I’m part-way through Level four, and I’m noticing that Wanikani prompts a lot when it comes to remembering words. Like for 分かれる, it always provides the hiragana, so you don’t actually have to memorize the word. I usually do really well on the reviews, but without the prompts, I wouldn’t be able to remember all the words, especially the longer ones. Last night I tried the Kaniwani App and did horribly at the recall without prompts (ie, spell “to understand” in Japanese). Wanikani suggests not to study between reviews, but it seems that I’m not learning it well enough the first time through. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you.
So what you’re saying is that when you see a word, you’re able to know what it means and how it’s read, but when you wanna remember the word for yourself you can’t recall it? Is that it?
If so, it’s perfectly fine. This is called recognition vs recall. WK teaches the former (u see the kanji and u identify it), while writing kanji by hand would be a recall process. That’s why you didn’t do as well with Kaniwani. Recalling is a harder process than recognition. The WK team chose to put aside the recalling process because writing kanji is a very rare thing to do, even if you’re living in Japan, not to mention that it’s harder and it would delay your general progress on kanji.
I’d recommend you to read Chapter 3 of my Guide for Wanikani to understand a bit more of this 
My Journey of 368 days (+ The Ultimate Guide for WK 📖 ) - #2 by jprspereira
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Yes, that is exactly it, I know the meanings and how to read the words with high accuracy, but I can’t always recall the longer words on my own. Thank you so much for sharing your guide, It is very helpful.
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This is common and will continue on through your learning process. As JP has already stated, WaniKani is for the recognition part but not the recall part – that is something you’ll have to do on your own. I realized early on that this was a problem for me, too, and had to figure out a way to practice. KaniWani certainly does that, but for me, it added way too many reviews, to my already-large pile of WaniKani reviews. So the way I started to practice my recall is to write regularly in Japanese. I keep a digital “diary” of sorts, where I try to write out my thoughts in Japanese. I try not to look anything up or use any other resources except for what I can remember/recall on my own. It’s not perfect, but it’s helped. 
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You may want to check out KaniWani or KameSame. They’re like reverse WaniKani.
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This was happening to me to! (still is really after new lessons) I was annoyed by it at first but stuck with the reviews and finally saw some progress… like a small breakthrough in Level One.
I think what I’ve found most is I learn best from making mistakes in WaniKani. If I tried to look over Lessons again in attempts to get higher score it didn’t help much. I think this is okay…?
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Thank you, I’ll check out KameSame, I haven’t seen that one yet.
I just finished reading your entire guide, thank you, it’s great
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On Kaniwani, I’m just doing reviews, not trying to recall anything, or study anything, if I can’t remember, then whatever, just make sure you get angry at yourself, so that your brain can do connections and stuff and next time you see your current nemesis, (or the 5th time you see it in a row…) you remember it, and feel a nice wave of green colored pixels…
Until it comes back for you…
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Glad it was a good read 
Feel free to ask me or everyone around in case you have questions
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Thank you, I should give writing down the vocab a go. I’ve been working through the Genki texts which is helping with my written Japanese.
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Exactly! That’s what I’m trying to do too. Glad to hear it’s what others experience.
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