Hi, I just started leaning radicals on WaniKani and currently am at level 1. I can say though that I was able to learn Kanji radicals and even a few basic Kanji faster than I expected. Back when I was learning Kana, I used to sit down and study every single day writing kana down over and over again. While I did this everyday, I sometimes forgot different characters, which just pushed me to write more.
When I started using WaniKani though, I noticed the less frequent reviews and quizzes I got on the content that I just learned. That confused me so I looked into SRS, I was able to understand the basic concept of SRS and what it’s meant to be used for. I do have a couple questions though, that I wasn’t able to find an answer to.
What are the time intervals that you guys wait until you review the content again (example: review after 1 week then review after one month).
I know a good amount of basic radicals, but I wouldn’t say that I have them fully engrained in my mind yet (I remember most of the time, but sometimes I forget the radical). Do I keep reviewing them first and then when I have them memorized I begin using SRS? (Basically how long after the content is exposed to me should I review it).
Is it possible to mess up SRS? For example when I was learning kana I would sometimes try and recall characters in my head (would that mess up my memorization of the topic)?
If something is fully memorized, should I still use SRS?
WK has their own intervals, that I try to hit as closely as possible. This means that I do reviews at least 3 times a day, and usually don’t go to bed with outstanding reviews.
In the WaniKani Knowledge Base you can learn more about WK specific SRS (and lots more):
Once you’ve done the lesson for an item, it is in the SRS. Then you only need to get it correct a few times in a row, until it reaches SRS stage Guru. This will unlock the kanji that use the radical, and other radicals already in Guru+. After that you will still keep reviewing the item, but not as often, until you ‘Burn’ it, after which you will not see it again on WK.
What you do, would not mess up SRS. What would mess it up, is if you were to specifically quiz yourself on items in an upcoming review, get some wrong, and then get those right in the WK review a short while later. But in this case the item will advance to a later stage, you will get reviewed on it again, this time hopefully without quizzing yourself beforehand, and either fail it again, or get it right. What I mean to say is, the SRS will set you right eventually (except if you quiz right before the Burn review, but that is only after at least 6 months from the lesson, so I wouldn’t worry about that yet).
Reviewing items in WK takes up very little time per item. I would say, just do the reviews WK gives you. You can’t remove items from the queue anyway, until you Burn them. On other platform you do have an option to skip words you already know, but WK basically does not.