I just noticed to my horror that I keep hitting these almost near burn but forgotten vocabs and kanjis when reading NHK EZ and only after looking them up, I realize that I used to know them, 2-3 months ago that is but now I had no idea what they were. Multiple times these are up for burn review in just 2 weeks or so…
I so wish I could just manually demote kanjis and vocab at the spot when I realize my lapse.
In todays case I realized I had already cheated by first failing 研究室 and then succeeding 研究, only to possibly poison the burn for it in 24 days. I now need to try to remember that I remember that vocab just because I looked it up between reviews.
Nah, just take the gift. You’re going to be reminded somewhat frequently in real life, too, so it’s not unrealistic. You’re not supposed to hide your head in the sand for 4 months, just in case.
You’ll forget words that you’ve burned, too. Just today I saw 不味い and thought “…have I ever seen that word with kanji before?”. Yes, I had – it’s on level 17 and I burned it two years and three months ago.
Don’t sweat it. SRS is a good way to help you learn a lot of stuff at once, but it’s not the best way to remember stuff forever. I find that seeing words in the wild helps fix them in my brain better anyway.
I’m wondering the same thing, since I keep seeing the WK vocabs in manga. And then some of those vocabs I encounter appears in my to-be-burned review on the same day, and of course I’m reminded of them even though I only remembered the meaning due to context. I don’t know if it counts as cheating, but yeah
I think I’ve forgotten about 50 words in ENGLISH, my NATIVE language in the past week…
“Pass me the…thing…you know…the one that’s like that other thing…” Gesticulates wildly in direction of thing I can’t remember the name of “The…book?”, asks my poor husband, who is surely convinced his wife is losing it. I mean, more so than usual.
But WK expects this to happen. They advise you to start a habit of reading as much as you can well before you finish WK, so plenty of words will be getting additional exposure outside of the SRS.
And you can argue this even happens within WK itself. If I have forgotten an on’yomi reading and demote a word, I can end up burning a different jukugo using the same kanji two days later because I was reminded of the right reading.
Engaging with native content and getting a feel for the actual application of words is hugely important, and expected by WK already. ^^
My advice is to not do anything with that card. You’re going to see words from WK outside of WK if you’re doing reading, which is what you should be doing anyway. Don’t sweat it–it’s just part of the language learning process, and it’s totally expected!
Being able to relate words to experiences (as opposed to a flashcard) makes them easier to remember anyway, so it’s great that you’re seeing vocab pop up in the real world!
One thing I have done is make a note of words I had to look up (either for reading or meaning). If I find that a word has come up a couple of times, it’s a common word, and it’s been burned on WK I just resurrect to get some additional practice.
However, I do agree with what others have said about not worrying about outside reading affecting your SRS. In the end, the most important is the stuff you do outside the SRS. You can always resurrect items after the fact if you find you need more time to review later.
Still, having manual demotion available would be useful in many cases. Other being that you misrecognize kanji for other and would like to demote not only that kanji but the other and all vocab related to both. I could see userscripts popping up for automation even if just API support would exist
you can at least unburn items without scripts on their item page, though they get back to Apprentice.
You could also alternatively use the burn reviews script:
You can also add these burned words you had trouble with to another SRS like Anki or Torii.
but as others have said, i wouldn’t worry about it too much.
This is a numbers game so just don’t worry about it.
Pretty much the whole point of WK (in my opinion) is to make it so that you don’t have to look up every word when you are learning to read Japanese text. If you have to do that, then the chances of you getting through any substantial amount of text is vastly reduced and you might just give up altogether.
You won’t remember every burned item from WK afterwards but you will remember an overwhelming majority of them and that is what matters. You might poison a small number of kanji but if you’re seeing them in NHK EASY then there’s a good chance that you’ll be seeing them plenty elsewhere anyway.
You’ll still be learning new vocabulary anyway, and also how vocabulary you learned in WK is actually used in practice, so having to review the occasional forgotten burned item is just a minor part of that.
They advise you to start a habit of reading as much as you can well before you finish WK, so plenty of words will be getting additional exposure outside of the SRS.
