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Stop after finishing? - Printable Version

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Stop after finishing? - thorstenu - 2009-04-23

Hi there,
I "finished" somehow RTK 1 two months ago. It really gave me confidence and speeded up vocabulary/sentence learning a lot. But I have still a lot of reviews everyday (using anki) and I cant see the light of being burden free. The main problem is my motivation.. i rush through the reviews so i have more time for my "real" Japanese learning. Every new word learned is some nice gain and gives me the feeling to make something useful with the Kanji.
Anki counts now 600 Kanji in my sentence deck and I have the feeling my heisig reviews are getting worser and worser with every new word i learn. There is more and more confusion between vocabulary words, keywords and other keywords. Perhaps one problem is that I don't use keywords most of the time while learning vocabulary... i see it more as some sort of entity I know.
Overall i think heisig gave me much as it really helped and still helps the learning process I do now but on the other hand i want to stop it because I think it has more use to spend the time now for sentence mining and such.

I have the feeling that most people think stopping is (or was for them) a really bad idea. Are there people out there that don't regret anything or don't think its a bad idea at all?

EDIT: I also thought about using the Japanese keywords but I don't want to learn that much uncommon vocabulary for now. Yet, it could be some serious option for the future... especially to restart if needed (after stopping).

Stop after finishing? - cerulean - 2009-04-23

I'm not done yet, but I gain a little confidence and knowledge every time I make a connection between a Kanji I've seen in RtK and a Kanji that belongs in a Japanese vocab word I'm already familiar with.

Ideally for me, by the time I'm done with or shortly after finishing RtK, I'd like to be in Japan, surrounded by the Kanji constantly.. And I intend to continue with the reviews until the Kanji and Japanese vocab are second nature to me (which isn't a foreseeable end yet.. so just keep reviewing I say!)

Stop after finishing? - Mcjon01 - 2009-04-23

I stopped doing Heisig reviews maybe two months after I finished. They were a chore that I dreaded doing, and actual Japanese was far more interesting at that point. That was probably about half a year ago, and even though I probably suck at Heisig stuff now, picking up new kanji from sentences hasn't really gotten any harder than it was when I was fresh out of RTK1. I can't say I regret stopping, but then again, I never regret anything I choose to do.

I think the important thing, if you want to keep up your ability to write kanji from memory, is to continue writing kanji from memory. It doesn't really matter how you do it.

Stop after finishing? - Sequa - 2009-04-23

I eventually stopped reviewing the kanji. I simply figured the cost-gain ratio is not good considering how much time it takes me too review. I see many of the kanji in the vocabulary that I learn and I count it as some kind of reviewing. I hardly ever make the connection with the keywords though. I just feel that I'm farmiliar with the kanji when I see them and have a feeling what they can mean both from the heisig keyword as well as the other vocab words I have seen them in. By stopping to review the kanji explicitly my ability to write kanji has dropped. When writing I often can't recall the radicals because I don't have that close connection between keyword-story-kanji anymore. However I don't really have any problems with recognition at least for those kanji that appear in my learned vocabulary. As for the others I decided it's not worth knowing them properly if I don't even know any words with them and can easily relearn them if I need to.
I would recomment to continue reviewing if writing is important to you. For me it's my lowest priority so I'd rather invest the time for Japanese in learning vocab, reading and listening. I suppose in the end it's all a matter of priorities.

Stop after finishing? - HerrPetersen - 2009-04-23

What I did was:
1.) Stop reviewing RTK
2.) Add sentences/vocab
3.) Check those sentences for RTK-Kanji and put those into anki in the Heisig model.
So basicly I only review those Kanji Heisig-style which I have in my deck. Right now this amounts to around 1200 Kanji vs 3000 (I think) sentences. Relearning Kanji from new sentences comes pretty natural.

Stop after finishing? - uberstuber - 2009-04-23

I stopped reviewing almost immediately after finishing, and regret it. I had to relearn a lot of kanji unneccessarily.
I'd suggest keeping it up for 6 months or so, even though it is a bit of a chore. Your reviews should go way down pretty soon though, making it not too bad.

Stop after finishing? - sethg - 2009-04-23

I wouldn't stop. I'd keep going. Personally, I'd keep adding until you're around 3000... If, that is, you really want to become fluent. I mean, why stop? It'll just take you backwards in a major way.

