Can other SRS tools interfere with the SRS method on wanikani?

[mchlnix]

Hey all!

I’ve just started BunPro and kamesame to supplement my learning, when wanikani is being too quiet, but I recently wondered, while going through the wanikani vocabs in kamesame:

Does learning/repeating guru or master items in another app mess up the SRS effect? Going from master to enlightened, for example should take 2 months or so, but if I practice an item 2 weeks before that in another app, does enlightened really mean the same thing now?

Wondering if you guys ever thought about that, or maybe experienced it interfering more, than helping.

[Joeni]

\textcolor{pink}{\huge \textsf{WELCOME! ^-^}}
@mchlnix

Take the time to check out the FAQ and GUIDE if you haven’t already.

There’s also a lot of good stuff on the forum to help you, like:

The Ultimate Guide for WK
The Ultimate Additional Japanese Resources List!
The New And Improved List Of API and Third Party Apps

I hope your Japanese learning journey goes well and that you enjoy your time with us on the forums.

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I could type out a long response, but thankfully @MegaZeroX has already done the work here: There is no such thing as cheating yourself in SRS

Essentially though, no, there’s no harm. Wanikani’s SRS is the most efficient way to learn, requiring the least amount of time put in, but there’s no harm in studying externally or doing other SRS systems.

Personally, I put failed items in to a separate SRS deck in Kitsun.io so that I can double reinforce, for example

[skymaiden]

We don’t learn in a vacuum, so it’s impossible to not interfere – even in Wanikani, you might fail one vocab item with a given kanji in it, and pass all the other ones with that kanji in it thanks to that one failed item

SRS gives us a minimum number of exposures to a thing in a certain time frame to be able to memorise the thing efficiently. But as described in MegaZeroX’s post that Joeni posted, there’s no actual harm in seeing things elsewhere – in daily life contexts like reading or walking around in Japan, or synthetic ones like other SRS

[mchlnix]

Ah perfect. Thank you

[Joeni]

No problem at all

[xplo]

Yes, it screws it up.

OTOH, at some point, you should be reading, and that will screw it up too.

The thing to remember is that WK is just a tool to get you to a point where you can use other, better tools to learn (like native input).

[Starker]

From what I remember looking into the research on this, it doesn’t actually matter all that much what the interval of the items you’re learning is in SRS, just that they are spaced out. So if there’s still quite a bit of time between reviews, you should be okay and the system is working, so to speak.