A strange kind of problem

I just started using this site as a resource to keep sharp on Japanese since I haven’t used it in years. I studied for 4 years in highschool and 2 years in college. I almost never have an opportunity to use Japanese in actual day to day life, so I figured I could brush up here but I am failing miserably. From the get go, I learned Japanese from a missionary who lived in Japan during the 70s and 80s. As such, I never learned radicals at all even though at my height I could write almost a thousand kanji from memory. Now I’m doing horrible right off the bat due to what I presume was unconventional teaching by entering incorrect answers on what is apparently the most trivial of Japanese to know. I did things like entering “ten” instead of “cross” for radical answers on the quiz. I just now finally broke into the quiz point where I am being asked a mix of meaning/reading questions and making dumb mistakes like typing “gawa” instead of “kawa” for 川 due to how I used it the past most often. I feel like I’m doing horrible even though I can recall more complex kanji like 勉強 from memory still. Has anyone else been in a position similar to mine where their existing education did not match what they were learning here? Can a recommendation be made to help circumvent this oddly specific kind of challenge easier?

WK is created for people who don’t know any Japanese. As such, it can be a bit challenging for people who can already read kanji. However, it’s not impossible to use WK to refresh your kanji knowledge. Just remember that the radicals are only there to create the mnemonics and often have no relationship whatsoever to the meaning of the kanji. A good example is your own “ten” and “cross”.

Add synonyms where appropriate for the things you know that WK names differently. The purpose of WK’s radical names is merely to have words to make mnemonics from. They are not “official” or anything.

And you can install the override script to mark answers you believe were correct.

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I was not aware of this script so I might look into it. Thanks.

This.

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