I started WK about two years ago, when, entirely on a whim, I decided to start learning Japanese. No prior knowledge, no real reason beyond “This is a fun challenge, and I enjoy Japanese media.” I made steady progress for a year, even buying the lifetime subscription. And then, I just kind of stopped?
A number of Life Things happened that made it difficult to stick to WK with the regularity I had, and the significant UI changes that were implemented (many of them kind of poorly at first) threw me off my game and made me feel really discouraged. In the year since, I’ve tried a few times to get back to it, but I’m finding that I’m completely forgetting even some of the most basic kanji and vocabulary. In a recent conversation, someone asked “Who knows the Japanese word for the colour orange?” and though I know I know it, I drew a complete blank.
I feel like I should reset at this point: I know I’d be able to breeze through the early levels, and it would help reinforce what I already know. But then there’s that Sunk Cost Fallacy part of my brain that worries about “throwing away” a year of progress.
Any advice from folks who’ve been in a similar situation and have either done a full or partial reset?
I don’t have any advice other than that it sounds like a good idea, based on your description.
If you really don’t remember any of it, especially due to a lack of anchoring from other Japanese study/experience, it seems like the only way forward would be to start from scratch, be disciplined about keeping at it, even at a slow pace, and ideally branch out to use the kanji you learn in WaniKani outside of it as well so you don’t end up right back where you started (literally) again.
It depends upon you, Are you really okay with throwing away a year’s worth of progress.
Personally I took a break from wanikani for a year and half.
I had a whole lot of missing knowledge. I knew readings for some and not the meanings and vice versa.
But I did not want to lose a year’s worth of progress and I also don’t pay for this myself.
Hence I decided to read through every radical, kanji and vocabulary in each level and quizzed myself through self study. I also decided to start logging my progress in studylog.
Now I am more confident in my language as I have filled a lot of gap of missing information.
Since you’re already at level 18. Sometimes you can easily go through the mnemonics again in the earlier levels.
If you study a level per every 2 or 3 days you can easily catch up in a month.
P.S: You could start reading graded readers to reinforce memory or start immersing slightly or pick up a textbook. It’s hard to remember words if you dont reinforce it other scenarios.
Thats All I have to say.
In the end It’s all up to you.
Happy WanimeKani Journey
I reset from level 16 all the way back to 1 last year after having not done WaniKani for about 2 1/2 years.
You’ll be surprised at how much you remember when you see it.
I found that items that I had burned or would’ve burned when I stopped, I remembered or was able to recommit to memory very easily. Enlightened items usually came back to me with minimal effort and I was surprised how many I could still remember. Same goes for Master level items.
Guru and below is when my memory started to get iffy. Levels 14-16 might as well been as if I had never seen them before in my life.
I’d recommend going through your burned items using the Extra Study section on the dashboard to see what you remember. It will give you a good idea if it is worth resetting all the way back to level 1 or if you could get away with something a little less drastic.
A few months ago I reset from level 22 back to level 1 after being away for about a year, and I regret it. I wish I had used the new practice features or another source like Kaniwani or Anki to just review everything. I lost over five months progress, and a lot of work. Even if I had just spent a whole month reviewing, it would have brought me up to where I was before. I find that as I go through it again, I’m remembering quite a lot of it. I think if i were to do it again, I would practice for a month or so, then probably go back two levels if I needed to.
That’s just my opinion, though. If you have all the time you want to study, and prefer a fresh slate, then resetting might be right for you. Just consider not resetting to level one, because you’ll likely find the first ten levels super easy.
It also doen’t matter how many mistakes you make either, because the SRS will continue to repeat everything until you get it right. As you make mistakes, you can just relearn those lessons.
I climbed too fast to level 20ish a few years ago. Went too fast, got a ton of leeches, and eventually left Wanikani and Japanese for a few years. When I got back I reset all the way to level 1. I regretted it for a while, but then I decided to go back to the beginning and relearn everything, but slowly, so I don’t drown in reviews again. I went back to Genki I and started grammar studies from the beginning of N5 at Bunpro.
For me it was the right decision. Now I can slowly re-learn everything and deal with the leeches as I go. With a lower number of reviews I have the time to join book clubs and read and use the language. Last time it was just an endless mountain of reviews.
I reset from 22 to 1 a few months back after a 3yr break (possibly longer).
I checked each level’s kanji to see how many I remembered and realized I’d lost too much to make catching up on 2000+ reviews worthwhile.
After the reset, everything is paced nicely and its feeling chill, even for things I’d forgotten, and the vocab is sticking this time.
