Am I the only one who’s utterly annoyed that reviews treats meaning+reading as one atomic thing?!
I can remember meanings pretty easily, but struggle with readings. Yet reviews make me spend tons of time typing meanings that I know perfectly well while that precious time I could’ve spent on my further progress!
Not mentioning that it screws with the whole SRS concept: it makes me review meanings much more often than is ideal for me to commit them to memory.
Also: typing?..
Welcome to the forums!
Don’t forget the FAQ and the Guide… if you stick around!
It’s your learning, you could obviously get user scripts to mark all the meanings correct, but why would you do that to yourself?
I think it’s good that they are connected, because… The reading and meaning are connected in real life too
Sometimes they are not correct. I want SRS to track and set the pace for meanings separately from readings.
\textcolor{pink}{\huge \textsf{WELCOME! ^-^}}
Take the time to check out the FAQ and GUIDE if you haven’t already.
There’s also a lot of good stuff on the forum to help you, if you stick around:
The Ultimate Guide for WK
The Ultimate Additional Japanese Resources List!
The New And Improved List Of API and Third Party Apps
—————————————————————————
I mean, if all you want from this site is to look at a kanji and to know what it means, then sure, I can understand your complaint and can I suggest that instead you just find a kanji learning Anki deck and delete all the reading cards?
Seriously, unless all you want is to be able to recognise signs, you need to be learning both the the meaning and the reading. After all, it’s called the reading for a reason, because it’s used for reading. The thing we’re learning.
You don’t want WaniKani then. You could try something like Kitsun.io, which would allow you to have two decks, one of Kanji readings, one of Kanji meanings. The two things ARE intrinsically linked though, so although that would give you what you want, I sincerely do not recommend it.
I don’t want only meanings. I want both meanings and readings. But I don’t want the review pace of readings interfere with review pace of meanings. If I’m struggling with readings – that’s where I want to spend the majority of my time on, not being slowed down by reviewing meanings much more often than they deserve.
I do understand that they are linked, and obviously I don’t want the system to give me new kanjis to learn until I master both readings and meanings of unlocked ones. But I do feel annoyed a lot when it asks me for things it knows I know perfectly well.
Also they are obviously not too linked together: when in review mode the readings and meanings of all kanji are mixed. (I might be wrong on that point, actually, I didn’t specifically tried to find hidden structure in the order of items to review when there are a lot to review at a time.)
Realistically though, you’ll always be slowed by the thing you are weakest at. Granted, they could just not show you the meaning question if you’ve got it right the last X times, but this would require re-engineering the entire system and I just don’t see that happening.
I know it may seem annoying, but realistically all it’s costing you, if you know them that well, is a couple of seconds of typing. Also, you’re only on the first level, as you progress further, the meanings will get more complex as the kanji do, with multiple similar looking things that all mean different things. I’d wait until you progress a little to judge that too fully.
There’s actually some science behind that, though I can’t remember the specifics off the top of my head. I believe it’s called interleaving though and it’s better for your memory to have things that way than to have reading and meaning back to back, if I recall.
but this would require re-engineering the entire system and I just don’t see that happening
That I do get. I’m just surprised it is still to this day implemented that way, and users just accept it.
it’s better for your memory to have things that way than to have reading and meaning back to back
Aha, so they’re not connected when you review! 
They are though, because if you fail the reading portion, you fail the item in it’s entirety during review.
This is actually the first time I’ve seen someone complain about this, so most users probably think it’s better the current way or don’t care. In my opinion, the meaning and reading are two parts of knowing the kanji/word, so if you don’t know one of them you don’t know the word. For that reason, I think tying them together like WaniKani does makes sense.
I was about to say the same thing and I’ll add that it’s not just WaniKani that teaches it this way, yet I’ve never seen a complaint for any other platform either.
They are though, because if you fail the reading portion, you fail the item in it’s entirety during review.
I don’t get your point. That’s exactly what I’m complaining about in the first place.
You said “so they’re not connected when you review” and I said, yes they are.
FYI, if you highlight the text you want to quote, a little quote button appears. Quoting this way will properly link the quote back to the original post.
You said that it is important to review them together because “The two things ARE intrinsically linked though”. And what I meant by my reply that in review mode all items to review are in a random order, so, although the readings and meanings are given to you in the same session together, but within the session meanings and readings are completely detached in the order of items to review. So if you have a lot of items to review, they’ll be as detached from each other almost as if they’re given in different sessions.
I see the point you’re making, but what I’m saying is (and I’m aware that this is your complaint) that it’s impossible to review an item without reviewing both parts of the kanji.
If you abandon a review session and have only done one half, you’ll still have to review both halves in your next review session.
The fact that the review and meaning are separated is not evidence that they aren’t linked, rather than research shows that interleaving promotes better recall. If you had the meaning and then reading together, you may use meaning to infer reading. Having them separately requires recall of both to be accurate.
Theres’s actually a knowledge base page on this: Randomized Review Order
Yes, that is the interleaving part.
Yup. And my point it’s the limitation of the WaniKani system, not some intrinsic limitation of the way learning a language always works in general.
The more reasons to review them in different sessions completely 
Ok, the explanation there makes sense, actually. Thanks.