使用 means Use, Application, Employment and starting today I'm never going to get that one wrong again

Not too long ago, 使用 showed up in my review pile, me never having gotten the item incorrect before, waiting to be moved to “Enlightened.” Little did "使用” know, I was about to get it wrong - for the first of many, many times.

I’ve been getting its meaning confused with “作用” in my head lately for whatever reason. Doesn’t even make any sense, really. So when the “meaning” prompt for this item showed up for what I expected to be the last time for a few months, I quickly thought to myself “oh, easy. Action. And - Enter.” My surprise when the red banner came up was honestly pretty mild. I was all “Whoops. Minor lapse. Happens. Guess I just need to see this one more often to make up for it. Let the SRS do its job!”

Next time it shows up I’m ready for it. Or - so I thought. I CONFIDENTLY typed… Goddang “Action” again! REALLY confidently, too! Red banner comes up, I’m slightly miffed. This event… Repeated itself. Multiple times in a row. Including again, today. The item is now in my “apprentice” pile, ready for review in 8 hours. I find it really hilarious how many times I’ve repeated the “get it wrong, realize why, resolve to remember it next time, make the same mistake again” loop on this item and even though this is all part of the process, and even though I know it’s not really that big a deal, I needed to vent because I’m a little frustrated. Hopefully now after venting, it really will stick.

Anyone else have an item like this? Absolutely killing it, then all of a sudden you just don’t want to get it right ever again?

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Constantly, yes :slight_smile: In fact recently I’ve noticed that there are ones I’ve got right consistently, then suddenly my brain says ‘you have never seen this kanji before’. As though I was sort of recognising the shape of it and the fact I’d seen it often, but I hadn’t really noticed what it actually looked like. I like to think it’s part of the Learning Process. But it’s bleedin annoying.
And I know what you mean about consistently typing in the same wrong answer. If my brain can remember the same wrong answer why can’t it substitute the same right one!
the mysteries of the brain, eh.

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It happened/happens to me too for quite some items. But that’s how we learn! Getting always everything right won’t lead you far away in your learning journey :blush:
Now when I keep failing the same item (again!?!?!), I just laugh and tell it: ok, you’re not in my brain yet. See you next time buddy :wink:

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I too have some long standing issues with those 2 vocabs, and have been on the loop of getting them wrong repeatedly for a while. It’s been better the last month or so - I’m hoping I’ve finally gotten them down, but TBH it might just be that I got them high enough level to not see them for a bit and they’re going to crash and burn again when the next review comes up.

FWIW, this happens to me (and I think to most here) all the time.

Eventually you learn to just trust the SRS. You’re reviewing it more frequently because you keep getting it wrong. That’s exactly what you’re paying for!

Sooner or later those items become so ingrained in your memory that you’ll know them instantly for the rest of your life. You’ll know them better than most of the other items you’ll learn here.

The attitude thing is really important. Realize you’re paying for a service to quiz you on items you find difficult more frequently, and ones you find easy less frequently. The system doesn’t know what you find difficult unless you answer incorrectly.

It’s human nature to become slightly annoyed every time you provide an incorrect answer (for whatever reason) but it pays to eventually acquire the attitude, “Oh, I answered incorrectly. Hooray! I’ll get to review this one again sooner rather than later.”

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Yes! you’re absolutely right. I need to keep reminding myself of this because it’s so easy to let the jerk-reaction annoyance momentarily distract me from my overall goal.

Many WK users are also full-time students and are still learning the lesson that there are no grades here; you don’t lose any points for answering incorrectly.

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Very well put.

I’ve only been here for coming up on two years, but even in that time I’ve seen enough examples to believe this needs to be emphasized much more strongly in the WK introductory materials.

Wanikani makes it easy to memorize kanji if you follow just three rules:

Rule 1:
Do your reviews! Get your queue down to zero (or as close as possible) every single day.

Rule 2:
Don’t worry about wrong answers. There are no grades or points for correct answers! WK can’t work unless it knows which items you find difficult (for any reason). WK cannot know what you find difficult unless you sometimes answer those items incorrectly.

Rule 3:
Do your lessons at a pace that is comfortable for you. Remember that lessons you do today will affect your workload months in the future. In early stages its common to do all your lessons as soon as they are unlocked. In later stages, many find it wise to stop doing lessons whenever there are more than 100 or so items in the Apprentice stages.

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