English keywords that are almost identical
Characters that resist stories
Characters that resist stories where the order and direction [1st or 2nd, up and down or side by side]
Viewing the many hours ahead before you can get into the actual language
Viewing the insane hours before you can get to the level of a 5 year old or a "special" 8 year old
Wondering if I'll ever get any real use out of the language
Other life crap

Last night I had pretty much decided to quit. Did another chapter today but I am running on steam here, steam and not having a life so I got nothing else better to do.


Also my review accuracy is dropping below 90% and my first round learning from book to Anki today went from 2/3 pass or about a 1/3 pass. It takes a round of recall to cement them into the head, less and less are sticking from the book and writing them down.

Well at least there is this guy.

Except I am not almost there, nobody is cheering me on and I think I'd rather harvest Asiatic clams at 10 below.
Matsuoka Shuzo is right, if I keep going I know I'll eventually make it.

I'm remembering your other thread:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=13005

Are you aware of the shared stories on the site this forum is attached to? Sometimes a less popular story will work better.
http://kanji.koohii.com/

And if you're still using Anki settings that create more reviews than is necessary, that will make things harder as the number of kanji go up.

80% for reviews is OK. 1/3 for new cards probably means you need better stories.

HelenF Wrote:I'm remembering your other thread:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=13005

Are you aware of the shared stories on the site this forum is attached to? Sometimes a less popular story will work better.
http://kanji.koohii.com/

And if you're still using Anki settings that create more reviews than is necessary, that will make things harder as the number of kanji go up.

80% for reviews is OK. 1/3 for new cards probably means you need better stories.

I just set up an account as per your suggestion just now.

Earlier on either buddy came up with a good one in the book or one of the deck stories nailed it or when neither of those 2 did it I could come up with something myself. I find the stories arn't bad they just don't stick very well... I guess that means they are bad, but they make sense.

Sometimes I go into Anki without a story at the first learning pass. If the book has nothing and I can't come up with anything I have to wait to see the results of the card to find out the stories in the deck.

One thing I don't do is visualisation, nor do I really use stories but rather sentences that incorporate the keyword and the elements. I find those actual stories in RTK just get on my nerves. I know that visualisation is a powerful memory tool, but lets just say if I were required to follow the forever fluent advice of say visually blowing up all male nouns and burning all female nouns, I'd rather take up knitting. Not that Japanese has gendered nouns [right?] but you get where I am coming from.

Failing IIRC 19 out of 31 was very much an under performance for me. Did better the previous lesson even though I was less confident. Maybe a combo of too many flies [yeah as in bugs, long story] and too much people with the yakkity yak yak crushed my performance. I figured as long as my review accuracy was riding above 90% or even 80% it was nothing to worry about.

I never fretted the first round failure rate as usually on learning stage repeats I'd get it the second time around. I just figured it took an attempt at recall to nail it in as opposed to reading the book, and writing down the character 5 times.

I still have starting ease at 200 although I must admit until very recently I'd mark most things hard at the review stage. I've gotten out of that habit recently so my accuracy rate should be dropping a bit.
Trying to trust Anki more and not fretting the fails.

I've reduced the learning stages to 6. I found the 7th and 8th repeats were just too easy, going through the motions. I was thinking of dropping it to as low as three, after all if I am not comfortable with a card I could just fail it and I'll get 3 more repeats. Granted that will kill my accuracy rate at the review stage but I can probably afford it.


Looking for better stories and cutting back a bit on the rote grinding might help a bit at least with some issues.

Dudeist Wrote:Viewing the many hours ahead before you can get into the actual language
Viewing the insane hours before you can get to the level of a 5 year old or a "special" 8 year old
Wondering if I'll ever get any real use out of the language

There is nothing stopping you from getting into the actual language. If your motivation is getting to be as low as you say it is, this might actually be a good idea. No shame in not sticking to the instructions of the book, especially in the case of someone who says they don't like doing stories. I got sick of the book a maybe a few hundred frames in, a year later I can't write 2,000 kanji and I may never learn to, but I can read material well above the level of a 5 year old, as far as recognition goes I probably have somewhere between 500 and 1,000 characters under my belt. Perhaps more significantly I can do about three or four hour of Japanese conversation a week over Skype without getting frustrated with how little I know. I'm getting real use out of the language. Maybe RtK does turn out to be a good choice for you but don't burn out and quit.

