviews piled up, and felt completely unmotivated to tackle that mountain.
So, I’ve kinda just been paying for WaniKani to not use it since then, always telling myself I’m paying for it because I’ll start it up again “this weekend” or whatever. At this point, I’ve grown annoyed enough with myself to actually start back up with it, but I feel like I’ve forgotten most of what I’ve supposedly “burned”, so I was thinking it may be best just to restart from the beginning so there aren’t any unexpected holes in my knowledge.
Just wanted to get some thoughts from others to see if restarting would actually be in my best interests.
It’s basically your choice whether it’s right for you or not. Restarting would take the pressure off and make it easier to get back into it, but it will take around your level x number of weeks to get back to where you are now. As long as that doesn’t become boring for you it might be worth it. It might also be better to just reset a few levels since that’s where you likely remember the least.
You could also choose to overcome that pile of reviews and get back into it. That will also take some time but probably less than restarting. As long as you commit to do a certain number of reviews per day (around 100 is a good number) and stick to it every day, you’ll overcome that pile. If you’re worried about having forgotten burned items, you can also unburn them individually bit by bit once you’ve gotten back on track.
It’s mostly dependent on what method feels better to you so pick whichever one you think is best. There’s also many other threads and posts about topics like this so you can also read them for more first hand experience from others if you want to better understand each option.
If you reset, you get the option to go back to whichever level you like (I believe), so perhaps if you don’t want to do the whole thing all over again you could just reset the last few levels and tackle it again. I think resetting the whole thing could be really discouraging, the thought of not even learning anything new for a few months at least while still putting in an equal amount of effort. At least that’s how I think it would be for me. That isn’t to say people don’t reset 30 levels all the time and then manage to finish, I just think the best way is to do whatever won’t make you want to quit.
Personally, I’ve done 900 reviews in one session before, and even though it absolutely SUCKED and I was level 50 something and I cleared the whole day for it, it’s doable. Even more doable would be to split it up over a few days, say you’ll do 200 reviews a day, and the pile’s gone within a week even accounting for new reviews you get every day.
Forgetting what you’ve learned is inevitable, but you don’t need to reset because of it if you think that’ll make you less motivated to go on. There are userscripts for leech training, and most of these kanji from the first 15-20 levels or so are gonna be used pretty consistently in future vocab and will definitely continue to appear in lessons, so you’ll still need to learn and use them. You can go back and unburn items you’re sure you’ve forgotten so you review them again.
I did exactly that in august from level 10 so thought i’d give some pros and cons
Pro
It was a good refresher
I sped through most of the words i was previously struggling with
I am more motivated now than ever before to continue learning
Con
It took an excruciating long time to get back to where i was (november)
It can be frustrating to start from scratch as you are limited by the waiting time
Maybe if i just had powered through i might had managed to get back on track without the reset.
My recommendation is to just see if you can power through the reviews. Get the Reorder script and work your way through your reviews one level at a time. If you start getting almost every one wrong at a certain level, that’ll be a good place to reset to, but I would bet that you know more than you think you do.
As someone who got overwhelmed by going too quickly/letting reviews pile up, I can say in my experience, resetting to the level prior was immediately gratifying (it took away so many impending reviews, making it a much more manageable number) but very frustrating to have to deal with all the lessons again when I really did know them better than I thought I would.
The best thing to do is to start It will be tough work, but I do think it’s worth it to just let the SRS work its magic.
The lifetime sale is just about to start. Buy the lifetime subscription and don’t stress about paying for something you aren’t using when life gets in the way.
900 reviews certainly looks like a lot, but it’s certainly not insurmountable. I’ve done that in one sitting on a couple occasions. You could takle it over a few days, one or two hundred a day or whatever you feel comfortalbe doing, and wait on new lessons until it’s done. But if you’re worried about not being able toremember any of it, it may make more sense to reset a few levels. I wouldn’t go all the way back to level 1, though.
It will be tough work, but I do think it’s worth it to just let the SRS work its magic.
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