I started my WaniKani journey within a few months of starting to learn the language. The years ago.
At the beginning of this year I noticed that early kanji would come up in my lessons/reading and I would be shocked that I had apparently burned then some time okđ¤Śââď¸
I considered resetting (couldnât bear to) so have been going through the early levels and trying to pick out common kanji/vocab that I might actually meet at my beginners level of reading/speaking.
Maybe it will work, maybe it wonât.
Any other strategies to suggest? Should I just bite the bullet and reset?
You can just unburn the specific items that you encounter but donât actually remember.
On the bottom of the items page should be a resurrect button to do just that.
That would be better than resetting whole levels if itâs just the odd item here or there that you have forgotten.
Even if you burn items, youâre going to forget them unless you encounter them regularly while reading. I wouldnât worry too much about it; itâs perfectly normal. Having to check a burned item you probably wonât forget it anytime soon.
I wouldnât reset if I were you, but you have lifetime, so that makes it more reasonable. But, more focused studying of items you feel uncertain about, seems more doable and efficient than resetting and redoing everything.
You might wanna use the burn-manager script to unburn items you wanna put back into your normal review queue (for a while). After youâve done some reviewing of them, you can then re-burn them and move back to your current lessons instead.
Iâve started doing that for kanji in the Hell-levels as I felt myself slipping. Itâs a good way of doing focused studying (also by using the latest mistakes study feature on the Dashboard) for some intense-cramming. Once I feel Iâm done, I reburn them and so donât have to deal with a huge addition of items long-term, unless you want to. Itâs a good middle-ground I feel.
But, Iâm going to second what @morteASD is saying. I think itâs perfectly normal to forget over time. I have certainly not âfinishedâ learning all items on WK. What makes items stick for me is seeing/hearing them in the wild. Especially leeches are like that. Once Iâve found a clear example of use, suddenly itâs like a finally âget itâ. I just need a stronger connection to the item.
If you donât want to reset (and I understand why you might not want to), maybe use [Userscript] Wanikani Item Inspector to have a better view for going back and looking at old vocab?
EDIT: adds a nice view on the dashboard of your leeches:
Or using the built-in filter at the top of the dashboard:
(if youâre already using that, my apologies)
How do you feel youâre doing on remembering kanji vs. vocab? Is it mostly vocab you donât remember but you feel like you know the kanji? Or about even?
Oh, yeah, forgetting early kanji is extremely normal. It happens to me almost every day!
You can reset if you want, but I doubt you need to. Youâll probably see vestiges of most of those items again in the future levels. Iâd recommend continuing with any non-WaniKani Japanese practice that youâre doing and look up those words when you need to. If theyâre burned, you might just need one little reminder or push to reignite the memory.
EDIT: I often handwrite forgotten words or kanji ten times, just to strengthen the memory. Even that is probably more than you need to do. I like it though because handwriting helps me tell the kanji apart.
(Iâve not been using the feature though, so it is currently just a pile of all my burned items.)
I think it works like normal reviews: you have to answer both parts of kanji/vocabulary correctly. If you answer incorrectly, youâll see it come up periodically during the review âsessionâ. I believe it still keeps no more than 10 items outstanding (it wonât show a new item until you answer all parts of at least one item correctly). The Wanikani folks assured us that once youâve answered all of the burned items correctly, it loops back and lets you continue working through them.