JKS87 Wrote:There is nothing stopping you from getting into the actual language. .

I was half thinking of that tonight actually. Not so much from a motivation perspective but perhaps I am better off just pounding kanji into my head as they slowly dribble though via course work. Over a year that's just 6 a day and thanks to the almost 400 I've done so far at least I can sort of see a pattern in ones I haven't seen before as opposed to a tangle of meaningless strokes.

Or maybe I can switch from production to recognition. Maybe I am wrong about the value of writing in terms of recognition, others seem to think so. Writing everything out does seem to be hard mode. Every review I write it out, it does take a lot of time.

I am wondering, if I do finish RTK, how difficult are actual words with multiple Kanji in comparison.

I am half wondering if I will end up in the position of many here who go in so far and then continue just because of the sunk cost fallacy. You find out it isn't really doing it for you any more but meh, you put so much time into it, you might as well keep slogging it out. Sadly one will never know till it is too late.

I do find it weird that yesterday and before I was fairly consistent with failing about 30% of my cards on the first stage of the learning steps and getting the rest for an overall score of over 90.
I decided last night to quit. Figured today I'd give it another shot and now my first round accuracy has tanked to missing about 2/3s earlier today and just now missing 9 out of 19. I have no idea what is different. Granted by the second and third run I was nailing all of them as per usual but still.

Oh well I guess Anki will sort it out.

Dudeist Wrote:I am half wondering if I will end up in the position of many here who go in so far and then continue just because of the sunk cost fallacy.

This was basically my fear when I started Japanese, and half the reason I chose to put RtK down and focus on conversation and other skills I could put to use immediately. I honestly didn't have much of a reason to start learning Japanese besides being housebound with a crippling illness and needing something to do. Pressing on with practical skills, making Japanese friends I can talk to over Skype, and learning to love Doraemon and Yotsubato gave me enough reasons to keep at it. If I had continued with RtK I don't know if I would have those things today, maybe I too would be learning Japanese just because I couldn't deal with admitting I wasted a year of my life. I have no doubt it's a great method for people who can get through it in good time, but I feel like there's got to be a point where it's taking too much time and effort to justify any more . Same with anything, I did Assimil and Pimsleur simultaneously but promised myself if I couldn't get through a new lesson most days I'd quit since they're both billed as one lesson a day type deals. Spending ages on a big grammar book I can almost understand, but doing the same with a method which is meant to be quick and efficient sounds like hell to me.

When I started RTK I figured it would be a good idea to get all the Kanji down solid. At the time I was thinking of picking up a second language and using that time to further review the RTK to mature the cards so when I got started in Japanese everything would be in the brain solid.

Now I am wondering if perhaps that is the wrong attitude. If it is simply important to get through it and if for example I can recall 1500 of them with no problem and struggle with 500 it is no big deal, something that will get fixed as time goes on when learning the language. After all the key words and stories are supposed to float away over time.

Also when I fail, it is at recall and not recognition and I figure at the lesson stage recognition will be more important. Writing new vocab down over the years as well as any hand writing I may choose to do should cement at least the more important Kanji down.

Having trouble and hard patches is normal. Personally, I think you should stick with it. As you said, getting full mastery can wait. Having a good working knowledge of 1500 characters will be useful.

How many new cards are you adding per day. It's easy to get caught up in the machista outlook of adding the absolute maximum number of cards per day. This will sometimes burn you out. Try stopping adding new cards and just do reviews for a while.

I want to just reiterate a suggestion I made to you earlier, and that is switching to recognition cards instead of production. It's so much easier, quicker and more pleasant. I've seen several people writing about the same frustrations as you and switched to recognition and never looked back. I've never seen it go the other way.

