It can but its not possible to choose my leech items from different levels.
I’m also wodnering how the drilling with anki works. Should I set the Steps to a very short interval?
Step of 1 10 240 480 should do. Or something like 1 1 1 1 10 240 480.
240 is 4 hrs. 480 is 8 hrs.
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Okay thats the point I’m missing. Drill means reapeating it over and over in a small amount of time. 
60m = 1 h
1440m = 1d
hours in minutes
If you want to find your leeches, there’s a script that does it, or you can download the android app I made which has a section for that. You can find it through search.
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I’ll purposefully “miss” the stuff I can’t recall in under 10 seconds, so they’ll show up more frequently in the future and then hopefully I can recall them faster.
Prefer not to take too long to recall items because in real life situations you’d want to access that information quickly. By failing the item, it trains you start recalling quicker and quicker. In the beginning I used to fret a lot about my percentage of accuracy to the point of taking too much time to try to remember the items. In the end, it made made problem worse. Rather than recalling quickly, it seemed as though I needed play through the process which led to the reading or meaning. Although this solidified the imagery of the mnemonics really well, I wasn’t getting the results I desired (being able to read). Once I got over needing to get 100% review results, that’s when memorization–>production/recognition became easier.
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I usually don’t have the patience to try to remember - but that also depends on how many reviews are/were in my session. I hardly ever try to remember for over 20 seconds, though.
I wait for about 10-20 seconds. If I remember it after a long time, then I intentionally fill in the wrong answer so that the level is reset. I don’t believe it’s good for me to let it progress if I’m gonna be answering/remembering it wrong eventually, so I prefer to get a few more repetitions.
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I think it depends on the person… for me it is really effective to write words/kanji out over and over the old fashioned way. I think because that is how i learned english vocab back in elementary school so my brain is used to that style.
Most certainly a YMMV situation. Also, i dont think that drilling is necessarily less effective for learning but more that it gives a lot of people burn out since its boring.
A little mix of everything and switching it up once in a while is probably best for keeping your brain interested and not zoned out imo. But i also find if you are bored/frustrated you probably arent learning much.
Disclaimer:
Apologies for resurrecting an old topic. Didn’t want to create a whole new one for my small commentary.
I recently joined a kanji class, which was only meant for Chinese students (oops). The whole class content and organisation of the lessons is very loose / random. When the time for mid-terms came up, I was quite shocked to get to know we only had a few minutes to fill in the questions (hiragana → kanji, kanji → hiragana for about 20 words that had come up in class by then). The teacher’s reasoning for this, was that
“the only way to confirm whether one properly remembers a kanji or not, is if they’re able to instantly retrieve it from memory”
WaniKani is different though.
Like the previous posters, it sometimes takes me a while, if not two, to walk through the mnemonic while I’m constructing the kanji in my head or on paper. It does, however, give me the ability to correct myself if I’m pointed wrong - meaning I can retract the steps of the story and see where I turned the wrong way. Last time this happened with 裁, which I first mistakenly wrote down as 載.
With pure drilling, I wonder if forgetting simply ends up in a black out…
What’s your take on the balance between mnemonics and drills? Surely both are needed, or…?
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For me, it depends a bit. I expect to struggle a bit more recalling kanji/vocab I learned recently in a level. But for a kanji that I learned a while ago and have practised repeatedly since; not knowing it swiftly indicates it didn’t stick well enough.
I want to be able to read and recall Japanese, and taking a minute or two to work out one word in a sentence is not a functional level of knowledge for me. If it takes too long I’ll let the SRS do its thing: I’ll take the downgrade to make sure the word pops up in reviews more again.
I don’t want to make mistakes, so having to grudgingly accept a red error screen is a bigger motivation for me to improve that kanji than if I take a long time to pass it. If I know it that poorly already, it’s unlikely I’ll remember after an even longer SRS interval.
If I don’t know a word, I’ll name the radicals in case that brings back the mnemonic, but I really won’t take longer than maybe 10 or 15 seconds before deciding that my recall is too weak. I’m most lenient on new words, since sometimes that act of mentally banging through the mnemonic helps form a recollection (I won’t know a word, but I’ll remember I didn’t know last time, either, and that somehow leads me to remember it? Sure, brain.)
And of course it depends on what your Japanese goals are. If you’re planning to sit tests, you have to practice very swift recall if you want to have enough time to finish. Otherwise it’s important to focus on what you know works for you and how you learn best.
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Nice point. I’ve been perhaps grudgingly accepting the slow recall time for the more complicated kanji - not entering a wrong answer even when it’s taken me a while before the correct answers shows itself. This has surely caused my recall “style” to also shift from speedy and passive to it’s current state of “active” recall.
To be fair, I did use to also purposefully write a wrong answer when I couldn’t remember fast enough, but that was before I started handwriting the kanji in the midst of reviewing. It was all good and dandy for a while. However I noticed I could read the kanji / word when it came up, but God forbid if someone asked me to write the same thing.
