I'm about to get my first burned items (radicals from Level 1), so technically I should be around the peak of number things that I need to keep in short term memory at the same time! With that in mind, I had what I think of as, a "restructuring" week. A lot of kanji/vocabulary has similar pronunciation so had to slow down to 10 new lessons per day and make a lot of mistakes, but all to get a more solid picture of kanjis!
Oh boy, I thought they were joking about levels 11-20 being “painful", but with burned items hitting me I've been doing about 100-120 reviews per day and that is painful! As I previously mentioned I had to dial down number of new items I learn daily to just 10 (from 20-30) because I was making a lot of mistakes, and I'm still not comfortable enough with where I am to dial it back up!
On a good note, I now know a lot of kanji and vocabulary that I recognize daily!
My immediate goal remains to get to level 20 of #wanikani, and I'm trying to not think too much about the "Death" and “Hell" levels that follow it 😅
Meanwhile, #bunpro decided that I deserve some punishment too and consistently spams me with 30-40 reviews per day even though I'm learning only 1 new grammar point per day now. It certainly helps with my grammar, but SRS can be really harsh!
That's it for my complaining. Thanks for tuning in!
Looks like starting from Level 14 there are way less radicals to study each level. I even got one free from what looks like some internal rearrangement of radicals on #wanikani.
You might recall from my last report that reviews got a bit tougher. Well, they didn't quite relent yet, although last couple of days were at least < 100 reviews per day. I'm still capping my lessons at 10 per day so hopefully in a month or two this will pay off and the review count will settle somewhere below 70!
Tons and tons of new words, and my grammar seems to start catching up. I'm currently reading first book of デスノート and while my vocab is not up to the task yet I don't spend as much effort trying to understand the sentence if I looked up the words in the dictionary.
Anyhow, glad to make progress and still looking forward to reaching level 20. I don't intend to stop there, but it seems much more in reach than level 40 or 60 so we have to aim at something that we can get to, right? #wanikani
I’m still taking it very slowly and it feels like the number of reviews is beginning to subside! I'm doing around 70-80 per day consistently with only a few days going close to 100.
Even though, it has been tough lately, it is just a few more steps to Level 20! Having #wanikani study as a part of my daily routine certainly helps getting through it!
Relatedly, I'm about to finish studying N4 grammar in bunpro!
Can't wait to study "喜 (rejoice)" 😅 Jokes aside, this is another stepping stone towards my immediate goal of reaching level 20. I'm got so close to it now! A lot of kanji I encounter while reading are familiar to me and I can guess the reading of the words in some cases.
Regarding the grammar study - I decided to solidify N5+N4 (thanks to your advice!) and concentrate on Kanji and Vocabulary. With this in mind I added N5 vocabulary deck to bunpro. We'll see how it goes!
I finished reading first book of Death Note, which was quite tough to read despite omnipresent furigana, and got back to reading 鬼滅の刃. As a look back I decided to check out the very first book to see how much easier it would be to understand text in it than it was months ago. Good progress!
Not much new other than a bunch of words I learned. My plan is to reach level 20 and then get to studying N3 grammar! Depending on how well that goes I'll study N2 either on level 25 or level 30.
Between these levels I began to use HelloTalk and Busuu, and both appear to be pretty indispensable when it comes to practice and acquiring conversational skills.
In addition to that, I've been taking a bunch of conversation practice with various teachers on italki.Good stuff!
Perhaps a new thing to post, but here's the breakdown of the #wanikani items that I have in various SRS stages.
It'd be fun to hit a point where I have more burned items than the ones in “enlightened” bucket, although I don't think there is much meaning attached to it. 😅
Perhaps when I'll finish the thing I should go over the burned items. I doubt that I'll remember 100% of them then!
Slow and steady progress. 10 new items a day, reviews twice a day most days, but at least once in the morning. With the help of #wanikani, bunpro.jp, and italki teachers and I can have very basic conversations with native speakers, and when writing I can express even some less basic thoughts (albeit with plenty of grammatical mistakes!)