Learning to recognize the kanji is going to open up a whole new world to you pretty immediately because it only takes a few months and you'll be able to puzzle out some actual japanese. Then you can learn some vocabulary and you're on your way to actual reading. You can learn to write later, once you can actually read what you're writing.

mpericks Wrote:How many new cards are you adding per day. It's easy to get caught up in the machista outlook of adding the absolute maximum number of cards per day. This will sometimes burn you out. Try stopping adding new cards and just do reviews for a while.

My personal experience, though, is that you burn out anyway. On my first try I burnt out during lesson 23 at just 20 a day. On my second and present try, I blazed through the first 1100 kanji (I did lessons 1-27 in under a month), after which my pace has become really sluggish. I'm currently halfway through lesson 37 and hope I can reach the 3/4 mark in a few days.

Taking a break from adding cards so that reviews don't pile up and the retention rate doesn't drop too radically is a good idea, though. More than 80-100 reviews a day starts getting tiresome if you write the kanji as you review them, plus you need a bit of time to consolidate all the new kanji.

I do one or two lessons every day so far. Mostly 1 though. I've skipped a day or two. I do reviews every day.
I've actually been debating ramping up the speed just to get it over with faster and into the review stage.
I got the time at least. Don't really have the time to finish off another language while doing RTK unless I slow the RTK down to a crawl and I don't really want to start the next stage of Japanese till I got the RTK and the Kana done.
Half of me wants to just finish it ASAP even if I have to half ass it due to the speed [as in not giving it the time to absorb everything right] and let the review only stage take care of what I missed.


422 now. I have no idea what lesson that is [17, 18?].
Did 103 old ones with an accuracy of slightly over 80%. Switching from 6 learning steps to 3 really hit that number hard I think. However in the longer term I guess and hope that it is better to let the easier cards go with only 3 and have the harder cards restart the process with another 3 steps on another day vs 6 on one day[I have 3 steps for lapsed cards.
That 6 learning steps does get monotonous even if it cements everything firmly.

One thing I do now, if I fail a card at the review stage I write it down to look at sans Anki later on that day both for review and to try to fix a story.
I've also taken to editing cards I fail with story 1 being a list of elements and story 2 being a story I like. It really slows things down but I figure in the longer run it will save time.

27 new cards, failed about 10 on the first round so I seem to be back to my old pattern.

Every time though I get that WTF am I trying to learn Japanese for anyways moment but I suspect I'll get that quite a bit even I get near fluent in the language unless I live there. Not really much to do with method actually. I came into this project with pretty weak motives compared to many. I mean I could just as easily have chose Chinese if it were not for tones or Hindi if it were not for a bunch of letters that sound exactly the same.

Those English key words that are very similar are getting to be a huge pain. Admonish vs Chastise, I mean really? Those two I can keep straight so far but I can see it getting worse as time goes on.

I think I will keep with writing for now. I'd rather do it right the first time. One Stop equals Correct after all.
I can always switch to recognition at a latter point or even production but of stories as opposed to physical writing them down if it ever comes to either quitting or making it easier.

If you're not liking RTK just don't do it. Learn the actual language, and if down the road you may think you need a more systematic way of learning kanji you could try RTK or another method with a new-found motivation.

But, keep in mind, learning Japanese is not easy; there will be harder things to do than get through RTK.

Tzadeck Wrote:But, keep in mind, learning Japanese is not easy; there will be harder things to do than get through RTK.

I know it isn't easy. I would however like to hear what fresh hell I am in store for me. What are the harder things.

Dudeist Wrote:Those English key words that are very similar are getting to be a huge pain. Admonish vs Chastise, I mean really? Those two I can keep straight so far but I can see it getting worse as time goes on.

