WK’s method of reviewing works for me, or at least it works much better than regular flash cards, so I’m sticking with it. (I paused at lv 39 after the big update with the gross new UI and then Tsurukame changed their font size which made that weird too, and then I came back 6 months later, earlier this month. The Tsurukame font is still a little weird but not uncomfortable anymore after my time away, so I can use it again. I’m currently lv 40 going on 41.)
It is, of course, not perfect, and there are a handful of words where I’ve made the executive decision that either a.) I’m never gonna learn them out of context or b.) I don’t care about the word and if I do ever end up needing it I’ll just learn it then, and I don’t force it and just pass them since otherwise they’re going to stay perpetual leeches. Reading will help since you get context, and I’ve definitely had words where I’d been having trouble with them but then I came across them while reading and they suddenly clicked, but if I never come across them in the stuff I read, then, well.
But also there are words that I can never seem to remember the meaning and/or reading of no matter how many times I come across them and look them up. It took me 2.5 years to finally get the reading of 訝しい down! I got the meaning much quicker since I come across it a fair bit reading novels, but I could never remember the reading until recently. (Good thing I managed it on my own, too, bc WK doesn’t teach that kanji.) And that’s where WK comes in. If I actually have to write it down, I’m more likely to remember it. KameSame could work too, especially since it’s got a bigger corpus than WK and I can pick and choose what to learn when, except I could never get myself to use anything other than WK consistently, precisely because I can use WK through the Tsurukame app on my phone. Websites I gotta remember about.
Another example: 免れる. I don’t come across this one as often as 訝しい, but still enough so that it’s frustrating when I could never seem to remember either its meaning or its reading. I recently did the WK lesson for it, I’ll be guru’ing it in a couple hours, and so far it’s sticking just fine! I’ve taken to searching for words/kanji I struggle with on WK when I come across them while reading so see if/when I’ll learn them on here. There are quite a few that I will, and it’s nice knowing that when I get to them, I’ll have an easier time learning them than I have been.
It’s okay to set synonyms for words you don’t want to spend time on—once they’re burned, you can always add them back into your queue if you think it necessary, and then manually re-burn them if you decide you don’t need all the reviews for them after all. It’s also okay to slow down and spend time on other parts of the language and/or engaging with it. SRS isn’t perfect. It can often be efficient, but our brains aren’t geared to learn things in a vacuum—99% of the time, they need context to tie the bits of info together and make them stick.
Good luck, whatever you choose!
)
). Cheers!