I think it depends on what your priorities are and how you learn best: are you more interested in vocabulary or kanji or grammar? Which of the aspects of Japanese you study on WK are you comfortable with tackling on your own? Do you have a plan for doing it yourself?
I donāt think falling accuracy is necessarily a sign that the WK system isnāt working for you: you might also need to examine other factors, like whether or not your workload (both inside and outside WK) has changed and if the way youāre studying the kanji and mnemonics has changed, particularly since Iām sure that the kanji at the higher levels are more complex and contain more strokes. Even if the default mnemonics from WK arenāt working for you, the SRS will at the very least ensure you review kanji regularly, which is important for learning regardless of whether youāre doing it inside or outside an SRS. Iām not a fan of flashcards and SRSes myself, and I donāt use WK because Iām a Chinese speaker and donāt feel the need, but if the SRS seems to be helping you to stay on track, it might be worth sticking around. To put it another way, even though itās true that you donāt have to use the WK SRS to keep learning Japanese, and it doesnāt seem to be going well for you right now, thereās no guarantee that youāll get better at retaining new words and kanji outside of it either: Iām not insinuating anything negative here or being condescending, but I think that when we struggle with learning something, we need to reexamine how weāre learning it. Facing difficulties is normal, but the real question is whether thereās something we havenāt tried yet that could help.
I donāt see why you canāt do both, though you might want to slow down a little on WK so you have more time for other stuff. That should also give you more space to work on the items that youāre struggling with on WK. I think that exposure to real usage is very important and helpful in learning languages, especially when it comes to learning what exactly something means and how itās used. However, you could also see learning vocabulary on WK as a form of preparatory study so that youāll have an easier time recognising it in the real world. The fact that I know various words in Mandarin and that I know how to guess onāyomi based on readings in Mandarin often allows me to identify these same words when I encounter them in Japanese, and, when I know the kanji used but not the compound, I often have an easier time guessing what the compound means. I think itās quite rare for sources outside of WK to do a kanji-by-kanji breakdown for new words, and so, unless youāre comfortable with doing that yourself ā by looking up single kanji on Jisho, for example ā I think this is one aspect of vocabulary study that you might lose after dropping WK. I think kanji-by-kanji breakdowns are essential to understanding how compounds work, however, so this might be quite a great loss unless you acquire the skill yourself. (Of course, there are compounds that are never dissociated, and various people will tell you that you can learn compounds as single units. Sure, thatās true, and Iāve done that in Mandarin to an extent, but when the day comes when you want to interpret a novel compound thatās not even in the dictionary yet, maybe because itās slang, youāll be much happier if you know what each individual kanji means.) I donāt really think about it much, but as much as I love learning things in context, I believe Iām vastly under-appreciating just how much of an advantage my Chinese knowledge affords me in understanding Japanese, and I think WK offers a similar advantage by giving you similar āforeknowledgeā of what words mean before you see them in the wild.
Just another thought about the importance of immersion and exposure though:
Iām at the beginning of chapter 13 of 15 in Tobira, and Iām taking a long break. I certainly did pick up some vocabulary from the textbook, but a lot of it is utterly useless for me because itās so tradition-specific that I think you wouldnāt need it even if you lived in Japan, unless you were talking to friends about traditional arts and culture. As for the grammarā¦ Iām not trying to push this on you if anime isnāt your thing, but I sincerely and very seriously can say that I learnt almost all the grammar in Tobira just by watching anime and constantly looking words up in the dictionary and online. For the past 12 chapters, three grammar points per chapter ā at the very most ā were new, and most of the time, I would only learn one new thing if I was lucky. Thatās how much you can learn through exposure alone. I even ran through the grammar point list on japanesetest4you.com (though yes, I know itās not an error-free site), and I think I know or can extrapolate what all of the N2 grammar points mean, along with about 50% of N1 grammar. Ultimately though, I think what you need to examine is whether youāre willing to put in all the work on your own (pausing videos and looking for transcriptions or copying words from articles; looking them up in dictionaries, including https://ejje.weblio.jp and monolingual dictionaries because sometimes Jisho just doesnāt provide enough examples; and trying to commit them to memory in any way you can before moving on) or if you find it more effective/efficient to absorb things on WK with regular revision and then supplement that learning with additional exposure.
Just one caveat with regard to everything Iāve just said: again, I already speak Chinese, so I canāt guarantee that what I do is just as feasible for everyone else. Thereās probably a whole lot of words Iām hardly looking up or understanding 50% of beforehand just because I know the kanji in Chinese already. I donāt know what it will be like for you, which is why I think that kanji learning systems, while not strictly necessary for learning Japanese, are probably very helpful for learners who have no experience with kanji in other languages.
ā¦.