Stop after finishing? - QuackingShoe - 2009-04-23

I stopped. It hasn't affected my ability to read, or to learn to recognize new kanji. However, my ability to write has dropped dramatically, because I have no other method for practicing it. I intend to pick up writing again sometime later, but for now my priorities are what they are.

Stop after finishing? - esgrove - 2009-04-23

I think you should keep going. All of the problems you're having just haven't ironed out yet. You've captured the tiger of kanji, now you just need to tame it. It seems like you have a lot of reviews now, but the beauty of spaced repetition is that it spaces it out over time. After a few months, you'll know the kanji like the back of your hand, won't get them confused, and your review decks will diminish to only a few a day.

Stop after finishing? - Mesqueeb - 2009-04-23

I think you should start the Japanese keywords.
http://wrightak.googlepages.com/afterrtk1

I started that deck and I am adding 25 new cards each day, and when all Japanese-keyword cards are added I will stop reviewing here.

You still practice the same Kanji, but only in Japanese. Only a step UP the ladder imo.

-Mesqueeb

Stop after finishing? - saizen - 2009-04-23

i dont understand how in the hell you can all work sooooooo hard to master all 2042 and then just stop reviewing? Really how hard is it to keep reviewing after doing something as crazy as learning 2042 kanji in under a year (my estimation).

Stop after finishing? - QuackingShoe - 2009-04-23

You're rather impassioned about other people's choices that don't affect you in any way.

I gained a lot from going through RTK, but the only thing I lost by not continuing to review was a distinct connection to English keywords, and an ease in writing. I don't care about either of those things (right now), so the loss was meaningless, while the gain in time and peace of mind (I hate reviewing) is worth something.

Stop after finishing? - Nukemarine - 2009-04-24

I'm in the keep up your reviews camp. Yeah, it's probably not necessary if you go 8 hours a day into Japanese as you're going to be getting tons of exposure. If you're like me, limited to 2 hours of study and questionable ability at exposure due to work situation, keeping up reviews in 10 minutes a day is well worth it. Yeah, it was 60 reviews a day, then 30 now it's down to 10 or less a day out of 2500 cards.

As a side effect, I think vocabulary comes to me very quickly, and the ability to scan read has improved.

Plus, don't forget you can always add more to your reviews to make them more beneficial. After switching to Anki, I added more description to the kanji (definition, on and kunyomi words, stroke order).

Stop after finishing? - Floatingweed5 - 2009-04-24

With Nukemarine. I'm 1.5 years finished and the reviews are 10-20 per day. It takes minutes to finish and I have no trouble recognizing, recalling or writing kanji when I'm language studying. Stick with it.

Stop after finishing? - Tobberoth - 2009-04-24

Keep going, get Japanese keywords from the sentences you have in your deck. Trust me on this, using Japanese keywords you know speeds up your kanji reviews immensely because you can clearly see the word in your mind, so you know which kanji it is from that alone. The Heisig story should be enough for you to remember the details.

Also, keep in mind that after 8 or so correct reviews of a kanji, it's more or less gone. The only reason you still have tons of kanji is because you haven't reviewed them enough and you keep failing some. Just remember that eventually the kanji WILL go away completely from your reviews. Give it another year and you will probably not see kanji all that often.

Stop after finishing? - Brokenvai - 2009-04-24

A lot of topics like this are really....itchy? Heartbreaking?
Why would you want to quit? You've already done the work to get 2042 Kanji down, and then you decide to miss the critical step to remembering them? Everything about this site and the book Remembering the Kanji, is all about reviewing and keeping the Kanji in your memory.

I've noticed that there are a LOT of people looking for shortcuts through the method.
How is that supposed to help? I'm really confused.
We have groups of people that are trying to take the "useful" Kanji of Heisig, and study those instead of the rest.

I say, the more Kanji you know, the more prepared you shall be. Looking in the past, there were a lot of things I skipped over because I didn't think they were important enough. Homework was a big one. But I created a schedule and a method to getting all my work done, and I began to succeed.

A lot of the stuff on here, reminds me of the advice of those problems from Khatzu. The one thing he said that is screaming at me on here, is the feeling people have.

