I’ve started using KaniWani recently, and have been both frustrated and interested that I’m kinda rubbish at it - even though I’m very comfortable with a word in Wanikani, when I try to reach in the opposite direction, the Japanese just isn’t there. This makes sense of course, WaniKani is a kanji learning tool so it’s not supposed to teach you to grammar in this way, but really highlighted to me how one dimensional my knowledge is.
Are there any other of these ‘inverted’ learning apps. Another one I’d be interested in is from spoken Japanese word (i.e. the Wanikani recordings) to meaning, which again I think I probably wouldn’t be very good at. I looked in the third party app list for a tool that does this, but couldn’t find anything besides some old apps which don’t seem to be there any more. Does anyone have any recommendations in this area?
There’s a difference between “passive” command of a word, being able to recognize it, and “active” command of it in being able to use it. The way to promote things from passive memory to active memory is to use them. And yes, it will be a struggle recalling things at first.
There are some things out there that are WaniKani in reverse, e.g. KaniWani. But rather than basically doubling your SRS time, I highly recommend just finding an outlet for Japanese in general. You could practice in the Japanese Only area of the WaniKani forums, or you could grab an app like HelloTalk and do some language exchange with Japanese native speakers who can then correct grammar mistakes or awkward word choices, etc.
Torii for Android has audio → meaning review mode as well as English → reading.
It has a WaniKani mode to skip WK vocab, but I personally don’t skip to be able to get those EN → JP reviews for those words.
Do note that Torii does NOT use WK definitions, so words might have slightly different translations than on WK.