On top of that, there’s been a few items that I feel I keep going back with - resurrecting them after burning when the memory of the item feels somehow not strong enough. With that, it seemed like I wasn’t able to get rid of the leeches no matter how many times I reviewed (yes, I know… should’ve done proactive leech squashing) and that they just bloated my review queue, causing the most recently learned items to come up more slowly than without the extra leeches creeping around.
In any case, it looks obvious I need to rearrange the way I do my reviews (again), based on your and other posters’ confirming experiences. ^^;;
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I was going to ask you how much exposure to native Japanese material you get, but then I remembered you just made a topic about your bureaucratic woes of renewing your Japanese visa. So I have my answer already!
Because that’s the only other thing I can think of that is helping me a lot
I re watch Japanese media that I have already seen before with Japanese subs. A Japanese Youtube channel that I often watch plasters written text all over the screen all the time. I’m reading along in the Japanese Harry Potter 1 while listening to the Japanese audiobook version of it at the same time. Looking up stroke orders for my handwritten grammar notes.
Having other experiences and moments with the kanji, outside of just WK is definitely making a difference for me. That way I don’t just have the mnemonic to help my memory, but I remember the time I understood what they were talking about because I saw a certain kanji on screen. Or the time I had to look up what kind of grammatical tense that kanji was being used in while reading.
Numerous memory paths leading to the same kanji. ^^
Of course, I’m a lot lower level than you, and you’re likely dealing with words less commonplace. Those may be more difficult to reinforce by simple Japanese exposure.
My fiancée is learning my native language to take the citizenship tests. For her worst leeches, she would change passwords to her leech word plus its translation. A fun trick, but naturally not suitable if you have many troublesome words.
I honestly think it differs per person, our brains all work differently, right? Try both and see what makes you perform best I guess?
Mnemonics give you a wider variety of hooks to help recall info, so you have a wider chance of recall as a kanji fades from memory. This is especially helpful for kanji and vocab that you rarely see.
But drilling works just fine when you are exposed to kanji/vocab enough to keep them refreshed in memory. Context from in-the-wild encounters sort of becomes a barely-conscious or subconscious mnemonic.
So, I think the balance depends on how well you make use of what you learn.
I think this a judgement call per item. Sometimes I forget basic English words but that doesn’t mean I don’t know them. Actually, I’ve been living alone for a little while and, outside of work, mainly talking to Japanese people and there have been times where I completely forgot the English names for some things. For example, I wanted to say “spring onion” to someone and all I could think was ねぎ
Agreed. ^^ It is always possible to have a brain-fart moment, or it’s just one of those times that you’re not in a head-space to successfully recall much of anything.
You mostly know for yourself if you’re having a moment, or if you’re shaky on a reading/meaning.
I still take a brain-derp moment on the chin. I have never yet spaced on words that were already very ingrained from before WK. For me personally, it feels like only the more iffy words are the ones I may draw a blank on, so I’m still fine with a lower SRS in an attempt to strengthen those.
Speaking two different languages at home, and learning a third, I’m definitely familiar with only coming up with a word in the wrong language. I’ve heard pretty much every language student I’ve dealt with mention running into this, so it’s just one of those language-learner things. 
I think this is a delicate balance. Early on (ie on apprentice levels) I like to take time to recite the mnemonics (either my own or the wanikani ones, whichever) and say both meaning and reading out loud. By the time I hit guru I try to do away with the mnemonics and this has worked out well for me. If something’s at master and my recall isn’t fast, I, like others have said here, want that item going back on the pile for more practice because I want to read faster than a snail’s pace.
But recently I got 教える confused with 数える and I’ve done it twice now - blitzing out the answer despite knowing the meaning and reading well, just because they look similar at a quick glance (to me anyway, it’s caught me twice so that’s a problem) and so when either of these comes up, I slow down a little just to double check. I don’t think there’s a real stringent rule that can be applied but imo it is very reminiscent of studying chess tactical exercises (something which I have spent a lot of my life doing playing competitively).
I had a GM coach at one point who pointed out that if I couldn’t find the correct tactical idea in the first 5-10 minutes looking at a tactical problem then spending 2 hours staring at it trying different ideas wasn’t worth the time investment, and that I should just get it wrong, learn the pattern, go get a set of simple tactical patterns using the same motif, and drill those. Even if I eventually solve the original, you can’t spend that much time in a game. It’s good for identifying a weak area in your tactical vision but it’s no good if you grind your study time on 1 or 2 problems that are only hard because you aren’t familiar enough with that specific idea.
For me this has pretty much directly applied across to wanikani, although obviously 5-10 minutes is way too long. I feel like if it hasn’t come to me in the first 5-10 seconds then at that point I’m better off having to do it again, although it sucks getting things wrong. At the end of the day though, green and red lights aren’t the goal; being able to smoothly read Japanese is the goal. That’s my take anyways.
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