"The problem with our point-centric way of achieving goals and dreams and whatever-word-is-now-most-fashionable-for-”the prize”…is just that — it’s a “point”. It’s a single moment. Ipso facto, everything other than that point, every moment not spent at that point is a moment of failure. Every moment your sink is not empty, is a moment of filth and squalor. Anything that isn’t overtly and directly connected to acing the exam becomes a waste of time. Every second you are not fluent in Japanese, you are a n00b. Every day that isn’t your birthday sucks. Every day that isn’t your wedding day isn’t happy." --Khatzumemo; Processes not Results(Article)

Stop after finishing? - Codexus - 2009-04-24

saizen Wrote:Really how hard is it to keep reviewing after doing something as crazy as learning 2042 kanji in under a year (my estimation).
A lot harder. At least that's how it was for me.

While I was doing RtK I had a goal to keep me motivated. So even though it was really hard, I was spending all my evenings on kanji and nothing else. I finished in 2 and a half month.

But after I finished, I just lost the motivation and drive to continue even though the amount of reviews wasn't as large, even though I had more free time and was less tired, I just didn't have the motivation anymore.

I never decided to stop but due reviews started to accumulate and that was the result.

However the damage has been minimal. The benefit of recognizing the characters stayed pretty much intact and when I started reviewing everything again it was very easy. There are a few kanji from the very end of the book that I only got to review one or two times and then I haven't reviewed in a year that feel like unknown kanji but I'll get to adding them again eventually. But there is no rush, I can take my time now and focus on more interesting things than kanji.

So while it's best to review, if you need a break from all that, take it.

Stop after finishing? - mentat_kgs - 2009-04-24

You should never stop reviewing RTK, but it doesn't mean it must be with anki.
You can read normal books or write the sentences from your sentence deck.

Stop after finishing? - igordesu - 2009-04-24

I'm in the same boat as you. I finished RTK1 roughly 1.5ish months ago, and reviews still suck. Like, they just won't go away. They're stuck around 100/day, and the graph in anki lies when it says i'll only have 40 kanji in 10 days--i still have 100. But...I don't think I can stop reviewing. I worked really hard to finish RTK, and i don't want all that work to go to waste. To make it really useful, maybe i'll go through RTK with Japanese Keywords a year from now when reviews are less and i know more japanese.

Stop after finishing? - stoked - 2009-04-24

People who stop reviewing RTK have not understood what SRS is all about.

Stop after finishing? - Codexus - 2009-04-24

stoked Wrote:People who stop reviewing RTK have not understood what SRS is all about.
SRS are a great concept as long as you're able to keep up with the daily reviews. But they fail to take into consideration real life.

By imposing their revision schedule, they conflict with people's variations in motivation and/or available time for study. I don't even know a SRS that's capable of scheduling more long-term revisions on the week-ends! And they are awful at dealing with even the slightest break.

The inflexibility of SRS is the reason why many people can't keep up with their revisions. There is a lot of progress to be made in the scheduling methods.

Stop after finishing? - stoked - 2009-04-24

Codexus Wrote:SRS are a great concept as long as you're able to keep up with the daily reviews.
If you're not able to keep up with daily reviews, you're adding too many cards or have poor retention rate. It's always your fault. You can't blame the SRS.

Codexus Wrote:I don't even know a SRS that's capable of scheduling more long-term revisions on the week-ends!
Terrible idea. There's a reason why a card shows up on day X and not on day Y. It's the whole purpose of SRS.

Codexus Wrote:The inflexibility of SRS is the reason why many people can't keep up with their revisions.
No. The reason is either poor retention rates or too many new cards added in a short time frame. Everything else is a lame excuse.

Stop after finishing? - Tobberoth - 2009-04-24

Codexus Wrote:
stoked Wrote:People who stop reviewing RTK have not understood what SRS is all about.
SRS are a great concept as long as you're able to keep up with the daily reviews. But they fail to take into consideration real life.

By imposing their revision schedule, they conflict with people's variations in motivation and/or available time for study. I don't even know a SRS that's capable of scheduling more long-term revisions on the week-ends! And they are awful at dealing with even the slightest break.