Yes, and later on you get "scold" as well. There's also "garments" and "clothing"; "hop", "leap" and "jump"; "embrace" and "hug"; "cape", "promontory" and "headland". Usually what I do in these cases is I add the actual Japanese reading to the front of the flashcard. In fact whenever I know a word or there's a word I don't know but is basic enough that I should know it, I add it to the keyword. It's pretty helpful! But if you don't want to be learning vocabulary yet, you can do something like "admonish (not 寸)" and "chastise (not 敬)".

There are also a number of similar primitives which you should be careful not to mix up, possibly by reviewing them on their own a couple of times (moving legs, crotch and taskmaster; stop, mend, just so, determined, zoo; arrow, fiesta, harvest festival or whatever that one was called, parade, march; history and grow late; rake, mop and broom, etc.) Luckily most of them are very common so you'll be reviewing them all the time anyway.

Keep in mind one trick for similar keywords is to add a hint that points to the story. Similar keywords usually have very different stories so that works out in the end.

Dudeist Wrote:I know it isn't easy. I would however like to hear what fresh hell I am in store for me. What are the harder things.

Well the learning is long, so staying motivated is one thing. Grammar is straightforward but using it in speech will be tricky, with conjugations, transitive/intransitive pairs, patterns, etc.

One thing that is hard for me is how forgettable vocabulary is. Even after three years I still sometimes feel like I'm perpetually relearning the same things (adverbs for example). That can put a damper on the fact that you're always making small progress. But it's nothing personal, just your brain struggling to grasp something quite alien, so no need to be mad at yourself. And one day you'll realise you can read the stuff when other people can't. Not that it's rewarding, but know pratice will get you there.

Dudeist Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:But, keep in mind, learning Japanese is not easy; there will be harder things to do than get through RTK.

I know it isn't easy. I would however like to hear what fresh hell I am in store for me. What are the harder things.

Well, for example, you only need to learn a bit over 2,000 kanji and you have a method laid out for doing that. But you need to memorize way more vocabulary than that to achieve fluency, and there's no easy system to do that. Or, for example, if you're not especially outgoing or you're not living in Japan, learning to speak is a very difficult task. Making the jump from learning materials to native materials, especially things like novels, is also a very difficult time period because you have to sludge through an awful lot of stuff before it starts getting noticeably easier.

But convincing yourself to continue to study for as long as it takes to reach a high level is probably the biggest problem. I think it takes most people more than five years to reach JLPT N1, and even then it's not like you're a Japanese whiz. It's a serious life commitment; that's hard.

What Tzadeck said. I'm still banging my head on the N1 wall, and it's frustrating as hell sometimes. You have to find your reasons to struggle on, and stay motivated. Motivation more than anything is what will keep you going, and it's the one thing that will either help/hinder your progress.

If you don't have good reasons, it's going to be harder to find motivation in the first place. (They just have to be good reasons for you. Good enough to devote a lot of time to studying the language.)

If you're still losing motivation, you need to either find a way to make it fun, or find another way to do it. If RTK isn't working, maybe RTK Lite or one of the other methods will work.

There's no ironclad rule that says you HAVE to start your Japanese learning with RTK. It helps, but it's far more important to be excited and motivated about learning, rather than "Oh God, I have to do another 30 kanji."

No RTK Police will come and raid your house if you stop reviewing and take a break. Yeah, you'll lose your progress. That part sucks. But from the long term view, it's more important to stay motivated than it is to kill all desire and interest in the language doing something you hate. (And for the record, it took me two tries to get through RTK. I quit once, went to Japan, had a blast, then came back and breezed through it.)

I might be 20% done but it feels like I am so close to the end even though I got hundreds of hours to go. I can just taste it. I believe it was Robert Frost who said "Many pages to RTK before I Genki 1 and 2" or maybe it was something about miles and sleep. Maybe I should learn Klingon so I can read him in the original language.

Hell even if I just finish RTK and stop it would be a feather in my cap.

If I am about to give up on the language, I'll try other methods first.

