WaniKani and KaniWani success %

I am using both WK and KW together. My success percentages in WK are in the low 90% but when I do reviews on KW my success % drops dramatically some times in the 70% range. Is this normal and do others have a similar experience. I understand that with WK you have the Kanji as a memory trigger which you don’t get with KW. Does anyone have any thoughts on this.

For reviews I got about the same % on WK and KW respectively as you. I don’t start vocab on KW until they reach guru on WK and even then I usually got around 50-70%, depending on how much I struggled on WK before.
I’d guess that recall is just harder than recognization. Even though I could recognize and recall kanji on WK and KW I know I’d still struggle when trying to write the same kanji by hand.

Just my opinion, I don’t take my KaniWani percentages too seriously (apart from when they’re good, haha) - all the girl/woman/young woman business encouraged me to just see it as a good way of jogging my memory and practising in a different way (I think it makes different neurons fire). When I wrote ‘onna’ instead of ‘onnanohito’ (pardon my typing) and it said NOPE I just was pleased I’d remembered something relevant. I use it every day though, I find it useful.

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This is definitely normal, don’t stress about it.
With WaniKani, you’re going from something unfamiliar to something familiar (Japanese to English), and remembering the spelling and definition of English words is relatively easy, assuming you’ve been speaking it for a while. All of the difficult parts (kanji, okurigana, etc) are provided to you, while you simply supply the pronunciation and meanings.
With KaniWani, however, you not only have to match up an English and Japanese word, but you have to recall the Japanese word, usually a word you’ve only seen a few times. You have to remember which kanji to use, which reading of that kanji to use, and any okurigana in the word.
That, combined with the girl/woman/young woman synonym stuff addressed above, makes it so KaniWani as a whole is much more difficult than WaniKani can be, and as such your percentage will probably be lower.

(sorry for the giant paragraph, I just think about this a lot too, and wanted to share! :smiley: Hope it helped.)

I appreciate how KameSame does it - if you get a different right answer from the one it asked you for, it’ll make sure to tell you on subsequent reviews that it’s looking for another term.

Though I also feel like I got enough on my hands doing WK and Bunpro at the moment.

Thank you for a great reply. It has put my mind to rest. I thought I was being a bit thick.
Your explanation of KW shows just how much you need to think about just to translate. I maybe won’t worry so much in future and just treat it as a tool to help with learning. When learning something new you always feel as if you are the only one having problems. Once again thanks for the reply.

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Ahhh yes, the girl/young girl/woman thing. I hated it when those words showed up.

No problem, I’m glad I could help!

Ah yes PDotAlex, I was trying KameSame the other day and thinking about switching, but I was struggling with picking the right hiragana/kanji off the drop-down list (and ended up somehow deleting the ones I wanted) so out of sheer laziness I will probably return to KW. (But I know I need to crack on with grammar… at the weekend I keep telling myself. But I know it will take proper concentration and it’s midwinter here and I am tired. Wanikani has become a marvellous habit for me (yes, perhaps addiction) and although a bit painful maybe not quite as painful :slight_smile:

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