The inflexibility of SRS is the reason why many people can't keep up with their revisions. There is a lot of progress to be made in the scheduling methods.
I can't agree with that. Putting long-term reviews on weekends would be bad for many people including me, I would even prefer if it tried to keep my reviews on weekdays since that would keep it as a routine. I prefer being free from chores on the weekends. I do however agree that such an option would be kinda cool and probably useful for many people, I'm sure you can ask resolve about it and he'll add something like it to Anki.

As for breaks, I think Anki deals with it as good as any software can: It simply lets you review them later. What do you want it to do, review them for you? The cards need to be reviewed, there's no way around that. If you can't do it today, you're going to have to do it tomorrow.

I agree that SRSes don't take considerations of real life but that's the point. If you take into consideration real life at all times, you're not going to learn. It can't be JUST convenience, at some point you're going to have to work for it, you know? It's not like you mess up your studies just because you take a break for a weekend. You took a break from your studies, now you get some extra workload for 2 days, I'd say that's fair. A lot more fair than any educational system such as high school or college.

Stop after finishing? - plumage - 2009-04-24

I think the weekend idea, *as an option*, would be good--primarily for cards that are well known and thus have a very long interval. With shorter intervals, it's important that the day be more targeted. Once something is put off for, say, 180 days, I honestly don't believe the science behind SRS has it down so exactly that if it schedules that card at 182 days to land on a Saturday instead that it'll harm your retention. After all, most SRS programs have a stagger algorithm that places the next card within a 2-4 day "range" to daily learning stacks as much as possible.

It would, however, be a terrible idea for short-term cards that are being repeated often due to being new or fails.

Given that AJATT has you SRSing up to 10,000 items, mainly sentences with multiple definitions and junk--cards that take more time per card than just definition cards--it's not inconceivable to see SRSing eventually taking up quite a long time on a daily basis. Perhaps even a barely manageable period of time per day, but that hoses you if you miss a week due to life.

Language study takes discipline. Absolutely. Toss in kids, divorce, financial hardships, work, family obligations, exercise, other associations, friends...yeah, I can easily see where it gets in the way even if you cut out every spare time hobby you have. One can be very steady and still have a ceiling to the amount of time they can dedicate to language study. These aren't just lame excuses, unless LIFE is a lame excuse.

That said, if you're sitting around watching TV, pr0n, or playing videogames 4 hours a day and you're complaining about SRS time, then yeah, maybe you should rethink why you're trying to study another language.

Stop after finishing? - Codexus - 2009-04-24

stoked Wrote:Terrible idea. There's a reason why a card shows up on day X and not on day Y. It's the whole purpose of SRS.
The day X isn't the result of a precise scientific calculation. It's at best an educated guess and most SRS actually add a random component to their calculated interval. So a difference of 3 days (the maximum difference to reschedule a card from a week day to the week-end) would already be well within normal variation range for a mature card.

stoked Wrote:No. The reason is either poor retention rates or too many new cards added in a short time frame. Everything else is a lame excuse.
That's not a very enlightened attitude. One could just as well say that if you need a SRS at all that's because you're not learning properly. I think using the best possible tools to facilitate learning is a good idea. SRS are a step in the right direction but they still have shortcomings.

Tobberoth Wrote:I can't agree with that. Putting long-term reviews on weekends would be bad for many people including me,
The idea is that you would have the flexibility to set your schedule any way you want to. So you could just as well have minimal short-term reviews on week-ends if that's your thing.

Tobberoth Wrote:I agree that SRSes don't take considerations of real life but that's the point. If you take into consideration real life at all times, you're not going to learn.
I understand that to some extent having a software force a fixed revision schedule can motivate people to keep up with it no matter what. And this is fine until, you can't keep up anymore. Then the SRS has the opposite effect on many people. It acts as a demotivator. All you see is that xxxx due cards.

Instead the software should use all the information available to it to make a realistic schedule that includes learning new information (an important factor for motivation) and be flexible about the schedule of revision of long interval cards that don't need immediate attention.

And the end, the SRS is a tool. I want it to be the most useful it can be even when I'm not following proper revision schedule. Current SRS are good but I think there is a lot of room for improvement in dealing with the issues that I've mentioned (apparently some people think that's a blasphemous opinion Wink)