I use WK to study kanji and to date I haven’t made any attempt to practice writing. There are two reasons for this: first, because numerous sources say that no one actually writes kanji anymore since everything is computer or phone (even though this is obviously false), and that you’ll just forget how if you’re not doing it a lot, etc. And second, because I’m a lazy, undisciplined student; I want to make a minimal effort and focus on the lowest-hanging fruit, and practicing writing is an added hassle.
But I’ve often thought that I should practice writing, if only to reinforce my memory. See, I can’t even clearly visualize many of the kanji (and I am not a strong visualizer in general, e.g. art). I feel this makes it harder to disambiguate similar kanji - since the different radicals are “meaningless” to me - and I think it also makes it harder to recognize kanji in the wild, since I’ve only memorized their appearance in WK.
Since I’ve also forgotten some kanji I’ve burned, I’ve thought about rolling back to level 1 after I’m done with WK, and doing it over, and practicing writing them this time. But this is probably a lot of wasted effort reviewing kani and vocab I maybe don’t need to review. Speed running through them by N level, or grade level, etc, is probably the smarter move; I shouldn’t need such intense review for most kanji I’ve learned even if I’ve forgotten them, and I can zero in on the leechy ones that way. I’ve already noticed patterns in radical use, meaning, and reading, so I’m not sure that going in grade order will teach me anything I didn’t know, but it probably can’t hurt anyway, and the more ways you can look at a thing you’re learning, the better, usually.
WRT passing items that you “failed” that you actually mostly knew… I do this with WK all the time. I’m actually not concerned with learning the exact nuance and closest equivalent English grammar for every kanji or word; Japanese is such a big elephant that I’m content being in the right general ballpark, and refining my understanding later. Some people feel it’s a burden to “unlearn” things but I’m trying to reach a functional level, where I can parse out some writing and understand it broadly; we are not computers, and trying to learn everything exactly right the first time doesn’t seem like an optimal strategy because we can’t commit it to memory the way computers can, anyway. I do this with Bunpro even more, to the point where I question whether I’m cheating myself - but I see Bunpro as a means to get exposed to a grammar point repeatedly, not as a useful tool for rote memorization (not because it isn’t one; on the contrary, I tend to memorize sentence/answer combos without necessarily being comfortable with the grammar!) Getting stuck on some leech forever because you didn’t get a na or a no or a ni in exactly the right place is miserable and frustrating. My feeling is that I will actually end up learning grammar largely from consuming native Japanese; the point of doing something like Bunpro or any other grammar study is just to get enough familiarity with structures that I can recognize them in the wild and have a good chance of figuring out what’s being expressed.
Keep in mind, the object of language study isn’t really native fluency. I mean, it can be. But unless this is a 100% abstract exercise for you and you don’t care about ever using the language as a language, rough functionality is far more important. Imagine every immigrant you’ve ever met with an imperfect understanding of your local tongue; do they hide away from the world until they’re ready to speak perfectly? Or do they muddle through with terrible accents, limited vocab, and mangled caveman grammar until years of practice and exposure improve them? Which one is more likely to be able to function in an environment where the less familiar language is spoken exclusively, and which one is letting perfect be the enemy of good? Do you think you’re any different? I don’t, and I choose my study methodology accordingly. YMMV, of course.
