Curious for thoughts on this approach or if anyone has done similar. I’ve taken an approximate two year slow down on WaniKani while I completed a masters degree. I’ve now graduated and my wife (Japanese) and I will be moving to Nagoya in September for a professional position I’ve accepted there. I’m now ready to fully dive back into my Japanese studies by picking up where I left off on the JLPT (N3 and on), WaniKani, my Anki Deck, etc…
As I wade back in I’m realizing I’ve forgotten a lot of burned items. Rather than resetting I’m thinking I’m just going to cherry pick kanji and vocab items to add back to my SRS log as I encounter them in the wild. Also get back to doing lessons and working towards Lvl 60 from my current level.
I know resetting would be a great refresher, but I feel like my time would be better spent consuming native content, studying for JLPT, and once we move taking advantage of the immersion rather than spending a lot of time drilling back through the WaniKani game machine.
Anyone else taken this approach and found success? I realize it’s all fairly arbitrary but curious for the communities thoughts on such a plan.
Since you’re just getting back to WK, it might help to know there’s a self-study feature now for burnt items that lets you go through them bit by bit. Besides this, there are also user scripts that can help you cram burnt items.
I think you’re right in that resetting WK might not be the best way to spend your time. I’m sure other might disagree, but I also think consumption of native content is more important. Reading speed is very important during the JLPT. But also going into more difficult grammar would be helpful.
WK, isn’t going to help you with those bits, so find a balance on continuing with your reviews, while learning about the other sides of the Japanese languages outside of kanji.
I’ve taken extended breaks twice now (I think), and I never reset more than a couple of levels (aka resetting all the items that were still in Guru stage or lower; basically those I started but never had a chance to learn before I took a break). I might not have reset even that much if I hadn’t also avoided vacation mode; meaning actually reseting two levels also wiped away about 300 reviews I suddenly didn’t need to do on top of the enormous pile I already had.
So personally, I definitely think it sounds like a reasonable plan. I think you’ll probably find that you’ll remember more than you think, especially when you see it in context. If I looked at my burns in isolation (like I would while reviewing them on SRS), I might not remember exactly what they mean, but if I see them in context, I would remember a whole lot more of them for sure.
I would suggest only adding a WK burnt item to another SRS (or resurrect on WK) if you have to look it up twice. First time might just jog your memory enough that if you keep seeing it while consuming content you won’t need to look it up again.
With your plan of studying for the JLPT and consuming native content, I feel like you’ll find any items that you need from WK that you’ve forgotten. And with time you’ll stumble on more and more of them (meaning the more uncommon ones), so naturally you’ll get into contact with them again and can decide if you need to SRS them again or not.
Honestly that’s what I’ve been doing post-WK and I think 48 is a high enough level that you’ve built up enough of a Kanji vocabulary that you can just go it on your own.
Forgetting them is normal. The advantage is that coming across a burned item while reading is much, much faster to relearn. You look it up quickly and instantly move on.
