I’ve been using Wanikani for over a year now, and I recently reached level 30, and passed the JLPT N3 this July!
Some time along the way, before taking the N4, I realized that Wanikani was not working very well to get Vocab fixated in my head. I could remember Kanji and readings, but whenever I tried recalling vocabs to write down, nothing came up and I was stuck with the “Wait what was the kanji for this word again?”, Not to mention the fact that some words aren’t on Wanikani.
So I added Kamesame to my review rotation, and it worked wonders! I learned useful words, and I remembered them way more easily. I’ve also been using Kamesame for around a year and my Japanese skill skyrocketed.
That said, recently I have been incredibly swamped with reviews, with a large part of this being Kamesame. In a single day I get upwards of 250 reviews, and god forbid I miss one or two days, It’s very easy to blink and accumulate 700.
If I then click the “Space out reviews” option, it declogs my immediate problem, but since it marks my reviews as failed, they go back to appearing very frequently, and it’s not long before I’m clogged with reviews again.
This study routine has been incredibly effective, and has gotten to where I am right now (I can confidently say that I mostly understand the gist of any immersive material I try to consume), but when my routine starts getting busier in the future I have no idea how I will manage to keep this up.
Does anyone know of a solution/tips for a problem like this? Better SRS systems for vocab that are not Kamesame, better review routines, anything like that?
As you seem to be very successful with that SRS overload, I wonder if my advice does anything for you, but as there are no others right now:
Drastically cut back on the SRS, you sound like you will get overwhelmed very soon and start dreading the review hell.
Don’t take new lessons, get your review pile down (which might take a while) and then think about what you want to do with the language. Is it really that dire to learn vocab in isolation that you need two SRS systems back to back from a source that mainly exists to burn Kanji into your mind?
Maybe give up on one completely and fill the time with more exposure to actual material. You seem to be far enough to only learn vocab through reading/listening anyway.
Before WK I made myself a rule, that I try to invest 4 Minutes into “immersion/exposure” for every minute I waste in SRS systems and even that felt too much. Obviously that can’t really be done with WK if you want to get through, but imo that should only be temporary anyway. WK can be very useful for the first half of the levels, but the amount of time you need to invest afterwards might not be worth it for you. It is no shame to not complete a ressource and branch into other things.
Also: If you don’t get constant exposure to the language, it doesn’t matter how often you “beat” WK, the burned items will also vanish. It is there to kickstart your reading ability, not to be burnt in your mind forever!
Anki with FSRS may cut down reviews faster by better optimization. Anki with Easy button may already do something.
Otherwise, indeed, take more effort to remember. But maybe remembering English equivalent is not that optimized. In the end, recalling phrases or usages is more important, but SRS isn’t the best tool for that. Be mindful of recall or realizing, rather than memorizing or not. Exposure to the language may help better.
I didn’t use Kamesame but experienced the same with Wanikanki, reviews started to form a bigger pile than what I wanted to do everyday. The solution was to do diminish the number of lessons per day as much as necessary, until I was happy with the size of the review pile. Doing reviews multiple times a day to make good use of the SRS intervals and to get the items out of the apprentice stage fast helped too.
