AlgoRhythmic Wrote:40-50% failure rate sounds pretty high to be honest, though I'm not entirely sure about what the standard numbers are. Are you making sure that you really imagine the stories in front of you? It's really important that you not only read the story and try to remember the words, you have to visualize it in your head.

ryanjmack Wrote:...I add cards in bunches of three, write them a couple times, look over their stories. Then I do some homework and return and see if I remember them 15 or 30 minutes later...I usually forget a good chunk (maybe 40 or 50%).

I was wondering if this is normal, and if not how did you study them?

ryanjmack Wrote:I've mastered kana, and now working on RTK. I know no grammar, vocab etc. Should I focus on solely RTK before doing any other study?

overture2112 Wrote:) I think you're waiting too long before initial review. When I was studying RtK, the method I settled into after the first few hundred was to learn about 10 at a time (slightly more or less if finishing a section for a new primitive)- that is, reading heisig's story and the ones recommend on this site until I came upon one I liked then do all the mental imaging (as AlgoRhythmic notes this is a very important part and is why I can remember a new kanji for half an hour after seeing it once but can't remember a phone number for more than a minute without memory tricks). After the 10th I'd take a break for ~10minutes, run a script which updated my Anki deck based on my stories on this site, then review the cards in Anki. I used non-daily scheduling which put my first real review at roughly 8hrs (which, in the worst case, would become around 14hrs if I couldn't do reps in the morning on the way to work and had to wait til lunch break).

ryanjmack Wrote:The options for feedback is bad (like 10 seconds), good (10 minutes) and well (10 days). How did you modify those settings?

ryanjmack Wrote:I definitely think the mental imaging is what i was lacking. There was little to 0 what so ever. My question is I've tried using anki before, but i do not know how to modify the settings too well. The options for feedback is bad (like 10 seconds), good (10 minutes) and well (10 days). How did you modify those settings?
I've found anki to be a bit frustrating if your new with it but I feel it is worth it since everyone has good things to say about it.

ryanjmack Wrote:I also have the sixth edition of heisigs RTK and I've noticed that some of the kanji are nonexistent on the RevTK website. So far these kanji do not exist:
Elbow #30
Derision #54
Pop Song #57
Post a Bill #60
Sniff #129
Gland #141
None of these kanji seem really important, I kind of want elbow and sniff in my deck. Any way to add these? Or are these not in there for a reason??

Thanks!

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:Well now that you're more aware of imagining the stories then it could be a good time to re-read the introduction, or at least the parts about imaginative memory. I don't mean to imply that you didn't read properly, just that going back and reviewing the instructions after having got into it a bit should make things clearer. It's a really fat introduction, and just like when you're supposed to read the manual for things like software - you can't really sit down and read carefully for ages and then start off just knowing everything clear as day :p You want to just get into it, try it, run into problems or questions, and then go back and see what you can do about it.

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:(Btw, I'd probably recommend downloading a pre-made RTK deck rather than making your own, if you haven't done so. You can customize it the way you want anyway).