Hey, I’ve been doing WaniKani for a few weeks now and I’m almost done with the free portion, I think it’s pretty cool and it’s something I can do whenever (or while watching something c:) I just had a few questions:
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1. They claim it only takes about a year to complete the course, does that mean doing reviews every day? Twice a day? Whenever they pop up? How much time will I be losing if I’m not totally on top of it?
2. When people say they get stuck on a level, what does that mean? Is it that they keep getting things wrong and losing the apprentice status? or is it they just get behind on the reviews?
3. I haven’t tried Anki yet. I’ve looked at some of the posts and it seems to be up to preferences on which to do, but I’m still unsure. How do you know what to study with Anki? Also, is it for mobile and is that interface good too?
Thanks!
2 comments
1. Totally the wrong phrasing… only a year? if you go at max speed for the entire time it takes minimum 1 year. Not possible for the vast majority of people using it. To complete in 1 year, you need to wake up at night to hit those review times. Do all lessons when they become available, it’s a LOT of work.
2. It can mean many things, maybe they personally wont move on until they rank everything up. Maybe they just stopped for a time and came back to too many reviews. Maybe they keep failing kanji and you can’t unlock more stuff until you pass enough kanji. Different reasons for different people.
3. Anki has mobile apps. It’s free on andoird and paid for on Ios. Most people start with a premade deck, that is a deck someone else made. Some people only do those, others start making their own. It’s free to use the desktop app, so download it. Find a shared deck with Core in the title. Once you install it you can also use the anki website.
>They claim…
It takes [a little under a year](https://community.wanikani.com/t/wanikani-world-record-level-60-in-344-days/49421) at the fastest possible speed. Apprentice 1 and 2 are 12 hours in total, so as long as you do your reviews on time in the morning and at night (say, 9am and 9pm), then you’ll always level up at the fastest possible speed.
>When people say…
Yes, that and more. People have no discipline and fall behind, too much WaniKani and not enough supplementary studies (grammar, immersion), WaniKani’s straight-from-JMDict definitions suck and can be hard to remember without extra study to discern their exact meanings, the words they pick are obscure and useless, etc.
>I haven’t tried Anki yet…
Mobile interface for Anki is fine. [Follow the loop.](https://morg.systems/58465ab9) Trust me, I know Anki seems intimidating to learn and looks like it requires a lot of effort, but WaniKani requires a substantial amount of effort to circumvent its deficiencies, especially at higher levels.