Hello,
I am quite new to Wanikani and very very slow. I am on level 4 after a few months, but I have no stress since I have lifetime subscription. Because of school, I cannot progress really quickly.
I was wondering if there was a way (either via WK directly or throw an addon) that would either disable burnt items or still schedule them after a certain period of time. I know that this goes against the principle of burning items, but, since I progress really slowly, I am afraid of forgetting items, especially old ones, as I donât have a lot of daily exposure outside of WK (lack of time).
Is there a way that I could do something like that, letâs say that no item can be really burnt and, letâs say, will pop up back again in say 4 months when they are at the higher mastery levels.
Honestly, I wouldnât worry about burning items at all.
Burning no longer necessarily means you wonât review it again: Wanikani recently added the ability to review burned items using the new âextra studyâ feature on your dashboard.
Thereâs nothing wrong with a slow pace (lessons), but for the SRS to schedule items appropriately based on what you find difficult, it is important to have a regular (daily) pace. Itâs not the end of the world if you miss a day or two here and there, but you really must try to get through all or most of your outstanding reviews every day.
Thank you for telling me about this feature, I was not aware of it.
I do practice regularly, at least for my reviews, as they do not pile up. Itâs more that I donât do quickly my lessons. On a typical day, I have between 5 and 30 reviews, never really more.
I am more afraid of getting to level 10 in a year or so and having forgotten chunks of what I have already done.
Well, the whole point of the system is to get this stuff into long-term memory to be able to read vocabulary when you see it in the wild. If you burn an item, it indicates that you were able to answer the meaning and reading correctly 8 times in a row, and with a four-month gap between the final two review sessions. Itâs a reasonable proxy for âknowingâ an item, but even natives sometimes forget words in their own language if they donât come across them in their reading.
I know for certain that there are items in my burn pile that I might struggle with, but I think most I really do âknowâ (note that there are always nuances and other readings not taught here, you can only pick them up from reading and conversing). A number of people here have reset to lower levels after completing level 60, but the new extra study feature for burned items is quite popular and I suspect obviates the need for resetting.
There is a balance one must maintain between speed, thoroughness, accuracy, and motivation. We all struggle with motivation some days: Find the speed that works for you, but I would encourage some experimentation. Persistence and regularity are the key but require you to stay motivated: too fast or too slow, too easy or too hard (accuracy), etc. can become a problem in this regard.
You can mitigate this by reading some easy manga in your non-wk study time or free time (well, depending on your jp level outside of kanji knowledge and your tolerance for looking up unfamiliar words and grammar as you read), that way youâll keep seeing the kanji and some of the vocabulary in the wild after burning them:)