For me, the mental clean slate was worth it more than the dread and doom or failing so many reviews. I need a “narrative of success” to help me progress and resetting allowed me to “succeed” for months rather than fail for several weeks. I put it in inverted commas because I know it’s just a perception thing, but I knew myself well enough to know it would work.
I’m also among one of those who reset to level 1 (2 years ago, from level 23 I believe).
I didn’t really use Wanikani for more than probably 3 years. When I came back, I thought so many things had changed that it’d be better to reset and learn everything from scratch again.
I don’t regret it. It reenforced things I already knew and it fixed things I remembered wrong. Instead of feeling frustrated with the things I couldn’t remember, it was encouraging to realize what I did remember.
You could also consider resetting only a few levels back. That way, you’ll only redo lessons you’re more likely to have forgotten.
I took the path of resetting after being overwhelmed while on vacation in Japan… From Level 49
And I feel very pleased. It was like a deja vu from time to time, but everything is going smooth this time, almost every lesson seems really easy (maybe this will change soon as I’m about to reach my previous level), but now I have the confidence to finish before July.
And that’s not all: I’m not using plugins whatsoever So it feels like I’m really learning from heart.
About the topic, I reset to Level 2 (should have been 1), because I have some ideas of how to learn each Kanji more than what WaniKani is teaching. Like, not-taught readings, extra vocabularies, Wiktionary, JP definitions, and also reading context sentences as a bonus.
If it is possible to reset just a few levels that may make more sense. I mean, re starting from scratch would be really painful (I didn’t have to restart but coming from a late beginner level, the first WK levels were not as gratifying as bow)
If it was me, I would start reviews where I left them and target to do a certain number per day, while practicing those I don’t know at the same time. And maybe go down 3-5 levels to take off some of the items pending review. I think japanese will come back to you faster than you might imagine.
I reset twice and really got things to stick. A year and a half ago, my computer went down and I couldn’t get it fixed. When I finally was able to fiix it, I started from where I’d stopped. It needed some review and I had a lot of leeches for a while, but now things are going faster than ever and I am remembering more than I thought I would without needing to reset again.
So it really depends on what you know about how you study. Good luck!
You’ve paid for a Lifetime subscription, so the sunk cost equation is primarily about your time.
What I might suggest is to take a look at your WK Stats page and see which items are Pink (Apprentice), which are Purple (Guru), and which are Blue (Master/Enlightened)… If there are a lot of Blue items in a level, don’t reset that level… just wait for their turn to review (unless you really want to do them again from the beginning). If there are a lot of pink and purple items in a level, it might be worth resetting to that level.
Maybe reset to Level 12, for example, and see how that feels… If you need to bring it lower, reset further. You’ll be able to get back up soon enough.
If you’d prefer to do the full reset, that’s probably fine, but it’ll make you have a lot of Time Management issues at some point if you breeze through the early levels without managing the number of items too…
I don’t think it’s so much that that would be a problem by itself, it’s the possibility that you would reset, find it really easy (way easier than the first time), be too bored with all the waiting for unlocks, and quit again. i.e., it wouldn’t be challenging enough to keep your interest the second time.
I’d see if I could cram enough with the self-study script to at least make review sessions not torture sessions, and try to catch up. 300 reviews a day or so is achievable and knocks the “impossible” review stack down perceptably (to keep motivation up) and clears the whole thing reasonably quickly. Faster than a reset anyway.
edit: answered before reading the other responses. Exactly what @Izabelle said above.
Depends on whether or not you want to learn Japanese really.
There are only two reasons to use WK:
You are learning Japanese, and reading is important for that, and knowing Kanji well can improve your recognition of words written in kanji while you learn to sight read them.
You’re just really interested in Kanji, for some reason.
Assuming it’s option 1.
If you’ve been learning Japanese for the last two years, then you’ll know whether or not it’s worthwhile resetting. If you’re struggling to read simple books because you don’t recognise the words, then you need to reset in order to actually learn the kanji, or alternatively take a different path to learning to read starting with basic learner books or something.
If all you’ve done is WK for a year and then nothing, but you do want to learn Japanese, then you should probably reset and start some kind of proper learning that can be supported by WK - it’s going to take you another 5 years to get to any kind of competence, resetting from level 18 is nothing compared to that. There’s no sunk cost, the absolute worst thing about WK is the leveling system[1], trying to gamify language learning distracts from the thing you’re actually trying to do which is learning a language. The levels don’t matter. You could be level 60, but if you’re reading a light novel and don’t recognise the word 冒険者 then you might as well be level 1. The knowledge counts, the level doesn’t.
If you don’t want to learn Japanese, then just stop.
So it feels like I’m really learning from heart.