I tend to find myself reviewing Kanji in upcoming reviews, mainly for newly learnt Kanji (early apprentice level), to try to recall their mnemonics and readings. What do you guys think?
Not really, youâre studying the kanji so youâre learning it. I donât think the idea should be that you should only see/recall the kanji exclusively through wanikaniâs review intervals. Say youâre living in Japan and youâve learned a kanji thatâs set to come up in 2 days time, but you see it half way through that time period out in the wild and it prompts the memory of it and you solidify the reading in your mind a little better. Youâre then better equipped to remember it when the kanji comes up in your review, but would you consider this âcheatingâ compared to not having seen it at all before the next review came up? I actually think this is the most natural way to learn your kanji with wanikani, and itâs why starting to read even simple works with kanji in them once you have a strong enough base of kanji will do absolute wonders for your kanji learning process!
That being said, if your reviews are due and you know a kanji is coming up and you go and look at the readings before hand to âpracticeâ then yes, I feel that would be sabotaging yourself a little.
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Youâre defeating the purpose of the SRS if you look up the answers beforehand. I would say just do your reviews on time.
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âShortly beforeâ is relative. Reviewing a kanji that is due in 8 hours, 6 hours in advance is probably fine. Reviewing a kanji that could be burned (4 month interval) 6 hours in advance basically renders the review meaningless.
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Yes imo.
You should remember the meaning and reading as you see the item. Doing so can harm this in long run.
Short answer: kind of.
Iâm assuming youâre doing this to keep up a consistent leveling speed? If thatâs the reason, you might find that once you hit higher levels, if you keep doing this, your accuracy drops considerably for items in the guru stages. It isnât the end of the world, and it doesnât mean youâre doing wanikani wrong, but if youâre trying to guarantee that youâll push kanji out of apprentice before your brain really knows them that well, you might run into some issues.
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Depends. Early on in the kanjiâs review lifespan, Iâd say itâs just part of getting them downâthough doing it right before every tested review does neuter the point of the SRS to some extent.
Once itâs in Guru or higher, Iâd say you really do want to be letting WK do its job of seeing which kanji have really stuck when they come up for review. Obviously thatâs different from getting exposure to the kanji through outside reading (which you should totally, 100 percent be doing). Iâd probably just avoid doing a specific meaning/reading look-up right before you know itâs going to be checked, because at that point the check isnât really evaluating anything meaningful, and youâll wind up burning items that could actually use some more drilling.
Just remember that the goal isnât to beat your reviews, but to become a fluent reader of the kanji WK teaches you when you encounter them in the wild. If you sense something youâre doing might be hurting that purpose, I just wouldnât.
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I definitely donât look right before a review, maybe 2-3 hours, and I only do it for apprentice level Kanji.
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These are my thoughts exactly! Iâd agree with everyone else above, really. WK is definitely gamified learning, but playing the game isnât really the goal (at least not for me). The goal is to be able to encounter kanji out in the wild and read/understand them.
So, in my opinion, reviewing only to achieve the goal of getting the kanji right on your WK review defeats the purpose of a SRS, but any time you spend encountering the kanji in their native environment is working at that bigger picture goal of understanding!
On a related note, whenever I get a particularly low % correct on a review session, Iâm really thankful, because where before I would have just brute forced past it and never learned those kanji because I was âsupposedâ to be âmoving onâ (cough my college Japanese courses cough), here I know that break in new items means I need more time to solidify them in my mind, which is doing me better in the long run.
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Deja vu. Seeing this thread again lol.
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WaniKani uses a SRS (Spaced repetition system, more here) that stretches your reviews to just the limit of your memory and then forces you to recall them. Itâs not a huge deal, but studying right before a lesson might throw the system out of whack.
Also the Crabigator might get mad at you for using a non-WK service to memorize kanji.
I personally struggle with the built-in intervals, so I do sometimes practice early apprentice items between reviews (not just before a review though). If I fail an item in my self quizzing, Iâll study it again and will naturally fail it in my next review if I still havenât internalized it. Iâm not an SRS purist, itâs a tool for timed exposure and the intervals donât line up with my memory.
I donât live in Japan so donât get the same amount of natural exposure as people who do live there. Vocab reviews arenât cheating, nor is reading - but theyâre not enough for my poor brain. So I adapt!
Mind you, I donât do this systematically and I donât self quizz higher level stuff - if Iâve forgotten it after managing to remember it over the course of a few days, it needs to go back to the queue. Iâm ok with thatâŠ
I did the fewer-but-more-intensive, natural exposure way (no SRS) for a few years before WaniKani, but that was slow and hard going living outside Japan - now I know I need the synthetic exposures to compensate
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As long as you donât specifically study your upcoming master/enlightened/burn reviews, I think itâs perfectly fine. If you donât have those in long term memory yet, throwing them into short term memory just before a review seems like a bad idea.
But other than that, everytime you see/think about a kanji you strengthen it in your permanent memory, so by all means go and look at stuff. Especially out in the real world (or books/manga/whatever) rather than in some dry study material.
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I think thatâs fine. The WK intervals are arbitrary, and personally too long for me in the earlier stages as well.
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