I'd like to get the N1, even for it's own sake. Much like Mt Everest, because it's there.
It's a big deal to get something like this done. Sure I got degrees up the wazoo but they were insanely easy for me and I never did anything with them.
I must admit there is this idea in my head that perhaps going to Japan in my mid 40's might unfornicate my life a bit but I have my serious doubts about it, even before I started. On the plus side my life can't get much more barren. Even if I don't go, having an exotic and difficult language under my belt might give my otherwise dull exterior a bit of a shine. Although I doubt that also.

So really I have the Everest thing and sheer bloody minded determination and nothing else to try/do.
Well that and Matsuoka Shuzo, Tennis playing clam guy.

The other thing that keeps me going is having a bit of trust that if I keep pushing, it will eventually start to fall into line... somehow. Even if I end up having to lapse half those cards 3 or 4 times, it just means it will take longer. I need to get over the distress and frustration of failing cards and starting from the beginning.


Determine[ation]. House over mend. As in Mike Holmes is determined to get that home mended. Sadly before I looked it up I was remembering it as home over correct. Sigh.


I'd like to thank everyone for your kind words and ideas.

It's frustrating to study kanji that seem to have the same meaning, but in the actual language they are often used together to make a word of the same meaning. For example 到 and 着　both have the meaning of "arrive" and they are used in the word 到着 which means... you guessed it, "arrival". Another example is 懲 "penal" and 罰 "penalty" which are used in the word　懲罰 which means punishment or discipline.　They are pronounced differently, and used in other words from each other too. So this meaning overlap is not totally pointless. The meanings I gave here might not be the RTK keywords, but I'm sure you get the gist.

For your RTK burnout, I'd recommend taking a break and just keeping up with reviews while working on some beginner Japanese. ~400 kanji is a lot, but with ~1600 left there's a lot more room for further burnout. Sometimes it's best to take a break and keep things fresh by working on something new. Then when you come back to RTK it'll feel fresh and more motivating to work on again, imo.

I seem to be doing better. I think I was just running tired, I was working on my sleep schedule and I had some non Japanese stuff getting me down... well distantly related non Japanese stuff. I mean when you are out at a fast food place on a Saturday night working on the RTK and seeing couples with an uber hot girl, you gotta reflect on how much your life sucks. Nothing to do directly with the RTK but not completely unrelated.

It is feeling more difficult though, like I just don't have the grasp on it but my reviews are still hitting 85% so that could just be perception. I think I need more as EratiK says above... "but know practice will get you there."

For now at least I think I will forgo the break. I will keep an eye on actual RTK burnout though. Until then if I get full sleep, avoid depressing reminders of my life suckatude and just keep reminding myself that "practice will get you there" and I should be able to push past the feelings that this is just getting too hard. I really want to finish things up and move into review mode.


It does help that I am recording my progress on the facebook. About 3 of the 12 "friends" seem to be keeping track at least. Nice to have some accountability.

Dudeist Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:But, keep in mind, learning Japanese is not easy; there will be harder things to do than get through RTK.

I know it isn't easy. I would however like to hear what fresh hell I am in store for me. What are the harder things.

I'd say Japanese study is downhill in easiness after RTK. That's the magic of it.

Tzadeck Wrote:

Dudeist Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:But, keep in mind, learning Japanese is not easy; there will be harder things to do than get through RTK.

I know it isn't easy. I would however like to hear what fresh hell I am in store for me. What are the harder things.

But convincing yourself to continue to study for as long as it takes to reach a high level is probably the biggest problem. I think it takes most people more than five years to reach JLPT N1, and even then it's not like you're a Japanese whiz. It's a serious life commitment; that's hard.

Sure most people who take classes. Sunehiro and Vempele here did it in under 2 years.

yukamina Wrote:For your RTK burnout, I'd recommend taking a break and just keeping up with reviews while working on some beginner Japanese. ~400 kanji is a lot, but with ~1600 left there's a lot more room for further burnout. Sometimes it's best to take a break and keep things fresh by working on something new. Then when you come back to RTK it'll feel fresh and more motivating to work on again, imo.

seconded.
but don't give up reviewing! it's important, and you'll retention rate will go up in a week or two.