Can't wait to start learning N3 grammar. It is exciting to finish 1/3 of all available kanji levels!
Here's the screenshot of #wanikani SRS stage populations!
100 new burned items since the last level, and slightly more master/enlightened items which contribute a lot to reviews lately. We'll see how this changes as I reach further levels!
Not much of an update, but just slow methodical progress towards level 30. Looking at my SRS buckets I see that I'm a bit better off than I was when I reached Level 20, which is nice to see!
Since Level 20 I began studying N3 grammar again, and trying to take is a slow as possible. As soon as I get >10 ghosts on bunpro.jp - I just stop and wait to clear them up before I learn anything new. It appears to be working better and doesn't overwhelm me anymore!
New kanji and vocab certainly became less general, but at the same time I already found some words useful in my lessons with an italki teacher.
My SRS buckets are doing alright, and my Burned count is approaching my Enlightened count, which is very thrilling to watch! Overall, it sounds like I'm 35% through the WaniKani's content.
Grammar work didn't stop either, but the progress there is at steady slow pace as I planned.
It's funny how the new words that I learn seem to just to crop up into the books and lessons. Seeing them makes me excited and helps a lot in memorizing them since I had to use them outside of wanikani already!
One thing that I do begin to wonder, if I could expand number of nouns that I know. My teacher often asks me to come up with an example sentence, and I feel like I'm using the same nouns all over again…
I've been struggling to keep correct answers at 90% lately. As in, I think I hit it in general, but I was often on the edge of not making it. Partly this is due to some new confusing words (警察庁 and 警視庁 are good examples), partly because the way I memorized some previous kanji didn't generalize and had to be revisited in the light of new similar kanji that I learned.
It has been exactly 1 year since I began “serving the Crabigator”. What an adventure!
Halfway through level 25 #wanikani has switched their lessons system, but apparently it didn't take me much longer to finish the level and now most of the vocab from 25 is already studied, which is quite unusual!
I've set my batch to 4 items so that I get 12 lessons per day (20% more than before), and I really enjoy that they mix in kanji/radicals into mostly vocab batches!
SRS buckets are healthy, but I studied only 10 new grammar items! :blobcatsob:
I'll be honest, this level was a bit tough. I think it might be 12 reviews per day versus 10 that I had previously, but it remains to be seen. Lots and lots of useful words and kanji, and slow, but steady progress towards the goal! (Immediate goal - level 40)
The SRS buckets are roughly where they were, and I can’t believe that I got almost 100 items burned in past couple of weeks!
I'm very glad that #wanikani has introduced a new setting to set the total amount of lessons per day (in addition to batch size). Switching from 10 to 12 lessons per day resulted in subjectively higher error rate and bucket sizes, and looking back I don't believe it was sustainable.
Comparing my bucket values to the last level I see that they are not much worse, but it felts way more intense!
As a positive aside, it became easier to converse with my teacher!
10 lessons per day works wonderfully. I didn't expect that 20% difference would put as much as strain on me as it did, but 10 seems to be just right for a balanced study.
I feel like I'm getting much comfortable with reading text in Japanese, because I know much more kanji now! In fact, during one of the lessons I didn't know the meaning of the word, but teacher dared me to guess it based on kanji and I managed!
Level 30 of #wanikani !! Big milestone, although I'm not quite out of the "Death" level yet.
10 lessons per day still works best for me, and it feels like a decent progress was made! 154 new burned items, and master/enlightened is roughly where it was. Given that it has been 16 days I guess I'm burning items with 96% accuracy. However, my review sessions are around 90% most of the time, which is curious.
Got a bit of a progress on grammar as well, even learned an N1 point! (なりに）.
@indutny so do you feel like it has helped you overall? Has it allowed you to strengthen your reading skills? I can't wait to get to level 30, though im only at 4 now.
@nnungest for sure! My subjective feeling is that my reading skills are stronger that speaking/listening/writing. The look on my teacher’s face when I just read kanji without Furigana is also worth something 😅
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