What's the best way to tackle a Vocab Backlog

[Thuvar]

Hello! First time posting here, but lurk a lot, love the community and discussions.

I’m Level 12 currently but at around Level 10 I stopped putting in time for lessons and made sure I could squeeze in time for reviews. I managed to get to 12 slowly doing some Vocab but with my emphasize on only doing reviews if I had the time it resulted in over 400 Vocab left to learn and the level 12 Radicals/Kanji. My plan was to zip through 100 vocab a day for the next 4 days but wanted to ask here if there’s some serious drawbacks in the long run for this and if anyone had a similar experience to share and some tips/strategies. Thank you

[seanblue]

Make sure you start by disabling the Reorder script so you don’t get yourself in this situation again.

[Joeni]

Hey, hi, howdy!

The only drawback is the number of reviews you’ll have and the shockwaves this will cause. I had a stack of 680 lessons that I did at a rate of about 60 a day and managed it just fine, but it’s been lockdown and I’ve had plenty of time. So long as you’re aware that you’ll have 100 reviews come back from each of those items in a week, a month, two months, etc. It’s not all that bad, in the grand scale of things.

As @seanblue says - staying script free in terms of the order of lessons is one of the best things you can do, I abused the reorder script too much and ended up having to do the same thing you are and it’s not great. It also defeats the point of vocabulary being there to reinforce your kanji learning. Now, when I level up, I’ve got all my vocab to do, which reinforces the kanji that will come up for review in the near future.

Also, since this is your first post…

\textcolor{pink}{\huge \textsf{WELCOME! ^-^}}

Even if you’ve been a member for a while, so aren’t really new hehe

Take the time to check out the FAQ and GUIDE if you haven’t already…
…but you probably have, because you seem like you’re diligent and awesome like that ^-^

There’s also a lot of good stuff on the forum to help you…
…that you’ve likewise probably already seen, but it still worth mentiioning!

The Ultimate Guide for WK
The Ultimate Additional Japanese Resources List!
The New And Improved List Of API and Third Party Apps

I hope that you continue to enjoy WaniKani that your worship of the Crabigator is eternal!

[Thuvar]

Thanks for the welcome! Just like Sean said it’s safe to say I just experienced first hand why the Reorder script is unhealthy for someone just trying to learn causally like myself. My main question now is if doing these massive lumps of lessons well affect how I remember later on since I can see myself in the future remembering certain vocab will be in my review because I’ll remember learning one of them during the huge lesson.

[Joeni]

I definitely found that I remembered them slightly less well than if I was doing smaller batches, but ultimately the SRS system takes care of that - they’ll keep coming back until you get them

[Thuvar]

Great to hear, thanks!