Hey folks! Hereās another idea Iāve been trying out recently, which helps balance my review schedule to fill in gaps of upcoming reviews but without overloading myself with too many new lessons too quickly:
You might think of it in a āscenic routeā kind of way as, revisiting old friends. Basically, it amounts to āresurrectingā previously-burned items that ā despite being āburnedā ā I came across later on in my ājourneyā and just couldnāt remember. For example, I recently came across the word é³ during a grammar review on BunPro.jp, and I just couldnāt remember how to pronounce it as a vocabulary word (ććØ).
So I searched it up on WaniKani and found the pronunciation, which I had previously burned long ago. At the same time, I noticed that I had a day or two coming up in my WaniKani Review Forecast which only had a few reviews scheduled (for me, less then 15 or 20 makes for a āslow dayā; I prefer around 30-ish per day).
So, seeing as é³ is a pretty common word, and seeing as I had a spot of āfree timeā in my upcoming schedule, I decided to use the Resurrect button on the bottom of the itemās page to reset it back to Apprentice from Burned. And just for good measure, I also resurrected the related é³ kanji item, and a couple of related vocabulary items.
This has some nice advantages!
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Normally, if I spot a slow day coming up in my review schedule, Iāll do a batch of new lessons, since that usually indicates that Iām running low on Apprentice and Guru items. But what if Iām already going a little too fast and want to slow things down a bit? Well, instead of filling in the schedule gap with something new to learn, why donāt I fill it in with something old that Iāve unfortunately forgotten? Reviewing resurrected items (revisiting old friends!) is much much less stressful, has a nice āfamiliarā feeling, and eliminates any feeling of disappointment at having forgotten a so-called āburnedā item.
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At the same time, it balances out my review schedule with some low-difficulty, low stress items, so that I always have at least a handful of items I can review each day, which helps me keep up the daily habit of doing WK reviews, but doesnāt overload me with too many new items at once.
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It helps prevent me from āpowering throughā levels too quickly, which would deny me the enjoyment of Durtling the Scenic Route! Of course I could power through, but I donāt need to, nor do I actually want to. So, taking the time to ārevisit old friendsā Iāve forgotten seems like just as legitimate a way to spend my time learning Japanese as constantly always learning only new items!
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Probably other advantages I canāt think of right now, but thatās plenty enough for this post!
So, Iāve recently been doing this for a few other words/kanji here and there that Iāve burned but now forgotten. For me, itās a great alternative to only having the option to fill in gaps in my schedule with new lessons.
Hopefully this is a helpful idea for anyone else looking to fill in those gaps in your schedule to āsmooth it outā so you have roughly the same number of reviews per day. If you donāt yet feel ready to take on more new lessons, and youāve recently discovered some āburnedā items (especially if they are common words!) that you just canāt remember, feel free to resurrect them and even resurrect their related vocabs, kanji, or even radicals. Theyāll refresh your memory and on āthe second burningā, Iām sure they will stick with you much longer, yet they wonāt require much stress or effort to āget to knowā, since you basically already know them! Theyāre just like old friends!